Don't think every couch, lamp, and article of clothing had a royalty paid for it's use. You could extend that idea to "character A walks through a door. He hangs his jacket on a hook." Consider every element in that shot. The clothes, the door, the carpet he was standing on, the hook. None of those manufacturers made any money except for the retail cost of their product.
If this decision holds, that's about to change. And considering the amount of movies that have already been made, there's gonna be a shitstorm of lawsuits going on.
Nevermind the soldiers, what about the coats, helmets, guns, boots, etc. Someone designed all those things, which he so blithely copied without bothering to properly recognize artistic authorship.
I'm sure your post is meant to be funny, but the thing is, it hits too close to the truth to be funny. You absolutely could change something about your appearance and get a copyright for it, and it would be just as valid as Mr. Gaylord's is. And yes, based on this court decision, people would have to get your permission before they would be allowed to make a profit on any photo of you that included the copyrighted work.
I'm not people here are really getting the implications of this, and why it's so wrong.
Essentially, what this decision means is that any photo/video/painting/rendition of any kind of anything designed by a human can be considered copyright infringement, if that "derivative work" is being used to make a profit. Any building design recent enough to be under copyright is just as applicable as this war memorial. (In reality, literally *everything* would be applicable, because the creator of a work gets copyright by default unless he gives it away. This could include even things as far-fetched as landscape design, or the way some average joe mowed his lawn. Or some fence a farmer built, or even a highway. But, to keep it simple, we'll stick with buildings.) There's millions of buildings throughout the world, for which I'm 100% certain if you checked, you'd find copyrights on the design not just by default, but in every sense of the term. That means that literally every movie, every photo, every drawing, every painting, every rendition whatsoever of any of these buildings that is used to make a profit without first getting permission or paying royalties for every single building contained in them is infringing every bit as much as the USPS is here. Think about it. That's insane.
There's lots of games I've personally boycotted (no buying, no pirating, no using the game in any way) because I didn't agree with their DRM, or other "features". Some recent big names that come to mind include Spore and MW2, and now of course AC2 as well. I've also gone out of my way to buy some games because I DID like the policies of the publisher. (Sins of a Solar Empire is one example). Do you think they care? Do you think they even noticed?
There's also millions of gamers who boycott subscription-based games. Do you think Blizzard cares?
The only way a boycott works in the arena of PC games and piracy is if you can get literally every single gamer in the world to boycott it, to the point where a cracked version isn't even attempted. As long as there's a cracked version of it available, OR they still turn a decent profit on it, nothing you (as an individual gamer) can do amounts to jack shit as far as they're concerned. They'll still continue to pull numbers out of their butts to represent the sales they "could have" and "should have" had, and claim anything less than that as piracy.
All that means is you don't have a good virus scanner or trojan scanner.
Or, it could mean that I know what to look for. I've found things manually before that even the best scanners miss. Simple truth is that, thanks to hashes, community feedback, etc. you'll basically never find infected torrents on any "reputable" torrent site.
Or you don't visit that many torrent sites...
That's relative, but probably true.
Or you never have downloaded software, EXE files
Most of my software comes as an iso, so if I understand you correctly, you would be right.
People will take the approach of "this DRM sucks, ergo I'm going to pirate it, instead of paying for it". This isn't a boycott, nor is it voting with your wallet. This is taking the approach that two wrongs make a right, and that pirating the game somehow "punishes" the makers of it for the sin of screwing over legitimate users.
Wrong. It's taking the approach that Ubisoft considers you a pirate either way. Any gamer who didn't buy it is a "lost sale", and they have no way to determine what the cause is of that "lost sale". Simple answer: they're all pirates. So if you're not going to buy it, you may as well pirate it if you have any interest in playing it.
A boycott is only successful if you can prove it is having a significant impact on their profit. Good luck with that.
His whole argument is predicated on his incorrect assumption that the game saves are solely online, and that the game is constantly using those saves. In fact, the game itself uses only your local saves, and the online saves are merely a backup.
The DRM will be broken, and just as quickly as ever.
To have the potential for interaction with other players wherever you are (that's the multiplayer part) in a massive world (that's the massively part). Those elements are what has always made MMOs a genre of themselves.
The way it currently operates, WoW is no longer an MMORPG. It's now merely an MORPG, with the "M" standing for either "massive" or "multiplayer". You no longer participate in both at the same time. It's now either one or the other. If that's what you really want, that's fine, but you can get the same sans subscription fee by playing Diablo 2 or any MUD + Oblivion, or just Guild Wars. Couple that with the added anonymity and complete lack of accountability when grouping with random players from other realms, and WoW's biggest strength - community - is gone.
Sure, when it first came out I liked the dungeon finder tool as much as anyone. It was awesome at first, being able to get to dungeons instantly, getting groups in 20 min instead of 1-2 hours, etc. But in retrospect, it's probably the single worst addition they've ever made to the game after Arena. Even players that previously were quite considerate and fun to play with are now greedy asshole pricks in the strongest sense of those terms. They roll Need on anything they can, if they feel like it. They leave group on a whim, after the first boss if they feel like it, because something didn't drop. There's even players that load into the instance and AFK while the other four carry them, just like in battlegrounds. And they can get away with it, because there are no repercussions or consequences for any of these actions. After all, you're in a group with four players you'll probably never see again, and what are they going to do about it? Vote-kick you? They can't even do that for at least five minutes, so you're almost certainly going to get some emblems at least. And when they do kick you, who cares. Hit up random dungeon queue again.
All that, and we still haven't gotten to the part where it eliminates any fun interaction you may have had with other players on your way to the instance. Or how all 5-mans have had to be tuned to faceroll difficulty status to allow for any combination of 1 tank + 1 healer + 3 DPS. Or other downsides that I haven't even thought of yet.
My WoW subscription ran out a few weeks ago, and I have no desire to renew it. I'll probably read some reviews about Cataclysm after it's been out a few weeks/months to see if they've corrected any of these glaring issues, making WoW fun to play again. I'm not holding my breath though.
So what you do is you make a game that combines the interesting aspects of experimenting with a reasonably complex character skillset system, which is something people like about PVP in MMOs, with the action and general painlessness of dieing in Quake.
The difference is that now (as of patch 3.3), you directly zone or fly to wherever you're going. There's no longer even an adventure in the journey (if there even IS a journey). Now, as soon as you hit level 15 you can level the rest of the way to 80 without ever setting foot outside of a city. This is what GP was referring to, when he said that all WoW is now is "a tiny game with about 10 instances and raids". I would wager you'd find more than 99% of logged-in players at any given time now are either in a major city or in an instance somewhere. Hell, probably 75% are in Dalaran or an instance.
Yes, there were some of those players, but most of the players referred to as "griefers" weren't. Most of them were just as they claimed - only picking on lowbies to start a *real* fight. I've had lots of fun participating in world PvP in WoW. Even as recently as last month, I had a ton of fun forming a raid to defend Goldshire and Stormwind from a horde raid. (Yes, we were successful, though they didn't give up for quite a while!:P) I can't tell you how many times I got into a good battle between southshore and tarren mill, or at gromgol, or darkshire, or in arathi highlands, or even astranaar back in the day. I've also done my share of lowbie-killing to entice them to get onto their mains. Sometimes, that's what it takes to get a real fight going, and yes sometimes it doesn't work and after a while you just get bored and quit.
I've also seen it from the other side: my first true main was a warlock started about 9 months after release (though I had a pally and a rogue before, both axed before level 15 due to lack of interest). Yes, I got ganked a lot. Yes, I complained about it. Other players said once I hit 60 I'd understand. I didn't believe them. Then I hit 60. They were right. Sure, being ganked while you're on a lowbie is annoying - but that's all. Even starting a new main on a new server, it wasn't that big a deal because you know it's just part of the process. And, once in a while even while leveling you get a good fight going.
Raw nerves. You know you've hit one when the entity in question practically jumps through the roof to staunch the pain. In my case, the nerve belonged to Microsoft Corporation. And true to form, the company spent incalculable political capital - and cashed in more than a few favors - in order to orchestrate the most one-sided smear campaign in the history of IT journalism.
Personally, I find that hilarious. Literally, blow-$RANDOM_BEVERAGE-out-your-nose funny.
Click the above link in parent post to see the rest of his latest blog post, if you want more amusement.
Yes, Microsoft has hit-squads out 24/7 taking out anyone who says anything bad about their products. My inside source tells me you're next, better run for the hills.
It's true that a gig machine would turn into a brick, but 4 gigs on a new machine is what? $100? I forget, but it's inconsequential.
Actually, I think Win7 is tuned to use a certain percentage (with a specific maximum amount) of your memory to "preload" programs. A machine with less memory will also have considerably less tied up like that. Actual memory use as best as I can tell is very similar to XP.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't think every couch, lamp, and article of clothing had a royalty paid for it's use. You could extend that idea to "character A walks through a door. He hangs his jacket on a hook." Consider every element in that shot. The clothes, the door, the carpet he was standing on, the hook. None of those manufacturers made any money except for the retail cost of their product.
If this decision holds, that's about to change. And considering the amount of movies that have already been made, there's gonna be a shitstorm of lawsuits going on.
Nevermind the soldiers, what about the coats, helmets, guns, boots, etc. Someone designed all those things, which he so blithely copied without bothering to properly recognize artistic authorship.
I can't wait to see the lawsuits these guys will bring, if this decision holds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marnell_Corrao_Associates
And hell, why not this guy too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Morrow
But why stop there? I'm sure this guy could bring some pretty impressive suits as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Graham
I'm sure your post is meant to be funny, but the thing is, it hits too close to the truth to be funny. You absolutely could change something about your appearance and get a copyright for it, and it would be just as valid as Mr. Gaylord's is. And yes, based on this court decision, people would have to get your permission before they would be allowed to make a profit on any photo of you that included the copyrighted work.
I'm not people here are really getting the implications of this, and why it's so wrong.
Essentially, what this decision means is that any photo/video/painting/rendition of any kind of anything designed by a human can be considered copyright infringement, if that "derivative work" is being used to make a profit. Any building design recent enough to be under copyright is just as applicable as this war memorial. (In reality, literally *everything* would be applicable, because the creator of a work gets copyright by default unless he gives it away. This could include even things as far-fetched as landscape design, or the way some average joe mowed his lawn. Or some fence a farmer built, or even a highway. But, to keep it simple, we'll stick with buildings.) There's millions of buildings throughout the world, for which I'm 100% certain if you checked, you'd find copyrights on the design not just by default, but in every sense of the term. That means that literally every movie, every photo, every drawing, every painting, every rendition whatsoever of any of these buildings that is used to make a profit without first getting permission or paying royalties for every single building contained in them is infringing every bit as much as the USPS is here. Think about it. That's insane.
Care to take a guess how many infringements there are in this item alone?
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000RA3ZBY?tag=freefocom05-20&camp=211493&creative=379997&linkCode=op1&creativeASIN=B000RA3ZBY&adid=15664KQ5AMV47KCTWZ7H&
This decision can't hold. The can of worms it would open is literally too massive to really comprehend.
Well, then they would have to admit that their new anti-piracy solution doesn't work as well as they want.
Fixed that for you.
Their answer, of course, is a new, "better" anti-piracy solution, just as it has always been.
There's lots of games I've personally boycotted (no buying, no pirating, no using the game in any way) because I didn't agree with their DRM, or other "features". Some recent big names that come to mind include Spore and MW2, and now of course AC2 as well. I've also gone out of my way to buy some games because I DID like the policies of the publisher. (Sins of a Solar Empire is one example). Do you think they care? Do you think they even noticed?
There's also millions of gamers who boycott subscription-based games. Do you think Blizzard cares?
The only way a boycott works in the arena of PC games and piracy is if you can get literally every single gamer in the world to boycott it, to the point where a cracked version isn't even attempted. As long as there's a cracked version of it available, OR they still turn a decent profit on it, nothing you (as an individual gamer) can do amounts to jack shit as far as they're concerned. They'll still continue to pull numbers out of their butts to represent the sales they "could have" and "should have" had, and claim anything less than that as piracy.
All that means is you don't have a good virus scanner or trojan scanner.
Or, it could mean that I know what to look for. I've found things manually before that even the best scanners miss.
Simple truth is that, thanks to hashes, community feedback, etc. you'll basically never find infected torrents on any "reputable" torrent site.
Or you don't visit that many torrent sites...
That's relative, but probably true.
Or you never have downloaded software, EXE files
Most of my software comes as an iso, so if I understand you correctly, you would be right.
.MP3.EXE files from torrent site
I've never even seen those on a torrent site.
People will take the approach of "this DRM sucks, ergo I'm going to pirate it, instead of paying for it". This isn't a boycott, nor is it voting with your wallet. This is taking the approach that two wrongs make a right, and that pirating the game somehow "punishes" the makers of it for the sin of screwing over legitimate users.
Wrong. It's taking the approach that Ubisoft considers you a pirate either way. Any gamer who didn't buy it is a "lost sale", and they have no way to determine what the cause is of that "lost sale". Simple answer: they're all pirates. So if you're not going to buy it, you may as well pirate it if you have any interest in playing it.
A boycott is only successful if you can prove it is having a significant impact on their profit. Good luck with that.
I have never yet found a torrent on any torrent site that had a virus or trojan.
His whole argument is predicated on his incorrect assumption that the game saves are solely online, and that the game is constantly using those saves. In fact, the game itself uses only your local saves, and the online saves are merely a backup.
The DRM will be broken, and just as quickly as ever.
Tag the summary flamebait and be done with it.
Nothing to see here.
What "point" is that, exactly?
To have the potential for interaction with other players wherever you are (that's the multiplayer part) in a massive world (that's the massively part). Those elements are what has always made MMOs a genre of themselves.
The way it currently operates, WoW is no longer an MMORPG. It's now merely an MORPG, with the "M" standing for either "massive" or "multiplayer". You no longer participate in both at the same time. It's now either one or the other. If that's what you really want, that's fine, but you can get the same sans subscription fee by playing Diablo 2 or any MUD + Oblivion, or just Guild Wars. Couple that with the added anonymity and complete lack of accountability when grouping with random players from other realms, and WoW's biggest strength - community - is gone.
Sure, when it first came out I liked the dungeon finder tool as much as anyone. It was awesome at first, being able to get to dungeons instantly, getting groups in 20 min instead of 1-2 hours, etc. But in retrospect, it's probably the single worst addition they've ever made to the game after Arena. Even players that previously were quite considerate and fun to play with are now greedy asshole pricks in the strongest sense of those terms. They roll Need on anything they can, if they feel like it. They leave group on a whim, after the first boss if they feel like it, because something didn't drop. There's even players that load into the instance and AFK while the other four carry them, just like in battlegrounds. And they can get away with it, because there are no repercussions or consequences for any of these actions. After all, you're in a group with four players you'll probably never see again, and what are they going to do about it? Vote-kick you? They can't even do that for at least five minutes, so you're almost certainly going to get some emblems at least. And when they do kick you, who cares. Hit up random dungeon queue again.
All that, and we still haven't gotten to the part where it eliminates any fun interaction you may have had with other players on your way to the instance. Or how all 5-mans have had to be tuned to faceroll difficulty status to allow for any combination of 1 tank + 1 healer + 3 DPS. Or other downsides that I haven't even thought of yet.
My WoW subscription ran out a few weeks ago, and I have no desire to renew it. I'll probably read some reviews about Cataclysm after it's been out a few weeks/months to see if they've corrected any of these glaring issues, making WoW fun to play again. I'm not holding my breath though.
Way to totally miss the point of an MMO.
No it hasn't. Quite a few of the events on there are from NBC (presumably recorded somewhere in the US) and are not complete.
So what you do is you make a game that combines the interesting aspects of experimenting with a reasonably complex character skillset system, which is something people like about PVP in MMOs, with the action and general painlessness of dieing in Quake.
Yeah, that game is called Guild Wars.
The difference is that now (as of patch 3.3), you directly zone or fly to wherever you're going. There's no longer even an adventure in the journey (if there even IS a journey). Now, as soon as you hit level 15 you can level the rest of the way to 80 without ever setting foot outside of a city. This is what GP was referring to, when he said that all WoW is now is "a tiny game with about 10 instances and raids". I would wager you'd find more than 99% of logged-in players at any given time now are either in a major city or in an instance somewhere. Hell, probably 75% are in Dalaran or an instance.
Yes, there were some of those players, but most of the players referred to as "griefers" weren't. Most of them were just as they claimed - only picking on lowbies to start a *real* fight. I've had lots of fun participating in world PvP in WoW. Even as recently as last month, I had a ton of fun forming a raid to defend Goldshire and Stormwind from a horde raid. (Yes, we were successful, though they didn't give up for quite a while! :P) I can't tell you how many times I got into a good battle between southshore and tarren mill, or at gromgol, or darkshire, or in arathi highlands, or even astranaar back in the day. I've also done my share of lowbie-killing to entice them to get onto their mains. Sometimes, that's what it takes to get a real fight going, and yes sometimes it doesn't work and after a while you just get bored and quit.
I've also seen it from the other side: my first true main was a warlock started about 9 months after release (though I had a pally and a rogue before, both axed before level 15 due to lack of interest). Yes, I got ganked a lot. Yes, I complained about it. Other players said once I hit 60 I'd understand. I didn't believe them. Then I hit 60. They were right. Sure, being ganked while you're on a lowbie is annoying - but that's all. Even starting a new main on a new server, it wasn't that big a deal because you know it's just part of the process. And, once in a while even while leveling you get a good fight going.
It gets even better...
Raw nerves. You know you've hit one when the entity in question practically jumps through the roof to staunch the pain. In my case, the nerve belonged to Microsoft Corporation. And true to form, the company spent incalculable political capital - and cashed in more than a few favors - in order to orchestrate the most one-sided smear campaign in the history of IT journalism.
Personally, I find that hilarious. Literally, blow-$RANDOM_BEVERAGE-out-your-nose funny.
Click the above link in parent post to see the rest of his latest blog post, if you want more amusement.
Yes, Microsoft has hit-squads out 24/7 taking out anyone who says anything bad about their products. My inside source tells me you're next, better run for the hills.
The simple fact that there aren't masses of people complaining about this "issue" should tell you what you need to know.
kinda like the global warming people.
Yeah, you really needed to tack that on there. Way to be an ass.
Pfft, kids these days. Think you need 256MB!! 640k ought to be enough for anybody!
I am somewhat mystified how Mr. Kennedy thought that spreading FUD would actually help his career. Interesting tact..
It did, until those pesky things called "facts" got in the way.
It's true that a gig machine would turn into a brick, but 4 gigs on a new machine is what? $100? I forget, but it's inconsequential.
Actually, I think Win7 is tuned to use a certain percentage (with a specific maximum amount) of your memory to "preload" programs. A machine with less memory will also have considerably less tied up like that. Actual memory use as best as I can tell is very similar to XP.