I have thought about this for a long while and made the personal decision to not buy second hand software, especially games. Software developers/publishers/distrubuters receive no monetary compensation for resold items. Games have a typical life span of a few months (MMOS are an obvious exception) and even then only a few weeks for the average user. This would mean that a game could easily be used by 10 or more users with the original producers receiving payment for only one copy. If software (games) had the price tag that somthing like a car has then this would probably be an acceptable practice, but in general they are fairly cheap (the hourly cost is only fractions of a movie).
That being said I think that the law is probably on the side of the second hand purchaser in this case, and most software license transfers. To bad MMO producers haven't yet figured out that they should give away the software and up the charge on use, there by removing the whole need for transfer of license entirely.
Oh, and people, please learn that purchasing anything from an online reseller of used items, like Ebay, is a risky deal. When a service does not provide a warranty there is probably a good reason for it.
I didn't notice in in the message if the original poster every tried to request or purchase a new Key from Blizzard. I am pretty sure that for a fee Blizzard would be happy to sell someone a new key. I would believe that, regardless of EULA, the buisness model in place here is one that charges the end user not only a monthly fee but also a set up fee, which is disguised as the cost for purchasing the game. This may very well be a violation of the EULA, but I can't really comment on that.
That is a very interesting question, and if I had mod points I'd mod it that way. I would assume this would fall under the same laws that would cover a machine capable of creating a copy of it's self. I think this could potential be a patent violation, unless the crossbreeding actually produces a derivative work with enough difference from the original (not sure what the percent is off hand).
The Question I have to ask is, would we ask the same thing of a Machine capable of creating other patented works that has a bug causing it to do so with out the owner actually directing the machine to do so? Who then has the legal right to the newley created machines
show me the ape which has conquered the planet, which has tamed the forces of nature, which thinks
I'll do you one better.
Show me the ape that can create a new form of life (of his own design, not coincidental evolution) and I may consider him mankinds equal.
You do not collect patent related royalties for the activities of things you have created. You collect royalties from a patent if someone else violates your patent by creating that thing you have patented (or using that process. etc).
Now we could go on to talk about license agreements and the buyer of such products. Assuming the patentee is smart and makes sure any purchaser of his product (the ultimate goal of any patent) agrees to an EULA that states the purchaser is unable to use the creation for monitary gain without paying significant royalties, then you could certainly see the patent holder collecting royalties for thier creations actions. Other wise it would probably be like the purchase of a work truck, what you do with it is up to you and you can make monetary gain from it.
Honestly I'm not going to debate the moralities issues, becasue once man starts creating sentient life morality has to change, being as most (I did not say all) morality is based on regious belief and religion is mostly based around some form of creator god(s), which would be usurped by the fact that humans would now be the creators, and no one one question what a god does with it's creations. Therefor a scientificaly created creature is really know different that any other creation except that it is biological.
Go figure that the first truely patentable concept to come up, in the news, in a long time has been deined by the US patent office. Mind you a general patent on the idea of creating geneticaly cross breed creatures may be a bit broad for a patent, but hopefully this does not stop specific creations from being pantented.
Patents should be about things that can actually be done at the time they are patented. So the first person who creates Dog-Man should be able to patent Dog-Man.
On the other hand, if this means the patent office is actually reviewing patents, and rejecting overly broad patents based on concepts mostly fictitious I'm all for it.
The PS3 should not have nearly the problems that the PS2 had in regards to it's difficulty of development (a.k.a. Lazy developers). Because Cell is a joint project by IBM, Toshiba and Sony it will have a much larger install base. Rather than being a specialized chip for a specialized system, it is to be a general chip useable in many systems. These means more people will be programing for it, not just game developers which are notorious for there lack of desire to change (hence why the 68000, 6502 and z80 were so popular for so long). Cell chips should end up making it into systems designed for scientific computing, where developers (a.k.a. computer scientists) will be willing to take more chances and dig deeper into the architecture.
We will see some of the typical ramp up time in cell programs but being as the cell, if you beleive what you read, is so far above and beyond other modern processors (and that lazy developers for the PS3 can always let the NVIDIA GPU carry the load in a more traditional fashion) we should see leaps and bounds in program performance fairly quickly.
It is still a fair comparison for a couple reasons.
1) There is not a 266% price difference between SO-DIMMS and standard.
2) I was only complaining about the drop in price. Since Mac Mini memory dropped 30% then so should PowerBook memory, since the price of memory did not drop just the mark up.
This is a huge slap in the face to future buyers of other mac products, particularly PowerBooks. I have been looking to upgrade my PowerBook for a little while, but when they are charge powerbook buyers more than twice that as mac mini buyers for essencially the same upgrades I just get alittle pissed off.
256k to 512k upgrade (both DDR333 SDRAM on single stick):
- Mac Mini: $75
- Power Book: $200
40 to 80 gig hard drive:
- Mac Mini: $50
60 to 80 gig hard drive:
- Power Book: $125
Being a Mac owner for a while now, I will just say they better do something for their higher end buyers or they may loose out on that market.
I am so sick of people in this world, particularly the United States, expecting and wanting the Government to be the supervision for thier children. At the rate we are going it would probably just be easier to have a goverment agency set up to raise children, and then just let humans be baby making machines and have no responsibility, that is after all what people obviously want.
Parents today, most of them, don't deserve to be parents in my opinion. Arguments like, we can't watch them 24/7 are complete bullshit. If you don't know what you're kids are doing you are not being much of a parent, especialy if you are the one giving them money to go spend on video games. I don't know about the rest of the population but I certianly wasn't carrying around $50 (enough to by most video games) before I was working for the money myself. Also once you are old enough to work for a living you should be able to buy what ever you want.
If we spent a little more time on educating parents, and parents spent more time teaching their children how to be decent human beings we wouldn't have any of these problems. Not every kid that picks up a mature game goes on to be a bad person, that all depends on how they are raise.
Sorry about the rant, but people really need to start taking responsibility for their own actions, like having children, and giving them money and not watching them...
What? There is something past Red Clearance? Sorry fellow Citizen, you should report to for immediate exterm... Err... corrective training immediately.
You appear to have missed your daily meeting with the Happiness Officer. Sorry fellow Citizen, you should report to for immediate exterm... Err... corrective training immediately.
In Service to the Computer,
Howard-R-EWE (my friends call me "how")
I passed up this entire thread until just now, while metamoderating. This time I decided to actually read it. People should stop getting offended by statements like "let his wife." I mean I personally live in a free country (Sorry if you don't) and people have a right to their opinions. I mean you wouldn't "let" your kids do certain things and no one questions that because you obviously know better. In this case the guy with the CS degree should know better, though probably doesn't if it came from a US school, than his wife. I happen to be married and would never think of letting my wife run as admin or root no mater what the OS. Heck I don't run as admin or root. On top of that if my wife does procced to screw up her machine by doing something I explicitly told her not to do, then she is on her own in regards to getting it working again.
Also I am primarily a Mac user and oddly enough I have never run into something I needed IE for, which is good since IE for mac is a worse POS, though more secure, than IE for windows. If you find yourself going to sites that require IE or ActiveX (which can run in mozilla and firefox if you really want it to) I would suggest setting up a computer specificaly for such activity since it is bound to have virus within a use or two, or a change in browsing habits so you don't go to those sites anymore.
Lastly I don't get how people get viruses, and other malicious code, in the first place. I have been running windows, mac linux and other OS machines for many years (10+ for windows) and have never once even come close to recieving any malicious software.
Allow me to point you in th right direction. Expressing the reasons that US and International Copyrights protect a creator of Intelectual Property from unliscened and unwarranted sales would take many hours without the all parties having extensive knowledge of the many laws and acts involved.
Both of these site contain alot of technical and legal information. There are many sites devoted to IP both in the US and internationaly: http://www.wipo.int/ and http://www.aipla.org/ are just a couple.
Pay Close attention to EULA Section 3 and 13 (which states you agree to the laws of the state of California) and TOU section 2 subsection H, Section 7 and Section 10.
That should clarify the situation. If you need more information feel free to ask questions and, time permiting I will look up specific case law. I would also suggest contact a legal profesional in your area who is familiar with US Intellectual Property law.
At this point you have proven your lack of knowledge of Copyright law as it pertains to the United States. You have show that you are not aware that in the US it is illegal to facilitate of assit in a crime.
As for your country I can not comment, it may actually be legal in your country to reproduce copyright material and sell it (even if that is not the actual case here). It may be legal for you to sell a leased or rented product that you yoursel do not actually own. It may also turn out that your country does not honor the laws of other countries, I really do not know.
What ever the situation may be, my orginal point was that Blizzard is not restricting sales based on any idea of fair play, but instead as an act to protected their own Intelectual Property. No mater what laws in what country are granting those rights, be it copyright, patent, or license agreement, Blizzard has a right to enforce their right over their property, even if that means revoking accounts of violators.
Hopefully that clears up my original point. If you are not able to see why or how that is, then there is nothing more I could say to help, and I would suggest reviewing US and international Law as it pertains to Copyrights, Licensing, Intelectual Propery and those which partake and assist in criminal activity.
As it happens to turn out in the US it is a crime to not only facilitate a crime, but to witness a crime and not report it. This is what holds Ebay responsible for their own actions.
Actually the way copyrights work, digital or otherwise is that the creater gains and maintains all rights to all works of authorship including computer software. Remeber that the items that are being traded are backed back physical software somewhere. People not familiar with copyrights tend not to realize that copyrights are granted at the time of the authorship and no registration of the copyright is required. The whole point behind the copyright issue and WoW is that Blizzard controls the rights to what can and can not be done with their works, and in there licensing they have expressly stated that no one other than Blizzard is allowed to sell those works out side the means given within the game itself. The DMCA grants this right to them, as does standard copyright law (the DMCA only clarifies how copyrights effect digital media).
Since you are outside of the United States you have to realize this does not put you outside of US law. It does in the fact that Blizzard may not be able to bring litigation against you (Please check with your local law enforcement) but it does not stop them from revoking your rights on there service, or taking legal action against US companies that support illegal activity (In this case it would have been Ebay).
This entire argument was already brought up by Sony a few years ago, and if you look you will notice that no Everquest items are sold on EBay or by any other legitimate source. Just remember that all players of WoW have entered into a contract with Blizzard, a legal and binding contract.
>That typically involve making a new copy of the music. This is a violation of copyright in most cases. You are NOT making a copy of something when you sell something in a game.
Ok I agree, so allow me to use another analogy that will make a more direct correlation. Making music or video publicly available even without copying is considered violations of copyright. If I were to allow you to listen to the mp3s on my pc through a streaming means I would still be breaking the law, more specificaly the DMCA. Regardless of how I distribute it, the data is not mine to distribute or sell, even if there is only a single copy.
>If someone want to pay someone for something they do or don't do is completely up to them and is for the most cases neither illegal nor of anyone elses bussiness.
Based on this statement I would have to conclude that you live in a country where prostitution is legal. Here in the US it is not. This shows that your right to take money from someone is not always legal, when it can be determined that your are receiving it as payment for illegal serivces or products. The fact that most of the sale of online items is done through online auction houses or matching serivces there is an easy trail to track the money as part of an illegal purchase.
>Data is for the most part not "intellectual property".
Hmmm, I guess we can all throw out the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which states specificaly that Digital Media (which some people refere to as Data) is protected by copyright. As a mater of fact it is more stringently protected. But once again I believe that only applies to the United States, which does cover Blizzards data. I am not a lawer but have studied copyright law (not to be confused with patents or trademarks) so I am very certain I am right on this one.
You are correct you do own the CD and the CD Keys but this does not give you the right to create and sell copies of those items. If you read the license agreement you will see that to sell any part of the game you must sell the entire thing, all packaging and documentation, and forgo all your rights in regards to the licensing.
The point here is the same as it is any where, regardless of what you feel is fair, you have agreed to a particual license that control the use and sale of the product and the intelectual property of the company. Please see my other post http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=132616&cid=110 77870 which has direct quotes from the license and terms of use which explain why it is that you can not legaly sell characters, items, any object or information you have gained through playing the game.
Somehow alot of people failed to read this specific line in the Terms of Use. "Therefore, no one has the right to "sell" Blizzard Entertainment's content, except Blizzard Entertainment! So Blizzard Entertainment does not recognize any property claims outside of World of Warcraft or the purported "sale" in the "real world" of anything related to World of Warcraft"
I am not a blizzard representative, and in many cases I fight against intellectual property laws, but in cases like this where people are atempting to profit on another persons works without aquire the appropriate license (one which alows the resale of the work) I have to speak up and inform those making the sales that they are breaking the law.
Your first few lines confuse the transfer of physical property and the transfer of intelectual property. Had Wizards of the Coast licensed their Trading cards in a manor that did not transfer ownership then people would not be able to sell them. The best example of this type of situation applies to leased cars. When you lease a car you do not have the right to sell or transfer ownership of the car because you do not actually own the vehicle. In the case of an MMOG, the player or licensee does not actually own the characters or items, ownership is retained by the creating, or publishing company. See the follwing quotes from select World of Warcraft documentation.
From the Blizzard EULA All title, ownership rights and intellectual property rights in and to the Game and all copies thereof (including, but not limited to, any titles, computer code, themes, objects, characters, character names, stories, dialog, catch phrases, locations, concepts, artwork, character inventories, structural or landscape designs, animations, sounds, musical compositions, audio-visual effects, storylines, character likenesses, methods of operation, moral rights, any related documentation, and "applets" incorporated into the Game) are owned or expressly licensed by [Blizzard Inc.].
From the Terms of Use of The World of War Craft: 7. Selling of Items.
Remember, at the outset of these Terms of Use, where we discussed how you were "licensed" the right to use World of Warcraft, and that your license was "limited"? Well, here is one of the more important areas where these license limitations come into effect. Note that Blizzard Entertainment either owns, or has exclusively licensed, all of the content which appears in World of Warcraft. Therefore, no one has the right to "sell" Blizzard Entertainment's content, except Blizzard Entertainment! So Blizzard Entertainment does not recognize any property claims outside of World of Warcraft or the purported "sale" in the "real world" of anything related to World of Warcraft. Accordingly, you may not sell items for "real" money or trade items for things of value outside of World of Warcraft.
Just trying to make people aware of what they are actually agreeing to when they click the big yes at the end of and EULA.
Blizzard can enforce this in the exact same way the RIAA has enforced the illegal distribution of Copyrighted music, litigation. Through litigation Blizzard, or any company protecting intelectual property, can make the risk of these illegal sales to high for it to be profitabl by big item shops. They may not be able to completely eliminate sales by individuals, but as you would find out with a short search around the net, the majority of in game items are sold by companies (many outside US jurisdiction) set up for the purpose of playing games for profit.
I think alot of people are missing the real point here. Blizzard is not cracking down on item sales because of any sense of fairness. Blizzard, like Sony before them, is looking to protect their intelectual property. Many people have come to accept and agree that sharing of MP3s is an illegal activity and should not be done. The items in WoW, and other MMOGs, are not being given away, they are being sold for profit. I don't know about you, but I would be very upset if I produced a product that people turned around and sold without expressed rights granted by me. I assume no one would find it acceptable to be producing copies of the game, or CD keys, and selling those. Selling in game items is no different, they do not belong to the players, read you EULA.
Allow me to list just a few of the original games that have been released for the PS2 in america and over seas.
Katamari Damacy
Culdcept
Dark Cloud
Robot Alchemic Drive
ICO
Frequency
Chulip
Okami
I think you can get the point from there. And that's not listing the titles that are an original twist on an old idea, such as Disgae.
As for Normal Mapping on a PS2 check ot this link http://ps2dev.org/kb.x?T=1098 which has a doucment all about how to achive normal mapping.
Oh and though I tried I could not find any list of any console games currently out that use Normal Mapping, so if you have a list I would love to see it.
I actually run hot and cold on the idea of memory cards for storage, but so far I have not run into any issues with my memory cards and have never had one fail. I can't say the same for hard drives, but I have had a few more of those in my life.
No conflict for me. MS Hardware, as you put it, seems to be moderate at best. And worse than the quality of their products is their complete lack of originality. I mean the PS2, like it or hate it, is a peice of creative genius. Wether you think the final out come of the PS2 is good or not you have to admit the concept of high through put no caching, in conjunction with multiple general purpose vector (matrix actually) processors is way above and beyond anything being done by MS. But if the rumors hold true and MS does move the XBox 2 over to a PowerPC architecture, they are atleast taking steps in the right directions.
As an Experienced Software Engineer with no degree what so ever, I have to agree with the statment "Experience is key." More than experience you should have personality, preseverance and a drive to continue learn. I am at a point now where I have alot of say in what developers are higher. A degree of any kind is a good way to keep from getting you Resume throw out of the running, but very few companies care what school it was from.
By your logic, Slashdot readers would be on the side of any and all underdogs, and they're not. Indeed, the Slashdot crowd almost wets themselves over Microsoft's Xbox console...
Assuming "wetting oneself" is a good thing in this context...
Did you really just make a point and refute it in the same sentence? I mean Slashdoters supporting the X-Box is supporting the underdog after all (4th in overall sales of consoles world wide, 3rd on a good day)
Personally poker is my side job. With good analytical skills you can do pretty will in low and moderate stakes poker. I'm no pro, so I don't expect to sit at the final table at the WSOP but it does bring in a little extra if you are patient and don't try and play in games above your skill level (which I am prone to do)
Slashdot Mirror
I have thought about this for a long while and made the personal decision to not buy second hand software, especially games. Software developers/publishers/distrubuters receive no monetary compensation for resold items. Games have a typical life span of a few months (MMOS are an obvious exception) and even then only a few weeks for the average user. This would mean that a game could easily be used by 10 or more users with the original producers receiving payment for only one copy. If software (games) had the price tag that somthing like a car has then this would probably be an acceptable practice, but in general they are fairly cheap (the hourly cost is only fractions of a movie).
That being said I think that the law is probably on the side of the second hand purchaser in this case, and most software license transfers. To bad MMO producers haven't yet figured out that they should give away the software and up the charge on use, there by removing the whole need for transfer of license entirely.
Oh, and people, please learn that purchasing anything from an online reseller of used items, like Ebay, is a risky deal. When a service does not provide a warranty there is probably a good reason for it.
I didn't notice in in the message if the original poster every tried to request or purchase a new Key from Blizzard. I am pretty sure that for a fee Blizzard would be happy to sell someone a new key. I would believe that, regardless of EULA, the buisness model in place here is one that charges the end user not only a monthly fee but also a set up fee, which is disguised as the cost for purchasing the game. This may very well be a violation of the EULA, but I can't really comment on that.
That is a very interesting question, and if I had mod points I'd mod it that way. I would assume this would fall under the same laws that would cover a machine capable of creating a copy of it's self. I think this could potential be a patent violation, unless the crossbreeding actually produces a derivative work with enough difference from the original (not sure what the percent is off hand).
The Question I have to ask is, would we ask the same thing of a Machine capable of creating other patented works that has a bug causing it to do so with out the owner actually directing the machine to do so? Who then has the legal right to the newley created machines
show me the ape which has conquered the planet, which has tamed the forces of nature, which thinks
I'll do you one better.
Show me the ape that can create a new form of life (of his own design, not coincidental evolution) and I may consider him mankinds equal.
You do not collect patent related royalties for the activities of things you have created. You collect royalties from a patent if someone else violates your patent by creating that thing you have patented (or using that process. etc).
Now we could go on to talk about license agreements and the buyer of such products. Assuming the patentee is smart and makes sure any purchaser of his product (the ultimate goal of any patent) agrees to an EULA that states the purchaser is unable to use the creation for monitary gain without paying significant royalties, then you could certainly see the patent holder collecting royalties for thier creations actions. Other wise it would probably be like the purchase of a work truck, what you do with it is up to you and you can make monetary gain from it.
Honestly I'm not going to debate the moralities issues, becasue once man starts creating sentient life morality has to change, being as most (I did not say all) morality is based on regious belief and religion is mostly based around some form of creator god(s), which would be usurped by the fact that humans would now be the creators, and no one one question what a god does with it's creations. Therefor a scientificaly created creature is really know different that any other creation except that it is biological.
Go figure that the first truely patentable concept to come up, in the news, in a long time has been deined by the US patent office. Mind you a general patent on the idea of creating geneticaly cross breed creatures may be a bit broad for a patent, but hopefully this does not stop specific creations from being pantented.
Patents should be about things that can actually be done at the time they are patented. So the first person who creates Dog-Man should be able to patent Dog-Man.
On the other hand, if this means the patent office is actually reviewing patents, and rejecting overly broad patents based on concepts mostly fictitious I'm all for it.
The PS3 should not have nearly the problems that the PS2 had in regards to it's difficulty of development (a.k.a. Lazy developers). Because Cell is a joint project by IBM, Toshiba and Sony it will have a much larger install base. Rather than being a specialized chip for a specialized system, it is to be a general chip useable in many systems. These means more people will be programing for it, not just game developers which are notorious for there lack of desire to change (hence why the 68000, 6502 and z80 were so popular for so long). Cell chips should end up making it into systems designed for scientific computing, where developers (a.k.a. computer scientists) will be willing to take more chances and dig deeper into the architecture.
We will see some of the typical ramp up time in cell programs but being as the cell, if you beleive what you read, is so far above and beyond other modern processors (and that lazy developers for the PS3 can always let the NVIDIA GPU carry the load in a more traditional fashion) we should see leaps and bounds in program performance fairly quickly.
It is still a fair comparison for a couple reasons.
1) There is not a 266% price difference between SO-DIMMS and standard.
2) I was only complaining about the drop in price. Since Mac Mini memory dropped 30% then so should PowerBook memory, since the price of memory did not drop just the mark up.
This is a huge slap in the face to future buyers of other mac products, particularly PowerBooks. I have been looking to upgrade my PowerBook for a little while, but when they are charge powerbook buyers more than twice that as mac mini buyers for essencially the same upgrades I just get alittle pissed off.
256k to 512k upgrade (both DDR333 SDRAM on single stick):
- Mac Mini: $75
- Power Book: $200
40 to 80 gig hard drive:
- Mac Mini: $50
60 to 80 gig hard drive:
- Power Book: $125
Being a Mac owner for a while now, I will just say they better do something for their higher end buyers or they may loose out on that market.
I am so sick of people in this world, particularly the United States, expecting and wanting the Government to be the supervision for thier children. At the rate we are going it would probably just be easier to have a goverment agency set up to raise children, and then just let humans be baby making machines and have no responsibility, that is after all what people obviously want.
Parents today, most of them, don't deserve to be parents in my opinion. Arguments like, we can't watch them 24/7 are complete bullshit. If you don't know what you're kids are doing you are not being much of a parent, especialy if you are the one giving them money to go spend on video games. I don't know about the rest of the population but I certianly wasn't carrying around $50 (enough to by most video games) before I was working for the money myself. Also once you are old enough to work for a living you should be able to buy what ever you want.
If we spent a little more time on educating parents, and parents spent more time teaching their children how to be decent human beings we wouldn't have any of these problems. Not every kid that picks up a mature game goes on to be a bad person, that all depends on how they are raise.
Sorry about the rant, but people really need to start taking responsibility for their own actions, like having children, and giving them money and not watching them...
What? There is something past Red Clearance? Sorry fellow Citizen, you should report to for immediate exterm... Err... corrective training immediately.
You appear to have missed your daily meeting with the Happiness Officer. Sorry fellow Citizen, you should report to for immediate exterm... Err... corrective training immediately.
In Service to the Computer,
Howard-R-EWE (my friends call me "how")
I passed up this entire thread until just now, while metamoderating. This time I decided to actually read it. People should stop getting offended by statements like "let his wife." I mean I personally live in a free country (Sorry if you don't) and people have a right to their opinions. I mean you wouldn't "let" your kids do certain things and no one questions that because you obviously know better. In this case the guy with the CS degree should know better, though probably doesn't if it came from a US school, than his wife. I happen to be married and would never think of letting my wife run as admin or root no mater what the OS. Heck I don't run as admin or root. On top of that if my wife does procced to screw up her machine by doing something I explicitly told her not to do, then she is on her own in regards to getting it working again.
Also I am primarily a Mac user and oddly enough I have never run into something I needed IE for, which is good since IE for mac is a worse POS, though more secure, than IE for windows. If you find yourself going to sites that require IE or ActiveX (which can run in mozilla and firefox if you really want it to) I would suggest setting up a computer specificaly for such activity since it is bound to have virus within a use or two, or a change in browsing habits so you don't go to those sites anymore.
Lastly I don't get how people get viruses, and other malicious code, in the first place. I have been running windows, mac linux and other OS machines for many years (10+ for windows) and have never once even come close to recieving any malicious software.
Allow me to point you in th right direction. Expressing the reasons that US and International Copyrights protect a creator of Intelectual Property from unliscened and unwarranted sales would take many hours without the all parties having extensive knowledge of the many laws and acts involved.
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First look at the US Copyright law:
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/
Then take a look at the American Inventors Protection Act of 1999 and the Intellectual Property and High Technology Technical Amendments Acts of 2001 and 2002:
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/dcom/olia/aipa/i
Both of these site contain alot of technical and legal information. There are many sites devoted to IP both in the US and internationaly:
http://www.wipo.int/ and http://www.aipla.org/ are just a couple.
Once you have a good understanding of Intellectual Property law read over the WoW End User License Agreement and Terms of Use both of which I have quoted else where in this thread: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/eula.html
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.h
Pay Close attention to EULA Section 3 and 13 (which states you agree to the laws of the state of California) and TOU section 2 subsection H, Section 7 and Section 10.
That should clarify the situation. If you need more information feel free to ask questions and, time permiting I will look up specific case law. I would also suggest contact a legal profesional in your area who is familiar with US Intellectual Property law.
At this point you have proven your lack of knowledge of Copyright law as it pertains to the United States. You have show that you are not aware that in the US it is illegal to facilitate of assit in a crime.
As for your country I can not comment, it may actually be legal in your country to reproduce copyright material and sell it (even if that is not the actual case here). It may be legal for you to sell a leased or rented product that you yoursel do not actually own. It may also turn out that your country does not honor the laws of other countries, I really do not know.
What ever the situation may be, my orginal point was that Blizzard is not restricting sales based on any idea of fair play, but instead as an act to protected their own Intelectual Property. No mater what laws in what country are granting those rights, be it copyright, patent, or license agreement, Blizzard has a right to enforce their right over their property, even if that means revoking accounts of violators.
Hopefully that clears up my original point. If you are not able to see why or how that is, then there is nothing more I could say to help, and I would suggest reviewing US and international Law as it pertains to Copyrights, Licensing, Intelectual Propery and those which partake and assist in criminal activity.
As it happens to turn out in the US it is a crime to not only facilitate a crime, but to witness a crime and not report it. This is what holds Ebay responsible for their own actions.
Actually the way copyrights work, digital or otherwise is that the creater gains and maintains all rights to all works of authorship including computer software. Remeber that the items that are being traded are backed back physical software somewhere. People not familiar with copyrights tend not to realize that copyrights are granted at the time of the authorship and no registration of the copyright is required. The whole point behind the copyright issue and WoW is that Blizzard controls the rights to what can and can not be done with their works, and in there licensing they have expressly stated that no one other than Blizzard is allowed to sell those works out side the means given within the game itself. The DMCA grants this right to them, as does standard copyright law (the DMCA only clarifies how copyrights effect digital media).
Since you are outside of the United States you have to realize this does not put you outside of US law. It does in the fact that Blizzard may not be able to bring litigation against you (Please check with your local law enforcement) but it does not stop them from revoking your rights on there service, or taking legal action against US companies that support illegal activity (In this case it would have been Ebay).
This entire argument was already brought up by Sony a few years ago, and if you look you will notice that no Everquest items are sold on EBay or by any other legitimate source. Just remember that all players of WoW have entered into a contract with Blizzard, a legal and binding contract.
>That typically involve making a new copy of the music. This is a violation of copyright in most cases. You are NOT making a copy of something when you sell something in a game.
Ok I agree, so allow me to use another analogy that will make a more direct correlation. Making music or video publicly available even without copying is considered violations of copyright. If I were to allow you to listen to the mp3s on my pc through a streaming means I would still be breaking the law, more specificaly the DMCA. Regardless of how I distribute it, the data is not mine to distribute or sell, even if there is only a single copy.
>If someone want to pay someone for something they do or don't do is completely up to them and is for the most cases neither illegal nor of anyone elses bussiness.
Based on this statement I would have to conclude that you live in a country where prostitution is legal. Here in the US it is not. This shows that your right to take money from someone is not always legal, when it can be determined that your are receiving it as payment for illegal serivces or products. The fact that most of the sale of online items is done through online auction houses or matching serivces there is an easy trail to track the money as part of an illegal purchase.
>Data is for the most part not "intellectual property".
Hmmm, I guess we can all throw out the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which states specificaly that Digital Media (which some people refere to as Data) is protected by copyright. As a mater of fact it is more stringently protected. But once again I believe that only applies to the United States, which does cover Blizzards data. I am not a lawer but have studied copyright law (not to be confused with patents or trademarks) so I am very certain I am right on this one.
You are correct you do own the CD and the CD Keys but this does not give you the right to create and sell copies of those items. If you read the license agreement you will see that to sell any part of the game you must sell the entire thing, all packaging and documentation, and forgo all your rights in regards to the licensing.
0 77870 which has direct quotes from the license and terms of use which explain why it is that you can not legaly sell characters, items, any object or information you have gained through playing the game.
The point here is the same as it is any where, regardless of what you feel is fair, you have agreed to a particual license that control the use and sale of the product and the intelectual property of the company. Please see my other post http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=132616&cid=11
Somehow alot of people failed to read this specific line in the Terms of Use. "Therefore, no one has the right to "sell" Blizzard Entertainment's content, except Blizzard Entertainment! So Blizzard Entertainment does not recognize any property claims outside of World of Warcraft or the purported "sale" in the "real world" of anything related to World of Warcraft"
I am not a blizzard representative, and in many cases I fight against intellectual property laws, but in cases like this where people are atempting to profit on another persons works without aquire the appropriate license (one which alows the resale of the work) I have to speak up and inform those making the sales that they are breaking the law.
Your first few lines confuse the transfer of physical property and the transfer of intelectual property. Had Wizards of the Coast licensed their Trading cards in a manor that did not transfer ownership then people would not be able to sell them. The best example of this type of situation applies to leased cars. When you lease a car you do not have the right to sell or transfer ownership of the car because you do not actually own the vehicle. In the case of an MMOG, the player or licensee does not actually own the characters or items, ownership is retained by the creating, or publishing company. See the follwing quotes from select World of Warcraft documentation.
From the Blizzard EULA
All title, ownership rights and intellectual property rights in and to the Game and all copies thereof (including, but not limited to, any titles, computer code, themes, objects, characters, character names, stories, dialog, catch phrases, locations, concepts, artwork, character inventories, structural or landscape designs, animations, sounds, musical compositions, audio-visual effects, storylines, character likenesses, methods of operation, moral rights, any related documentation, and "applets" incorporated into the Game) are owned or expressly licensed by [Blizzard Inc.].
From the Terms of Use of The World of War Craft:
7. Selling of Items.
Remember, at the outset of these Terms of Use, where we discussed how you were "licensed" the right to use World of Warcraft, and that your license was "limited"? Well, here is one of the more important areas where these license limitations come into effect. Note that Blizzard Entertainment either owns, or has exclusively licensed, all of the content which appears in World of Warcraft. Therefore, no one has the right to "sell" Blizzard Entertainment's content, except Blizzard Entertainment! So Blizzard Entertainment does not recognize any property claims outside of World of Warcraft or the purported "sale" in the "real world" of anything related to World of Warcraft. Accordingly, you may not sell items for "real" money or trade items for things of value outside of World of Warcraft.
Just trying to make people aware of what they are actually agreeing to when they click the big yes at the end of and EULA.
Blizzard can enforce this in the exact same way the RIAA has enforced the illegal distribution of Copyrighted music, litigation. Through litigation Blizzard, or any company protecting intelectual property, can make the risk of these illegal sales to high for it to be profitabl by big item shops. They may not be able to completely eliminate sales by individuals, but as you would find out with a short search around the net, the majority of in game items are sold by companies (many outside US jurisdiction) set up for the purpose of playing games for profit.
I think alot of people are missing the real point here. Blizzard is not cracking down on item sales because of any sense of fairness. Blizzard, like Sony before them, is looking to protect their intelectual property. Many people have come to accept and agree that sharing of MP3s is an illegal activity and should not be done. The items in WoW, and other MMOGs, are not being given away, they are being sold for profit. I don't know about you, but I would be very upset if I produced a product that people turned around and sold without expressed rights granted by me. I assume no one would find it acceptable to be producing copies of the game, or CD keys, and selling those. Selling in game items is no different, they do not belong to the players, read you EULA.
- Katamari Damacy
- Culdcept
- Dark Cloud
- Robot Alchemic Drive
- ICO
- Frequency
- Chulip
- Okami
I think you can get the point from there. And that's not listing the titles that are an original twist on an old idea, such as Disgae.As for Normal Mapping on a PS2 check ot this link http://ps2dev.org/kb.x?T=1098 which has a doucment all about how to achive normal mapping.
Oh and though I tried I could not find any list of any console games currently out that use Normal Mapping, so if you have a list I would love to see it.
I actually run hot and cold on the idea of memory cards for storage, but so far I have not run into any issues with my memory cards and have never had one fail. I can't say the same for hard drives, but I have had a few more of those in my life.
No conflict for me. MS Hardware, as you put it, seems to be moderate at best. And worse than the quality of their products is their complete lack of originality. I mean the PS2, like it or hate it, is a peice of creative genius. Wether you think the final out come of the PS2 is good or not you have to admit the concept of high through put no caching, in conjunction with multiple general purpose vector (matrix actually) processors is way above and beyond anything being done by MS. But if the rumors hold true and MS does move the XBox 2 over to a PowerPC architecture, they are atleast taking steps in the right directions.
As an Experienced Software Engineer with no degree what so ever, I have to agree with the statment "Experience is key." More than experience you should have personality, preseverance and a drive to continue learn. I am at a point now where I have alot of say in what developers are higher. A degree of any kind is a good way to keep from getting you Resume throw out of the running, but very few companies care what school it was from.
Personally poker is my side job. With good analytical skills you can do pretty will in low and moderate stakes poker. I'm no pro, so I don't expect to sit at the final table at the WSOP but it does bring in a little extra if you are patient and don't try and play in games above your skill level (which I am prone to do)