The only thing that being an engineer dictates is how they should perform their job. I don't expect a doctor to be any more or less ethical than anyone else, outside of the work environment. If non-medical students would perform a prank, I can't see why a doctor wouldn't. I'd just imagine that they'd be a bit better an making sure that it had less potential for harm.
Schools have no place teaching ethics or morals, asside from those directly releated to the job, and even then it's a "peer-accepted code of conduct". Teaching ethics is no better than a school teaching "proper christian behaviour" or any other subjective view.
The city threatened to sue. How typically USA... They didn't ask for money, they threatened to sue for unspecified and no doubt inflated damages.
If they were asked to cover actual damages or expenses, that'd be different.
There's a huge difference for taking responsibility for your actions, and being the brunt of whatever assinine punishments someone choose to arbitrarily hand down to appease their hurt feelings.
I don't suppose you'd like to submit to twenty lashes for posting your message? It's the penalty I assess for people who post irrational and unreasonable replies to my posts. Come on, take it like a man.
Sure, so a bunch of people come forward after having written something like DeCSS, and they all get sued back into the stone age. For what purpose?
Everything they accomplished by releasing the source code can be done with an anonymous release, as well as staying out of a corrupt court facing insane damages for lawyers for a faceless corp.
The engineers didn't do anything that required blocking traffic. At most, one lane should have been blocked while they hauled it up. That would have been a disruption, true, but if they were asked to make reasonable restitution for it, I think they'd do it. But to expect them to come forward to be stuck in a foreign prison in a country with an appalingly back record when it comes to justice... No.
As for the Ghandi/MPAA thing, I do think it's a bad metaphor. But, not all change must come with a martyr. Releasing something like DeCSS and watching the corps scramble when its shown that their bought laws are irrelevant to the issues at hand and that they're willing to violate the rights of anyone who gets in their way to protect their ill-gotten profits... That says more to the public than someone getting arrested and tossed in jail to rot, while the MPAA-owned media calls them an evil hacker.
You may think that quiet suffering is the only force for change, but I disagree.
I'm sure your definition of a real engineer is the correct one...
Respect for a legal system that's threatening overblown fines and jail time for a harmless prank? Dude, even your own citizens don't respect your laws, why should anyone else?
I would agree that someone should come forward if they caused harm, like a driver stopping instead of speeding off after an accident, but I don't think this is anything like that.
Why would they pay for someone to fish it out of the bay? It wasn't them who dumped it into the water. If the officials cared about it, they could have either winched it back up or attached a longer rope to it and lowered it onto a barge. I'd agree that the engineers should pay for any work entailed in a rational cleanup, but nobody is asking that. Instead they threaten jail time.
A cheque was the term used when I heard about it, but I'd guess that it was a money order, or other pre-paid cashable.
It's not really terribly hard. Just use a Really Big Rope(tm) and strip the VW of all the heavy parts. And they had practice, this was twenty years after the first time...
Until we hear further we won't know if they just tied the rope to a railing and pitched, or if they went under the bridge earlier to rig up a better tie-down. I suspect they did, if only to deny easy access to the rope and prevent a few brawny cops with a winch or block and tackle from pulling it back up again.
Anyways, their original pranks required a bit of skill. Their later pranks seem to be more quick little reminders of how odd it seemed when they did the first one, rather than a true prank in their own rights.
IMHO they should take the VW to new heights, attach it between high-rises in the downtown core, or something similarly bizarre. Park it in the street and have it self-winch itself up at 7am, or something.
Stepping forward to be tossed in jail would be pretty stupid. It'd be like DeCSS and then mailing it to the MPAA with your return address on it.
No harm was done, no jail time or $10,000 fine should be needed.
It's fairly common knowledge at UBC who the engineers are who perform these pranks. Nobody actually acts on this information though because in most cases they don't cause any problems and no harm is done. They'd be insane to step forward and let some over zealous cop arrest them.
The one year that actually damaged something (nothing major, but they scraped up whatever they mounted the VW on) a cheque was delivered to the city (anonymously) for damages.
I don't remember the details exactly, but it's fairly obvious that while they're pulling a bit of a stunt they aren't actually damaging anything.
How on earth, with cheaper, better equipment, and more people in the industry, could the equipment and talent get more expensive?
I'm sure there are some services that are getting more expensive, because certain technologies are being invented. But the standard services that were available five years ago are getting cheaper.
It's like with computers and techs. You can always blow half a million on really funky hardware, and $250 an hour on a special consultant to run it. But if you have the same project to do that cost a million five years ago, it'll cost about $100,000 now.
If you always insist on the bleeding edge then you'll always pay insane prices, but that's not relevant here. These cutting edge services are uncommon and very expensive in an already overpriced industry, the recording companies aren't going to send their new talent to these uber-studios, they're going to send the incredibly well performing artists who are guaranteed to perform.
So it's apples and oranges.
Perhaps for a new artist, the top recording houses are beyond reach, but they always were because they wouldn't have been sent there even with a music contract.
So they settle for the same quality that was cutting edge a few years back and they can swing it with a small bank loan.
And this isn't a misconception. I have installed nonlinear editing systems in the past, and I know how cheap it is now.
The system I used to install had 90GB of SCSI HDs, that's 10 in a RAID. It was a high-end 486 (soon to be pentium) with 128MB of RAM, two custom video cards for MPEG-1 realtime compression, and a bunch of expensive extras like turtle-beach sound cards.
It cost, as a complete system, around $75,000, mostly because of the disks.
I could build a better system with a 160GB IDE RAID, dual P3s 800s, 2GB of RAM, and better sound and video cards. For $2500...
That's dropped the barrier a LOT. I knew the art students who used to work there to pay their way through school and get some editing time. Now they can afford to buy their own hardware and setup an editing studio that does 90% of what the full studio did. They're obviously skilled because they're the people who'd work on your project for you if you paid the studio to do it.
The only thing this system can't do is the actual tape splicing type stuff, but it generates the same list of timing codes to feed into the same machines. So you rent 5 hours of studio time, instead of 200. It helps the budget a bit.
So don't give me crap about how equipment and skilled professionals are getting more expensive. You're talking out of your ass and you know it.
Except that the technology and experienced personel required to properly produce a professional quality product are getting cheaper every day.
It was very hard for anyone to afford getting custom tapes made professionally. In the era of tapes the recording and editing equipment wasn't as common as it is now, and was thus much more expensive. Tapes also cost a ton to duplicate because the only method available was to actually run all the tape through the spool while recording. Unlike CDs which are mastered in a second.
The labels are getting obsolete, except as marketing. And PR companies exist on all scales, from someone to promote you locally to a world-wide campaign. These companies also contract for a specific job for a specific fee, not the complete rights to everything you produce for a number of years.
Then why do companies bid on chunks of the spectrum in government auctions when they become available? If they were all sold outright, those would be private sales.
So what? Whether what you're saying has a shred of truth or not doesn't make it legal. Which is what we're discussing.
You keep repeating this, but it's not that cut and dried. The word "reasonable" is used an awful lot in law. And even where it's not, judges have a lot of leeway if how they follow the law. This is if the law doesn't get ruled unconstitutional. So it matters a lot if a law makes sense and is consistent.
You have an expectation of privacy if you've taken reasonable steps to ensure privacy. Shouting, even encrypted data, is never private. If it is with cellular phones that's only because nobody has challenged the law yet. Assuming you don't get bribery or corrupt judges (like Kaplan) insane laws like that have a reasonable chance of being overturned.
To *some* degree. There are a lot of international agreements regarding copyright and other relevant laws...
That's not US law. And copyright only prevents copies and public displays.
If I write an essay, you're allowed to read it, to mark it up, etc. You're not allowed to perform it (which only applies if it's a dramatic work or musical recording) or make copies for other people.
Hmm. Not an area of law that I have much knowledge in, but I'm fairly certain that US law allows for some degree of an implicit nature to contracts -- when you buy a book, you don't buy the right to make copies of it. You buy some physical paper and and the right to own a single copy of the book.
That's not part of the sales contract, that's copyright law.
The implicit contract of sale is about getting a product that does what was advertised, etc.
You're still in legal trouble if you're violating copyright on the code.
Yup. If you print off a hex dump of the code, that's a copyright violation. If you do it and sell it, you're liable for damages.
Errata, though, is not a copyright violation. I can reference a copyrighted book and say "Page 34, line 12, the fourth word should be 'Llama'" and that is not a copyright violation. I can also say "Change all references of 'Crocodile' to 'Alligator'" and "Replace page 37 with '...'".
I would not have copyright on the completed work, but I would on my changes (if my changes were a large enough body of work on their own to warrant copyright). In this manner, you can use something that is copyrighted by someone else, and you can modify it, as well as distributing those modifications (as a patch, not as the modified whole).
*Maybe*. IANAL, and I really think YANAL either -- that you're pulling this out of your ass. When you buy a CD with software on it, EULAs often forbid modification of the code.
Shrink-wrap licenses have no force, except where given so by another law. Currently the only law (worldwide) that I know of is the UCITA in some US states. It is widely held to be unconstitutional, unjust, incompatible with other law, and unjurisdictional.
Its very existance also proves that shrink-wrap licenses are unenforcable or the industries lobbying for it wouldn't have bothered since its prime purpose is to allow in a hidden contract those restrictions which until now always took an explicit before sale contract.
Because these licenses aren't valid, the customer owns the card regardless of what the company says. And they are allowed to use the dish and related products in any way they see fit that is still in accordance with federal law. (They can modify the smart-card code as I said earlier, but they can't distribute copies.)
Wrong. Clean room implementation gets around copyright issues. Reverse engineering is, in the US, generally illegal.
Reverse Engineering isn't illegal. Shrink-wrap licenses all forbid it, but they aren't binding.
And all a clean-room implementation does is provide you with really strong evidence that you reverse engineered and didn't copy. Really any rewrite will do. The only problem might come in proving that you wrote similar code yourself instead of copying it.
Interesting argument. Are the crackers really clean-room reimplementing the code, or looking at what's there, though?
Doesn't matter for these purposes. Rewriting the code to avoid copyright would only be necessary if the crackers were distributing all the code necessary to write onto a blank smart-card. As is, they are probably distributing binary patches (just because it's easier - I'm sure they don't care about the technicalities).
Well, perhaps those subject to them? Maybe?
Ok, I was refering to the Canadians viewing this programming. They really only need to avoid international law like copyright. The only time American law is an issue for them is if the companies bribe local law enforcement or catch these people in the states...
And do you really feel compelled to follow bad law? Except in front of authority, I mean... Laws created or enforced by bribery (UCITA, DMCA, etc) are so obviously unjust that many people I know not only intentionally break them, but they make tools for others to break them as a protest. It's somewhat like prohibition.
True. So? It's hardly as if the same behavior doesn't happen in countries around the world. Money has always talked in politics. If you don't like it, you're still subject to the laws.
So, if nobody respects a law they tend to get pissed off when that law is enforced. And having unjust, unenforcable laws on the books just reduces people's respect for the whole system of laws.
Are you advocating ignoring them?
Yes. Following unjust laws only serves the dishonest who made those laws. Civil disobedience is basically the responsibility of everyone in the face of unjust law. So I'm not just advocating ignoring the law, I'm advocating making it as hard to enforce as possible by sabotaging any efforts by the courts or police to enforce those laws. Mirror deCSS, flaunt the shrink-wrap license, etc. If the law is still too powerful to challenge directly then undermine it so later generations can challenge it.
Only through outrage and action will anything change. Fighting it may not make it go away, but it will certainly get worse if you just roll over and take it.
I claim that US law, despite any imperfections, still beats the snot out of US anarchy. And that's what you'd be for -- you'd be a criminal unless you totally overthrew the government.
It's not an all or nothing situation. Some laws I morally support and some I disagree with but agree that they help keep society (as I see that it needs to be) running. Then some laws are bought and paid for by special interest groups and help them to the detriment of all others. So I support some laws and challenge others in any way I can.
Some laws like the UCITA and DMCA don't directly affect me now, so my fighting against them is limited to mirroring deCSS (etc) and informing the people who are affected by them, of the truth.
People feel free to violate the laws of some nations. When China forbids internet usage, people import high-quality crypto (even though any crypto is forbidden) and packet radio for internet links. Why are China's unjust laws different from the USA's unjust laws in anything but scale?
[...] I really think YANAL either [...]
Correct. But I've studied the law enough to know the basics. About consumer rights (what is implicit in a purchase) and contracts (what is and what isn't a valid contract). IMHO if the law gets to the point where a non-lawyer doesn't understand what a contract is, that law is wrong. We're not to that point yet, but laws like the UCITA are definately a push in that direction.
Not really. It's like leaving the door unlocked, but using a different type of key.
The 2600Hz tone dropped you to a trunk, basically. From there you needed a special tone dialer with access to the special tones. It was the same thing as standard DTMF except with different tones.
So all you'd end up doing if you whistled 2600 would be to drop the call. Only if you had a custom-made tone dialer, or (in later years) a PC, could you do anything.
The whole in-band signalling was a hack, to save them from having to reimplement a bunch of stuff. It tacked onto the existing system with a minimum of effort and was completely secure. Until someone found out what the tones were...
No, WalMart didn't have an absolute no-bag rule. That's the problem. If they treated everyone equally then I'd have made the choice about shopping there with that in mind. But the way they let one person do something and then immediately prevented me from doing the same was the problem.
As to Sony... They should have the right to change the game, and thusly change the rules the world works in.
If Sony forbids certain behaviour on their server then that's okay with me. If their AUP forbids impersonating a GM, fine. But if they try to regulate the behaviour of their players off of the servers, that's when I draw the line.
It's only one stop from that to preventing players from publishing FAQs or walk-throughs of the quests.
Where the line lies will eventually be determined by a judge. I think that line lies very close to Sony's servers, unless they provide people with a contract up-front, before sale.
They should, IMHO, give the disks away and then make all the money on the service. Like AOL. That'd get them around most of this, because you wouldn't be buying the full game until you logged onto the net and read the AUP at the same time as you payed your money.
Then they could send any fancy packaging and manuals to people once they subscribe.
I really have no sympathy for a company that sells software and expect a shrink-wrap EULA to protect them. Especially when they do stupid stuff like say "Contract terms may change at any time and you are responsible for keeping track of any changes." That stuff just doesn't fly. It's like DC and the CueCat. They deserve anything that comes back to bite them. Let them write a real contract and get people to agree to it beforehand, and people can be responsible for signing their rights away, like in any other context.
No, the lawsuit is over the fact that the USPS can pick and choose what to deliver. And that if they deliver your product in demolished form, they still expect to get paid for it.
And as to the "use a courier". No. A brick isn't a delicate product which requires a courier. The only way it'd break is if some moron takes a hammer to it...
It doesn't matter if someone mails a brick for scientific analysis, or for the joke value. As long as they pay the postage on it, the USPS is contractually obligated to deliver it.
I think you're the one in denial. Lawsuit exist specifically for the purpose of forcing someone to do what they contracted to do and then refused to follow through. This isn't receiving hot coffee and suing over the temperature, this is using the courts to force a big corporation to honor its word like you'd expect anyone else to do. The lawsuit only needs to be for the court costs and damages. In this case, $5 should cover it. But the idea is that you don't let a corporation get away with screwing around with you just because they can.
And if the cops think it has drugs in it, they can act like they'd have to in any other context. Obtain a search warrant, take the minimum steps necessary to determine if it does. They should definately notify the owner, show them the warranty, and repay any damages conducted in their overzealous search.
Anything else is simply an abuse of power.
Do you have any better way to make them own up to their bullshit?
About the purchasing thing... Many stores I've been in have prominent signs stating that they refuse to accept software returns for ANY reason if the BOX is opened. Nothing about secondary packaging or anything.
And sure, if you wish to be pedantic, EULAs can't take away RIGHTS, they can only restrict your ability to practice those rights. But that doesn't mean much, if the EULA forbids you to do something, what does it matter the specific method with which it does this? They're still trying to prevent you from things that you want to do.
The first amendment is unlikely to counter a contract to limit speech (an NDA) in any except the most extreme cases (whistle-blowing, etc). If shrink-wrap EULAs are ever found to have any validity, they'll definately hold up in preventing hostile reviews, etc. (The NDAs that review sites sign now to limit pre-release disclosure have held up in many court cases.)
Your reading of the GPL misses the fact that if the source code was published without a license, copyright law would prevent you from using it in any way. (You could critique it, or use samples in a parody, but you couldn't base a program on it...) You certainly wouldn't be able to create derivative works.
But if you agree to the terms in the GPL, you are granted the right to use the source code. Something you wouldn't be able to do at all without the GPL granting that right.
It's not like the GPL code is released in the public domain, then restricted. It's released with full copyright rights reserved and then it explicitly grants an exception in certain conditions.
And you're missing some things in the GPL...
"...requires that the user abide by the license, even if directed to do otherwise by a court of law;"
That means (and it says so in the license) that if you can't comply with the license and the court, then you can't use that as an excuse to not comply with the license, you have refrain from any use/publishing which the GPL would have granted.
This means you can't sign a contract to sell exclusive rights to the code, then use GPLed code, and use the fact that the other party sues you as a reason to close the source. You'd have to comply to the court's order to provide closed-source code by writing your own code in place of the GPLed code you used.
When I buy a CD in the store, there isn't a license contract. The only thing I'm bound to is federal copyright law.
There's a license in the box, but they didn't show it to me before I bought the game so I'm not bound to follow it.
And when you "agree" to the license to play the game, that's not binding either. You can buy the game which entitles you to use it, and the only way to use it is their server, so they can't place any restrictions on that use without making it clear on the OUTSIDE of the box.
Nobody can say they didn't see the EULA, but being as how it's not binding, they can say they laughed and clicked through.
(How far would you get in the real world if you changed contract terms and didn't tell the other party?) Jail is my guess.
It may be a neat concept, but if they can't come up with some plot device to prevent people from camping weak monsters, they're idiots.
And if they can't come up with the idea of RANDOM spawn locations, they're likewise idiots.
If there was an adequate supply of magical items and monsters, they wouldn't have these problems. People might still sell 50th level characters, but they wouldn't inhibit the ability of other players in doing so.
There are many things they could do... Have monsters spawn in locations where nobody is watching, have more powerful monsters drawn to more powerful characters, and so on. There shouldn't be any one thing you can do to get powerful, or any one place to sit where the good items are spawned.
Sony's just pissed that people are making money off of their game.
I'm sure they let it get to the point of pissing people off (through lack of items, etc) to appear to be the good guys when they got all heavy-handed and shut it down.
The big problem with Shrink-wrap EULAs isn't the EULA part, it's the shrink-wrap part.
If I go to buy something and the clerk tells me that they don't sell, only rent, then I'm fine with that. I might choose to rent the item.
But if I buy something and then when I look in the box is a note saying that I'm only renting, I'll be damned if I'll accept that.
Thanksfully this shit is illegal and I know it. But many people just accept it, thinking that a big company wouldn't print something they knew to be wrong.
So, if I can see the license, I may agree to it, before I purchase the product. Or, if I want to do something later, I may contact the company/writer and ask. Then we can negotiate. That's fine.
The GPL and BSDL, etc, are all licenses that you see before you try to do something, and that grant more rights than you'd get if you ignored the license.
EULAs (as a class) restrict rights, they even try to restrict rights that it's illegal to take away. (No freedom to publish reviews, etc.) It's all about disclosure.
I signed an NDA when I went to work for my current company, that's fine. But if they tried to tell me I'd implicitly signed an NDA just be showing up for an interview, I'd have told them to take a hike.
Troll. If you've read anything on Slashdot you'd know that companies are pushing the UCITA because EULAs aren't enforcable.
If you buy something from me, I can't tell you (after the sale) that there are restrictions on how you use it. And I can't then withhold the item you bought until you say you agree to my terms.
The first is post-sale disclose which is just invalid. And the second is outright illegal.
This just hasn't been pushed in court by someone with enough cash to hurt Microsoft or any other big company.
It's painfully obvious to anyone with ANY legal experience that EULAs are NOT valid contracts.
And further, a real contract that contained a clause like that wouldn't make it in the courts. Judges have squashed contracts with unconscionable terms for a long time now.
Sony can claim anything they want in the EULA but it's not binding. Meaning that people can click the "Agree" box and not be obligated to do anything.
EULA's are based on post-sale disclosure of terms (which means they sell you something and then tell you what you can do with it) and extortion, where they limit your use of a product until you "agree" to what they want. It's much the same as a protection racket where a thug tells you that you need to pay him a $50 insurance fee, or your car might get badly damaged...
The reason software companies are pushing the UCITA is that EULAs aren't binding and they know it. But if you live somewhere the UCITA isn't in force, the EULA is just a joke.
Instead of thinking someone deserves a medal, I'd be thinking someone deserves a lawsuit. They opened the package and demolished the brick, and then had the balls to deliver the pieces.
What if that was a brick from a historic building, or was being sent somewhere for lab analysis?
Doesn't anyone see a problem with the government opening your mail, destroying it, and then not even refunding the postage?
It's not like they thought it was a bomb or anything (they'd have blown it up - and the person who went to pick it up would have been met by the cops). They simply thought it MIGHT contain drugs.
But if you charged to let them in, you couldn't kick one out because he was in the same line of work as you and you didn't like competition.
That'd be breach of contract and would allow him to sue for his enterance fee, damages (lost business), court costs, etc.
Similarly, Sony says (In a "contract" similar to an EULA (ie, not binding)) that they reserve the right to kick anyone out if they refund the enterance fee. But they can't... They can't kick out one person for an offense and let another who did the same thing stay.
Sure, Sony may get complaints from people who don't like the idea of someone buying a powerful character (I'd complain) but they don't have the right to forbid this. (As a similar example, the CueCat company would have liked to forbid a certain use of a product they made but they didn't have the right to because they didn't own them anymore.)
If Sony wants to change this they need to figure out a way where this can't work.
In Quake, it'd be simple, if you did get to buy accounts and come into games fully stocked, the test would be to pit you against a similarly armed bot of a certain skill. If you bought that rank you'd be killed and lose your stuff.
Maybe EQ can do something skill-based, such that a good player will do much better than a new player even with a similar character. And then powerful characters can encounter these challenges. And maybe they could tax players a percentage of their income, so powerful characters would have to work to keep their status, you couldn't just sit around with this god-like character and never risk anything.
That way someone could buy a character, but if they weren't any good, it wouldn't help them.
But, if EQ isn't skill based and it's all about logging into the right account, then people will sell that password, and more power to them.
If Sony's contract says they have the right to terminate the service of anyone at any time, with a simple repayment, they're wrong.
Contracts like that don't fly in any other industry and they wouldn't fly here. If a business wants to kick out one customer and let another stay they need a fairly good reason or they open themselves up to lawsuit.
For example, I'm a young white male, and I carry a duffel bag with me everywhere. I went into a Wal Mart type store and was told I'd have to leave my bag in their little cubby holes *at my own risk* while I shopped. I said "Hell no" and pointed at a woman in her thirties who had just walked in with a large open purse. I told them that statistically she was more likely to shoplift, and that if they refused to let me in with a bag while letting her in, they'd hear about it. They called a manager and he agreed, he said that technically the greeter should be saying "We *ask*..." because they didn't have any legal right. The exception would be if they knew me, from previous experience, to be a thief. Otherwise they opened themselves up to discrimination charges.
Further, if Sony didn't discuss this contract *before* people bought the game, then it's not binding. Shrink-wrap licenses aren't binding because you didn't find out about them till after you buy the game. Here, even if this license is 'negotiated' at the time you sign up, it's not binding because it functions to limit your use of an already purchased product. It'd be like Adobe saying "we admit shrink-wrap licenses aren't binding. So, you own a non-functional program. To make it work, come to our website, sign a contract, and download the required file to make it work." Because Everquest is nothing without the online service, limitations on that service are limitation on the product you originally purchased. And they can't do that unless the box says that the are certain rules which govern the use of the service.
On the subject of copyrights... Derivative work only applies if you modify an existing copyrighted work, or use too-large chunks of it. This varies. Using 'Captain Kirk' might be considered too large, in a space story, etc. But if you write something ABOUT Star Trek, you're fine.
Using a copyrighted tool is no different that using a patented tool. The creator of the tool has no power over what you do with the tool once you buy it.
Anyways, on the subject of the save-game. The file is made at your request, and represents your development of the character. Much like a graphic in photoshop; you don't color the pixel on the monitor, you direct the program to do it. The save-game could contain copyrighted data (like in PC games sometimes they save the whole level, with your character in it.) and you wouldn't own that, but by saving a game, they're giving you implicit permission to use any data they put in that file (for the purposes of save-game restoration).
Slashdot Mirror
The only thing that being an engineer dictates is how they should perform their job. I don't expect a doctor to be any more or less ethical than anyone else, outside of the work environment. If non-medical students would perform a prank, I can't see why a doctor wouldn't. I'd just imagine that they'd be a bit better an making sure that it had less potential for harm.
Schools have no place teaching ethics or morals, asside from those directly releated to the job, and even then it's a "peer-accepted code of conduct". Teaching ethics is no better than a school teaching "proper christian behaviour" or any other subjective view.
The city threatened to sue. How typically USA... They didn't ask for money, they threatened to sue for unspecified and no doubt inflated damages.
If they were asked to cover actual damages or expenses, that'd be different.
There's a huge difference for taking responsibility for your actions, and being the brunt of whatever assinine punishments someone choose to arbitrarily hand down to appease their hurt feelings.
I don't suppose you'd like to submit to twenty lashes for posting your message? It's the penalty I assess for people who post irrational and unreasonable replies to my posts. Come on, take it like a man.
Sure, so a bunch of people come forward after having written something like DeCSS, and they all get sued back into the stone age. For what purpose?
Everything they accomplished by releasing the source code can be done with an anonymous release, as well as staying out of a corrupt court facing insane damages for lawyers for a faceless corp.
The engineers didn't do anything that required blocking traffic. At most, one lane should have been blocked while they hauled it up. That would have been a disruption, true, but if they were asked to make reasonable restitution for it, I think they'd do it. But to expect them to come forward to be stuck in a foreign prison in a country with an appalingly back record when it comes to justice... No.
As for the Ghandi/MPAA thing, I do think it's a bad metaphor. But, not all change must come with a martyr. Releasing something like DeCSS and watching the corps scramble when its shown that their bought laws are irrelevant to the issues at hand and that they're willing to violate the rights of anyone who gets in their way to protect their ill-gotten profits... That says more to the public than someone getting arrested and tossed in jail to rot, while the MPAA-owned media calls them an evil hacker.
You may think that quiet suffering is the only force for change, but I disagree.
I'm sure your definition of a real engineer is the correct one...
Respect for a legal system that's threatening overblown fines and jail time for a harmless prank? Dude, even your own citizens don't respect your laws, why should anyone else?
I would agree that someone should come forward if they caused harm, like a driver stopping instead of speeding off after an accident, but I don't think this is anything like that.
Why would they pay for someone to fish it out of the bay? It wasn't them who dumped it into the water. If the officials cared about it, they could have either winched it back up or attached a longer rope to it and lowered it onto a barge. I'd agree that the engineers should pay for any work entailed in a rational cleanup, but nobody is asking that. Instead they threaten jail time.
A cheque was the term used when I heard about it, but I'd guess that it was a money order, or other pre-paid cashable.
It's not really terribly hard. Just use a Really Big Rope(tm) and strip the VW of all the heavy parts. And they had practice, this was twenty years after the first time...
Until we hear further we won't know if they just tied the rope to a railing and pitched, or if they went under the bridge earlier to rig up a better tie-down. I suspect they did, if only to deny easy access to the rope and prevent a few brawny cops with a winch or block and tackle from pulling it back up again.
Anyways, their original pranks required a bit of skill. Their later pranks seem to be more quick little reminders of how odd it seemed when they did the first one, rather than a true prank in their own rights.
IMHO they should take the VW to new heights, attach it between high-rises in the downtown core, or something similarly bizarre. Park it in the street and have it self-winch itself up at 7am, or something.
I think it was funny, but nothing exceptional.
Well duh!
Stepping forward to be tossed in jail would be pretty stupid. It'd be like DeCSS and then mailing it to the MPAA with your return address on it.
No harm was done, no jail time or $10,000 fine should be needed.
It's fairly common knowledge at UBC who the engineers are who perform these pranks. Nobody actually acts on this information though because in most cases they don't cause any problems and no harm is done. They'd be insane to step forward and let some over zealous cop arrest them.
The one year that actually damaged something (nothing major, but they scraped up whatever they mounted the VW on) a cheque was delivered to the city (anonymously) for damages.
I don't remember the details exactly, but it's fairly obvious that while they're pulling a bit of a stunt they aren't actually damaging anything.
I find it hard to believe that FAT32 would support an odd size like 32GB for files...
2GB is an unsigned 32b integer. A 32GB file would require a 36b integer.
Not to mention that I've had Win98 running on FAT32 refuse to make a large file (I was piping data in, it hung when the file hit 2GB).
NTFS supports larger files, but only 2TB from what I've heard. No idea what the max partition size is.
How on earth, with cheaper, better equipment, and more people in the industry, could the equipment and talent get more expensive?
I'm sure there are some services that are getting more expensive, because certain technologies are being invented. But the standard services that were available five years ago are getting cheaper.
It's like with computers and techs. You can always blow half a million on really funky hardware, and $250 an hour on a special consultant to run it. But if you have the same project to do that cost a million five years ago, it'll cost about $100,000 now.
If you always insist on the bleeding edge then you'll always pay insane prices, but that's not relevant here. These cutting edge services are uncommon and very expensive in an already overpriced industry, the recording companies aren't going to send their new talent to these uber-studios, they're going to send the incredibly well performing artists who are guaranteed to perform.
So it's apples and oranges.
Perhaps for a new artist, the top recording houses are beyond reach, but they always were because they wouldn't have been sent there even with a music contract.
So they settle for the same quality that was cutting edge a few years back and they can swing it with a small bank loan.
And this isn't a misconception. I have installed nonlinear editing systems in the past, and I know how cheap it is now.
The system I used to install had 90GB of SCSI HDs, that's 10 in a RAID. It was a high-end 486 (soon to be pentium) with 128MB of RAM, two custom video cards for MPEG-1 realtime compression, and a bunch of expensive extras like turtle-beach sound cards.
It cost, as a complete system, around $75,000, mostly because of the disks.
I could build a better system with a 160GB IDE RAID, dual P3s 800s, 2GB of RAM, and better sound and video cards. For $2500...
That's dropped the barrier a LOT. I knew the art students who used to work there to pay their way through school and get some editing time. Now they can afford to buy their own hardware and setup an editing studio that does 90% of what the full studio did. They're obviously skilled because they're the people who'd work on your project for you if you paid the studio to do it.
The only thing this system can't do is the actual tape splicing type stuff, but it generates the same list of timing codes to feed into the same machines. So you rent 5 hours of studio time, instead of 200. It helps the budget a bit.
So don't give me crap about how equipment and skilled professionals are getting more expensive. You're talking out of your ass and you know it.
Except that the technology and experienced personel required to properly produce a professional quality product are getting cheaper every day.
It was very hard for anyone to afford getting custom tapes made professionally. In the era of tapes the recording and editing equipment wasn't as common as it is now, and was thus much more expensive. Tapes also cost a ton to duplicate because the only method available was to actually run all the tape through the spool while recording. Unlike CDs which are mastered in a second.
The labels are getting obsolete, except as marketing. And PR companies exist on all scales, from someone to promote you locally to a world-wide campaign. These companies also contract for a specific job for a specific fee, not the complete rights to everything you produce for a number of years.
Then why do companies bid on chunks of the spectrum in government auctions when they become available? If they were all sold outright, those would be private sales.
So what? Whether what you're saying has a shred of truth or not doesn't make it legal. Which is what we're discussing.
You keep repeating this, but it's not that cut and dried. The word "reasonable" is used an awful lot in law. And even where it's not, judges have a lot of leeway if how they follow the law. This is if the law doesn't get ruled unconstitutional. So it matters a lot if a law makes sense and is consistent. You have an expectation of privacy if you've taken reasonable steps to ensure privacy. Shouting, even encrypted data, is never private. If it is with cellular phones that's only because nobody has challenged the law yet. Assuming you don't get bribery or corrupt judges (like Kaplan) insane laws like that have a reasonable chance of being overturned.
To *some* degree. There are a lot of international agreements regarding copyright and other relevant laws...
That's not US law. And copyright only prevents copies and public displays.
If I write an essay, you're allowed to read it, to mark it up, etc. You're not allowed to perform it (which only applies if it's a dramatic work or musical recording) or make copies for other people.
Hmm. Not an area of law that I have much knowledge in, but I'm fairly certain that US law allows for some degree of an implicit nature to contracts -- when you buy a book, you don't buy the right to make copies of it. You buy some physical paper and and the right to own a single copy of the book.
That's not part of the sales contract, that's copyright law.
The implicit contract of sale is about getting a product that does what was advertised, etc.
You're still in legal trouble if you're violating copyright on the code.
Yup. If you print off a hex dump of the code, that's a copyright violation. If you do it and sell it, you're liable for damages.
Errata, though, is not a copyright violation. I can reference a copyrighted book and say "Page 34, line 12, the fourth word should be 'Llama'" and that is not a copyright violation. I can also say "Change all references of 'Crocodile' to 'Alligator'" and "Replace page 37 with '...'".
I would not have copyright on the completed work, but I would on my changes (if my changes were a large enough body of work on their own to warrant copyright). In this manner, you can use something that is copyrighted by someone else, and you can modify it, as well as distributing those modifications (as a patch, not as the modified whole).
*Maybe*. IANAL, and I really think YANAL either -- that you're pulling this out of your ass. When you buy a CD with software on it, EULAs often forbid modification of the code.
Shrink-wrap licenses have no force, except where given so by another law. Currently the only law (worldwide) that I know of is the UCITA in some US states. It is widely held to be unconstitutional, unjust, incompatible with other law, and unjurisdictional.
Its very existance also proves that shrink-wrap licenses are unenforcable or the industries lobbying for it wouldn't have bothered since its prime purpose is to allow in a hidden contract those restrictions which until now always took an explicit before sale contract.
Because these licenses aren't valid, the customer owns the card regardless of what the company says. And they are allowed to use the dish and related products in any way they see fit that is still in accordance with federal law. (They can modify the smart-card code as I said earlier, but they can't distribute copies.)
Wrong. Clean room implementation gets around copyright issues. Reverse engineering is, in the US, generally illegal.
Reverse Engineering isn't illegal. Shrink-wrap licenses all forbid it, but they aren't binding.
And all a clean-room implementation does is provide you with really strong evidence that you reverse engineered and didn't copy. Really any rewrite will do. The only problem might come in proving that you wrote similar code yourself instead of copying it.
Interesting argument. Are the crackers really clean-room reimplementing the code, or looking at what's there, though?
Doesn't matter for these purposes. Rewriting the code to avoid copyright would only be necessary if the crackers were distributing all the code necessary to write onto a blank smart-card. As is, they are probably distributing binary patches (just because it's easier - I'm sure they don't care about the technicalities).
Well, perhaps those subject to them? Maybe?
Ok, I was refering to the Canadians viewing this programming. They really only need to avoid international law like copyright. The only time American law is an issue for them is if the companies bribe local law enforcement or catch these people in the states...
And do you really feel compelled to follow bad law? Except in front of authority, I mean... Laws created or enforced by bribery (UCITA, DMCA, etc) are so obviously unjust that many people I know not only intentionally break them, but they make tools for others to break them as a protest. It's somewhat like prohibition.
True. So? It's hardly as if the same behavior doesn't happen in countries around the world. Money has always talked in politics. If you don't like it, you're still subject to the laws.
So, if nobody respects a law they tend to get pissed off when that law is enforced. And having unjust, unenforcable laws on the books just reduces people's respect for the whole system of laws.
Are you advocating ignoring them?
Yes. Following unjust laws only serves the dishonest who made those laws. Civil disobedience is basically the responsibility of everyone in the face of unjust law. So I'm not just advocating ignoring the law, I'm advocating making it as hard to enforce as possible by sabotaging any efforts by the courts or police to enforce those laws. Mirror deCSS, flaunt the shrink-wrap license, etc. If the law is still too powerful to challenge directly then undermine it so later generations can challenge it.
Only through outrage and action will anything change. Fighting it may not make it go away, but it will certainly get worse if you just roll over and take it.
I claim that US law, despite any imperfections, still beats the snot out of US anarchy. And that's what you'd be for -- you'd be a criminal unless you totally overthrew the government.
It's not an all or nothing situation. Some laws I morally support and some I disagree with but agree that they help keep society (as I see that it needs to be) running. Then some laws are bought and paid for by special interest groups and help them to the detriment of all others. So I support some laws and challenge others in any way I can.
Some laws like the UCITA and DMCA don't directly affect me now, so my fighting against them is limited to mirroring deCSS (etc) and informing the people who are affected by them, of the truth.
People feel free to violate the laws of some nations. When China forbids internet usage, people import high-quality crypto (even though any crypto is forbidden) and packet radio for internet links. Why are China's unjust laws different from the USA's unjust laws in anything but scale?
[...] I really think YANAL either [...]
Correct. But I've studied the law enough to know the basics. About consumer rights (what is implicit in a purchase) and contracts (what is and what isn't a valid contract). IMHO if the law gets to the point where a non-lawyer doesn't understand what a contract is, that law is wrong. We're not to that point yet, but laws like the UCITA are definately a push in that direction.
That was sarcasm...
Like saying a system with a default root password is secure, until someone finds it.
Cool. I didn't know you could 'pulse dial' with it.
Thanks.
Not really. It's like leaving the door unlocked, but using a different type of key.
The 2600Hz tone dropped you to a trunk, basically. From there you needed a special tone dialer with access to the special tones. It was the same thing as standard DTMF except with different tones.
So all you'd end up doing if you whistled 2600 would be to drop the call. Only if you had a custom-made tone dialer, or (in later years) a PC, could you do anything.
The whole in-band signalling was a hack, to save them from having to reimplement a bunch of stuff. It tacked onto the existing system with a minimum of effort and was completely secure. Until someone found out what the tones were...
No, WalMart didn't have an absolute no-bag rule. That's the problem. If they treated everyone equally then I'd have made the choice about shopping there with that in mind. But the way they let one person do something and then immediately prevented me from doing the same was the problem. As to Sony... They should have the right to change the game, and thusly change the rules the world works in. If Sony forbids certain behaviour on their server then that's okay with me. If their AUP forbids impersonating a GM, fine. But if they try to regulate the behaviour of their players off of the servers, that's when I draw the line. It's only one stop from that to preventing players from publishing FAQs or walk-throughs of the quests. Where the line lies will eventually be determined by a judge. I think that line lies very close to Sony's servers, unless they provide people with a contract up-front, before sale. They should, IMHO, give the disks away and then make all the money on the service. Like AOL. That'd get them around most of this, because you wouldn't be buying the full game until you logged onto the net and read the AUP at the same time as you payed your money. Then they could send any fancy packaging and manuals to people once they subscribe. I really have no sympathy for a company that sells software and expect a shrink-wrap EULA to protect them. Especially when they do stupid stuff like say "Contract terms may change at any time and you are responsible for keeping track of any changes." That stuff just doesn't fly. It's like DC and the CueCat. They deserve anything that comes back to bite them. Let them write a real contract and get people to agree to it beforehand, and people can be responsible for signing their rights away, like in any other context.
No, the lawsuit is over the fact that the USPS can pick and choose what to deliver. And that if they deliver your product in demolished form, they still expect to get paid for it.
And as to the "use a courier". No. A brick isn't a delicate product which requires a courier. The only way it'd break is if some moron takes a hammer to it...
It doesn't matter if someone mails a brick for scientific analysis, or for the joke value. As long as they pay the postage on it, the USPS is contractually obligated to deliver it.
I think you're the one in denial. Lawsuit exist specifically for the purpose of forcing someone to do what they contracted to do and then refused to follow through. This isn't receiving hot coffee and suing over the temperature, this is using the courts to force a big corporation to honor its word like you'd expect anyone else to do. The lawsuit only needs to be for the court costs and damages. In this case, $5 should cover it. But the idea is that you don't let a corporation get away with screwing around with you just because they can.
And if the cops think it has drugs in it, they can act like they'd have to in any other context. Obtain a search warrant, take the minimum steps necessary to determine if it does. They should definately notify the owner, show them the warranty, and repay any damages conducted in their overzealous search.
Anything else is simply an abuse of power.
Do you have any better way to make them own up to their bullshit?
About the purchasing thing... Many stores I've been in have prominent signs stating that they refuse to accept software returns for ANY reason if the BOX is opened. Nothing about secondary packaging or anything.
And sure, if you wish to be pedantic, EULAs can't take away RIGHTS, they can only restrict your ability to practice those rights. But that doesn't mean much, if the EULA forbids you to do something, what does it matter the specific method with which it does this? They're still trying to prevent you from things that you want to do.
The first amendment is unlikely to counter a contract to limit speech (an NDA) in any except the most extreme cases (whistle-blowing, etc). If shrink-wrap EULAs are ever found to have any validity, they'll definately hold up in preventing hostile reviews, etc. (The NDAs that review sites sign now to limit pre-release disclosure have held up in many court cases.)
Your reading of the GPL misses the fact that if the source code was published without a license, copyright law would prevent you from using it in any way. (You could critique it, or use samples in a parody, but you couldn't base a program on it...) You certainly wouldn't be able to create derivative works.
But if you agree to the terms in the GPL, you are granted the right to use the source code. Something you wouldn't be able to do at all without the GPL granting that right.
It's not like the GPL code is released in the public domain, then restricted. It's released with full copyright rights reserved and then it explicitly grants an exception in certain conditions.
And you're missing some things in the GPL...
"...requires that the user abide by the license, even if directed to do otherwise by a court of law;"
That means (and it says so in the license) that if you can't comply with the license and the court, then you can't use that as an excuse to not comply with the license, you have refrain from any use/publishing which the GPL would have granted.
This means you can't sign a contract to sell exclusive rights to the code, then use GPLed code, and use the fact that the other party sues you as a reason to close the source. You'd have to comply to the court's order to provide closed-source code by writing your own code in place of the GPLed code you used.
Actually, you're wrong.
When I buy a CD in the store, there isn't a license contract. The only thing I'm bound to is federal copyright law.
There's a license in the box, but they didn't show it to me before I bought the game so I'm not bound to follow it.
And when you "agree" to the license to play the game, that's not binding either. You can buy the game which entitles you to use it, and the only way to use it is their server, so they can't place any restrictions on that use without making it clear on the OUTSIDE of the box.
Nobody can say they didn't see the EULA, but being as how it's not binding, they can say they laughed and clicked through.
(How far would you get in the real world if you changed contract terms and didn't tell the other party?) Jail is my guess.
That's because EQ sucks.
It may be a neat concept, but if they can't come up with some plot device to prevent people from camping weak monsters, they're idiots.
And if they can't come up with the idea of RANDOM spawn locations, they're likewise idiots.
If there was an adequate supply of magical items and monsters, they wouldn't have these problems. People might still sell 50th level characters, but they wouldn't inhibit the ability of other players in doing so.
There are many things they could do... Have monsters spawn in locations where nobody is watching, have more powerful monsters drawn to more powerful characters, and so on. There shouldn't be any one thing you can do to get powerful, or any one place to sit where the good items are spawned.
Sony's just pissed that people are making money off of their game.
I'm sure they let it get to the point of pissing people off (through lack of items, etc) to appear to be the good guys when they got all heavy-handed and shut it down.
The big problem with Shrink-wrap EULAs isn't the EULA part, it's the shrink-wrap part.
If I go to buy something and the clerk tells me that they don't sell, only rent, then I'm fine with that. I might choose to rent the item.
But if I buy something and then when I look in the box is a note saying that I'm only renting, I'll be damned if I'll accept that.
Thanksfully this shit is illegal and I know it. But many people just accept it, thinking that a big company wouldn't print something they knew to be wrong.
So, if I can see the license, I may agree to it, before I purchase the product. Or, if I want to do something later, I may contact the company/writer and ask. Then we can negotiate. That's fine.
The GPL and BSDL, etc, are all licenses that you see before you try to do something, and that grant more rights than you'd get if you ignored the license.
EULAs (as a class) restrict rights, they even try to restrict rights that it's illegal to take away. (No freedom to publish reviews, etc.) It's all about disclosure.
I signed an NDA when I went to work for my current company, that's fine. But if they tried to tell me I'd implicitly signed an NDA just be showing up for an interview, I'd have told them to take a hike.
Troll. If you've read anything on Slashdot you'd know that companies are pushing the UCITA because EULAs aren't enforcable.
If you buy something from me, I can't tell you (after the sale) that there are restrictions on how you use it. And I can't then withhold the item you bought until you say you agree to my terms.
The first is post-sale disclose which is just invalid. And the second is outright illegal.
This just hasn't been pushed in court by someone with enough cash to hurt Microsoft or any other big company.
If you've been following EULAs, I pity you.
Troll.
It's painfully obvious to anyone with ANY legal experience that EULAs are NOT valid contracts.
And further, a real contract that contained a clause like that wouldn't make it in the courts. Judges have squashed contracts with unconscionable terms for a long time now.
Sony can claim anything they want in the EULA but it's not binding. Meaning that people can click the "Agree" box and not be obligated to do anything.
EULA's are based on post-sale disclosure of terms (which means they sell you something and then tell you what you can do with it) and extortion, where they limit your use of a product until you "agree" to what they want. It's much the same as a protection racket where a thug tells you that you need to pay him a $50 insurance fee, or your car might get badly damaged...
The reason software companies are pushing the UCITA is that EULAs aren't binding and they know it. But if you live somewhere the UCITA isn't in force, the EULA is just a joke.
Correct. Good to see that more people understand this.
They're also an attempt at extortion. You can't use a product you bought unless you "agree" to our illegal contract...
Instead of thinking someone deserves a medal, I'd be thinking someone deserves a lawsuit. They opened the package and demolished the brick, and then had the balls to deliver the pieces.
What if that was a brick from a historic building, or was being sent somewhere for lab analysis?
Doesn't anyone see a problem with the government opening your mail, destroying it, and then not even refunding the postage?
It's not like they thought it was a bomb or anything (they'd have blown it up - and the person who went to pick it up would have been met by the cops). They simply thought it MIGHT contain drugs.
But if you charged to let them in, you couldn't kick one out because he was in the same line of work as you and you didn't like competition.
That'd be breach of contract and would allow him to sue for his enterance fee, damages (lost business), court costs, etc.
Similarly, Sony says (In a "contract" similar to an EULA (ie, not binding)) that they reserve the right to kick anyone out if they refund the enterance fee. But they can't... They can't kick out one person for an offense and let another who did the same thing stay.
Sure, Sony may get complaints from people who don't like the idea of someone buying a powerful character (I'd complain) but they don't have the right to forbid this. (As a similar example, the CueCat company would have liked to forbid a certain use of a product they made but they didn't have the right to because they didn't own them anymore.)
If Sony wants to change this they need to figure out a way where this can't work.
In Quake, it'd be simple, if you did get to buy accounts and come into games fully stocked, the test would be to pit you against a similarly armed bot of a certain skill. If you bought that rank you'd be killed and lose your stuff.
Maybe EQ can do something skill-based, such that a good player will do much better than a new player even with a similar character. And then powerful characters can encounter these challenges. And maybe they could tax players a percentage of their income, so powerful characters would have to work to keep their status, you couldn't just sit around with this god-like character and never risk anything.
That way someone could buy a character, but if they weren't any good, it wouldn't help them.
But, if EQ isn't skill based and it's all about logging into the right account, then people will sell that password, and more power to them.
If Sony's contract says they have the right to terminate the service of anyone at any time, with a simple repayment, they're wrong.
..." because they didn't have any legal right. The exception would be if they knew me, from previous experience, to be a thief. Otherwise they opened themselves up to discrimination charges.
Contracts like that don't fly in any other industry and they wouldn't fly here. If a business wants to kick out one customer and let another stay they need a fairly good reason or they open themselves up to lawsuit.
For example, I'm a young white male, and I carry a duffel bag with me everywhere. I went into a Wal Mart type store and was told I'd have to leave my bag in their little cubby holes *at my own risk* while I shopped. I said "Hell no" and pointed at a woman in her thirties who had just walked in with a large open purse. I told them that statistically she was more likely to shoplift, and that if they refused to let me in with a bag while letting her in, they'd hear about it. They called a manager and he agreed, he said that technically the greeter should be saying "We *ask*
Further, if Sony didn't discuss this contract *before* people bought the game, then it's not binding. Shrink-wrap licenses aren't binding because you didn't find out about them till after you buy the game. Here, even if this license is 'negotiated' at the time you sign up, it's not binding because it functions to limit your use of an already purchased product. It'd be like Adobe saying "we admit shrink-wrap licenses aren't binding. So, you own a non-functional program. To make it work, come to our website, sign a contract, and download the required file to make it work." Because Everquest is nothing without the online service, limitations on that service are limitation on the product you originally purchased. And they can't do that unless the box says that the are certain rules which govern the use of the service.
On the subject of copyrights... Derivative work only applies if you modify an existing copyrighted work, or use too-large chunks of it. This varies. Using 'Captain Kirk' might be considered too large, in a space story, etc. But if you write something ABOUT Star Trek, you're fine.
Using a copyrighted tool is no different that using a patented tool. The creator of the tool has no power over what you do with the tool once you buy it.
Anyways, on the subject of the save-game. The file is made at your request, and represents your development of the character. Much like a graphic in photoshop; you don't color the pixel on the monitor, you direct the program to do it. The save-game could contain copyrighted data (like in PC games sometimes they save the whole level, with your character in it.) and you wouldn't own that, but by saving a game, they're giving you implicit permission to use any data they put in that file (for the purposes of save-game restoration).
Did anyone tell you, at the store before you bought the dish/box/card, that would didn't own them, that you were only 'renting' them?
If not, you own it.
They can't tell you afterwords that you don't own something which you paid money for.
And offering to let you return it is *not* enough. If they sold it, you own it. Offering an 'out clause' is worthless.
It's not valid in click-throughs, it's not valid in shrink-wrap licenses, it's not valid in anything.