Valve Censoring Torrent References In Steam Chat

dotarray writes It seems Valve is restricting just what you can talk about when using the Steam chat service. Specifically, any reference to a particular torrent site is being stripped from conversation, while mentions of other pages trigger a warning that the site is "potentially malicious." In the wake of website KickassTorrents being taken offline earlier this week, people quickly noticed that references to the torrent site were being stripped from chat - with no warning, notificiation, or acknowledgement that anything is missing. We've seen censorship before, with chat providers blocking certain words, replacing key letters with asterisks or simply substituting inoffensive words for those considered 'problematic.' That's not what Valve is doing here though - the entire message is disappearing, not just the troublesome domain.

Comments

Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Most pirated games go through the Steam client. Valve obviously wants people to buy games on Steam, not use Steam to play pirated games.

Re:Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

remember 31337-speak? Elite-speak, basically replace vowels with numbers and stuff. The moronic RMT bots have been doing this forever on MMORPG's.

As for Why are they talking about torrents, Valve obviously found that people were using it to encourage piracy or they would never have done it. More to the point, pirates often don't like Steam in the first place, so it seems like it's trying to block people from using Steam to distribute piracy torrents rather than to outright block the use of bittorrent, since the Steam system kinda operates on a torrent-like mechanic.

Re:Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Steam is a cloud-based service. Steam cannot be used to distribute piracy torrents. We are only talking about sharing external KAT links in the chat.

Re:Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. I don't see what the problem is here. If one really wants to have KickassTorrents conversations, I'm sure he can find some other channel to do it.

Do you really think they implemented that filtering function specifically to remove texts containing "KickassTorrents" and that it is hardcoded to that?
The problem isn't that they are removing texts containing "KickassTorrents", the problem is the ones we don't know about.
So, they don't want people to find out about pirated games. How do they feel about people saying bad things about their own games, like informing other users about bugs? What do they think about competitors games, are any of those censored?
If they want to censor the chat, fine, but at least provide us with a list of the words that aren't allowed.
It's like the ESL statement "If we told you what the chat rules were it would be easier for you to circumvent them."

Re:Well duh

[hairyfeet]

So in other words you are this guy and are so clueless about the subject you think Steam is a MSFT product....well thx for wasting our time.

Re:Well duh

[drinkypoo]

Most pirated games go through the Steam client.

You try to play one of those games on the Steam network, you're gonna have a bad time. Valve will detect your sorry ass and you may lose your whole steam account.

Re: Well duh

[Bengie]

"The Cloud" is typically in reference to a resource pool where you don't care about "servers", you just care about resources. The GP seemed to be using the term a bit more generically to indicate that there is no "Steam server" that you connect to, just some notion of "Steam".

Re:Well duh

[Bengie]

You seem to have mixed up a few things, but I'll just focus on the main argument of a boycott. Those only work when you have a roughly equivalent alternative, and you speak as if there is no cost to not using Steam, when many users have a large investment that they'd be walking away from.

The logic you use is similar to that who is suicidal. I want to hurt you by hurting me.

Re:Well duh

[thieh]

I wonder why nobody thought of forking the steam client on github to include TLS in steam chat.

Re:Well duh

[Sir_Substance]

Almost 100% of pirated games aren't sold, what are you talking about?

Re:Well duh

[complete loony]

It's a cat and mouse game, but the pirates have been quite successful from time to time. Download the game content and update from somewhere, and most games can't tell you haven't bought it. At one point steam would completely trust the list of games you owned that was saved on disk, but most of the time there has been a crack of some kind that would convince steam you owned everything. I think there may even be a reverse engineered steam server that you can set up for any number of users to download games from.

But I don't think there's much active development in that community at the moment. Steam has been going for ages, and most crackers have burnt out or gotten real jobs.

Re:Well duh

[blackomegax]

Or, yo(remove)u kno(remove)w... Break their regex.

Re:Well duh

[PopeRatzo]

Don't get excited. Your statement,

Mind you I am not a steam user, but I never liked Microsoft, so I simply do not use any of their products.

seemed to strongly indicate that you believe Steam is a Microsoft product. It was a reasonable assumption for the GP to make.

Re:Well duh

[PopeRatzo]

Steam has been going for ages, and most crackers have burnt out or gotten real jobs.

I've noticed that the older I get, the more willing I am to wait for a Steam sale or even (gasp!) pay full price for a game I really want rather than download a torrent.

Re:Well duh

[g0bshiTe]

I find I'm waiting for the Christmas blowouts typically, and until them I'm loading up on the $20 indie titles.

Re:Well duh

[matbury]

It's a reminder that we don't have the right to free speech on private corporate social networking services.

Re:Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that I'm old enough to have a small but manageable income, piracy is usually only about accessibility for me -- I will only pay for streaming media on demand, but I'll pay handsomely. I subscribe to Netflix & Rdio so my bases are mostly covered; I stream from TV station websites when the content is available there, I even abide the commercials (which after 15 years off cable, feel alien to me), and of course I buy all of my games because Steam makes them available.

Give us services worth paying for, and most pirates will gladly stop. Content owners and providers create this problem for themselves with bullshit scheduling and legal red tape for content availability (especially internationally). When HBO Go is available legally in Canada, I will no longer have a reason to steal Game of Thrones or Last Week Tonight. When Hulu is available, I'll have no reason to pirate any of their content. I am a consumer with no patience for cable-company price gouging or scheduled inconvenience, but I will pay for a quality service and Canada has been held hostage in this regard for a long time.

Re: Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

...fake the authentication?
Whatever authentication they're running, they can't control your side of it. There is nothing stopping you from generating hashes of a stored clean copy or just passing a known good hash.

Re:Well duh

[Enfixed]

Steam has made buying games convenient and affordable, I don't even think about pirating a game anymore. Today I work along the lines of "if it's not on Steam I'm not going to bother buying / playing it". A reduction in piracy simply because a market started doing what the consumer wanted, you reading this music industry guys?

Re:Well duh

[rochrist]

It's not that hard. He's saying the majority of these pirated games have their legitimate retail version sold thru steam.

Re:Well duh

[jandrese]

Steam did the same thing for PC games that iTunes did for Music. It make digital buying so easy and affordable that there was little reason to pirate anymore. Lo and behold the piracy rates plummet as a result. It doesn't even require intrusive and invasive DRM, all you need to do is allow people to buy the product at a reasonable price without throwing up a bunch of roadblocks. It's like magic.

Re:Well duh

[PopeRatzo]

It's like magic.

It's almost as if companies that produce a decent product and treat customers with a little bit of respect are gonna do a lot of business and be successful.

Who knew?

Re:Well duh

[PopeRatzo]

The viewer's sense of entitlement is the single factor preventing them from having a legal way to obtain content.

You might not realize this, but consumers are supposed to have a sense of entitlement when it comes to getting the products they want at an affordable price.

There was a time when companies understood this, but in today's business climate, it seems that the prevalent business model involves making sure your customers don't have any choices. You want to play a game without having a persistent internet connection? Fuck you, pay me.. You want to avoid having intrusive and dangerous DRM on your computer? Fuck you, pay me. You want to know whether a game will run on your computer or is completely buggy before dropping >$60 on it? Fuck you, pay me. You want a choice of internet service providers? Fuck you, pay me.

It a climate of such corporate hostility, I can absolutely understand it when a consumer decides that the best response is, "Oh yeah? Well fuck YOU, too!

Re:Well duh

[PopeRatzo]

I find I'm waiting for the Christmas blowouts typically, and until them I'm loading up on the $20 indie titles.

Heck, last year I distinctly remember buying the new Wolfenstein and Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag for less than half the full price, and I had a great time with both of them. I don't have a problem with waiting a little while. Waiting also has two other big benefits for me. First, by the time I buy a game, it has been patched and tweaked and actually runs properly and second, it gives me a chance to upgrade my PC to play the game as it was meant to be played without getting fleeced for premium prices for new components.

Re:Well duh

[mjwx]

Most pirated games go through the Steam client. Valve obviously wants people to buy games on Steam, not use Steam to play pirated games.

Most pirated games deliberately avoid using the steam client because the steam client likes to screw around with games and this has some bad effects with pirated games (I.E. replacing a cracked .exe with the DRM'd original).

And thats one of the more benign effects.

Re:Well duh

[Sir_Substance]

It would be more accurate to say "most pirated games are cracked using a steam services crack".

That's not surprising since "most boxed games now have steam as a requirement" is also true.

In fact, the only thing you can really say for sure is "steam is everywhere in games these days".

Re: Well duh

[Jakeula]

No, you're reading it wrong. He said stop using Steam. Then he said he's not a steam user, but he's walked away from Microsoft products because he doesn't like them, therefore he's confident you can do the same. I get it, the internet is hard, but don't blame him because you didn't take a moment to reread his message and attempt to understand what he was saying. Try reading his message with this additional insight, and it reads perfectly fine.

Re: Well duh

[PopeRatzo]

I wasn't the one confused by his comment. I just said that the person who misconstrued did so with good reason.

I'm able to make sense of poorly-written English, but only because I have professional training and 25 years' experience.

Re: Well duh

[ruir]

And apparently you have much time in your hands too, or your priorities very mixed up.

Re: Well duh

[PopeRatzo]

Both.

Good for them

[Bovius]

It's interesting to see how Valve his handling being the titan in the game distributors market for several years running. I know that not everything they do is best for the long term health of the industry or their consumers, but this deterring piracy on communication channels they sponsor seems pretty reasonable, and overall they've handled things quite well.

Maybe they can come up with a better way of dealing with it instead of just silently removing messages, though. Maybe wag a finger disapprovingly at the person sending the message and don't even make it look like the message got sent from their end.

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

"but this deterring piracy on communication channels they sponsor seems pretty reasonable, and overall they've handled things quite well."

Indeed. Let's watch and see what else they start to censor in the future. Slippery slopes are a bitch that way.

If they were going to do this, I'd just as soon they inform people that they ate their message and for what reason. At least then you know what's going on and not having to piece together why your friend isn't responding to what you said.

Re:Good for them

[mvdwege]

So you are using their chat app to talk about how to infringe their copyright, and you think they are in the wrong?

Entitled little bitch much?

Re:Good for them

[smooth wombat]

it is against the constitution for them to censor speech in such a way.

False. The Constitution applies to what the GOVERNMENT can do regarding speech. An employer or business is free to censor within certain bounds such as preventing their employees from talking about an upcoming product, internal financial figures and so on.

Further, this is Steam's property. They can do what they want, just as any other business can do with their property. You know those signs which says, "No shoes, no shirt, no service"? Guess what, they're not censoring your right to walk around barefoot. They are only saying on their property you can't do so.

Finally, anyone who didn't think their comments regarding how to not pay Steam for the games they developed wouldn't get censored is an idiot.

Re: Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

Freedom of speech is freedom from the government from restricting your speech. It does not apply in any way to a private corporation on their own network.

Re:Good for them

[GrumpySteen]

In America we have free speech. it is against the constitution for them to censor speech in such a way.

You need to re-read the constitution. It's against the constitution for the US government to censor speech. The first amendment does not apply to communication channels provided by a corporation like Valve.

Re:Good for them

[Bengie]

They can do what they want, just as any other business can do with their property.

You over simplify. Can banks just decide to not do business with you and keep your money? There are also laws against discrimination because a business can't just do anything it wants with its property, like put up a sign that says "No Blacks or Jews".

But you are correct about the main premise of your argument, the 1st Amendment applies to the Government or other government regulated entities like common carriers.

Re:Good for them

[bws111]

Can banks just decide not to do business with you? Yes. Can they keep your money? No, that would be theft. What does one have to do with the other?

Of course their are anti-discrimination laws, but what 'discrimination' they protect against is very narrowly defined (race, religion, color, gender, sexual orientation).

What makes you think the Constitution applies to 'government regulated entities'? It certainly does not.

Re:Good for them

[Bacon Bits]

Can banks just decide to not do business with you

Yes. That's how credit cards get cancelled and mortgages get foreclosed on. Don't you think the bank would just rather you paid them? Because that interest is how they make money.

and keep your money?

No, because that is theft. As parent said: "with their property." The money in a bank isn't owned by the bank. It's owned by it's customers. If the bank decides not to do business with you, they must return your property.

There are also laws against discrimination because a business can't just do anything it wants with its property, like put up a sign that says "No Blacks or Jews".

Yes, because discrimination on the basis of race or religion is specifically banned. But it's that category that is banned, not discrimination as a whole. Nearly every business has a "right to refuse service" clause or sign. You ever know anybody to get thrown out of a place for being an asshole? Right to refuse service. You just can't refuse service because of age, disability, gender, race, national origin, or religion (among a few other things), but you absolutely can refuse service for nearly everything else. "We don't serve people who are rude." "We don't serve people who bounce checks." "We don't serve people who complain for petty reasons." "We don't serve people without shirt and shoes." "We don't allow food in here." "We don't allow children into R-rated movies."

You know the Soup Nazi? That is not illegal.

Businesses usually have little interest in refusing services in general because it's -- quite literally -- turning money away, but that doesn't mean they don't get to decide who they do business with.

Re:Good for them

[stoatwblr]

"In America we have free speech. it is against the constitution for them to censor speech in such a way."

When Valve software becomes the government, then please let us know.

Re: Good for them

[Cederic]

What the fuck does that have to do with censoring private discussions on the subject that happen to go through the Steam chat client?

I can't say to a friend, "Glad Kickass Torrents got its ass kicked" now without using a different service. Maybe you think that's appropriate but I disagree.

Re:Good for them

[g0bshiTe]

ZOMG it's 1995 again!

Re:Good for them

[g0bshiTe]

Using the logic the entire internet should be done away with as it's the main mechanism allowing piracy.

Without a network think of how much reduced piracy and child porn there would be.

Re:Good for them

[rochrist]

Read up on how the First Amendment actually works.

Re:Good for them

[jandrese]

They aren't blocking messages that talk about infringing on copyright, they're blocking messages that so much as reference something they don't like. That's heavy handed and ineffective.

"You know you can download on ka.to, good seeds and everything". Not blocked
"You think the new Piratebay is just a FBI sting now? I hear it's just one guy and everything is shady. You'd have to be crazy go go there now." Blocked.

The smart thing to do would be to have a system that silently flags people's accounts when they use certain keywords (like Piratebay), and have them double checked for pirate content. If someone is dumb enough to talk about Torrenting on Steam chat while pirating games on Steam, then they deserve to get busted.

Re:Good for them

[HobophobE]

They've been censoring scam/malware sites for awhile now. Many games have virtual items, some of which have significant value. Scammers seek to steal these items through various techniques including phishing sites that look like Steam's website. Once aware of these sites, Steam chat censors them. It's not silent in that case, but replaces the URL with "{LINK REMOVED}". Of course, then scammers use link shorteners and such to try to continue distributing the malicious links.

Re:Good for them

[Bengie]

It's not theft if you gave them the money, they're just choosing to not do business with you. They're not "stealing" anything you have, they're just keeping what you gave them and are refusing to do business with you.

Re:Good for them

[mjwx]

You know the Soup Nazi? That is not illegal.

This. Even in Australia the Soup Nazi would not be illegal. Sure he wouldn't stay in business, but he's doing nothing illegal.

The law is very specific about the reasons CAN'T use to deny service, not about the reasons you CAN use. I can put a sign up saying "This establishment reserves the right to refuse service for any reason" and tell customers to naff off entirely out of whimsy. However if I put up a sign saying "This establishment reserves the right to deny entry to Gingers" and only told Gingers to naff off, then I'd have a problem.

A business owner has the right to refuse service to drunk customers, abusive or angry customers, even ones that are dirty and dishevelled or that a business owner believes wont be able to pay. Only a few businesses have to serve everyone and these businesses normally have special laws that offer them protections above what is normally afforded to other businesses in exchange (I.E. banks and taxi services). You can even be banned from a supermarket (although if you get banned from every supermarket in town, this normally means the court needs to "help" you).

I don't see the problem

[tsotha]

Would you go to Walmart's site and leave links pointing to instructions for shoplifting at Walmart? Valve's site; Valve's rules.

Re:I don't see the problem

[thegarbz]

Do you expect to walk into a Walmart and shout out instructions for shoplifting but have people mysteriously unable to hear you?

The problem is not the censorship, it's the covert censorship. With any kind of chat system we expect acknowledgement of a message. I don't care if the message doesn't get through as long as I know about it and as long as I know why.

Re:I don't see the problem

[gl4ss]

Valves site, Valves rules, so next week don't be so surprised when a friend messages you back that they bought a game they thought you recommended to them.

it's valves site after all so why not?

Re:I don't see the problem

[Jack Griffin]

True, this is the benefit of a free market. Another benefit is it's my money so I get to choose where I spend it, so guess what? Not another dollar off mine will go through Steam. I have no problem with santising comms, but the nature of blind censorship just reeks of abuse. I can't support such behaviour.

Re:I don't see the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a pretty poor analogy because no one's leaving anything in a public place on Steam chat, I think it's private chat isn't it? If so then you're analogy is actually akin to two people in Walmart talking about how shoplifting could occur and then someone from Walmart coming over and covering their mouth when they say certain sentences, except even that doesn't fit well because at least the other person in the conversation could see the other person is having their mouth covered when they say certain things.

I'm pretty sure I have spoken about shoplifting in shops before, not because I have any intention of doing it but because when a store is understaffed I almost certainly have said something to whoever I'm with along the lines of "they really should have more staff because it'd be so easy for shoplifters to take what they want off of them when there's no one around".

But it also depends on what expectation of privacy you could reasonably expect to have. If it's a private chat then regardless of who runs it unless it's incredibly transparent what they censor and when then it raises the creepy prospect of what's happening to those messages. Are they simply never sent by the client? does Valve get them and delete them? does Valve get them and read them logging information against you?

Depending on what happens Valve's site, Valve's rules doesn't mean Valve gets to ignore the law, in some countries depending on how it works on a technical level this could put them in breach of interception and surveillance law. You see, it's not that doing this sort of thing is illegal in such countries, but if you're perceived to provide a private chat service, and it's not actually private then it's misleading enough that you can be deemed to have tricked them into being surveilled. This sort of censorship and/or potential surveillance is fine IF you make it clear to people you're doing it. I don't know if Valve do, someone more informed might be able to clarify

But I don't know enough about the details because I don't use the system nor do I have any idea how it works, and I suspect no one except Valve knows the full details. There's no harm in them being more transparent though unless they have malicious reason not to be.

So long story short, it's really not as simple and trivial as your analogy and argument makes out.

Re: I don't see the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... police station for discussing shoplifting? I don't think so.

Re: I don't see the problem

[ihtoit]

when TPB went back up, music didn't even FEATURE in the top downloads. Neither did mainstream or prerelease movies. Any guesses as to what did make the top list?
.
.
.
.
.
.
Linux images. Followed by porn.

Re:I don't see the problem

[Sir_Substance]

A more accurate comparison:

Would you enact a law allowing the USPS to examine everyones letters and redact any references to other postal services?

Re: I don't see the problem

[ihtoit]

uh... they have stats pages on the website?

Re: I don't see the problem

[ihtoit]

would you rather I sourced from the MPAA, the BPI, the New York Chamber of Commerce? Because they would get exactly the same data from exactly the same source - and cherrypick that which suits their agenda.

TPB, as has been proved time and again, do not host infringing files. The FI says that's not true. What they mean is it's not convenient. What is convenient for them is the claim that they do, so that is the lie (as in claim proven to not fit the facts) that they push as truth. TPB host infinging files as much as Google host kiddie porn. Why isn't the FBI going after Google for *linking* to kiddie porn?

Re: I don't see the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux images. Followed by porn.

Humorist. I'm sure porn is quite popular, but there is no way in hell that Linux images could be #1.

Re:I don't see the problem

[jellomizer]

If it is done from a company or a none government organization it considered moderation. If it is because of laws or government it is censoring.
When a TV show bleeps out Sware words it is censoring because of the FCC regulations. Valve is trying to maintain a particular image on its message boards so it can and should moderate its boards to prevent it from going bad.

Re:I don't see the problem

[tsotha]

No, that's far less accurate. For one thing the USPS is a government sponsored monopoly.

Re: I don't see the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Either you're free to say WHAT you want or YOU'RE NOT.

Its neither, as the world consists outof shades of gray, not just black and white.

You're not allowed to scream "fire!" in a crowd,
you're not allowed to "dirty talk" to a minor,
you're not allowed to lie in court,
... and that list goes on and on.

In other words: the "I'm free to say whatever I want" has already got a large slew on restrictions on it. Interrestingly, most all of them to protect man against other man.

Yes, freedom of speech is restricted to protect you and your fellow man from being hurt by some moron who thinks he is free to say whatever he wants, whenever he wants to do it.

Also, most people who complain about the restriction of their free speech either have no clue, or forcefully refuse to acknowledge that that freedom is only valid against the gouverment, not their fellow man.

Re:I don't see the problem

[Sir_Substance]

Fair enough. Would you enact a law allowing UPS to examine everyones goods and redact any references to other postal/courier services?

Re: I don't see the problem

[Richard_at_work]

You can source it from anywhere you want, but don't expect not to be laughed at if you take the stats given by the website trying desperately to avoid prosecution...

Whether or not TPB hosts "infringing files" is a matter of opinion - the Swedish Government certainly takes a differing stance from yours, in that they have successfully prosecuted the founders for assisting in copyright infringement, and have taken the website down on many occasions.

You have to be fucking insane not to think that the bulk of the traffic on TPB is for illicit content (and bulk of traffic is different to "top downloads" - you can have ten million downloads of a hundred thousand infringing torrents, and two hundred thousand downloads of a Linux distro. The bulk of the downloads is still illicit). They have based their entire public persona around being edgy and "fuck the man"-esk.

A drugs pharmacy is still going to be shut down if they sell 99% legal drugs and 1% crack cocaine without a prescription. Especially if the intent is to sell that 1%.

Which is why Google doesn't get chased - their intention is not to push the illegal stuff, while TPB's is. Intention matters a lot.

Re: I don't see the problem

[ihtoit]

uh... you CAN shout "fire" in a crowded theatre. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects that right.
You CAN "dirty talk" to a minor, the First Amendment protects that right.
You CAN lie in court, the First Amendment protects that right.

What the First Amendment DOES NOT DO is protect you from the consequences of that exercise of the FREEDOM to say what you want to if it is a violation of other Laws. The Constitution is Supreme.

I: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Such litmus weighting on the Free Speech argument as the Brandenburg test does NOT seek to infringe or abrogate the right to free speech, they instead seek to balance the speech itself against hte immediate and direct consequences of that speech. For example, I could stand in the middle of Times Square and chant "Jihad, Jihad, Jihad", and there is NOTHING that can legally be done to stop me from doing that. If however, an individual hears me and goes off to kill a cafeteria full of people then claims I put him up to it, then that's something I'll have to answer to. Nothing stops me from making the speech, because nothing CAN without violating my Constitutional right to say it, but with rights come responsibilities. IF the Government wants to deprive me of my rights, they are welcome to try but with that abrogation comes a transfer of responsibility, not least of which to balance the beam and make it illegal for anybody(!) else to incite war or hatred in any form on any forum. In other words, if I get called a white trash piece of shit by a Brother, I should be affforded the same State protection that he gets if I call him a chicken munching nigger porch monkey.

Re:I don't see the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

"True, this is the benefit of a free market."

No it is NOT.

When someone "votes with their dollars" and doesn't use Steam or Valve games, they get THIS:

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=6972941&cid=49065259
by hairyfeet (841228) on Monday February 16, 2015 @05:29AM (#49065259) Journal
So in other words you are this guy [theonion.com] and are so clueless about the subject you think Steam is a MSFT product....well thx for wasting our time.

Note too that you moron corporate whores claim guns are OK because they can be used for defence and the widespread criminal use of it is irrelevant, but when it comes to torrents, "99% is illegal, therefore it's all illegal and you can't say otherwise".

No, torrents are useful for legal uses.

Steam games require Steam connection to work, so you need a license from Steam.

"Games are licensed not sold", therefore sending out copies of the game is NOT STEALING A THING, since no license (the only thing you buy, ergo the only thing with a price) is not torrented.

But but but... I hear you blubber.

NO.

If the game is not being sold, it has no price and no loss in being pirated.

Doubly so for Steam games.

Torrents have cracks for the protection for single player games tied to Steam. That isn't illegal copyright breeching, since it doesn't make a new license copy, merely uses the old one. It allows removal of DRM hence interoperability with computers not to be connected to the internet or tied to the existence of a separate account. Of course, since this has to be an individual vs Valve, it never can win and will be thrown out because Valve have better lawyers, not better law.

Valve, however, want people signed up to Steam, since they can point people to Steam numbers just like Microsoft did when pushing people to Windows games and DirectX: Look how may people you get access to!

This is why they want online connection:

Control of what you do above and beyond the rights of copyright
Marketing you to publishers

Next comes a subscription. It'll start optional and come with extras. It then becomes mandatory with extras. It then becomes mandatory. See Google's push of Google+ for how mandatory becomes the case when the company owns a big enough slice of what you can do.

Re: I don't see the problem

[ihtoit]

I didn't say that. What I will say is that yes, a private chat server is equivalent to my living room. I can remove you if I don't like what you're saying. That's not to say I want to stop you from saying it, you can say what you want till you're blue in the face, but just not in my private living space. It's my house, my rule, and in my house I am God.

If it were a chat space provided by the State, there would be a First Amendment argument because - and this is long established through the public library system as well as through the State position on copyrightable materials such as official reports - the material/space is paid for using public funds hence is owned by the public, kept in trust by the State who do NOT have the right to exclude you because you said something somebody doesn't like but have the option to remove you if as a result of that speech Laws are broken - for which there are established methods to do so (the court system). Speech of itself is not a criminal act.

Re:I don't see the problem

[thegarbz]

The same arguments apply for moderation. Moderators very quickly get called out on their shit when they blindly delete posts. Proper moderation has always been about marking a post as deleted and better still marking why.

When a TV show bleeps out a sware word it is the exact opposite of what I'm talking about. That is not shouting into a room where no one can hear you. That's shouting into a room and everyone knowing you said something that was blocked by someone. It's not at all covert. Blocking the link with a warning is fine. Having messages disappear in transit is definitely not okay.

Re:I don't see the problem

[ScentCone]

Would you enact a law allowing UPS to examine everyones goods and redact any references to other postal/courier services?

Bad analogy. A better analogy would be: UPS decides to run a forum or message system that their users/customers can use to communicate about UPS-related services, or issues that come up when you're running mail-order retail, etc. And then they decide to filter out communication that uses THEIR PLATFORM to talk about how to rip off UPS. Nobody's talking about laws, they're talking about what you can do with your own system when people choose to use it to communicate. The government's not even in this picture, and so all of this "censorship" babble is meaningless at best, and disingenuous at worst, if it's from people who know better.

Re: I don't see the problem

[Richard_at_work]

Troll? Oh yay, the pro-copyright infringement brigade is out in force today. Why *would* you take The Pirate Bays own stats, which conveniently exonerate themselves, at face value?

Re: I don't see the problem

[ihtoit]

I was born a few years after slavery was abolished (though you wouldn't think it looking at the state of the minimum wage economy). Your argument is invalid.

Re: I don't see the problem

[ihtoit]

depends on your definition. I'm for personal freedom, but I'm also for the personal responsibility that comes with it. We're all adults here, I assume, we've generally learned (we claim) to not be offended by language, but the Nanny State would have us believe that innocent use of language causes buildings to topple and firearms to discharge themselves and peoples heads to spontaneously explode. Their solution is to try and choke us while saying its for our own good. I say, the Law is settled in the consequences of language, and it should only come into play if actual, demonstrable physical harm has resulted as a direct result of that language. These days you can throw an insult at an "ethnic monority" and find yourself in a debtors prison for two years. There is no harm done by your use of language except in the eyes of some scumbag piece of shit barrister who sees you as nothing more than a payday. I say it would be justified if you could make somebody's head implode using the Weirding Way, but I'm fairly certain that's nothing more than a plot device in a book.

Re: I don't see the problem

[fuzznutz]

You're not allowed to scream "fire!" in a crowd,
you're not allowed to "dirty talk" to a minor,
you're not allowed to lie in court,
... and that list goes on and on.

Only the Constitution doesn't say "except..." The First Amendment is pretty unambiguous.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The current "court interpretations" of unambiguous text is the way we ended up with free speech zones, civil asset forfeiture, warrantless wiretaps, eminent domain for the benefit of private interests, and the rationale that everything is interstate commerce even when it isn't. We strict construction Constitutionalists have taken a lot of shit from those who happen to like their "current" interpretations, calling us mindless Libertarians or anarchists, but you are only one swing vote away from an "interpretation" you can't tolerate. So next time you are robbed by your local policeman who just happens to think you are carrying a bit too much cash to be normal, at least you can pat yourself on the back and say, "Well, at least we can get those dirty talking perverts, or those nasty Megaupload pirates, or those filthy traitors who told the world we are spying on our own people." Just remember that when the words don't say what is clearly written, anybody can twist them to mean what they want the next time around.

[...] most people who complain about the restriction of their free speech either have no clue, or forcefully refuse to acknowledge that that freedom is only valid against the gouverment (sic), not their fellow man.

This is the only "insightful" comment you have posted.

Re:I don't see the problem

[Sir_Substance]

You know you can use steam chat for talking about things other than video games, right?

For your rationale to be even slightly credible of consideration, valve would have to not censor torrent links about movies, ebooks and TV shows since they don't sell them.

Re: I don't see the problem

[fuzznutz]

uh... you CAN shout "fire" in a crowded theatre. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects that right.
You CAN "dirty talk" to a minor, the First Amendment protects that right.
You CAN lie in court, the First Amendment protects that right.

What the First Amendment DOES NOT DO is protect you from the consequences of that exercise of the FREEDOM to say what you want to if it is a violation of other Laws. The Constitution is Supreme.

That is the fucking stupidest thing I have ever read on Slashdot. By your logic, I have the right to shoot you in the face too, but I can't avoid the consequences of my exercise of my rights. Here's a clue for free: If the government locks you up when you do something, it's not a right, natural or granted, unless the government is illegitimate and is trampling those rights. If you happen to suffer consequences at the hand of your fellow man, but the government sits on its thumbs, it's a right.

Re: I don't see the problem

[ihtoit]

you have the right to SAY you're going to shoot me in the face. You DO NOT have the right to actually shoot me in the face. That would be attempted murder. Which is AGAINST THE LAW.

Your reading comprehension sucks balls, by the way.

Re: I don't see the problem

[blackomegax]

You can poll the tracker and get your own stats. The trackers won't lie, or, at least, would be HIGHLY improbable to do so, since that would be complicated convoluted code to spot music and movie keywords and keep up with that over time.

Re: I don't see the problem

[fuzznutz]

You should worry more about your own logical reasoning skills than my reading comprehension. First of all, if you believe that you have the right to "say" you can shoot someone in the face, try saying that you're going to shoot the President in public. You'll see just how far that right goes. You cannot claim as a right something that you will find yourself locked up for.

Second, You claim that I do not have the right to shoot you in the face because it is "AGAINST THE LAW" but in the prior post you claim (erroneously) that I have the right to "lie in court" because "the First Amendment protects that right." Which way is it? Do I have illegal rights or not?

Let me define rights for you:

Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people, according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory.

Therefore, if it is illegal, IT IS NOT A RIGHT!

I can read just fine. Apparently you cannot so I will spell it out for you. My point is that it is NOT a legal (or natural) right if you cannot exercise it without fear of penalty from the government. I argue that there are voluminous violations of our Constitutional rights by the very people who swore to uphold the very same Constitution. In an ideal world, the only case which our Constitutionally enumerated rights SHOULD be curtailed is when they are in direct conflict with our OTHER rights.

Re: I don't see the problem

[ihtoit]

I'm not going to bite because you've already made up your mind and you are WRONG.

Re: I don't see the problem

[JesseMcDonald]

I say, the Law is settled in the consequences of language, and it should only come into play if actual, demonstrable physical harm has resulted as a direct result of that language.

Then you will be glad to learn that it is absolutely impossible for any language to cause physical harm as a direct result. In your prior example of "inciting violence", the language wasn't the cause of the harm, the violence was the cause of the harm; and the cause of the violence was the listener's choice, not the speech, or the speaker.

The freedom of speech naturally extends to all speech. Your freedom of speech is respected if and only if you can say whatever you want to say without any change in your legal status. Social consequences are, of course, another matter entirely.

Re:I don't see the problem

[jellomizer]

If it is there site, then they should be able to moderate it as they see fit. While we as individuals are entitled to free speech. Such rules do not apply to the distributors. It is probably easier to delete then to correct.
   

Re:I don't see the problem

[thegarbz]

I didn't say entitlement. I said calling people out on their shit. A site can do whatever the hell they want. Just like users can, and do (and frequently end up in the news as a result) advertise that the moderation scheme is shady causing messages to disappear into the ether without any reason given.

It's not about correction. It's about getting an error message saying: "This message could not be delivered". I don't even care if the message doesn't give a reason why. Steam isn't the first one to do this, but previous providers (e.g. windows messenger, AIM, etc) gave you instant rejection notifications. Admittedly the windows messenger got the same furor back in the 90s for exactly the same thing. Initially they simply dropped messages containing.... I can't remember I think it was links with .scr or .exe or something. After a backlash they changed it so at least the user knew the message was dropped in transit.

Re:I don't see the problem

[tsotha]

I wish the president would stop saying that so people would stop aping him without thinking about what they're saying.

Re:I don't see the problem

[tsotha]

This is the dumbest, self-serving crap I've read in a long time. You are not entitled to other peoples' work, and Congress is not obligated to set copyright terms at lengths you find convenient. They absolutely have the constitutional authority to keep extending copyright, and if you don't like it you need to get involved in the politics. Breaking the law is bad enough, but expecting Valve to help you when it's not in their interest to do so is just dumb.

Re:I don't see the problem

[RyoShin]

it's valves site after all so why not?

Because that goes from private censorship to impersonation, which can run afoul of a lot of laws in a lot of countries even for something as relatively "innocent" as game recommendation.

In this case, Valve is simply refusing to pass on the message to the other party in one circumstance (one specific domain). Not a good thing, but not illegal or even necessarily amoral (though that is up for debate) when done through their own service. In the other circumstance (related domains) they pass the message on but change the client behavior to not automatically open the browser. This is also their prerogative, again neither illegal nor amoral (except, perhaps, mischaracterizing the site as malicious), though if they tried doing this for links to, say, EA's Origin website they could be sued by EA for anti-competitive practices.

Not offline

[Meneth]

KickassTorrents is still online, though its address has changed back to the original (from .so).

Re: Not offline

[Jane Q. Public]

It's a honeypot: go there, have your IP logged, after some months when you don't expected you're sued. And if they decided they want to make an example, your life is over. The internet as we knew it is dead: stasinet took its place. Watch what you say, citizen.

No, it's not. I forget which source it was (I think TorrentFreak), but they interviewed the CEO who said that they are regularly changing their domain on purpose. Problem with .so domain might have hastened their schedule but it would have happened anyway.

The person who runs the site had no reason to say that if it weren't true. The Canadian authorities might be able to put a gag order on people under some circumstances but they can't force somebody to lie in public.

Re: Not offline

[camg188]

It's a honeypot: go there, have your IP logged

So what? Do you realized that your IP address and more is probably logged for every web site you visit?
Nothing will come from going to Kickass.to. It's not illegal and there is no illegal content there.
However, it's rather trivial for anyone, including copyright holders, to collect the IP addresses of people serving files with bittorrent because the sources you are downloading from are displayed in the bittorrent program.
No web browser needed, no honeypot needed.

Re: Not offline

[camg188]

I think his point is stupid. As I just pointed out:
1.)How does going to the kickass.to website make you an illegal filesharer?
2.)Why bother building a honeypot when they could just launch uTorrent and get a list of IP addresses that are actually serving the copyrighted material? Which is exactly what the Copyright Alert System has been doing for 2 years.

Re: Not offline

[thegarbz]

Really? They'll sue you for downloading a file that has absolutely no infringing copyright and that is generated by a computer? A file that simply describes a set of other files, and their hashes?

Get a grip.

That's like arresting you because someone said they saw you walk around in a suburb where drugs can be bought on the street.

Re: Not offline

[Whorhay]

Even if it was a honey pot so long as the torrent files were good it wouldn't matter. VPN's are pretty cheap and easy to use. Simply use a VPN service so that your actual IP address never enters into the picture. For bonus points you can use a VPN server located in another country that doesn't recognize US copyright law.

Depends where you live

[DrYak]

It's a honeypot: go there, have your IP logged, after some months when you don't expected you're sued. And if they decided they want to make an example, your life is over.

Depends in which jurisdiction you happen to live. In the US, yes maybe.
In other countries depends. It might range from:
- laughing of and throw the **AA's letter in the bin
- to "Sorry guy, but I actually paid the necessary tax in my country" (Russia has a centralised - and very cheap - copyright tax, left over from the soviet era. In France, there's jurisprudence that the "blank media tax" imposed on most sold blank media is supposed to pay back for anything that you download and store there. Etc.)

Re:Depends where you live

[ihtoit]

Doe lawsuits were massively dismissed by a judge last January. I wrote an article on it and it was buried to make way for Kim Kardashian's latest arse measurement.

They haven't learned the lesson.

[Anonymous Coward]

How many times do we have to teach idiots the lesson?

1. Create a service.
2. It gets popular.
3. Apply heavy handed censorship.
4. The Streisand Effect causes the censored items to propagate further (see: TFA)
5. Lose the damn service by hemorrhaging users due to bad press.

This day and age the profit step is Zeroth, gotta have money already to build popular platforms now.

Re:They haven't learned the lesson.

[Kjella]

How many times do we have to teach idiots the lesson?

1. Create a service.
2. It gets popular.
3. Apply heavy handed censorship.
4. The Streisand Effect causes the censored items to propagate further (see: TFA)
5. Lose the damn service by hemorrhaging users due to bad press.

This day and age the profit step is Zeroth, gotta have money already to build popular platforms now.

The story goes more like this:
1. Create a service based on user supplied content, everything from YouTube to TPB.
2. It gets popular because of illegally shared content, since most people ignore copyright law.
3. You get big enough to get noticed and they threaten you with very expensive lawsuits
4. You apply heavy handed censorship to keep them from putting the thumbscrews on you
5. Discover that your users are fleeing while the copyright goons are never happy.
6. Service collapses from dwindling income, high legal costs and closes doors.

The only exception is if you get bought out by someone with deep enough pockets, like when Google bought YouTube. I don't see Steam having the same problem though as they deliver games from publishers, who pick the channels they'd like to publish through. I expect that soon torrents will be known as t0rrents on Steam Chat and the world will carry on as before.

Re:They haven't learned the lesson.

[Sir_Substance]

Steam is not based on user supplied pirated content.

Re:They haven't learned the lesson.

[Sir_Substance]

If you removed that feature tomorrow it would have no noticeable impact on their business model.

Steam is not based on user supplied pirated content.

Censoring private messages?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this about public forum, or a private chat between two people? If it's the latter, I don't see how this is acceptable.

Alpha [space] Papa India Tango Yankee

[Anonymous Coward]

Tango Hotel Alpha Tango [space] Sierra Uniform Charlie Kilo Sierra [Dot] [space] [space] India Foxtrot [space] Oscar November Lima Yankee [space] Tango Hotel Echo Romeo Echo [space] Whiskey Alpha Sierra [space] Alpha [space] Whiskey Alpha Yankee [space] Tango Oscar [space] Golf Echo Tango [space] Papa Alpha Sierra Tango [space] India Tango [Dot]

One of many reasons not to use Steam

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't give me "Freedom of speech doesn't apply to corporations or private places" because that's bollocks.

WHY doesn't it? SOLELY because the US constitution doesn't, and merkins think that Freedom of Speech ONLY means what *US law* means it. More freedom of speech isn't freedom of speech, less freedom of speech is a repressive horrible infringement of a totalitarian government.

It isn't private and more than the town hall is private.

And corporations stifling speech is still an infringement of speech.

"Oh torrents are pirate channels!". Really? Updates from Blizzard are all pirated????

And note that you can be kicked out of Steam for this, whereupon your ENTIRE collection becomes null and void. Oh, don't make separate accounts to hold each game, because that's against the ToS and you can get all your accounts killed for that!

Yeah Steam has the BEST DRM! In just the same way as firing squad is the best form of murder!

Re:One of many reasons not to use Steam

[Yosho]

And corporations stifling speech is still an infringement of speech.

On the other hand, why should a private corporation be obligated to provide you with a platform for your speech? If you run your own web forum, would it be ok for me to fill up your forum with, say, posts advocating White Power, or would it be reasonable to ban me? I shouldn't even need to post the obligatory XKCD comic here.

"Oh torrents are pirate channels!". Really? Updates from Blizzard are all pirated????

Pretty sure nobody said that. If you'd bother looking at the article at all, you'd see that references to specific sites that are known for pirating material are being flagged. Go ahead and talk about Blizzard's updater all you want.

And note that you can be kicked out of Steam for this, whereupon your ENTIRE collection becomes null and void.

What are you talking about? Please show me any indication at all that somebody has been banned from Steam and rendered unable to access any of their games because they tried to talk about torrents.

Yeah Steam has the BEST DRM! In just the same way as firing squad is the best form of murder!

And you make the BEST points, in the same way that Hitler had the best final solution! See, I can also use extreme, irrelevant hyperbole!

In the course of one post you went from being somebody who didn't understand how free speech works to somebody who is using extreme hyperbole to argue against something that didn't even happen. Good job.

potentially malicious indeed

[0dugo0]

Following links led to the browser auto-downloading .exe files, hope they fixed it by now.

Copyright ifnrigement has a DEFINITION

[aepervius]

Copyright infringement is about the distribution of copyrighted material without the authorization of the original copyright holder. It has never been about posting instruction on how to get the file, which is what TPB is. The GP is correct : there is NO infringing file whatsoever, which is why the swedish prosecution tried to make up "an aiding" gambit, as no infringing file can be found on TPB server. As for traffic being majorly about copyrighted material or your pharmacy example, it is legally *irrelevant*, which is mostly why over the year TPB was not prosecuted successfully. You can legally tell people where to buy crack cocaine. That fall under free speech. Again, TPB is not the pharmacy selling the 1% crack, it is the street board telling you precise instruction on how to reach that pharmacy. Perfectly legal.

Re:Copyright ifnrigement has a DEFINITION

[bmo]

but the simple truth is that they are deliberately aiding and abetting criminal activity.

Copyright infringement is not a crime. It's a tort.

There is a gigantic difference between the two.

--
BMO

Re:Copyright ifnrigement has a DEFINITION

[drinkypoo]

Copyright infringement is not a crime.

Here in the USA where Slashdot is hosted, we have criminal copyright infringement.

Re:Trust your comm channels? End-to-end crypto

[Anonymous Coward]

Steam chat is encrypted end to end. Valve has set up a convenient MITM that, until this news, no one had proof existed.

Torrent sites have a good reputation

[penguinoid]

The ratio of legal content vs illegal is 1 to 99%. This would be enough to have torrenting banned.

On the other hand, I've yet to see a torrent site that tries to install crap on your system (download manager, Mc-fee Virus, toolbars...). Even formerly reputable companies like Java and Adobe are doing that crap now. If people keep this up, the crowds will be turning to torrent sites for all their legit content. It's a reputation thing.

Re:Torrent sites have a good reputation

[penguinoid]

Mc-fee Virus

typo... meant to write McAfee Antivirus. I don't know how that one slipped by me.

Re:Torrent sites have a good reputation

[Cederic]

McAfee Virus is a far more appropriate name for it.
Does more damage than any computer virus I've ever actually been infected by.

Re:Torrent sites have a good reputation

[g0bshiTe]

Edited by Steam Client is my guess.

Re:Trust your comm channels? End-to-end crypto

[blackomegax]

They don't need a MITM to run client-side regex against certain keywords.

#### Steam!

[JamieKitson]

I was once in a cybercafe where any profanity typed in any application was replaced by hashes in front of my eyes. I couldn't even type places in England such as: West Sus### and S####horpe.

Bad idea - All negatives for Valve, for users.

[RanceJustice]

I think this is a significant misstep for Valve. There is zero realistic expectation it will provide any benefit and it has a huge potential for negative effects. Valve has built Steam into the 800lb gorilla of the digital distribution of games (and now, some software as well), making generally good decisions. However, this is one of their rare blunders that cannot help anyone involved.

Steam thrives due to a multifaceted system of technical and logistical policies that one could consider "open handed" in terms of accessibility. For instance, on the pricing side, Steam's legendary sales were a great component of its success. When developers and publishers alike generally were restrictive with pricing, Steam demonstrated the success when you allow your product to go for a lower price and more than make it up in the volume of sales. Steam also doesn't force any DRM (though they will not oppose if someone else wants to make that bad decision, but at least list it on the game's page), and when they created Steamworks, those who opt to use it for all the multitude of benefits (such as basically not having to code in a separate multiplayer server, account, comm system) find themselves without many restrictions. These kinds of successes have allowed Valve (along with admittedly, a very important third factor: the fact the company is privately owned, so no stockholders and venture capitalists demanding quarterly ROI damn the consequences) to branch out even further technically, such as all their investment in Linux gaming: the Steam for Linux client, SteamOS etc... as well as items like Big Picture Mode. Valve also built the community aspect of Steam in thoughtful ways - a unified account system with sane defaults, loads of community features, and features like achievements,trading cards, unlockable account items (emotes etc.), and the Player Marketplaces. The vast majority of what Steam has become is predicated on open-handed accessibility for all involved.

The decision to censor chat, especially without even noting that anything has been removed, is a significant step backwards and out of character for Valve and Steam. They had to know that when discovered, users would take umbridge at this behavior and much like this very post- becomes negative PR. Valve spent time creating Steam's community system and encouraging people to use it - for chat, video etc... censoring their conversations is antithetical to this end. While there are the usual prohibitions one expects on the public-facing community elements like forums (including warez, porn etc..), when it came to private user-to-user messages or chat rooms, Valve didn't interfere. While some behavior was able to be flagged for report (ie phishing attempts etc) it required action on the part of of those involved in the private message/chat and certainly was not automated. This new development however, is troublesome for doing just that - private user conversations being edited by an algorithm and to the recipient there is no trace the message even existed. Of course, the senders must be instantly aware that a certain block of text did not send as it should.. unless it is even more egregious and similar to "shadowbanning" where the sender sees everything normal, but the recipient doesn't see anything sent at all!

Regardless of personal experience with the policy, many of Steam's users are going to object on philosophical grounds; as well they should! There is no good that comes from this change. We now have a system in place that through automatic filtering eliminates one piece of "problem speech" so there is every indication that others will follow if this is somehow deemed as "success". It seems strange to me to choose to censor mentions of a torrent website, considering that Steam has basically been a major success story in the face of piracy. Steam, HumbleBundle etc... and others who choose a more even, open handed respect for the player and their finances, have been rewarded compared to the other parts of the industry th

Re:Trust your comm channels? End-to-end crypto

[liquidsin]

they do need MITM if, as the AC says, the chat is encrypted end-to-end. can't really regex encrypted chat...unless they have the keys.

Streisand Effect

[DigitalSorceress]

Ok, so, they want to censor, the best response is for them to feel a strong, immediate Streisand Effect.

I have no interest in tormenting or torrent sites in general, but since they're attempting to silence it, I now really want to know what domain(s) they're trying to cover up.