Just because Microsoft has been around - and dominant - for the last twenty years doesn't mean they will continue to do so for the next 20. I'd rather not have to wait through another 20 years of Microsoft, the 2000lb. gorilla, sitting on top of OEMs and killing off competitors through their shady business practices, stifling the innovation we should be seeing so that they can maintain their monopoly on the desktop OS and application suite. The government took two shots at them. Won both times, and yet they imposed no significant remedy for the problems MS had created. So the only real competition has been from open source channels, and only because Microsoft never quite figured out how to kill those off or even hurt them bad enough to halt the work. Commercial competition was held in check for years due to a lack of interoperability with MS products. That is a tragedy.
All of you people worried about Microsoft as a monopoly are freaking out over nothing. In the long term, what they're doing with Windows and Office is not sustainable. People have been saying things like that for years. It hasn't come to pass yet. What may not be sustainable for other companies, Microsoft can pull off due to their political and financial clout. They damn near succeeded in getting OOXML fasttracked due to their financial clout with their partners. They will come up with many many ways to fight off what you seem to think is inevitable.
That certainly is a seductive theory, but history shows us that before the US government granted a telephone monopoly to AT&T, competing telcos had no problems stringing up multiple sets of wire. Having 15 sets of wires hanging over our homes and roads is not exactly an acceptable solution either. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to treat the local telecom infrastructure as a public utility like water or electricity. Let them compete to provide service over the infrastructure. We can vote on upgrades and such.
I'm not saying that science can't be trusted. What I am saying is that it can't be fully trusted because the entities who are discovering scientific facts are humans, who are themselves prone to mistakes. This is why, while I am open to change my mind, I will not let science be the only source for defining what my origin and purpose is. But at least those humans are devising plausible and testable theories to explain the natural phenomena that we observe, rather than simply creating an untestable idea out of thin air and trying to convince people to accept it as an alternative to the currently accepted scientific theory. That's where you lose most people that have even a casual understanding of science.
This is why, while I am open to change my mind, I will not let science be the only source for defining what my origin and purpose is. Please understand that science does not even attempt to explain your purpose. As for origins, science attempts to discover what our origins are, and produces theories that we are continually testing and revising. If you would like to propose alternative theories, science is quite open to that as well. You just need to devise a way to test your theory.
There's nothing in the actual FACTS presented that represents a conflict of interest. You (and many other people) may wish to presume that there is a conflict of interest, and hence corruption, involved; but it's still nothing more than presumption. Yeah, because corrupt individuals always just come out and tell you that they're corrupt. Happens all the time on your planet I'm sure.
As a matter of principle, I choose to presume innocence until there is evidence of guilt; as that is the presumption that I wish others to make when viewing my actions. Good luck with that.
But why do the audiences have to be totally different? Why can't a studio make a console-style PC game targeted at Everyone and sell it over Steam or an equivalent service? Because PCs are hard. Or so goes the usual explanation. They also tend to be more expensive. That's why we have the XBox:) It's basically exactly what you describe, except that it still primarily uses DVDs for games, although there are a limited number of small games that you can download from the XBox Live service. I guess you could say that we're trending in that direction, but we're definitely not there yet.
But is this a "problem" with Mininova or increased P2P site competition? TPB, IsoHunt, TorrentSpy,... Isn't TorrentSpy pretty much dead since they now have to turn over their logs to pretty much anyone who wants them?
How does a set-top PC with four USB gamepad ports not qualify as a substitute for a game console, or how does Steam fail on a set-top PC? Because PC games usually aren't even remotely similar to console games, and Wii games specifically, especially when you narrow it down to just Steam games. Totally different target audiences there. They really aren't very comparable at all.
True, Dr. Lessig has shifted his focus from copyright to the crony capitalism to which you refer, which he and others see as the root cause of the problems with copyright. But is it possible to contain crony capitalism even in the developed world? I'm not sure if it's possible or not, but I'm glad he's the one pursuing this. The guy is very smart. I've read a few of his books, and they made a huge difference in my understanding of copyright and intellectual property in general. I just don't know if he'll be able to educate enough people to make a difference.
Then choose titles published by publishers who make their titles available on an other-than-fragile medium on platforms that support an other-than-fragile medium, such as games on Valve's Steam platform. You talk as if one is a substitute for another in a free market sense. They aren't. There is no non-fragile medium available for game consoles. The law is the problem here. The law is interfering with us taking reasonable action to protect our investment. The law needs to change. The only reason there isn't a larger outcry over this is because most people that want to back up their discs will do so even though they may be violating the law. If enforcement steps up, then people will get hurt, but maybe we'll get a large enough dose of indignation from people to inject some sense back into the legislation, instead of having congresspeople letting the entertainment industry write the laws so that they can get rubber-stamped by Congress.
I didn't use a strawman; I cited an actual case where you can own something and be restricted in its use. The original poster said nothing about signing a contract, and there are no contracts involved in the purchase of a console either, which is the topic of discussion and the situation that the OP was making a comparison with. You then made an argument that he was wrong about not being able to do what he wants with what he purchased, if he had signed a contract saying he couldn't do what he wanted with it, as if that had anything at all to do with his example or the topic we're discussing. You changed his argument (by inserting the HOA contract stuff in there) and acted as if that proved something. That is most assuredly a straw-man.
The blanket statement that said "I own it, I can do what I want with it" is what I was addressing. Nothing more, nothing less. Yes, but you used a straw-man to try to make your point. Nobody is arguing against the validity of contracts here. The argument is that a EULA is after-the-fact, and therefore not a true contract. You can agree to limitations on something in a contract signed before the transaction is made, but you can't be forced to agree to a contract after you've already made the purchase.
If your kids tear pages out of some of your books, do you think that publishers should give you another copy for "just the cost of media?" No, but I'm allowed to photocopy a book if I fear my kids destroying it and give them the copy to read. Nobody will arrest me for that. Nor do books come with the restrictions that we get with electronic media. Definitely not a good analogy.
Though they would likely charge you a shipping and handling fee as well as a materials fee for the new disk itself. Exactly why we should be able to make backups. Without that ability, we end up having to repeatedly pay to retain the software/movie/whatever just because they are distributed on a fragile medium.
what evil piece of patent tomfoolery means that Nintendo did not invent the wii? Nintendo built the Wii. Designing and building something is tough, even if you aren't doing anything really new or unique. I spend a lot of time working on a lot of things, that doesn't make them unique or inventive enough to be worthy of a patent. We've gone completely insane with handing out patents for anything someone cares to scribble down on paper, regardless of whether they can figure out how to implement it or not. When it comes to systems like Nintendo's, they don't generally do much of anything that is unique or inventive, they build upon what came before, adding a few new features. Nintendo went farther than most with their new input devices, but even those aren't new, just new to the console scene. Yet all of the console-makers have patented a hundred little things within their systems so that nobody else can build anything like it without going through them. Not because they did anything inventive, but because you can't afford to challenge all those patents. So, only another giant company that has a bunch of patents of its own can compete with them. So, the advice of "build your own" is pretty lame since there are patents covering all sorts of basic, obvious, and generally necessary components of a console that you won't be allowed to use. So until we stop handing out patents like candy, nobody is really able to build their own, legally.
And seeing as how you don't own the game, but only a license to play the game, it doesn't matter anyway. If all I have purchased is a license to play the game, then why won't they just ship me a new copy if my old one gets destroyed?
Oh please. The motivation for mod chips is to play games that you didn't buy. I'm not saying I think mod chips should be illegal, but don't try to claim that its mostly for legitimate purposes. No doubt that there is a lot of illegitimate use of mod-chips, but if you have a console and you have kids, it's a very wise investment. I don't see Microsoft, Nintendo or Sony lining up to ship me new copies of games when the old copies get destroyed, for just the cost of the new media. Until they start distributing the software on something a lot more durable, there will be a need for these chips.
That's my decision as a consumer. to dictate to a company that you want them to make the investment, but undermine their ability to recoup that investment, is clearly not going to work. The problem is that the console-makers don't disclose the terms at the time of purchase. Additionally, they are the ones that chose their business model. Nobody forces them to sell their consoles at a loss and then try to recoup that loss on game sales and licensing.
No copyright infringement took place. Nothing was "circumvented." So what law would have been broken? AFAIK, you didn't break the law. The person selling mod-chips probably did violate the DMCA which prohibits the sale or distribution of devices which can bypass copy protection systems, which mod-chips do.
Software can be licensed, hardware can be RENTED, in all these instances usage terms can be enforced. Software can also be bought. If the terms aren't presented to the person making the purchase at the time of purchase (of a Nintendo game, for example) then they should not be enforceable.
I guess you've never heard of home owners associations though, where you DO *own* the house but signed away your rights to do certain things. For example, building a fence. Again, this signing happens prior to purchase. Very different thing.
You seem to be forgetting these things called `contracts'. You most certainly can sell a house that includes certain conditions that are part of the sales contract. I could sell you a house with the conditions that you not have any pets or leave the house unattended, and once you signed the contract, you'd be bound to those restrictions. If you didn't like it, you would walk away, or negotiate with me about the clause. Notice how all that contract talk and negotiating happens up front? You can't do it after I've already bought the house. Nor should Nintendo or anyone else be able to slap a one-sided, non-negotiated contract on me after I've already made the purchase. Transaction is done at that point as far as I'm concerned. If they want a contract, then they should get people to read, negotiate, and sign up front before the purchase is made.
Your post is dripping with contempt for the people who actually make stuff. 'so-called inventors' is a great example. Seems quite fitting when you consider the kinds of "inventions" that patents are handed out for these days. It's utterly ridiculous. You also avoided the questions in the post, such as what EULAs have to do with copyright, and why we shouldn't be able to make backups of media that are fragile and easily destroyed through relatively normal use (especially if you have kids).
With regard to your fear of Scientologists broadcasting on every available frequency, they can't afford to alienate entire communities by greedily consuming limited public resources at everyone else's expense any more than any other organization that depends upon picking up recruits from the rank and file can. I already said that Scientologists are just an example. What planet are you from? On this planet, people will broadcast on all available frequencies because they think it's cool that they can overpower others, or because they think very highly of themselves and feel that everyone should listen to them, or just because they can.
If you don't have any rules about who can broadcast on which frequencies and when, then it will turn into an arms race to see who can drown out everyone else. So what's the point really? There's always some jackass that will ruin what would otherwise be a good thing, which is why we generally have to have laws to prohibit people from being jackasses when it comes to public matters. There has to be some control, at least at the municipal level.
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Superbowl. Jumbotron.
If you don't have any rules about who can broadcast on which frequencies and when, then it will turn into an arms race to see who can drown out everyone else. So what's the point really? There's always some jackass that will ruin what would otherwise be a good thing, which is why we generally have to have laws to prohibit people from being jackasses when it comes to public matters. There has to be some control, at least at the municipal level.