Valve came up with robust system for distributing a game to users, who could have had the game turned on two weeks or more ago, but there is a traditional publisher saying "No you cannot do that, you will steal our profit".
Maybe I'm being old fashioned, but this time to me it seems Vivendi has the robust system (people who bought a copy published by Vivendi have it in their hands right now) whereas Valve are the ones with the non-robust system (Valve's contract laden copyright protection which is sucking pretty hard right now for gamers).
3. What are they going to track, the fact you played the game? Also, read 1.
Where you played the game, and likely what version/region. A lot of games, if you accept the EULA as legal, are illegal to play in certain countries if imported. If, say, you purchased a Chinese version of Half Life 2 and planned to play it in the USA, you might actually be violating copyright/contract law. Although morally and ethically, you're a clearly in the right, that doesn't mean you couldn't be sued.
When you buy a new Nissan and you crash it in 30 years time, is Nissan still going to be making the same original parts for your car? What if you can't find any originals? WHAT THEN! HUH???
Hmmm. You're talking about trying to use a destroyed item. He was discussing how to use a fully factory original condition item. The difference is important.
I fully expect a properly stored vehicle would work just fine in 30 years. I would be extremely pissed off if Nissan managed to stop all cars 30 years old from starting, whether properly stored or not.
Is the Half Life brand name so unknown they should be forced to deal with a publisher to make sales?
With a brand name as popular as this, I am sure Valve was in a position to tell Vivendi "jump" if Vivendi said no to a copy protection free game.
Of course, now, they've signed a contract and, worse yet, the game is on the shelves. The damage is done. And another set of consumers are casualties of this odd war against them.
- People downloading a crack
- People returning the game
- People deciding not to play the copy protection game
All three look good to me, and should hopefully promote a more copy-protection free future. As far as blaming Vivendi... Did Vivendi put the authentication in there? No?! Hmmm...
Can anybody take your comments seriously after you say something like "you should be going to jail?"
If you can't take a little literary license into consideration when reading comments, then everyone will take you dead seriously. That is not a good thing...
Almost certainly that clause exists for only the purpose of blocking people doing what MS is (rightly or wrongly) accused of:
Of course, that's not the part that I quoted.
Let me quote what I quoted again:
>The Google Services are made available for your personal, non-commercial use only.
I then suggested (with literary license) that Google considers it illegal to use their service at work.
Quite honestly, I would be very surprised if at least half their hits did *not* come from a work computer. To tell a large chunk of your customers to go away or risk being banned (at best) is a very bad idea, IMHO. I run a business, and I certainly would not tell customers they are not allowed to use our website at their workplace. In fact, I think I would encourage it.
Frankly, I think that is a perfectly legitimate attempt to protect one's business
Frankly, I think that the law already says that if you want to deny someone the use of your website for any reason other than a certain few (racism, for example) you are already allowed to do that, and that wasting a webpage to put customers off using your website *is* a moronic and crappy business decision.
But hey, if you think it's a good idea to put customers off from using a service, that's your call.
>If you hate google, then why the gmail email address?
Google, the service, is good.
Google, the lawyers, are bad (IMHO).
So, I don't hate the google service. I don't particularly hate their lawyers, either, but I do consider any lawyer requesting a website TOS to be put up to be overzealous.
Then again, I'm assuming it was a lawyer that put that up there. Perhaps it wasn't... although that would be odd, in my expereience.
>The Google Services are made available for your personal, non-commercial use only.
Ahhh. So, let's see. If you use google at work, you should be going to jail. Sounds fair.
This is why most countries don't respect moronic crap TOS like this. Thank God.
If Google doesn't like it, they can start firewalling. That's their only legitimate answer to someone violating their TOS without doing something blatantly illegal (like DoS attacks).
Hey, Google, I'm holding up a finger. Guess which one?
Comment TOS: You may not guess which finger publically.
If it's a stolen credit card, better it wastes a few minutes of a Paypal plebeians' time than result in unpaid stolen merchandise from a store before the (likely idiot) with the stolen credit card notices.
>Not to mention that Meijer, like Wal-Mart, treats their employees as chattel.
So, if an employee decides they don't want to work anymore and they stay at home, Meijer will send armed gunmen to extract him from the house, cuff him, and whip him until he works?
Or do you mean they Meijer would deny him a salary? Yeah, that tends to happen when you don't work. Never heard of that being called "slavery" yet, though.
>What's special about the copies on eBay is that they are (gasp!) illegal.
How, exactly, are they illegal? Because Microsoft/Bungie have announced on their website that they want the product to sell at a later date?
Well, #1 is the right of first sale. If you have something in your hands, nobody, and I mean nobody (except the government) can tell you how to sell it unless you've entered into a written contract. This includes unopened, unused software since until it is opened/used/clicked on/signed in the USA you aren't bound by any agreements with the manufacturer at all.
And, unless the EULA says you may not play the game until a certain date, there's nothing illegal about playing it. I *VERY* highly doubt the EULA says you can't play it until the release date. It would be the first of its kind.
Nice try but did you stop to think about who would actually buy the thing if it cost $1000? Raising prices on a crappy product only goes so far.
I know this is tough to believe, but $1,000 was a hot deal on a pre-hacked illegal VideoCipher II board and receiver at the time. And that was $1,000 in 1980's $$$.
I don't know what the limit is before people rub their brain cells together and realize it's cheaper to be legal instead of pirating, but it's really high.
There's a wired article all about hacked VideoCipher boards somewhere... hmm... here it is.
This attempt to make these devices not exist won't work. At best, it might remove this one product from the market, and another two will spring up to replace it.
The allure of easy money and the fact there's a starved market mean these things are here to stay. It's no different than the illegal TV market. How many illegal cable descramblers have been discovered in the past few years?
And, just a while ago, thousands of people got letters in the mail saying DirecTV is going to sue them for pirating satellite TV. And there's still thousands of others doing it.
These markets don't collapse under the court of law. In fact, as the law makes the products increasingly illegal, the market for them increases. Yeah, that's odd, but look at the situation:
- Legal pirate device -- Easy to come by, near infinite supply, commodity pricing.
- Semi-legal pirate device (shady, not yet busted) -- Harder to come by, smaller supply, prices are driven up
- Illegal pirate device -- Really tough to come by, very tight supply, prices go very high
- VERY Illegal pirate device (active prosecution) -- Extremely tough to come by, rare supply, prices have to compensate dealer for risk of jail time
So, we go from a $40 pirate device, to a $1000 pirate device in no time. The funny thing is, in the end the people doing the illegal activities *benefit* from increased prosecution. It means they can raise prices. So long as they don't get caught, they make a killing scalping consumers.
Most people here are more intimately familiar with smart cards as satellite access cards (AKA CAM cards). Of course, a lot of lazy slashdotters have never bothered to take the card in their receiver out to check what it was until I just typed this.:-D
>You would have to tell what is wrong with a product. Can't just go out telling "possibly wrong", that would be the same as "as is".
So, you're saying that goods must be tested and all faults listed prior to sale, period, no exceptions, that's the way it is?
This explains why cars in Europe cost 2 - 5 times more than they do over here. I can't even being to imagine the amount of work that would have to go into checking over a used junker to list all the bad components. Better to trash it instead.
Did the environmentalists not have a field day over there with the amount of trash this sort of economy-choking law much be producing?
How many people buy consumer electronics and only expect it to last 90 days? I certainly don't. And if I buy something that fails after 120 days, I certainly want to be able to return it to the manufacturer.
I think, perhaps, you're not certain how serious I am about how low people are willing to go for that save-a-buck deal.
This is the a sign we have above a stack of power supplies we have in the store. I also have, under the sign, an open power supply that set on fire so customers can see. We constantly sell out of them. What does that tell you? Is there, honestly, in your opinion, anything I can do, other than lose business to the competition by refusing to sell them, to stop selling these power supplies to consumers? How much more babying do they need? If you don't believe me, I can take a picture of the stack. It's just in a corner, out of the way.
Consumers pretend they want quality and a 90 day warranty, but they are lying to themselves. Deep down, they are even willing to risk setting fire to their own homes to save $35 (we sell Enermax power supplies starting at $49.99).
I seriously don't know why. My store isn't exactly in a ghetto, this is an "average" Canadian town, and it happens to be located across from an auto manufacturer where wages start at $20/hr. I've given up on stocking many quality goods because people just don't want them. They don't sell, even when priced at cost.
All legislation would do is make sure I don't sell any more $15 power supplies. These people would *not* buy my $49.99 power supply. Then, because I am not selling enough, I go out of business. And our GDP goes down as more and more shops go out of business due to everyone buying their cheap junk as imports from the US (or whatever other country they can get their hands on it from). And then we have a recession, and etc, etc. Just don't go there.
Now do you see why I said what I said? I really am speaking from experience. To save myself from going out of business, I'd just have to hire a lawyer to find me a loophole in such a law.
Of course there is a way arround it, telling what is wrong with the product, selling it at a bit lower price and so on. As long as you tell about the product, you can of course sell damaged thing or things that doesn't work. What you can't do is just say "as is" and in effect have the customer figure out what might be wrong.
I see. So, basically, the legislation means you need to use different words. In North America, our legislation specifically requires we use the words "As Is" or "With All Faults" (read it, they're in there) to disclaim warranties.
From what I understand, it seems in your country I would need to label this item "Possibly defective goods -- untested -- use at your own risk". Whatever. I can still fit that on the label.
If it needs to be tested (why? That's impossible for some goods.) then I'd just have to write "Entire unit appears non functional. Use at your own risk."
Honestly, I've sold items with guarantees almost like that at full price (The specific words I've used are "The RF connector falls off and the power supply often smokes on these receivers, oh, and the DiSEqC support crashes the unit and sometimes erases the EEPROM in your motor"). People here are just that serious about buying junk.
Basically, in the end, if I'm at all correct, this law wouldn't make an inch of difference to me in your country, because I am basically "in compliance" with it as is.
Note that the reason I don't label these units in more detail like that is due to North American stupidities in law -- If I were to write on the unit that the power supply will smoke, I could be sued for negligence when it happens. Whereas, if I just say the unit is defective and untested, anything goes, and I don't get sued even if it starts a fire! Yeah, it's that stupid over here.:-)
You are correct, the linking of mod chips to weapons on airlines is in fact a red herring.
I'm sorry if "Your entire argument is based on the Red Herring that I am discussing how murder applies to chewing gum." translates to "linking of modchips to weapons on airlies" for you. I'm not sure how you were able to make a sentence where about 90% of the words in it are completely new and think it is still attributable to me, but hey, whatever.
If you plan to simply lie, I just don't want to discuss the issue with you. Sorry. I have work to do, and I just don't have time to correct you constantly.
Your entire argument is based on the Red Herring that I am discussing how murder applies to chewing gum.
We are discussing how useage with illegal intent compares with a usage with legal intent.
To clarify:
Chewing gum with a legal intent is to chew gum to exercise the jaw and enjoy the gum's flavour and consistency with regards to accepted local mannerisms. When finished with said gum it is safely deposited in the trash.
Chewing gum with an illegal intent (in Singapore) is to chew said gum as above, but to either not follow accepted mannerisms when masticating, or to improperly dispose of said gum.
The results of said illegal activities are to deface, as that article suggests, an entire country and thereby leave millions of people in Singapore disgusted with their country's appearance. Such illegal activities are rumoured to happen in the billions in a population of this size, and cause long term and permanent damage, and are rumoured to continue should the ban be lifted, and may even be continuing illicitly as we speak.
On the topic of box cutters in airlines:
A legal intent with a box cutter on an airline might be to open a package, or it may be a tool one normally uses in one's day to day legal work.
An illegal intent with a box cutter on an airline would be the use of such an item to hijack the flight.
The result of that illegal acitivity is to deface a city, emotionally harm millions, and kill thousands. This illegal activity is known to have occurred once, perhaps twice, and is extremely unlikely to recurr, meaning a future without such illegal activity is forseeable.
While the results are not the same, the fact remains that I am certain I could find a way to use most any item illegally, and that to ban items simply because they have an illegal use leads to a world without items. Even items traditionally considered wholesome in nature can be used in an illegal manner, for example spaghetti (watch Se7en). To follow the trend of banning items due to their even single-time illegal use would mean to ban spaghetti from the world. I like spaghetti. Don't take it from me.
If the retailer doesn't want to bear the costs of remedying crap products that they sell they have a very simple solution... refrain from selling crap products.
If only the customers would quit asking for them.
If I were only to offer quality components everything would cost twice as much in my store and nobody would shop here. People *want* junk. I have plenty of customers who come in and the first words out of their mouth are "Show me your cheapest", or, worse yet, they will have a junk brand in mind and that's ALL they want to buy. For example "Do you carry PC Chips? I want to buy PC Chips motherboards." Ugggggh. There's a reason why all this plastic junk that barely lasts a year exists. And it's not because manufacturers are forcing it on consumers. It's because consumers _requested_ it (indirectly).
Example: Would you buy a professional VCR for $700 that will, under household use, last about 15 years and is easily repairable by a technician, or would you buy a $40 VCR that lasts between 1 and 4 years? Well, maybe you would buy the $700 VCR, but for you there's another 100 who want to buy the $40 VCR, at any cost (pun intended).
So, you either sell it without warranty, or you go out of business because the customers won't buy from you. Even if everyone in the country stops selling it, in my case, the customers will drive across the border to the USA and buy junk there. I've seen this happen a lot for products which are tough to find here.
In the US, you can't declaim all warrentees - there is an implied warranty that a product will function as it is intended - i.e. I can't sell taosters that don't toast and then say tough - it was an as is sale.
Of course you are correct on that. Misrepresentation is illegal.
And that's why I tell people, it's in As Is condition. Does it work? I don't know. I wouldn't sell the product and tell the person it works if it has an As Is sticker on. As a gesture of goodwill, though, I do let the customer give it a whirl in the store, see if it works to their satisfaction.
I once did look up some laws on this, but I can't remember where the heck I found them, sorry. However, I do know they were quite specific that writing "As Is", or, more specifically "With All Faults" on the product and allowing the customer to decide (without telling them it works -- which wouldn't make sense to do anyways if you are labelling it as possibly broken) is completely legal and does protect one from warranty issues (not from some negligence / safety type stuff, though, of course).
However, even if labelled "as is" it must still be "suitable for the purpose" and "as described" and the warranty will still be for a year.
Then the sticker would be more detailed if said law passed here:
"Suitable as a deadweight".:-)
Seriously, there must be ways for dealing with this in your country because there is always a market for known-broken goods to be used for parts. I doubt anywhere would pass a law requiring people to warranty such parts... Otherwise, how do companies get rid of old junker cars, for example?:)
A law like this in North America would cause warranties to default to zero. All products would be labelled "As Is" to reduce liability. Trust me on that. I'm a retailer myself and we get plenty of garbage products in from manufacturers that we know will welch on their warranty that get labelled like that by us as is (BIG fluorescent sticker, too). You'd think that would deter customers from buying them, but nooo... the customers demand them ($15 CDN power supplies, sub $180 CDN satellite receivers, etc, etc). I don't want to sell them, but I'm a store. I'm there to serve the public, and make a good wage doing that. So you sell what you're told (by customers) to sell.
Slashdot Mirror
Valve came up with robust system for distributing a game to users, who could have had the game turned on two weeks or more ago, but there is a traditional publisher saying "No you cannot do that, you will steal our profit".
Maybe I'm being old fashioned, but this time to me it seems Vivendi has the robust system (people who bought a copy published by Vivendi have it in their hands right now) whereas Valve are the ones with the non-robust system (Valve's contract laden copyright protection which is sucking pretty hard right now for gamers).
3. What are they going to track, the fact you played the game? Also, read 1.
Where you played the game, and likely what version/region. A lot of games, if you accept the EULA as legal, are illegal to play in certain countries if imported. If, say, you purchased a Chinese version of Half Life 2 and planned to play it in the USA, you might actually be violating copyright/contract law. Although morally and ethically, you're a clearly in the right, that doesn't mean you couldn't be sued.
When you buy a new Nissan and you crash it in 30 years time, is Nissan still going to be making the same original parts for your car? What if you can't find any originals? WHAT THEN! HUH???
Hmmm. You're talking about trying to use a destroyed item. He was discussing how to use a fully factory original condition item. The difference is important.
I fully expect a properly stored vehicle would work just fine in 30 years. I would be extremely pissed off if Nissan managed to stop all cars 30 years old from starting, whether properly stored or not.
Is the Half Life brand name so unknown they should be forced to deal with a publisher to make sales?
With a brand name as popular as this, I am sure Valve was in a position to tell Vivendi "jump" if Vivendi said no to a copy protection free game.
Of course, now, they've signed a contract and, worse yet, the game is on the shelves. The damage is done. And another set of consumers are casualties of this odd war against them.
This will either result in:
- People downloading a crack
- People returning the game
- People deciding not to play the copy protection game
All three look good to me, and should hopefully promote a more copy-protection free future. As far as blaming Vivendi... Did Vivendi put the authentication in there? No?! Hmmm...
Whose fault is this really, then?
Then why would they want him to send in examples?
Nah, it rather says you can't use them to make a profit from them.
So, can you explain this?
Are you saying you don't prefer Google above all other web engines?
Uhhh, no. I'm saying that their TOS is silly, and moreover making a point of how silly a TOS is (read the next line).
Can anybody take your comments seriously after you say something like "you should be going to jail?"
If you can't take a little literary license into consideration when reading comments, then everyone will take you dead seriously. That is not a good thing...
Almost certainly that clause exists for only the purpose of blocking people doing what MS is (rightly or wrongly) accused of:
Of course, that's not the part that I quoted.
Let me quote what I quoted again:
>The Google Services are made available for your personal, non-commercial use only.
I then suggested (with literary license) that Google considers it illegal to use their service at work.
Quite honestly, I would be very surprised if at least half their hits did *not* come from a work computer. To tell a large chunk of your customers to go away or risk being banned (at best) is a very bad idea, IMHO. I run a business, and I certainly would not tell customers they are not allowed to use our website at their workplace. In fact, I think I would encourage it.
Frankly, I think that is a perfectly legitimate attempt to protect one's business
Frankly, I think that the law already says that if you want to deny someone the use of your website for any reason other than a certain few (racism, for example) you are already allowed to do that, and that wasting a webpage to put customers off using your website *is* a moronic and crappy business decision.
But hey, if you think it's a good idea to put customers off from using a service, that's your call.
>If you hate google, then why the gmail email address?
Google, the service, is good.
Google, the lawyers, are bad (IMHO).
So, I don't hate the google service. I don't particularly hate their lawyers, either, but I do consider any lawyer requesting a website TOS to be put up to be overzealous.
Then again, I'm assuming it was a lawyer that put that up there. Perhaps it wasn't... although that would be odd, in my expereience.
>The Google Services are made available for your personal, non-commercial use only.
Ahhh. So, let's see. If you use google at work, you should be going to jail. Sounds fair.
This is why most countries don't respect moronic crap TOS like this. Thank God.
If Google doesn't like it, they can start firewalling. That's their only legitimate answer to someone violating their TOS without doing something blatantly illegal (like DoS attacks).
Hey, Google, I'm holding up a finger. Guess which one?
Comment TOS: You may not guess which finger publically.
If it's a stolen credit card, better it wastes a few minutes of a Paypal plebeians' time than result in unpaid stolen merchandise from a store before the (likely idiot) with the stolen credit card notices.
Just my 2 cents on the issue, of course.
>Not to mention that Meijer, like Wal-Mart, treats their employees as chattel.
So, if an employee decides they don't want to work anymore and they stay at home, Meijer will send armed gunmen to extract him from the house, cuff him, and whip him until he works?
Or do you mean they Meijer would deny him a salary? Yeah, that tends to happen when you don't work. Never heard of that being called "slavery" yet, though.
>What's special about the copies on eBay is that they are (gasp!) illegal.
How, exactly, are they illegal? Because Microsoft/Bungie have announced on their website that they want the product to sell at a later date?
Well, #1 is the right of first sale. If you have something in your hands, nobody, and I mean nobody (except the government) can tell you how to sell it unless you've entered into a written contract. This includes unopened, unused software since until it is opened/used/clicked on/signed in the USA you aren't bound by any agreements with the manufacturer at all.
And, unless the EULA says you may not play the game until a certain date, there's nothing illegal about playing it. I *VERY* highly doubt the EULA says you can't play it until the release date. It would be the first of its kind.
Nice try but did you stop to think about who would actually buy the thing if it cost $1000? Raising prices on a crappy product only goes so far.
I know this is tough to believe, but $1,000 was a hot deal on a pre-hacked illegal VideoCipher II board and receiver at the time. And that was $1,000 in 1980's $$$.
I don't know what the limit is before people rub their brain cells together and realize it's cheaper to be legal instead of pirating, but it's really high.
There's a wired article all about hacked VideoCipher boards somewhere... hmm... here it is.
This attempt to make these devices not exist won't work. At best, it might remove this one product from the market, and another two will spring up to replace it.
The allure of easy money and the fact there's a starved market mean these things are here to stay. It's no different than the illegal TV market. How many illegal cable descramblers have been discovered in the past few years?
And, just a while ago, thousands of people got letters in the mail saying DirecTV is going to sue them for pirating satellite TV. And there's still thousands of others doing it.
These markets don't collapse under the court of law. In fact, as the law makes the products increasingly illegal, the market for them increases. Yeah, that's odd, but look at the situation:
- Legal pirate device -- Easy to come by, near infinite supply, commodity pricing.
- Semi-legal pirate device (shady, not yet busted) -- Harder to come by, smaller supply, prices are driven up
- Illegal pirate device -- Really tough to come by, very tight supply, prices go very high
- VERY Illegal pirate device (active prosecution) -- Extremely tough to come by, rare supply, prices have to compensate dealer for risk of jail time
So, we go from a $40 pirate device, to a $1000 pirate device in no time. The funny thing is, in the end the people doing the illegal activities *benefit* from increased prosecution. It means they can raise prices. So long as they don't get caught, they make a killing scalping consumers.
Most people here are more intimately familiar with smart cards as satellite access cards (AKA CAM cards). Of course, a lot of lazy slashdotters have never bothered to take the card in their receiver out to check what it was until I just typed this. :-D
>You would have to tell what is wrong with a product. Can't just go out telling "possibly wrong", that would be the same as "as is".
So, you're saying that goods must be tested and all faults listed prior to sale, period, no exceptions, that's the way it is?
This explains why cars in Europe cost 2 - 5 times more than they do over here. I can't even being to imagine the amount of work that would have to go into checking over a used junker to list all the bad components. Better to trash it instead.
Did the environmentalists not have a field day over there with the amount of trash this sort of economy-choking law much be producing?
How many people buy consumer electronics and only expect it to last 90 days? I certainly don't. And if I buy something that fails after 120 days, I certainly want to be able to return it to the manufacturer.
I think, perhaps, you're not certain how serious I am about how low people are willing to go for that save-a-buck deal.
This is the a sign we have above a stack of power supplies we have in the store. I also have, under the sign, an open power supply that set on fire so customers can see. We constantly sell out of them. What does that tell you? Is there, honestly, in your opinion, anything I can do, other than lose business to the competition by refusing to sell them, to stop selling these power supplies to consumers? How much more babying do they need? If you don't believe me, I can take a picture of the stack. It's just in a corner, out of the way.
Consumers pretend they want quality and a 90 day warranty, but they are lying to themselves. Deep down, they are even willing to risk setting fire to their own homes to save $35 (we sell Enermax power supplies starting at $49.99).
I seriously don't know why. My store isn't exactly in a ghetto, this is an "average" Canadian town, and it happens to be located across from an auto manufacturer where wages start at $20/hr. I've given up on stocking many quality goods because people just don't want them. They don't sell, even when priced at cost.
All legislation would do is make sure I don't sell any more $15 power supplies. These people would *not* buy my $49.99 power supply. Then, because I am not selling enough, I go out of business. And our GDP goes down as more and more shops go out of business due to everyone buying their cheap junk as imports from the US (or whatever other country they can get their hands on it from). And then we have a recession, and etc, etc. Just don't go there.
Now do you see why I said what I said? I really am speaking from experience. To save myself from going out of business, I'd just have to hire a lawyer to find me a loophole in such a law.
Of course there is a way arround it, telling what is wrong with the product, selling it at a bit lower price and so on. As long as you tell about the product, you can of course sell damaged thing or things that doesn't work. What you can't do is just say "as is" and in effect have the customer figure out what might be wrong.
:-)
I see. So, basically, the legislation means you need to use different words. In North America, our legislation specifically requires we use the words "As Is" or "With All Faults" (read it, they're in there) to disclaim warranties.
From what I understand, it seems in your country I would need to label this item "Possibly defective goods -- untested -- use at your own risk". Whatever. I can still fit that on the label.
If it needs to be tested (why? That's impossible for some goods.) then I'd just have to write "Entire unit appears non functional. Use at your own risk."
Honestly, I've sold items with guarantees almost like that at full price (The specific words I've used are "The RF connector falls off and the power supply often smokes on these receivers, oh, and the DiSEqC support crashes the unit and sometimes erases the EEPROM in your motor"). People here are just that serious about buying junk.
Basically, in the end, if I'm at all correct, this law wouldn't make an inch of difference to me in your country, because I am basically "in compliance" with it as is.
Note that the reason I don't label these units in more detail like that is due to North American stupidities in law -- If I were to write on the unit that the power supply will smoke, I could be sued for negligence when it happens. Whereas, if I just say the unit is defective and untested, anything goes, and I don't get sued even if it starts a fire! Yeah, it's that stupid over here.
You are correct, the linking of mod chips to weapons on airlines is in fact a red herring.
I'm sorry if "Your entire argument is based on the Red Herring that I am discussing how murder applies to chewing gum." translates to "linking of modchips to weapons on airlies" for you. I'm not sure how you were able to make a sentence where about 90% of the words in it are completely new and think it is still attributable to me, but hey, whatever.
If you plan to simply lie, I just don't want to discuss the issue with you. Sorry. I have work to do, and I just don't have time to correct you constantly.
Your entire argument is based on the Red Herring that I am discussing how murder applies to chewing gum.
We are discussing how useage with illegal intent compares with a usage with legal intent.
To clarify:
Chewing gum with a legal intent is to chew gum to exercise the jaw and enjoy the gum's flavour and consistency with regards to accepted local mannerisms. When finished with said gum it is safely deposited in the trash.
Chewing gum with an illegal intent (in Singapore) is to chew said gum as above, but to either not follow accepted mannerisms when masticating, or to improperly dispose of said gum.
The results of said illegal activities are to deface, as that article suggests, an entire country and thereby leave millions of people in Singapore disgusted with their country's appearance. Such illegal activities are rumoured to happen in the billions in a population of this size, and cause long term and permanent damage, and are rumoured to continue should the ban be lifted, and may even be continuing illicitly as we speak.
On the topic of box cutters in airlines:
A legal intent with a box cutter on an airline might be to open a package, or it may be a tool one normally uses in one's day to day legal work.
An illegal intent with a box cutter on an airline would be the use of such an item to hijack the flight.
The result of that illegal acitivity is to deface a city, emotionally harm millions, and kill thousands. This illegal activity is known to have occurred once, perhaps twice, and is extremely unlikely to recurr, meaning a future without such illegal activity is forseeable.
While the results are not the same, the fact remains that I am certain I could find a way to use most any item illegally, and that to ban items simply because they have an illegal use leads to a world without items. Even items traditionally considered wholesome in nature can be used in an illegal manner, for example spaghetti (watch Se7en). To follow the trend of banning items due to their even single-time illegal use would mean to ban spaghetti from the world. I like spaghetti. Don't take it from me.
If the retailer doesn't want to bear the costs of remedying crap products that they sell they have a very simple solution ... refrain from selling crap products.
If only the customers would quit asking for them.
If I were only to offer quality components everything would cost twice as much in my store and nobody would shop here. People *want* junk. I have plenty of customers who come in and the first words out of their mouth are "Show me your cheapest", or, worse yet, they will have a junk brand in mind and that's ALL they want to buy. For example "Do you carry PC Chips? I want to buy PC Chips motherboards." Ugggggh. There's a reason why all this plastic junk that barely lasts a year exists. And it's not because manufacturers are forcing it on consumers. It's because consumers _requested_ it (indirectly).
Example: Would you buy a professional VCR for $700 that will, under household use, last about 15 years and is easily repairable by a technician, or would you buy a $40 VCR that lasts between 1 and 4 years? Well, maybe you would buy the $700 VCR, but for you there's another 100 who want to buy the $40 VCR, at any cost (pun intended).
So, you either sell it without warranty, or you go out of business because the customers won't buy from you. Even if everyone in the country stops selling it, in my case, the customers will drive across the border to the USA and buy junk there. I've seen this happen a lot for products which are tough to find here.
In the US, you can't declaim all warrentees - there is an implied warranty that a product will function as it is intended - i.e. I can't sell taosters that don't toast and then say tough - it was an as is sale.
Of course you are correct on that. Misrepresentation is illegal.
And that's why I tell people, it's in As Is condition. Does it work? I don't know. I wouldn't sell the product and tell the person it works if it has an As Is sticker on. As a gesture of goodwill, though, I do let the customer give it a whirl in the store, see if it works to their satisfaction.
I once did look up some laws on this, but I can't remember where the heck I found them, sorry. However, I do know they were quite specific that writing "As Is", or, more specifically "With All Faults" on the product and allowing the customer to decide (without telling them it works -- which wouldn't make sense to do anyways if you are labelling it as possibly broken) is completely legal and does protect one from warranty issues (not from some negligence / safety type stuff, though, of course).
However, even if labelled "as is" it must still be "suitable for the purpose" and "as described" and the warranty will still be for a year.
:-)
:)
Then the sticker would be more detailed if said law passed here:
"Suitable as a deadweight".
Seriously, there must be ways for dealing with this in your country because there is always a market for known-broken goods to be used for parts. I doubt anywhere would pass a law requiring people to warranty such parts... Otherwise, how do companies get rid of old junker cars, for example?
A law like this in North America would cause warranties to default to zero. All products would be labelled "As Is" to reduce liability. Trust me on that. I'm a retailer myself and we get plenty of garbage products in from manufacturers that we know will welch on their warranty that get labelled like that by us as is (BIG fluorescent sticker, too). You'd think that would deter customers from buying them, but nooo... the customers demand them ($15 CDN power supplies, sub $180 CDN satellite receivers, etc, etc). I don't want to sell them, but I'm a store. I'm there to serve the public, and make a good wage doing that. So you sell what you're told (by customers) to sell.