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Xbox Modders Charged Under DMCA
JamesAlfaro wrote to mention a News.com article about a pair of game store owners charged with Xbox modding. From the article: "Jason Jones and Jonathan Bryant, two Los Angeles residents who own the ACME Game Store on Melrose Ave., allegedly sold Xbox game systems that had been modified by Pei Cai, of Pico Rivera, Calif. Cai allegedly equipped the Xbox consoles with modification chips and large hard drives to allow the user to copy rented or borrowed games onto the device for future playback. Buyers would pay from $225 to more than $500 for the changes."
Gods, that thing is an abomination. It seems like anybody can be charged for just about anything the big companies don't like.
From TFA: During the investigation, undercover agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement paid $265 to have a modification chip, a hard drive and 77 pirated games installed on an Xbox, according to the criminal complaint.
This is where we all cheer, because the DMCA is being used appropriately.
I suspect this story only got a green light because it has that particular acronym, but seriously guys -- this is what the law is supposed to do, right?
Did this just get posted so we could laugh at these guys for being so blatant?
From TFA:
During the investigation, undercover agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement paid $265 to have a modification chip, a hard drive and 77 pirated games installed on an Xbox, according to the criminal complaint.
Like I said on digg this morning when this was posted there, no wonder they were charged, and quite rightly too.
This is not a "Your rights online" story, it's a story about blatent copyright violation.
AAARRGGH them swanky pirates!
If you oppose the DMCA (as I do), this is the wrong type of case to rally around.
Read the article:
"During the investigation, undercover agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement paid $265 to have a modification chip, a hard drive and 77 pirated games installed on an Xbox, according to the criminal complaint." (emphasis added)
Now, if they were charged for selling the modding and hard drives, it's a clear-cut abuse of the DMCA by industry and law enforcement. But they were allegedly selling 77 pirated games. That's a completely different issue and doesn't necessarily deserve any support.
Disclaimer: The article is pretty scant on details, so if it turns out the 77 "pirated" games were actually purchased at full price and installed on the hard drive, then I'll support the ACME Game Store owners.
(Lyrics from Too Bad, by Doug and the Slugs):
As if selling an illegal mod chip wasn't bad enough, these geniuses also helpfully loaded up the XBox with 77 pirated games.
These guys are screwed, and they have noone but themselves to blame.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
From TFA:
During the investigation, undercover agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement paid $265 to have a modification chip, a hard drive and 77 pirated games installed on an Xbox, according to the criminal complaint.
I'd have a lot more sympathy for them if there weren't for the pirated games installed as part of the purchase. Real stupid move there.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
If you RTFA, then you'll find that this isn't a case of "Modded xboxes = bad" it's "Modded xbox + large amounts of commercial copyright violation = bad". Which I don't think most people would have a problem with. Slashdot strikes again!
(Although, having said that, I'm here on a day-pass. Anyone else think that the idea is actually pretty great?)
My UID is prime. Is yours?
If you read closely, they're not only invoking DMCA for pirated games, but also the modchip itself (conspiring to circumvent...).
This could set a precedent that means the end of:
TiVo mods
Linux on XBOX
Tinkering with Trusted Computing (!)
Pretty much modifying any hardware with basic protections
So if I buy a car I can't um "mod" it to be faster?
Who the hell would cheer for any of this?
The DMCA is silly. Don't our Federal Agents have better ppl to track down? Like maybe the terrorists?
I was all with them until this nonsense. Of course... why would they cost themselves the profit of at least selling the games if they ran a game store? Even at $10 apiece, that's well over the cost of what they were charging to give them for.
"To work for libertarianism -- to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual -- used to be
That's about 76 more than the number of worthwhile games available for the Xbox. They got ripped off. =)
http://www.flurry.com
E-mail and news on y
It still seems right to criticize the DMCA to me. It isn't necessary to get pirates but it does criminalize a whole range of activities that really shouldn't be illegal.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I don't have a lot of sympathy for these guys because obviously they were doing more than modding consoles. But is a 5 year prison sentence appropriate for this? I'm not sure how prison sentences work in California, but in Canada a 5 year sentence doesn't neccesarily mean you spend 5 years behind bars. I just think that a civil remedy would probably be just as effective (i.e. sue for damages). I'm obviously not a lawyer - I just think half a decade of unwilling participation might be overboard for small scale piracy.
NeverEndingBillboard.com
NeverEndingBillboard.com
1. You need to get a hacked bios that lets you boot soemthing else besides the DVD drive
2. you need to run some sort of dashboard. (basically a menu manager on which programs to launch.
Since all of these are built with an piece of software that MS owns, and is not licensened to build "homebrew" software its still technically not legal to get this software. That is why this software is not availiable for blatent download, you have to do a little bit of digging.
Now ethically I have no problem with the abouve steps to lets say get xbox media center working (my favorite reason for my xbox). But I think the store selling the box with games is totally wrong and just blatent copyright infringement/theft, depending on the camp you talk to. People worked hard on the games, and they deserve to get paid, just like you deserve to get paid at your work for what you do.
Source code is like sex. It's better when it's free.
Not only did they pirate the games, but they ripped off the rock band AC~DC for the logo on their website as well.
http://www.acmegamestore.com/
I'm intrested in what game programmers / creators think of the penalties that could be imposed. Would you prefer a large fine to jail time?
Remember that these guys could have been prosecuted under perfectly servicable copyright laws; it's not as if we need a law as divisive as the DMCA to bring people like this to justice.
Copyright laws, together with the concept of Fair Use, are reasonable; the DMCA is a corporate-sponsored attack on Fair Use, and serves no other purpose.
Andy
To elaborate, this is the exact charge that could set a precident that scares me: "conspiring to traffic in a technology used to circumvent a copyright protection system". For a long time, Linux on xbox was considered legal as no code was stolen. Only the copy protection system was broken, using flaws in the hardware (unlike DeCSS). No actual code is altered in the process. This could also prevent people who prefer their privacy from disabling Trusted Computing. Generally, the rule of thumb has been "you bought the hardware, you can do whatever you want with it as long as you don't touch our software". This would change that.
It would have been nice to see a test case for the DMCA. However, this is going to be settled fast.
From the article:
During the investigation, undercover agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement paid $265 to have a modification chip, a hard drive and 77 pirated games installed on an Xbox
Even without the DMCA crap, these guys are screwed. Most likely the lawyers for the defendants will settle for a fine and a suspended sentence. Nothing will be tried, and the DMCA will continue to exist as a nice chilling spectre.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Because they sure as hell aren't reading the articles before they slap them on the front page...
Wile E. Coyote was seen leaving the same store with a sledghammer, an Xbox and a very large rubber band.
Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
This is not a "Your rights online" story, it's a story about blatent copyright violation.
Listen to what you're saying. These people aren't bank robbers, rapists, con artists, gangsters - they are simply copying and modding stuff, and for that they are going to get hard time? WTF, next time someone drives 5mph over the speed limit - would you recommend death by lethal injection? Next time someone someone fails to report that extra 50 cent tip they made on their taxes, would you recommend life imprisonment? (with boy lover bubba) Next time someone tears the label off the matress, how about just skipping the trial and beat the F*** out of them right there ... really, I sense a serious values problem here.
Microsoft is a hypocrite, if they support these kinds of punishments for simply copying - then I can only imagine what they deserve to get for anti trust behavior themselves.
Are you serious? I would agree with you if all they did was install a modchip, but they also included 77 games. That most certainly IS wrong, not just illegal.
Holy crap that's the stupidest tripe I've seen in quite a while.
Fucking moron.
I simply do not agree on modding being illegal. I still feel that by modding an Xbox i get more functionality, I paid for the hardware and if i own it I can smash it, mod it, or do whatever I like to do with it in the privacy of my home.
.....
Now selling 77 games on the HDD is not a good thing, but being able to play a copy of a game comes handy sometimes.
E.G. I am the owner of the original game "Ghost recon Summit strike" NTSC but since I do no have Live I play on XBC or KAI.
Since I figured that the game is only compatible with the same system (NTSC vs NTSC and PAL vs PAL) I cannot play with my european buddies online unless I have a PAL version, and even if I buy a pal version I cannot play it in my unmodded NTSC Xbox. So I have a copy of the PAL game just for the purpose to be eble to play overseas.
But that is just one reason I own a modchip and why I refuse to buy a game 2 times. (UBI I love you guys, make the next GR playable all-over just like any other developers and I won't own an illegal copy I promise.
Now when it comes to game modding on consoles, ripping the game (whether you own it or steal it) is also a requirement (or to be able to make a custom DVD with the new files) .
Same goes with extra maps (without live).
But still this is just the game part, when you want to use your box as an AVI player, listen to online radio and etce..tc..tc
What is next? I buy a honda and there will be an eula that if I put on an extra exhaust pipe, or change the air filter I am modding illegally? Oh yeah, I circumvented the rev limiter because my bike moved like grandma's.... everyone does that
If it goes like this we will see computers with locks on it that only repairmen can open, and the police will come to you and check if your computer is still sealed, if not you pay $$$$ and go to jail.
A bit of info: I asked my local retailer for an unmodded Xbox. All I heard is : are you crazy? Why would you sell that here?
I mentioned it before, but here in Costa Rica a game goes for $80 for ps2/xbox while a copy goes for $5-$6.
Now which is selling better when a McDonalds worker makes around $200 a month ?
I personally order games used from Amazon or Ebay for like $15 a piece, but many people have no US shipping address here, and do not own a credit card, nor they want to pay for a game that's $80 and you are missing half the functionality as it is Xbox live only, as they barely have a dialup at home.
Just some inside look why piracy goes on here..... Well now returning to the LA story, I am sure those guys who bought these preloaded boxes made more than $200 a month, and I am sure I would be ashamed to get anything like thet in the US where you have $10 used games on storeshelves.
Oh, I saw ads last year around Christmas on TV advertising chipped consoles with 5 games included. I am 99% sure that those were copies too.
despite posting with no karma bonus and no subscriber bonus, I get modded down as overrated at 1- and yet I thought it was a somewhat funny take on an old joke, what with the multiple meanings and all.
RIAA/MPAA: "Look Congress, look! This is why we need even stricter penalties and more latitude in DMCA '06. These vile lawbreakers aren't getting the message."
One could argue that a hit man is merely "serving his customers" as well. They weren't harming others? Not directly, maybe, but distributing content that you don't have the intellectual property rights to distribute is definitely unethical. It's pretty pathetic (and cliche) to throw in the Rosa Parks comparison. What next, are you going to compare this to the Nazis?
As a republican I feel it my responsibity to manufacture criminals. People need punished!
At the time, it was a jail sentence
Later it was vindication
The main reason Rosa Parks is so famous is that the NAACP hand-picked her case because she was a good two shoes. They had numerous opportunities to contest the law before she decided not to get up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks
As for the rest of your statement, yes those two people got what they desrved. WTF did they expect would happen if they sold copyrighted games out of their store. It actually makes it worse that they were store owners and not some dude selling bootleg dvd's on the street.
You'd think people who're responsible enough to start a business, pay rent on their building, pay taxes would know enough to not blatantly violate the law.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Rosa Parks (who does not have a - in her name) did not steal sandwiches from a restaurant and subsequently sell them on the street, she refused to get up so that a white man could sit down. What she did was refuse to get up in a zero-sum scenario where either she had to stand or he did, and in the eyes of the law she was wrong because she was black.
In this case, thanks to the wonders of digital copying, (metaphor breakdown approaching) they were not only able to steal the sandwiches, but replicate them a few hundred times before selling them. Yes, depriving a publisher of money they would have earned is a kind of damage. But since you think depriving others of property is OK, I'll be raiding your fridge at about 2:00am tonight. Could you also unplug your computers and leave them in on the porch? They're so hard to unplug in the dark. Thanks!
I'd have a lot more sympathy for them if there weren't for the pirated games installed as part of the purchase. Real stupid move there.
No matter how you look at it, people are still up against hard time for simply copying and modding stuff. No, there is still plenty to say because, like as with most copyright related "crimes". These people are not criminals, and the punishment is WAY WAY out of line in relation to the supposed harm done to society.
Now if in addition they robbed a bank, and beat an old lady and left her for dead ... then I might have some sympathy, but then again that wouldn't be charged as a DMCA crime would it?
just becasue it's illegal - doesn't mean that it's the slightest bit wrong
Yes, yes it does. They were stealing games, there is no logic that can prove otherwise.
DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
In case the subject needs any more explanation, please see....
9 258&mode=nocommentd =12354088
http://technocrat.net/article.pl?sid=05/11/25/132
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=147420&ci
Im glad that they discovered & prosecuted against this crime, it shows their can be good uses of DMCA.
The problem i have with DMCA is that it is not balanced between the Copyrighter & the Consumer, it puts all the power in the Copyright holder & gives nothing to the consumer at all, there are no protections or basic rights given at all, this was a law that was inherintly flawed from the beginning because the consumer was not included in it.
Next year in Australia because of the FTA we are looking at adopting the DMCA in Australia as law and a lot of people are not looking forward to it.
This law puts every user at risk of abuse because there is little provision for checks of abuse against customers nor is there any solid defence against a DMCA violation, its basically as draconian as accusing someone of being a witch.
Just whose XBox is it? If I paid for it then I should be able to do as I wish with it. Doctrine of First Sale -- Microsoft loses any further control over it. Yeah, if they want to get me for pirating games that's a charge they can take to court, BUT there should not be allowed any case against modding.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Jason Jones? Xbox? L.A.? ACME?
Jason Jones = founder of Bungie (Halo/Marathon)
L.A. = Bungie West (before being pwn3d by M$)
Pei Cai = arranges a meal (thanks Google)
ACME prepares meal = smoked fish (Google)
hmmm...bungie west, smoked fish...
Oni!?!
Coming out for Xbox360! ^_^
no it doesn't, copying is not stealing. logic says that theft is defined by ones loss, not by anothers gain.
Yes, but the problem is that selling copied games is an offense of copyright infringement, not really circumvention. If they had sold the games without a modded console would they have been charged, or if they just modded the console?
Fuck, I hate slashdot when the tripe like this gets moderated up.
First, the language accepts 'piracy' and 'copyright infringement' to be synonymous. Deal with it. Yes, it's a loaded term when you consider that piracy used to mean 'loot, plunder, burn, pillage, rape & murder' but that's just how language works. I'm sure there are a fair number of people in this world that were used to using the term 'fag' to describe a smoke and are now upset that the term is associated with homosexuality. Too bad.
Secondly, the morality of copyright doesn't even compare to the morality of racial segregation. That's an asinine position to take. Copyright law sees to it that publishers can't sell an author's book without paying the author. It ensures that money is paid to a songwriter when a song gets used in a radio or TV ad. Copyright law is not the problem, abuse of copyright is. That abuse can be seen in many places (DVD-CAA vs DeCSS, $cientology, etc.)
So, lets go back to that morality angle. You are implying that it is perfectly moral for a person to go buy an XBox with 70+ games preloaded on it. The publishers of those 70+ games now make no money. They decide it is not profitable to make XBox games anymore. Programmers, game designers, etc. are very unhappy, as the publisher refuses to pony up the cash to make another XBox game.
Now, you can warp that morality angle and convince yourself you are in the right because Microsoft gets no software licensing money (as you didn't buy the XBox games), but that's a really warped way to look at it. If you think that's a moral reason to pirate games^W^Winfinge on copyright then there is no way I can continue this discussion.
If you give me the line that there's no lost revenue, as you wouldn't buy the games anyway, I'll gladly point out that you were able to:
a) afford an XBox
b) afford a bigger harddrive
c) afford a modchip (or afford whatever device you need to soft-boot it)
Ugh.. I just wasted how much of my day typing this out..
My Xbox is modded, mainly because I am too lazy to get up and switch the game disc when I want to play a new game. But come on, pirate 77 games and sell it bundled. Ya, talk about someone that was slapped with a stupid stick a few too many times.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
I always wondered how they stayed in business. Guess I know now.
A content creator deserves to be compensated for their creation. Illegal copying is denying the content creator's chance to be compensated. If a content creator wants to give out their content without compensation, that is their decision (see: public domain, open source, etc), but that decision cannot be made for them.
If you never wanted to/could afford to buy the content anyway, you have no inherit right to it in the first place.
Really, I don't like draconian IP enforcement, I don't like the DMCA, I don't like DRM, etc. However, I work for a software company. Copyright pays the bills. This business, and thousands like it (including publishers, tv / movie studios, etc) wouldn't bother opening up every morning if copyright law wasn't there to protect the fruits of our labor.
no it doesn't, copying is not stealing. logic says that theft is defined by ones loss, not by anothers gain.
Someone isn't getting paid for a game they made(loss), and someone is getting it for free(gain).
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
A content creator deserves to be compensated for their creation,
I'm sure they do, but that's a lot different than saying they should have the right to sue and toss anyone in the slammer anyone who coppies stuff.
Stupid editing strikes again.
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InformationWeek | Software Piracy | Trio Charged With Modifying Xboxes To Pirate Video Games | December 19, 2005
i am a soviet space shuttle
Someone isn't getting paid for a game they made(loss)
By that definition, it's a loss even if noone buys the game because it's overpriced.
The loss is easy to define, they lost sales. You can argue that they might not have otherwise bought the games, but if that is true, why were they getting copies of them?
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
The DMCA is being legitimatized by mentioning it next to the real crime... which is:
"During the investigation, undercover agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement paid $265 to have a modification chip, a hard drive and 77 pirated games installed on an Xbox..."
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
First, the language accepts 'piracy' and 'copyright infringement' to be synonymous. Deal with it.
No. The language also accepts 'nigger' and 'a person of color' to be synonymous, but I don't care about what the language accepts, but rather the way the language conveys the facts.
Secondly, the morality of copyright doesn't even compare to the morality of racial segregation
You're right, copyrights are worse because in the information age there is no technology that can naturally distinguish between free speech content and copyright content. At least Rosa Parks was able to secure the right to speak up forherself.
So, lets go back to that morality angle. You are implying that it is perfectly moral for a person to go buy an XBox with 70+ games preloaded on it. The publishers of those 70+ games now make no money. They decide it is not profitable to make XBox games anymore. Programmers, game designers, etc. are very unhappy, as the publisher refuses to pony up the cash to make another XBox game.
If that happens, then it happens. Maybe the entertainment industry won't get as much dough, and will get a smaller proportion with the copyright system dead. Sorry, but freedom from controll over information is more valuable to society than star wars.
Now, you can warp that morality angle and convince yourself you are in the right because Microsoft gets no software licensing money...
Like I really care if microsoft makes or looses billions off of this. That is completely irrelavent. This is about controll of information in the information age, if you want to sacrifice that for the sake of video games then I feel sorry for you.
A content creator deserves to be compensated for their creation.
This is untrue. First, most authors are not compensated; their works are flops and have no economic value, as far as copyright goes. But secondly, authors have never inherently deserved compensation. Copyright is an artifical system intended to benefit the public. Authors might benefit as well, but it is not the objective of copyright to reward them any more than the objective of building a highway is to pay money to road crews.
In fact, even if copyright were intended to reward authors, it would be the worst imaginable way of achieving this. Most authors, as already pointed out, don't derive any benefit from copyright. Among the few who do, most of them don't derive enough for it to be worth it; they would have made more money doing something else. Only an astonishingly small number of authors make a good living as authors. If your intent was to help them, a more efficient system would be necessary. Direct subsidies would probably do well. That we do not do that, and never have done that, is a good indicator that compensation is not a goal of copyright.
that decision cannot be made for them
As it happens, it can. We can require authors to deposit copies of their works as a prerequisite for copyright. And we can cause their copyright to expire at a date that is most beneficial to the public, regardless of whether the author likes it or not.
In fact, we could even abolish copyright altogether, if we really wanted.
If you never wanted to/could afford to buy the content anyway, you have no inherit right to it in the first place.
Quite false. There is an inherent right to free speech, and this encompasses repeating what another has said. Copyright is a temporary imposition on this, but that's all. Someone who could never have afforded to buy a copy of Tom Sawyer has an inherent right to it. We gave Twain a limited, temporary right to bar that, but we took it away again as well.
The only thing there is no inherent right to is to cause authors to create and publish works in the first place. No one can make an author write a book, but if they do, they have to play by our rules if they want a copyright. They cannot assert an inherent right to control others' use of the work, especially for no better reason than that they happen to be the author.
However, I work for a software company. Copyright pays the bills. This business, and thousands like it (including publishers, tv / movie studios, etc) wouldn't bother opening up every morning if copyright law wasn't there to protect the fruits of our labor.
And I'm a copyright lawyer. And while many authors would choose to do something else if they were not so favorably treated by copyright law, there's nothing bad about that.
The goals of the public, and of copyright law, are not just to cause original works to be created, but to cause derivative works to be created, to cause publication to occur, and to cause works to be in the public domain as fast as possible, and as close to being in the public domain during the term as possible.
If a change to law that better accomplished those goals happened to result in a number of authors leaving the field, we would nevertheless be better off without them. Heck, some authors would never leave, even if they had no copyright at all.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The loss is easy to define, they lost sales.
So what, that is'nt a violation. Ford lost sales when toyota's entered the market too.
also, these news headings are very misleading because it is not the chipping that is putting these people in jail, it is the sale of stolen video games, basically (as many other people have pointed out).
"conspiring to traffic in a technology used to circumvent a copyright protection system and conspiring to commit criminal copyright infringement"
Is this one of those cases where conspiring to do something is as bad or worse than doing it?
If they can prove conspirasy in this case it certainly seems they could prove the act itself. Taking the money and handing over a disk with 77 games on it sounds a little past conspiring.
Including the words:
"mod you (down)..."
in any slashdot post - is likely to get you... well modded down.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
This is sad. I didn't RTFA. I didn't even really read the /. article blurbage.
/. article summaries.
All I had to see was "Xbox Modders Charged Under DMCA", and I KNEW that they'd loaded pirated games on a HD, and THAT was mostly what they were getting busted for.
That is both a sad comment on the community of profiteering xbox modders, and a sad commentary on the state of
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
You don't get it. This isn't about copyrights and "compensation". It is about free speech and who controlls information in the information age. In spite of media propaganda, there is nothing wrong or unethical at all with copying stuff.
Nazis? Sure why not. After all, how can you enforce copyrights without an omni intrusive authority?
has mentioned the games were priated?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
in spite of the propaganda that the media industry feeds us, the simple truth is that there is nothing wrong with copying stuff.
A said it on an xbox forum when I heard about it (in a slashdotesque bitching style), and I'll say it here. I hate it when a headline is missworded purposely to get more attention.... They were not arrested for modding. They were arrested for loading 77 games onto the modded X-Box..... Arrested for modding would be surprising and interesting. Arrested for selling pirated games isn't. It's common sense.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
According to the Categorical Imperative of moral philosophy, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperativ e, there is a MORAL harm regardless of any legal harm. "Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it would become a universal law." In other words, pirate software only if you wish that everyone pirates software...or, if it wouldn't be good for everyone to do then it isn't good for you to do it...
Immanuel Kant would tell you that if everyone pirates software, there will be little new software produced and that is not desirable. Because it is not desirable for everyone to pirate, it is not moral for you to pirate.
At least according to one well known moral philosopher, there is a basis in common ethics and Christian teachings in this case.
"DMCA" is just one letter away (and only moving that letter up one position in the alphabet at that!) from being "ACME" spelled backwards. There's gotta be a large conspiracy here somewhere! :p
Slant
Between the Spaces
i'm curious to know which game would you consider worthwhile?
Well, ya see, it's quite simple. The I.S. government is sending a message, and the message is pretty clear. If you're the President of the country, then you can pretty much do anything you want--spy on whomever you like, it's no big deal. But, on the other hand, if you're gonna aid video game piracy and most especially if you attempt to make money off of such an endeavour, then that means you must be a terrorist (because you impinged on corporate profits) so... yer goin' down. Five years in prison is a small price to pay to uphold the sanctity of the Incorporated States of America, yeah buddy.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
Alright, 77 pirated games, we get it.
Ikaruga was a Dreamcast game prior to its GCN release.
Ah, but it isn't easy to define lost sale, as logic implies that despite the impossibility to get it correct per-person, whether or not that somebody buys something after getting it for free is still up in the air as a 2 way street. I am one who buys after downloading songs, for example.
Nice red herring there, wanting to buy something and wanting to have something are not synonomous, at least not all the time. You can not want to buy something, but still get that same thing later, legally or not.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
Someone just finished Philosophy 101 and wants to look smart.
Here's a hint. Kant and real life are completely different things. And not everybody is a Kantian.
Note to mods: I'm probably being sarcastic.
...other than helping to obliterate a major motivation for bothering to produce such content in the first place, of course.
But hey, who cares about consequences?
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/04/ 2150254&tid=222&tid=10
That article was later edited to add the fact that 80 games were added to the modding.
Once can be taken as an honest mistake, but twice is intentional. Stop it Zonk. Just stop it.
I think if I went to jail for an hour for everything illegal I've ever done, I'd be in jail for my entire life. I do think that they should have chosen something more lucrative and less destructive as a criminal pursuit, such as manufacturing crystal meth, or selling crack to children, or mugging, or murder.
i on_of_America, and putting people in boxes for theft of intellectual property is good business. Putting people in boxes for doing drugs that aren't government approved is good business. Putting people in boxes for not being good at managing government approved currency is good business. Good business all around, this putting people in boxes.
But on going to prison, the Corrections Corporation of America is one huge f0ing corporation, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrections_Corporat
I think if people knew what it was like in real prison, they wouldn't be so quick to send people there.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Not being able to spell isn't properly should be a violation. :/
Still the difference between the two is that in one case, they are losing sales to a competitor who has a superior product and in the other they are losing sales because someone wants to use their goods or services without paying for it.
One of these is a core principle of our capitalist society, and the other one isn't. Can you pick which one?
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
They're not synonomous these days because of the easy which products can be pirated. When talking about any product that is not easily pirated, 'wanting to have' and 'wanting to buy' are exactly the same thing. (Excluding theft, which I hope you agree is a crime.)
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
PS: While I'm thinking, should people be able to steal physical items from stores and only pay the cost of the raw materials, because they wouldn't have bought the item anyway?
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
...I would be angry now. I was angry until I got the facts about this case. These numb-nuts at ACME Games played themselves by installing the 77 "borrowed" games.
If this was simply a case of "here's the mod chip, go have fun" and Microsoft threw a fit, I would be supportive. But as far as giving people "borrowed" games they have no rights to, that's beyond the pale. This is a case of Warez pure and simple.
I have no sympathy. They were trading in Warez, and what's more they were doing it openly. That's not only wrong, it's *dumb.*
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Not to mention that maybe 90% of the XBMC users are using it to play pirated movies/videos/tv/porn.
My other first post is car post.
Not too much wrong with copying it for personal use, IMO - until you're copying and distributing it FOR PROFIT which these guys were doing.
As a republican I feel it my responsibity to manufacture criminals. People need punished!
Incorrect.
It's would be just about impossible to make significant profits off games if people had easy free access to them after corporations spend millions designing them.
I'm completely with you on this. The entire software industry (including games of course) is just screwing consumers if you ask me. The big software titles and big games, all in all they really do cost a fortune (LICENSE FEES!) for the average person (or small business) yet there are these (arrogant) people out there who pay (most of which don't know about copying). We've got the big software titles (industry standard apparently and certainly not open source) like Autodesk software, Adobe software, Microsoft software etc. $300 for Photoshop, $265 for Windows XP, and an even higher price for software like Cubase SX, etc. Meanwhile new games of all types cost $50. All of these prices I consider to be ridiculous. I really remember a time when I could buy games, they were cheaper, and they were all real. Nowadays, I only buy a game if I want to play it online, and it's always a drag to pay $50 for something that would sell more if it costed less.
I bet that there were a bunch of kids (the ignorant arrogant consumer types) who went into this store with their birthday money and didn't even know they were being charged for the modding. And after reading a comment on CNet, it seems they had plasma screens to try out games, which makes their store better than the average stores, e.g. EB games, any chain retail store (fucking screens angled at the floor up high and you have to look up to play and your neck hurts after a few minutes), etc.
I know many people will disagree, but also I'm on the side where you can't calculate the losses to the companies. I somewhat doubt that the average kid who loves Halo will go buy a Xbox, Halo 1 and 2 (about $230 at the least now), when they can go to this store and get 77 total games for a slightly higher price. They might play them, but if this store wasn't around, they would've never bought any 77 games ever. No losses incurred, in my opinion.
On a side note, as soon as I saw the name, I was sure I did business with this guy before. After looking at my PayPal history I see
Sep. 22, 2005 Payment To Pei Cai Completed Details -$22.88 USD $0.00 USD -$22.88 USD
for a PS2 laser. I didn't know he was selling Xboxes preloaded with games; of course at this time I'm glad I never bought one if I ever had interest. Hopefully no one questions me about anything.
with the 360 out, i figured they would stop making them soon. Once they do, will it be legal then to mod an xbox and copy the games?
Yeah, they were just selling an xbox package of over 3000 dollars worth of games for 500 dollars...
Actually the value of the games that they were selling was far less than $3000. Items are worth what people will pay for them; no more, no less. The value of the included games was the cost of the entire package, minus the cost of the hardware sold, the cost of the labor involved, and the cost of the time for the people putting the collection of games together.
Were the game store owners 'stealing' from the game developers. No. No Way. The game developers should have made arrangements with the game sellers to have some form of compensation that would be a small percentage of the price that the game store received for selling the games.
Instead the game developers made a deal with the game distributors instead. Easier for them. But they lost out from all the residual revenue that they would have received when the games were repackaged for easy sale (when they were copied onto the hard disk with hundreds of other games).
A game that retails for $69.95 is only worth that price for a very short time and under very specific circumstances. Outside those circumstances (like its being brand new and/or state-of-the-art in its play), a game is worth far less than the price that game distributors believe that it should be selling for.
All this nonsense about 'piracy' of so-called 'intellectual property' is nothing more than the breakdown of the marketplace to bring sellers and buyers together to exchange goods for mutual benefit at a price that each party agrees on. If $500 - $700 for an XBOX with a mod chip and a 'stash' of games is the price that many buyers are willing to pay, then that's the price that's fair and reasonable. The game developers and distribution companies are just going to have to get used to working in the actual marketplace.
These stupid laws about copyright, DMCA, and 'intellectual property' are destroying the market for the product and they aren't doing anyone any good in the long run. If the developers think that they should get more money for writing software that they receive from the sale of a hard disk with their code and hundreds of other game developer's code, then get the fuck out of the game development business!. Write code for someone who will pay your more for your services.
Jeez, this isn't all that hard to figure out. Please don't raise moral, ethical, and legal arguments over what is just a pricing issue between people who never learned to haggle in a free marketplace.
What pisses me off is you CANNOT get an xbox now that doesn't include the Forza racing game. I just want to softmod it and use it as an entertainment center. XBMC is awesome. I have little to no desire to play games on it.
I have about 6GB of music that I bought (I'm very picky about my encoding.) And about 1-2GB of audiobooks from http://www.audible.com/, not to mention movies *coughporncough*.
But think about it - not that much thought is required - A $29.99 game "included" with the xbox for $30 MORE than an xbox with no game.
That's right!
A $149.99 game system + $29.99 game being sold for $179.99.
You're just FORCED to buy a game at full price with the system whether you want it or not.
I asked the local Game Rush/Blockbuster how much they'd give in trade for the game, because I was planning on trading it in before I left the store with my new xbox.
Try looking for Forza on ebay. There are like 100 copies. Nobody wants the fucking thing, but we're forced to buy it at full price if we want a new xbox.
What the fuck?
Question everything
f you ask me. The big software titles and big games, all in all they really do cost a fortune (LICENSE FEES!) for the average person (or small business) yet there are these (arrogant) people out there who pay (most of which don't know about copying). We've got the big software titles (industry standard apparently and certainly not open source) like Autodesk software, Adobe software, Microsoft software etc. $300 for Photoshop, $265 for Windows XP, and an even higher price for software like Cubase SX, etc. Meanwhile new games of all types cost $50. Um.. boo hoo. I don't know about you, but I've easily made more than my (legally purchased) copies of Photoshop cost. If you have a need for industry standard photo manipulation software, or even if you just need to learn how to use it, it's WELL worth the $300. If you don't like it, I suppose you could always program your own, right? Or just, I don't know, go without? What is with the entitlement? Since when does anyone OWE you a piece of software with thousands of hours of programming invested in it, for $20?
As a republican I feel it my responsibity to manufacture criminals. People need punished!
logic says that theft is defined by ones loss, not by anothers gain.
And "lack of gain" is not the same as "loss" for those who are invariably going to claim that the "profit" from selling the overpriced crap (these are XBX games, after all) is being "stolen."
It's would be just about impossible to make significant profits off games if people had easy free access to them after corporations spend millions designing them.
You can't impose copyrights in the information age without microregulating the information people use and restricting peoples freedoms. Maybe in an environment where we do have freedom in the information age, the entertainment industries can't make as much of a profit. I really don't give a ratts ass. I like star wars and video games, but not that much.
It's criminal that customers were charged so much for this!
|/usr/games/fortune
I'm pretty sure the golden rule is as simple as its going to get.
I'd much prefer someone start getting into a serious debate, as opposed to your pseudointellectualistic dumbassery.
This content you are talking about is entertainment - copyrights and the need to restrict the free flow of information in the information age to impose them is about freedom. I like video games as much as the next guy, but when push comes to shove - freedom wins out every time.
If it's not wrong for personal use, then why should doing it for profit require hard jail time?
What is with the entitlement?
Well, I am so glad you mentioned that. If you write a piece of whatever, why does society owe it to you microregulate how content is used all over the planent for the sake of you getting royalities. And owe it to you to do it in a way that chokes off freedom and the free flow of information in the information age? Sorry. If you're smart enough to write something usefull, then you're smart enough to figure out some other way of getting money without controlling how everyone else on the planet can copy information at their disposal.
Still the difference between the two is that in one case, they are losing sales to a competitor who has a superior product and in the other they are losing sales because someone wants to use their goods or services without paying for it.
One of these is a core principle of our capitalist society, and the other one isn't. Can you pick which one?
Yes actually I can, because one model centers arround using government to choke off the natural supply and demand of information for the sake of incentive while the other relies on natural supply and demand of services behind the information.
I think you better read this other essay I wrote ... http://technocrat.net/article.pl?sid=05/11/25/1329 258&mode=nocomment
No, but if they see a barbie in the store that they like and renember with their photographic memory, then go home, then make their own plastic mold that's the exact same. Well, I'm sorry but the store has not been stolen from
Because it's not OK to profit off someone else'e work without their consent.
As a republican I feel it my responsibity to manufacture criminals. People need punished!
It's my piece of whatever, to do with as I see fit. Why do you think you automatically have rights to whatever content I produce?
As a republican I feel it my responsibity to manufacture criminals. People need punished!
It's my piece of whatever, to do with as I see fit. Why do you think you automatically have rights to whatever content I produce?
Then keep it to yourself and don't spew it all over the world and expect to control how I use it. In fact you can still do whatever the hell you want - it's your original copy pal. Rights? Perhaps you had some privacy rights before you spewed it all over the planet, anything else sounds like a personal problem buddy.
these things are rampant in south east asia. Modding goes for bout RM50- RM100 thats U$14 to 27 or so. And pirated disks are about USD3. And with xbox priced lower than actual cost its no surprise that PS2 is more popular that Xbox.
I love humanity, it is people I hate
You're being far too subtle in your sarcasm for the moderators. Maybe work towards comments that Saturday Night Live fans would think profound.
Because it's not OK to profit off someone else'e work without their consent.
Prove it.
By that definition, anyone who has a copyright is a hyporcrite - because no one is an island, and all knowledge builds off of the work of others who put in prior knowledge. not to mention that spewing content all over the world, like it or not, is a form of consent.
Yeah, its a great world where free market means "We would like to sell you this for fifty dollars" and we can reply "How about... free?" They then reply "No" and we then proceed to give them our free and take the product because... Its a free market and for some odd reason we don't value someone else's work as much as they value their own.
If you think someone is not worth the price, You don't buy it and shop for the competition, (competition not defined as people who "liberated" some more of the expensive products from their true owners) If its a good price, you take two. Simply saying it's too expensive is not a ticket to ride, Non-tangible goods or not.
"if the developers think that they should get more money for writing software that they receive from the sale of a hard disk with their code and hundreds of other game developer's code, then get the fuck out of the game development business!. Write code for someone who will pay your more for your services."
What do you mean, are you saying that, if the developers think they should get paid more than zero dollars, (silly rabbit) from some people who copied their creation without their permission they should... stop making games, and start programing something else you would probably advocate the mandatory free price tag for as well?
Since we are on slashdot, we need poor analogies to demonstrate my point as if you were a five year old. But with your... shall we say interesting world view, I'm going to say thats not a terribly bad place to start.
We are going to go on vacation. (Yay!) First we need a rental car, we want the Mustang, sadly we can afford the cavalier, so we haggle, which is to say, we pay them for the cavalier, then hot wire the Mustang (don't worry, we will return it, so really, its a non-tangible good, the "rental")
So finally we get to Florida in our 'loaned' car...
Your standing in line at Disney world, You come up to the front gates, and They expect 80 dollars from you for a day in the park (The nerve) you refuse, in a real market, you would go to six flags which is cheaper just with less rides. But in your wonderland... You find a guy out back who says he can let you into the park for the cost of opening the door to a service entrance. (because really, thats a free market, and we just haggled with Disney)
Where the hell did you get the notion that "haggling" means, whatever the buyer says = "that's the price that's fair and reasonable. " and that, all software should be sold for the price of some loser putting it on a hard drive.
"The game developers and distribution companies are just going to have to get used to working in the actual marketplace." What the hell does this even Mean?! What "Actual Marketplace" is this?! Some prince of thieves Walmart where all customers walk up to the front counter with a knife, name their price, then grit their teeth, tighten their grip on their saber, and then repeat their process in a more menacing tone?
It really, really hard to imagine viewing the world though as distorted and ridiculous scope as your own I'm not sure if you just some "free software (no, thats not a suggestion)" nut or if you really think that if someone can take it for free, that means thats now the price as if the people who create it don't own anything other than the physical DVD these games come on.
In conclusion, Get a clue, and uh.. Guess I will be seeing you in the paper for "haggling" one day.
Web Developers: Celebrate to our roots! Animated Gifs and Tiled Backgrounds, dont let our history die!
Need more analogy.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
The fact that we're talking about 'information' is completely irrelevant, except in that it allows for easier pirating. Capitalism boils down to: You do work, and people pay you for it. It doesn't matter whether the work is making a table or writing Doom 3.
PS: Neither the table, nor Doom 3 'wants to be free'.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
In the game industry it is often the case that product is forced to be shipped before it is complete and fully functional, employees are worked beyond normal limits (and sometimes legal ones), the products refuse to work for arbitrary reasons under arbitrary circumstances (copy protection), and a vast array of rights are stripped from the recipient of the product upon purchase (EULA), do game publishers have a leg to stand on when they assert moral superiority over people who take from them (pirates) when they make a habit of taking from people (paying customers)?
Prisoner's Dilemma has much more relevance to legal and business relationships than any Christian philosophy. It's fine for them to take from you but if you're taking from each other there's a problem. Two wrongs don't make a right means you lose your shirt with these folks even if you keep your morals.
Although I still say the thing to do is don't buy and don't take. Buy games from independent developers.
Whether you like it or not, there's a huge information based economy, it's not going anywhere, and it will be protected.
It doesn't matter how you deside to value information, because in the real world those 77 games are worth on the the order of thousands of dollars, and that's for one transaction. The scale of these guys' crimes is pretty large, and they should be punished accordingly.
Xbox modders charged under D-M-C-A
Xbox modders charged under D-M-C-A...
w00t
"Arrested for modding would be surprising and interesting. Arrested for selling pirated games isn't."
I'd mod you up if I could. Anyone who is doing the mod should be meticulously compliant with regards to media. This case is an outrageous abuse of copyright, and it will only serve to cast the legitimate modding scene in an even worse light.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
If they wanted a DMCA rap for selling mod chips, there were plenty of opportunities. What they have is a copyright infringement case. The only point of choosing this case to prosecute them under the DMCA is for one (or more) of these reasons: 1) To hit them with extra charges that can be dropped in the plea deal. Look for guilty or no contest, unless the EFF gets involved, which they'd be a bit silly to, because of the egregiousness of bundling the 77 titles. 2) To guilt-by-associate the mod scene with these infringers' prosecution. 3) To have case law that can be misquoted in the future as implying that selling/installing mod chips is a violation of the DMCA or copyright law.
These guys are guilty of copyright infringement, so charge them with copyright infringement. That's the crime they committed. There's no reason for "circumventing copy protection" to be a crime - unless you want to prosecute people MERELY for circumventing copy protection, even if they are NOT committing copyright infringement in the process. If you believe committing copyright infringement by circumventing copy protection is somehow worse than just committing copyright infringement, then the law should make circumventing copy protection in the process of committing copyright infringement illegal.
But it doesn't. It makes it illegal to circumvent copy protection even if the copying would otherwise be illegal. Thus, the DMCA effecively allows content owners to EXTEND their copyright protection by adding copy protection.
If it's legal for me to copy something, it should be legal whether the something has copy protection or not.
paintball
The problem is, if you don't send people to jail, how do you prevent people who have nothing to lose from committing crimes?
If I'm an intelligent person, and I can potentially make tens of thousands of dollars by committing a crime, and the penalty for committing the crime is potentially losing the 10's of thousands of dollars and doing some community service....
Time to begin my criminal career!
But if the crime is going to prison, committing the crime is probably no longer attractive.
Penalties for crime can't just be restitution - if there's no chance you'll be worse off if you commit the crime and a chance you'll be better off, everyone (not indoctrinated with social constraints like morals or fear of god) becomes a criminal.
paintball
You, sir, are my hero.
"Trust in haste. Repent at leisure"
Where's my dam mod points when I need them. This post should be insightful not the parent!
Were the game store owners 'stealing' from the game developers. No. No Way. The game developers should have made arrangements with the game sellers to have some form of compensation that would be a small percentage of the price that the game store received for selling the games.
As a game developer, I can honestly say you know absolutely nothing about the games industry from that statement alone.
Yes they were stealing from us developers. They took away sales that could have made hard earned money for dozens of team members who work 70 hour or longer weeks during months of crunch time. Under the current system with stores taking a cut, console manufacturers taking a cut, and costs for marketing and development, most (but not all) high quality titles have to sell close to 1 million units at $50 merely to break even.
Please don't raise moral, ethical, and legal arguments over what is just a pricing issue between people who never learned to haggle in a free marketplace.
Without moral, ethical, or legal boundaries, this world would be a pretty sad place. However, you're still wrong on the free marketplace argument.
There's no way you're going to get console games of any quality for 77 games at $265 in any sort of 'free market'. That's just over $3 each and is less than the media manufacturing and distribution costs alone.
(replying as AC)
It's no surprise you're a lawyer, you managed to say a lot without actually disagreeing with me...
You turned the word 'content creator' into 'author'. That entirely changes the meaning of my original statement. As I said, I work for a software company. The 'authors' at my work (programmers) do not even control the copyright on their work. The 'content creator' is not the author, it is the entity that delivers the final product. You, as a copyright lawyer, are a part of that. That economic paradigm depends on copyright.
I said: "If you never wanted to/could afford to buy the content anyway, you have no inherit right to it in the first place."
I should have avoided the use of the phrase 'inherit right', but the meaning is not false. Copyright is the law, even if it is (supposed to be) temporary.
The goals of the public, and of copyright law, are not just to cause original works to be created, but to cause derivative works to be created, to cause publication to occur, and to cause works to be in the public domain as fast as possible, and as close to being in the public domain during the term as possible.
That was my point, worded better.
If a change to law that better accomplished those goals happened to result in a number of authors leaving the field, we would nevertheless be better off without them.
I believe the burden of proof is on you for that. I cannot see our economy functioning without copyright, but that just might be that I can't see too far beyond my next pay stub.
Harsh punishment for minor offence is not always wise.
During the frirst all-China empire Qin, legalist Li Si held a great power and established harhs penalty for any minor crime. A group of peasants was drafted for labor service. Heavy rains made his group late in reporting for duty. Knowing they would be killed for this offense, the group members decided they had nothing to lose and became an outlaw band. Soon their ranks swelled with thousands of malcontents, making the band of outlaws a sizeable force. Similar uprisings took place simultaneously in other parts of the empire, and empire Qin collapsed.
reference here
Categorical imperative is an interesting philosophy, but -- at least the way you describe it -- it has flaws. The obvious one to me is the fact that it would be disastrous if everyone in the universe suddenly travelled to any given restaurant restaurant at any given time. Does this mean that going restaurants causes moral harm?
http://outcampaign.org/
You are, without a doubt, the most hilariously wrong-headed Slashbot I have ever had the pleasure of reading. You're ability to rationalise (but not justify) you're ridiculous beliefs through absurd metaphors, straw men, non-sequiteurs and taking ideas to their extreme is sure to become legendary. I can't commend enough your ability to use your demonstrable intelligence to produce ideas of such staggering idiocy, narrow mindedness and disconnection with reality. Excellent work!
"I believe the burden of proof is on you for that. I cannot see our economy functioning without copyright, but that just might be that I can't see too far beyond my next pay stub."
The poster mentioned a change to the law, not necessarily the elimination of copyright. Such a change could involve reducing the copyright term from umpteen decades back to something more sane like the 14 years that was defined in the original copyright laws centuries ago.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
it may be offtopic, but in europe xbox1 gets modded a lot. And IMHO it's about 5% modding it for playing "pirated games".
Again: In general you mod xbox'es _not_ for playing pirated games.
You mod it for this:
http://www.xboxmediacenter.de/
and for this
http://www.xbox-emulation.co.uk/
One of the main ways the chips have maintained legality is the inclusion of the cromwell bios(a linux loader). The cronwell bios can be replaced with a hacked version of the Microsoft bios(like the evox bios or xecuter bios), these bioses are not legal since they are break the copy protection. If they were selling the chips with the hacked bioses then the DMCA does apply.
At the time of wrighting this there is no way to play games or other Xbox SDK compliled materials with the legitimate cromwell bios.
This is a case of some people profiting off of the work of other(both game and hack developers).
While I don't like the DMCA, this case is not much diffrent to me than the people that sell pirated DVDs.
You do realise that philosophy is just one persons idea about something. Just because it is written down doesn't make it true or correct.
I don't even see where this is newsworthy. The guys sold modded xbox's....that's legal... They sold them with a larger hard drive...legal again... They included 77 pirated games...illegal.... Next....
There are two Halo games.
Immanuel Kant would tell you that if everyone pirates software, there will be little new software produced and that is not desirable. Because it is not desirable for everyone to pirate, it is not moral for you to pirate.
And, like all the others making such claims, he would be wrong.
Where do people get the idea that nobody would ever produce anything if they weren't paid? If that were true, we'd have no community orchestras or theater groups, there'd be no church choirs, no teenage kids would be forming garage bands, etc.
And there'd be no free/open-source software.
Granted, people like to make money from such efforts. But a lack of pay doesn't seem to stop people from producing.
When it comes to art, entertainment and software, one could well make the argument that we get higher quality when people aren't paid. You'd have little trouble finding examples to support such a thesis.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Does this mean I can get busted for putting big chrome exhaust pipes on my Honda Civic?
// This is not a sig.
"Quite false. There is an inherent right to free speech, and this encompasses repeating what another has said. Copyright is a temporary imposition on this, but that's all. Someone who could never have afforded to buy a copy of Tom Sawyer has an inherent right to it. We gave Twain a limited, temporary right to bar that, but we took it away again as well."
I disagree with your view of the first admendment. My right to speak (or write) does not grant you the right to listen (or read). To do so would infringe upon my implied (1, 4, 5 and 14 admendments) right to privacy. You wouldn't claim a right to read a person's private diary would you?
When I publish something, then things will be come determined by copyright law - my act of publication shows I no longer view the item as private. Still, even though it is published you have no right to read it under the 1st admendment, that gives me the right to publish it.
Copyright takes the 1st admendment and provides only some guidelines for the gray areas. Like when I publish a book to select people only (Scientology). If you happen to get access to this book, and find it to be offensive to yourself or others, you will want to speak out on this matter. This is where my right to privacy conflicts with your right to free speech and copyright guide lines come into play. Every case is different, but I'm sure you know the factors are the amount of the work copied, and the use of that copy. As a last protection, should you be found guily of copyright, copyright law keeps you from jail time (excepting mass piracy and an intent to sell pirated copies) - very important since the threat of jail would probably silence more people from speaking up.
I do agree with you that copyright is not about "getting the author paid."
Last, for anyone (not the OP) who has read this far and wants to know why the DMCA is bad in all cases is it makes any copy of the work illegal with the threat of jail time simply by claiming a "copy protection system or device" was bypassed to make the copy (in whole or part). The "system or device" can be anything they say it is, down to a flag of 1 means allow copies and 0 means don't. How the copy will be used is irrelvent.
Yes it is true, these people are pirates. Don't forget though, they may have a higher purpose. The Flying Spaghetti Monsterism loves pirates and He may have led them down that path. If that is the case, can they really be blamed?
Let he who is innocent, boil the first noodle!
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
The major problem that I have with this article and action in general is that they bothered to invoke the DMCA at all. If this were just a question about a company deploying an XBox with 77 games, that would be fine. But here we are talking about arresting someone for using a product that is designed to circumvent copy protection through reverse engineering.
With that out in the open, I have two other scenarios that would fall into this category. We all know that XBox's have very weak DVD-Rom drives, which have a tennancy of failing. These drives typically fail outside of warrantly, which causes Microsoft to deliver you a "too bad" when you try to have it replaced. Now, a company sees that there is a demand here, so they start repairing XBox's with upgraded DVD drives at a small cost. Seeing as how you need to "reverse engineer" the hardware to figure out how to install the drive, and that the drive itself is an integral part of the copy protection routine, you have effectively broken the law. You can now be tried by Microsoft. Not that you would, but the option is there. This is unjust.
Taking this theory a step further, we also know that the XBox power supply is a questionable product. If Microsoft deems that you are not to qualify for the recall, and you still have a defective product, you still may have a company offer a third party supply. Seeing as how you need a power supply to enable the copy protection to funtion, and you had to "reverse engineer" a replacement supply, are you not in violation of the DMCA?
This action was never a question of copywright. It is a question of invoking an injust law that fucks consumers for the benefit of big business.
Government no longer functions for the greater good, it functions for the greatest dollar.
Matt.
Not that I would do anything like that myself. Golly, that wouldn't be nice at all.
I disagree with your view of the first admendment. My right to speak (or write) does not grant you the right to listen (or read). To do so would infringe upon my implied (1, 4, 5 and 14 admendments) right to privacy. You wouldn't claim a right to read a person's private diary would you?
There is actually a right to listen in the First Amendment, or else the right to speak would be easily circumvented by government. But I'm not limiting myself to just the First Amendment.
In any event, the free speech doesn't grant a right of access to private property. If I obtain a copy of your diary, I do have a right to read it. It's up to you to keep your diary private. Since I don't have a right to make you hand it over, it shouldn't be difficult for you. When you publish it and it's in every bookstore, however, you have no hope of keeping people from reading it.
Incidentally, one's constitutional rights are generally only assertable against the state, not private actors. You have no constitutional right of privacy from intrusions by me. Instead, you'd need to fall back on privacy-related torts.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
First, most authors are not compensated; their works are flops and have no economic value, as far as copyright goes.
This is true, but it is also quite true that most patents have no economic value. Yet, many people spend a great deal of money to get one, a lot more then on copyrights. The fact that a persons work may flop does not change the fact that they have a right to protection of the work in order to prevent others from making money off their ideas or to claim the work as their own. It gives people control over the content they create.
But secondly, authors have never inherently deserved compensation. Copyright is an artifical system intended to benefit the public.
So, if an author has no right to compensation for his work, then no one else does either? The people writing the scripts for multi-million dollar plays and movies deserve none of the money to be made off their work? You then argue that the system is artificial and made for the public's benefit. This is not really true since the exclusive rights afforded are primarily for the benefit of content creators, not the public. The laws actual prevent items from going into the public domain for decades limiting the ability of copyright material to freely spread, because in a place where people cannot afford books, movies, tv, etc. there is no ready means available to gain access to the copyrighted material.
Among the few who do, most of them don't derive enough for it to be worth it; they would have made more money doing something else.
This reminds me of a line from Whose Line where Ryan Style's (giving bad parental advice) says, "A teacher? A teacher? Honey, prostitutes make twice that money." Some people do their profession because they enjoy it. Firemen, Police Officers, Teachers, Artists, and many writers are just a few of the people who enjoy their work and who are underpaid (in many areas). The fact is copyright guarantees the artist and writers a chance to make money off their work and prevents people from freely disseminating the information by photocopying it and selling it to everyone at minimal prices or giving it away outright.
As it happens, it can. We can require authors to deposit copies of their works as a prerequisite for copyright. And we can cause their copyright to expire at a date that is most beneficial to the public, regardless of whether the author likes it or not.
Actually this is false. In the United States, Copyright protection is now automatic and no longer requires registration. Once a work has been placed into it form, it is covered by the laws and anyone can seek to exact their exclusive rights on their work.
The only thing there is no inherent right to is to cause authors to create and publish works in the first place. No one can make an author write a book, but if they do, they have to play by our rules if they want a copyright. They cannot assert an inherent right to control others' use of the work, especially for no better reason than that they happen to be the author.
You seem stuck on this idea that copyright was created to protect the public from getting eternally screwed by copyright holders. This may be somewhat true, but without copyright laws, authors would have no guaranteed protection of their works and no real repercussion against "infringers" since there would be no infringing, everything would be public domain. Copyrights make it possible to encourage authorship because now they are guaranteed some protection, but it is limited and not eternal. This is why the copyright in some way benefits the public, because it does encourage authors to create works and subsequent derivative works.
If a change to law that better accomplished those goals happened to result in a number of authors leaving the field, we would nevertheless be better off without them. Heck, some authors would never leave, even if they had no copyright at all/
This is true. Some authors love th
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
You turned the word 'content creator' into 'author'. That entirely changes the meaning of my original statement.
I don't think so. 'Author' is the generic term used in the Constitution for the creator of a copyrightable work.
The 'authors' at my work (programmers) do not even control the copyright on their work. The 'content creator' is not the author, it is the entity that delivers the final product.
Well, there are two ways to see that sort of result. First, and most likely here, the programmers are not the authors of the work; the company is. You're their employee, you've assumed a duty to the company, the job you're told to do is to write code at the direction of the company, etc. You're basically in the same position as someone who takes dictation or a cameraman who films what his director tells him to film.
The other way is that you are the authors, but that you have obligated yourselves to transfer your rights to the company as part of the deal under which you're employed by them. This makes the company not the author per se, but the copyright holder. Since there's no reason why authors shouldn't be able to give away their copyrights if they want to (much as they could give away other things if they wanted to) we basically end up treating copyright holders who succeed the author the way we would have treated the author himself.
I believe the burden of proof is on you for that. I cannot see our economy functioning without copyright, but that just might be that I can't see too far beyond my next pay stub.
Well, I never said I thought copyright should be abolished. I just said that the metric by which we determine how successful the copyright system is not the number of authors in the field or even the number of works being created.
We could do okay without copyright at all, but what we really want is the system of laws (or no law) that results in the greatest public benefit. Since we've got a number of factors (original works created, derivative works created, works published, minimal protection during copyright, rapid entry into public domain) we have to look at the net public good, rather than focusing too much on any specific factor. Often increasing the satisfaction of one of these sorts of goods will reduce satisfaction of another (e.g. if we encourage creation and publication with a copyright, we reduce our satisfaction of the minimal protection and rapid entry goals, and tend to reduce the creation and publication of derivatives as well).
We have a baseline we can start with, however, in that we know from history that in a world without copyright we will see some degree of satisfaction of the creation and publication interests (leaning more toward the derivative side) with maximum satisfaction of the minimal protection (since there is none) and rapid entry (since it's instant). Of all the possible sorts of copyright laws we can create, we need to limit ourselves to only those that produce a net public benefit greater than we see with no copyright law at all. Furthermore, we want to try to achieve the greatest net public benefit possible, regardless of whether it fully satisfies the desires of authors; it's okay for them to benefit incidentally, but not okay for them to benefit at the expense of the public.
We also know from experience that most works have no economic value at all, that only a small fraction have any value, and that only a small fraction of those have any significant value. Authors, it turns out, are very risk-seeking. While it's true that there are very great potential rewards, it's also true that those rewards are about as likely to be had as winning the lottery.
We also know that in practice, those works with any value will be most valuable immediately. For example, a movie sells most of its tickets on its opening weekend, is most watched on PPV when it first becomes available there, rents most of its DVDs when it first hits the rental store, and sells most of its DVDs when it first becomes available
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The fact that a persons work may flop does not change the fact that they have a right to protection of the work in order to prevent others from making money off their ideas or to claim the work as their own.
Again, however, there is no inherent right to this. Also n.b. that neither patents nor copyrights protect mere ideas.
So, if an author has no right to compensation for his work, then no one else does either? The people writing the scripts for multi-million dollar plays and movies deserve none of the money to be made off their work?
I'm saying that they don't have a right to compensation. They might be lucky enough for the public to give them a right to compensation, but it's not automatic or magically deserved just by being an author. If an author wants a reward from the public, there had better be something in it for the public, something which more than compensates them for what they're giving away. Copyright isn't a charity, it's a quid pro quo.
You then argue that the system is artificial and made for the public's benefit. This is not really true since the exclusive rights afforded are primarily for the benefit of content creators, not the public.
It's true, alright. The exclusive rights system is just the means to a larger end. It's not an end in itself.
The laws actual prevent items from going into the public domain for decades limiting the ability of copyright material to freely spread, because in a place where people cannot afford books, movies, tv, etc. there is no ready means available to gain access to the copyrighted material.
And in the right circumstances, that could still fit with the greater public good. However, I will grant that modern copyright law has been deeply corrupted. Just because it's presently the law is no defense for the law, and does not change the ideals we should strive to live up to.
Some people do their profession because they enjoy it.
I know. And if they're willing to work for free, I'm willing to let them. Copyrights should be reserved, to the extent that we can manage it, only for those authors that would not work for free. Personally, I favor formalities as a way of filtering them out, but I grant that there's no perfect way to do it without being a mind reader.
The fact is copyright guarantees the artist and writers a chance to make money off their work and prevents people from freely disseminating the information by photocopying it and selling it to everyone at minimal prices or giving it away outright.
Yes. It's an artificial monopoly on a commodity good. A free market would be greatly beneficial to the public because copies of works would be published extremely cheaply, since each publisher is competing against the others. There's a reason why artificial monopolies are generally looked down upon. In the copyright world they're granted with the idea that there will be other benefits as well (rather like giving a cable company a monopoly for a few years so that someone will put in cables, then allowing competitors to use those cables to lower prices and provide more choices in service).
Again, though, no one is out to make sure that the authors (or cable companies) are the primary beneficiaries of the system.
Actually this is false.
Not when you deign to notice the word 'can.'
You seem stuck on this idea that copyright was created to protect the public from getting eternally screwed by copyright holders.
That's an unusual idea, since there would be no copyright holders if copyright hadn't been created yet.
Anyway, the fact of the matter is that copyright is intended to benefit the public. It accomplishes this through a system that provides some degree of benefit for authors but authorial benefit is not the goal, it's just how we exploit authors' predictable behavior.
One of my favored analogies is the farmer and the donkey. The farmer wants to go to market, so he dangles a carrot in front of the d
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I would be interested in any links to court decesions supporting the "right to read" in the first admendment or elsewhere.
In the diary case, your actions would amount to theft not copyright infringment if I had not published it, and I should be able to sue for damages caused by the use of the material stolen (i.e. you read it to my boss showing him the sections where I say he's full of crap and he fires me for it). Even if I leave my keys in the car, leave the car running, it's still grand theft auto when you drive off in it - so I don't see it being my job to keep it private and should I fail you'll be free to do whatever with it.
The limited publication is the real issue worth debate. Scientology has used copyright to protect exactly that - the limited publication of their "secret book." The publication of an internal company memo would be the same issue.
I would also take issue that the constitution does not apply to the private sector, the wording of the 4th for example "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects..." etc gives me a right and does not make that right available only with respect to the goverment. I have a feeling this may get some real debate in courts with the recent Sony issues and I'll be interested in hearing the decisions made in this case since it's a prime example of the private sector violating our rights.
btw, even if I'm not in agreement with you, I do acknowlodge I am not a lawyer, and I am probably wrong on all counts, but I have enjoyed reading your well thought out posts.
I'm still not entirely sure where you and I disagree, except maybe on very small specifics. Your overall point seems to be "Copyright should benefit the public and short copyrights best suit this."
I agree strongly with that statement and the nearly perpetual nature of copyright is troublesome, to say the least. A 10 year copyright (even 5, as you suggest) would keep most copyright-driven sectors of the economy working.
We also know from experience that most works have no economic value at all, that only a small fraction have any value, and that only a small fraction of those have any significant value.
While I agree with where you ultimately go with this point, I'm not sure how much I agree with this line. 'Significant value' can be interpreted in many ways. A person who voluntarily contributes to a GPL'ed work may not put much monetary value on their work. At the same time, they use copyright to protect their work and set terms on its use. Eh, I have a point here, but I've typed this paragraph out 4 times with and without the GPL example, but it's just not coming out right. Part of me agrees strongly with automatic copyright on all works. Just not perpetual ones.
There is the problem though, "using a product/service for free, that you would otherwise have to pay for" in itself is too broad of a concept to judge outright, since there are illegal ways to do this, there are also legal ways to do this as well, believe it or not... even though this is not what we are talking about here, I think in debates like this specifics matter.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
Sorry, I think my statement takes that into account. If you could get it for free, then you -wouldn't- otherwise have to pay for it. But If you DO have to pay for it (ie: There is no legal way to get it for free) and still use it for free, that's where we run into problems.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
The problem with your argument is that it is based upon faulty backing.
This is not true all of the time however, much your other definition of having to pay for it ("But If you DO have to pay for it (ie: There is no legal way to get it for free)" since these are conditions that always have exceptions to them that prevent them from being a sturdy definition for debating purposes.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
overrated? -doubtful-
but definately -not- offtopic considering it's a joke about xbox mods!
You do know what free means right? If you have to pay for it, it's not free and conversely if you get it for free (with the blessing of the provider of the goods or services), you didn't have to pay for it.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
Your overall point seems to be "Copyright should benefit the public and short copyrights best suit this."
/. posts, and a novel. Posts ordinarily shouldn't be copyrighted, whereas a novel is the sort of thing where it's expected. Now, if someone wants to buck either trend, that's fine. But a registration formality for copyright strikes me as a good way to tell them apart and limit protection to where it is needed. If you have a better method, feel free to tell us about it.
Well, a lot of people would say short terms. However, I think that copyright should be reduced in length and scope. Some works -- boat hulls, chip masks qua chip masks, architecture -- shouldn't be copyrightable at all. More exceptions should be added so that acts which presently are infringing are made legal. I'd also like to see formalities strengthened, work for hire and transfers strengthened, certain practices (e.g. EULAs and DRM) and copyright made mutually exclusive. And yes, I'd like to see terms shortened dramatically, and made more granular by using multiple short terms (so that if an artist loses interest in having a copyright, we don't have to wait long for it to expire).
Short terms are probably the most called-for reform, but I think it's insufficient by itself.
A 10 year copyright (even 5, as you suggest) would keep most copyright-driven sectors of the economy working.
My general feeling has been that 5 year terms would be best, and that for most works, they could be renewed a few times, if the author opted to do so. Some sorts of works -- software is the only example right now -- age so rapidly that 5 years is plenty of time for most of the value of the work to be had, but for the public to still receive a work in the public domain that has some use, rather than being totally archaic.
But this is just an idea. Some actual studies into how long works retain value would be needed so as to come up with hard numbers. I suspect I'm being too generous.
'Significant value' can be interpreted in many ways.
I meant economic value. Copyright is not about fame, or artistic merit. It's about fortune. Artists who create because they want respect or create for art's sake don't need copyrights to provide an incentive; they're already incentivized.
Part of me agrees strongly with automatic copyright on all works. Just not perpetual ones.
Well, I'm prepared to accept a statutory recreation of something like the old common law copyright. Thus, if an author has his manuscript stolen and published, he has a claim. However, protection on unpublished works should be relatively minor and short-lived, lest it be abused. We might borrow a page from patent interferences and enquire as to whether the work was still being developed or had been left to rot. And we might check to see if there had been any indication, aside from the self-serving testimony of the author bringing the suit, of whether the work was intended to be published eventually. And we might put a cap on it anyway, lest works that are hundreds of years old and unpublished, end up being protected unduly. (e.g. if people from the year 2525 find a 20th century MS)
However, the main system should require registration promptly around the time of publication. This serves the important function of seperating out authors who don't care enough about their work to fill out a form, etc., from those who do. The former probably were not incentivized by copyright, or they would treat copyright formalities seriously. The latter probably were, and are willing to jump through minor hoops for this, just as they might in order to get an agent, or a business license. The requirements of registration should be minimal, while still respecting the needs of the public.
Ultimately, I think there is a difference between, say, these
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.