I'm pretty sure the WoW EULA and TOS would preempt any attempts to validate the real world value of ingame items, since the players basically agree that the items belong to Blizzard (and are therefore nonsalable by them), just by playing the game.
Do people really run sweatshops on this sort of model? Somehow seems incredible to me that people would actually do this.
In defense of the grandparent, there are many games built with flaws that make it impossible to play unless you get an artificial boost of some sort. I don't know why you would want to play a game like that, and I think Blizzard is trying to assert that their game is well designed and supported enough that you'll never need to buy items off ebay to enjoy playing WoW.
I would refute your post, but honestly I have no idea what you are saying. What do Big Macs have to do with the values of freedom and democracy?
When I think about where I want to have lunch, I don't go through all the restaurants looking for one that represents the most prestigious culture. I don't drive by McDonalds and think, "ah, McDonalds, you sell overpriced crappy food that clogs my arteries, but your American ideals are just so pure. I must have a Big Mac! Now!"
Usually, my thoughts are more along the lines of, "There's nothing in this town but a McDonald's. Fuck."
In the olden days, people would pay artists room and board (and sometimes much more) out of their own pockets to work on creative stuff. This was called patronage, and it's how Shakespeare survived to write all those plays. Just saying, there are more ways to reward artists than the current system.
Your assumption is that the "public domain" will be better stewards than the original artists.
Speaking as an artist, I can say that this is very often the case. For example, I write plays. For a while I tried hiring actors and directing them myself, but it was just too damn much for me. I would rather be writing something else than trying to make the play into a physical rendition which is so important to the play's success. Now I give my plays over to a dedicated volunteer group who hire the actors, teach their lines, get a venue, etc. My work is not copyright-managed in any way. I don't ask for royalties, and I get paid scratch - usually a donation from the volunteers - but the plays are a big success.
Strangers walk up to me on opening night and pretend to know me. I now have clout that I didn't have when I was directing plays on my own. I have a reputation, all because my plays are run by people who are really invested in performing them. My plays are, in essence, community-supported works of art.
So why have I given my work away for next to nothing, you may ask? Because in a marketplace for talent, having had successful runs of your show is more important than having made money from them personally. Would I want a bigger cut of the profits if my play were being performed on Broadway? Hell yes I would, although I might not get it. I would worry about it more if I wasn't sure that I can continue to make products of that calibur and better for years to come. I already sold the work once for what I thought it was worth - professional credibility.
And even if no big theater puts on my play, there is still the chance that someday, those same volunteers who did it the first time will find my script (they're already keeping an archive) and remember how great they thought it was, and decide to pass it on to others or even perform it again. That's how literature becomes immortal, if not commercially successful.
But forget money for a second and think about Free software. Suppose it were no longer against the law to copy people's creative work however you wanted. Why, you could download a bunch of source code and put your own name on it. Wow, the AC Compiler. AC Linux. AC UNIX. AC Office.Org. And so on.
What would the authors of those packages do? They'd quit writing Free software, that's what. Would *you* write something for someone else to claim? I wouldn't.
Okay, internet story time. I once was in an internet community for writers. I put my stories on a web site. I also posted them to a message board that kept an archive - all free of charge for all to read. Why did I do this? Because at the time I didn't think I had the clout to get published (I didn't), nor the patience to deal with it all. I just put everything I made out in the hopes that someone would enjoy it.
One day I get an email from someone I've never met, telling me that someone on another board has posted an exact copy of one of my short works, with names changed to protect the..uh..copier. Now here's where it get tricky. Though I did send the copier a letter telling them they'd been caught, this piece of piracy ended up being a good thing. It told me, 1) that my work was good enough to merit copying, and 2) my work was widely read enough for someone to notice. As long as those particular thresholds were broken, it was pointless to copy my work, since everyone would recognize it as mine. That means more credibility and popularity for me and less for my doppelganger. At this point it would be more dangerous to me if someone published something of theirs under my name.
My point is, why would developers of open source software withdraw from their creations when anyone can see through blind source copying? It only gives the original author more credibility to have others steal their code. As long as we're not talking money, the pirate always loses and the legitimate developer always wins.
At least you can't make money sharing files on P2P. You could make a lot of money copying books with the copy machine or tapes with the VCR. Around college towns a lot of copy shops hook up with professors to offer "low cost" copies of textbooks. People sell bootleg VCRs all the time at computer flea markets and the like. Even though they take place on a smaller scale, aren't these crimes ostensibly (read: legally) worse than those of the filesharer, who gives the licensed work away for free?
I remember the day when we would argue that journalism has an inherent responsibility to the public discourse. This is the reason we need objectivity - the press has so much power that to be otherwise would be an abuse of the press' position. It's an old-fashioned position to take, but a good one.
This is the difference, to me. When I read something totally offensive in a blog, something damaging to the subject, something so opinionated as to be fictional, I think, fine. That's your opinion and you're entitled to it. But the newspaper represents me, my friends, my family, my neighbors, my city. I have a right to tell the newspaper if they print libel, fiction, or hate speech as news. They also have a duty to listen to me. At least, in theory they do.
Your blog can be impeccably credible, but it doesn't represent anyone but you. Therefore, applying the word "journalism" is a bit of a stretch.
At most accredited universities, you're required to take English department classes as well as everything else required to fulfill their degree plan. In high school, English classes are inescapable.
My objection was to the idea that students are being taught that literacy isn't important, when there is an entire required field that teaches it is. I do agree that having teachers in other fields who can't write and don't care totally sucks, but I can't reasonably agree that this constitutes an absence of literacy teaching on the whole.
From this year's election exit poll results, there were suggestions that conservative-leaning people may be far less likely to share their votes with exit pollsters than liberal-leaning people.
I'd just like to point out that this argument has been made on both sides of the political court. Supposedly left-leaners are also far less likely to share their votes than right-leaners. It all depends on who you ask.
There's a reason we have an entire "English" department to teach kids to read and write. It's too bad so few students use that resource or take it seriously.
I have a hard science friend who can't even read a clearly worded sentence. We'll get into long, angry arguments over something I wrote before either of us notices that he just didn't read the original message well enough to understand. It sucks.
They actually had these at Wendy's a couple of years ago. Don't remember what the toys were exactly, but I think it was an ad campaign for Super Mario World Advance.
Replace all reference to video games with the word "parents."
The U.S. Army now uses parents as recruiting tools because the parents capture the interest of teens, shape their attitudes and influence their behavior. Evidence grows that parents teach skills and affect behavior. The important thing to remember, therefore, is that parents are powerful-for good and for bad.
Parents are natural teachers. Children find them highly motivating; by virtue of their interactive nature, children are actively engaged with them; they provide repeated practice; and they include rewards for skillful play. These facts make it likely that parents could have large effects, some of which are intended by the parents, and some of which may not be intended.
Given the potential parents have to influence, we should pay attention to the fact that children are spending increasing amounts of time with them at younger and younger ages.
I have a better library anecdote for you. For a long time I borrowed books from my University library. They have an online renewal system, so I could just go online and say, "hey, I renew my books." I would keep several books out at a time (especially around paper-writing season), renew them online, and return them around the end of the semester.
One day, I checked my mail and found a hundred and fifty dollar fine for late books. There were three titles listed, and one had a title I didn't even recognize. There is a lot of identity theft going around at my campus, and I was sure I hadn't lent the card to anyone, doubly sure that I had not checked out that book. I went to the library to investigate, and they said:
1) They could not tell me which of these books generated the bulk of the fines. Those records are continually purged from the system after fees are calculated. (They could, however, tell me that all 3 books were now back on the shelves.)
2) I could not prove that I did not check out the book. My card and the computer said I had, and apparently those systems are held in higher confidence than my word, which I can understand. Since they had no way of determining whether the checkout was fraudulent and no way of calculating how much of the fine was due to this fraudulent checkout, I was responsible for 100% of the total fines.
3) They could not even confirm for me whether my online renewals actually worked. I can't remember if this was "confidential information," or if the data was just missing. This is pretty darn important because if they lead me to believe that the books were not accruing fines, I could not reasonably be expected to pay those fines.
Imagine if there were a centralized national I.D. system. Could they reasonably be expected to keep a permanent record of every bit of data that ever ran through the system, time-, date-, and location-stamped for verification? Probably not. They would probably purge unnecessary information from the system, leaving the pertinent results of the data behind to be acted on. More frighteningly, how would they manage permissions to that data if they did manage to keep that many records? Could we reasonably expect to be able to review our own records? What mechanisms would have to be enacted to prevent fraud? With my library fine, it came down to my word vs. my card's, with bias toward whichever would net the library the most money. This situation is something I think we'd all like to avoid as nearly as possible.
Actually, the readers voted to change the policy. As I recall, Nintendo wanted to advertise Wind Waker on the site, but they wanted something animated. So Tycho posted a review of the "minimal advertising" policy and they started a poll to see what the readers thought, and the general opinion was, "if it'll get Nintendo advertising here, we're for it."
Court documents indicate that Mr. Holley has long acted erratically, especially as he came to blame the archeologist for the breakdown of his marriage.
Ummm....as long as we're talking about libel, why is this paper reporting on the man's personal life? It looks to me like this is a malicious attempt to make the defendant seem mentally unstable and to devalue his free speech rights by justification of his (vaguely reported) "erratic" behavior. Newspapers aren't supposed to do this, guys.
Notice that there seems to have been no investigation into the man's claims...it's just assumed that he made them up (since, of course, he's mentally unstable.) So the question becomes one of "how can we set a precedent to punish this guy?", not "Are these allegations true or false?" That may not be the way the court heard the case, but that's certainly the way this paper is reporting it.
Personally, I'd sue the pants off the newspaper for libeling me. In fact, since they put this article online I should sue them twice!. Ohhh...except the newspaper has a big fat wad of money and probably a lawyer on staff. It's so much easier when the defendant can't spell and owns so little property that one lawsuit is going to bankrupt him.
The kicker, though, is that when this "carreer-damaging" email actually made it to someone who gave a damn (namely the plaintiff's boss), it was completely ineffective. The boss assumed, as it was natural to assume given that the source had a history of erratic behavior, that the email was a lie. He then encouraged the lawsuit just to make sure that no one else accidentally believed it. This means that at no point did the offending message convince anyone of import that the plaintiff really was a grave robber.
Still, even ineffective libel is libel. Libel just means saying something intended to harm - it doesn't actually have to harm anyone. We should punish all cases of this behavior with equal force of the law. But I've got a few targets we should go after first. News Corporation, for a start. Both political parties in this past U.S. election. SCO would be a good target too, as would Microsoft. These companies libel each other, and whoever else stands in their way, without any legal repercussions. Maybe we should go after them first, instead of that guy with the mean chain letter.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm pretty sure the WoW EULA and TOS would preempt any attempts to validate the real world value of ingame items, since the players basically agree that the items belong to Blizzard (and are therefore nonsalable by them), just by playing the game.
Do people really run sweatshops on this sort of model? Somehow seems incredible to me that people would actually do this.
In defense of the grandparent, there are many games built with flaws that make it impossible to play unless you get an artificial boost of some sort. I don't know why you would want to play a game like that, and I think Blizzard is trying to assert that their game is well designed and supported enough that you'll never need to buy items off ebay to enjoy playing WoW.
I would refute your post, but honestly I have no idea what you are saying. What do Big Macs have to do with the values of freedom and democracy?
When I think about where I want to have lunch, I don't go through all the restaurants looking for one that represents the most prestigious culture. I don't drive by McDonalds and think, "ah, McDonalds, you sell overpriced crappy food that clogs my arteries, but your American ideals are just so pure. I must have a Big Mac! Now!"
Usually, my thoughts are more along the lines of, "There's nothing in this town but a McDonald's. Fuck."
In the olden days, people would pay artists room and board (and sometimes much more) out of their own pockets to work on creative stuff. This was called patronage, and it's how Shakespeare survived to write all those plays. Just saying, there are more ways to reward artists than the current system.
Your assumption is that the "public domain" will be better stewards than the original artists.
Speaking as an artist, I can say that this is very often the case. For example, I write plays. For a while I tried hiring actors and directing them myself, but it was just too damn much for me. I would rather be writing something else than trying to make the play into a physical rendition which is so important to the play's success. Now I give my plays over to a dedicated volunteer group who hire the actors, teach their lines, get a venue, etc. My work is not copyright-managed in any way. I don't ask for royalties, and I get paid scratch - usually a donation from the volunteers - but the plays are a big success.
Strangers walk up to me on opening night and pretend to know me. I now have clout that I didn't have when I was directing plays on my own. I have a reputation, all because my plays are run by people who are really invested in performing them. My plays are, in essence, community-supported works of art.
So why have I given my work away for next to nothing, you may ask? Because in a marketplace for talent, having had successful runs of your show is more important than having made money from them personally. Would I want a bigger cut of the profits if my play were being performed on Broadway? Hell yes I would, although I might not get it. I would worry about it more if I wasn't sure that I can continue to make products of that calibur and better for years to come. I already sold the work once for what I thought it was worth - professional credibility.
And even if no big theater puts on my play, there is still the chance that someday, those same volunteers who did it the first time will find my script (they're already keeping an archive) and remember how great they thought it was, and decide to pass it on to others or even perform it again. That's how literature becomes immortal, if not commercially successful.
Well, that should cover the losses then. Problem solved!
But forget money for a second and think about Free software. Suppose it were no longer against the law to copy people's creative work however you wanted. Why, you could download a bunch of source code and put your own name on it. Wow, the AC Compiler. AC Linux. AC UNIX. AC Office.Org. And so on.
What would the authors of those packages do? They'd quit writing Free software, that's what. Would *you* write something for someone else to claim? I wouldn't.
Okay, internet story time. I once was in an internet community for writers. I put my stories on a web site. I also posted them to a message board that kept an archive - all free of charge for all to read. Why did I do this? Because at the time I didn't think I had the clout to get published (I didn't), nor the patience to deal with it all. I just put everything I made out in the hopes that someone would enjoy it.
One day I get an email from someone I've never met, telling me that someone on another board has posted an exact copy of one of my short works, with names changed to protect the..uh..copier. Now here's where it get tricky. Though I did send the copier a letter telling them they'd been caught, this piece of piracy ended up being a good thing. It told me, 1) that my work was good enough to merit copying, and 2) my work was widely read enough for someone to notice. As long as those particular thresholds were broken, it was pointless to copy my work, since everyone would recognize it as mine. That means more credibility and popularity for me and less for my doppelganger. At this point it would be more dangerous to me if someone published something of theirs under my name.
My point is, why would developers of open source software withdraw from their creations when anyone can see through blind source copying? It only gives the original author more credibility to have others steal their code. As long as we're not talking money, the pirate always loses and the legitimate developer always wins.
At least you can't make money sharing files on P2P. You could make a lot of money copying books with the copy machine or tapes with the VCR. Around college towns a lot of copy shops hook up with professors to offer "low cost" copies of textbooks. People sell bootleg VCRs all the time at computer flea markets and the like. Even though they take place on a smaller scale, aren't these crimes ostensibly (read: legally) worse than those of the filesharer, who gives the licensed work away for free?
I remember the day when we would argue that journalism has an inherent responsibility to the public discourse. This is the reason we need objectivity - the press has so much power that to be otherwise would be an abuse of the press' position. It's an old-fashioned position to take, but a good one.
This is the difference, to me. When I read something totally offensive in a blog, something damaging to the subject, something so opinionated as to be fictional, I think, fine. That's your opinion and you're entitled to it. But the newspaper represents me, my friends, my family, my neighbors, my city. I have a right to tell the newspaper if they print libel, fiction, or hate speech as news. They also have a duty to listen to me. At least, in theory they do.
Your blog can be impeccably credible, but it doesn't represent anyone but you. Therefore, applying the word "journalism" is a bit of a stretch.
At most accredited universities, you're required to take English department classes as well as everything else required to fulfill their degree plan. In high school, English classes are inescapable.
My objection was to the idea that students are being taught that literacy isn't important, when there is an entire required field that teaches it is. I do agree that having teachers in other fields who can't write and don't care totally sucks, but I can't reasonably agree that this constitutes an absence of literacy teaching on the whole.
From this year's election exit poll results, there were suggestions that conservative-leaning people may be far less likely to share their votes with exit pollsters than liberal-leaning people.
I'd just like to point out that this argument has been made on both sides of the political court. Supposedly left-leaners are also far less likely to share their votes than right-leaners. It all depends on who you ask.
I can mute all comments that use the term "slippery slope" and it's variants.
My grammar am perfection.
Etymology is the study of word origins. Entomology is the study of insects. I don't think saying Mass in Latin will teach you either.
There's a reason we have an entire "English" department to teach kids to read and write. It's too bad so few students use that resource or take it seriously.
I have a hard science friend who can't even read a clearly worded sentence. We'll get into long, angry arguments over something I wrote before either of us notices that he just didn't read the original message well enough to understand. It sucks.
The McSuper McMario Happy Meal!
They actually had these at Wendy's a couple of years ago. Don't remember what the toys were exactly, but I think it was an ad campaign for Super Mario World Advance.
What if this turns out like "sex education" in the U.S.?
"Now, little Jimmy, remember: the best way to avoid seeing gay horse porn is to never use the internet. Not until you're married."
Replace all reference to video games with the word "parents."
The U.S. Army now uses parents as recruiting tools because the parents capture the interest of teens, shape their attitudes and influence their behavior. Evidence grows that parents teach skills and affect behavior. The important thing to remember, therefore, is that parents are powerful-for good and for bad.
Parents are natural teachers. Children find them highly motivating; by virtue of their interactive nature, children are actively engaged with them; they provide repeated practice; and they include rewards for skillful play. These facts make it likely that parents could have large effects, some of which are intended by the parents, and some of which may not be intended.
Given the potential parents have to influence, we should pay attention to the fact that children are spending increasing amounts of time with them at younger and younger ages.
I feel a new prohibition movement coming on!
Video games are art. When you can answer the question,
"Does art imitate life, or life imitate art?"
you'll have the answer, as well as you can.
I have a better library anecdote for you. For a long time I borrowed books from my University library. They have an online renewal system, so I could just go online and say, "hey, I renew my books." I would keep several books out at a time (especially around paper-writing season), renew them online, and return them around the end of the semester.
One day, I checked my mail and found a hundred and fifty dollar fine for late books. There were three titles listed, and one had a title I didn't even recognize. There is a lot of identity theft going around at my campus, and I was sure I hadn't lent the card to anyone, doubly sure that I had not checked out that book. I went to the library to investigate, and they said:
1) They could not tell me which of these books generated the bulk of the fines. Those records are continually purged from the system after fees are calculated. (They could, however, tell me that all 3 books were now back on the shelves.)
2) I could not prove that I did not check out the book. My card and the computer said I had, and apparently those systems are held in higher confidence than my word, which I can understand. Since they had no way of determining whether the checkout was fraudulent and no way of calculating how much of the fine was due to this fraudulent checkout, I was responsible for 100% of the total fines.
3) They could not even confirm for me whether my online renewals actually worked. I can't remember if this was "confidential information," or if the data was just missing. This is pretty darn important because if they lead me to believe that the books were not accruing fines, I could not reasonably be expected to pay those fines.
Imagine if there were a centralized national I.D. system. Could they reasonably be expected to keep a permanent record of every bit of data that ever ran through the system, time-, date-, and location-stamped for verification? Probably not. They would probably purge unnecessary information from the system, leaving the pertinent results of the data behind to be acted on. More frighteningly, how would they manage permissions to that data if they did manage to keep that many records? Could we reasonably expect to be able to review our own records? What mechanisms would have to be enacted to prevent fraud? With my library fine, it came down to my word vs. my card's, with bias toward whichever would net the library the most money. This situation is something I think we'd all like to avoid as nearly as possible.
most of the users are just teenagers getting music and have little money to begin with,
That explains why teenagers 14-25 are the most sought-after advertising demographic, I presume?
Actually, the readers voted to change the policy. As I recall, Nintendo wanted to advertise Wind Waker on the site, but they wanted something animated. So Tycho posted a review of the "minimal advertising" policy and they started a poll to see what the readers thought, and the general opinion was, "if it'll get Nintendo advertising here, we're for it."
Um.....
Innovation = something somehow "different", new.
Actually, Libel technically would have to be targeted against a single person. Defamation of a group of people is considered "hate speech."
IANAL, but I think you could libel a specific corporation, too.
Court documents indicate that Mr. Holley has long acted erratically, especially as he came to blame the archeologist for the breakdown of his marriage.
Ummm....as long as we're talking about libel, why is this paper reporting on the man's personal life? It looks to me like this is a malicious attempt to make the defendant seem mentally unstable and to devalue his free speech rights by justification of his (vaguely reported) "erratic" behavior. Newspapers aren't supposed to do this, guys.
Notice that there seems to have been no investigation into the man's claims...it's just assumed that he made them up (since, of course, he's mentally unstable.) So the question becomes one of "how can we set a precedent to punish this guy?", not "Are these allegations true or false?" That may not be the way the court heard the case, but that's certainly the way this paper is reporting it.
Personally, I'd sue the pants off the newspaper for libeling me. In fact, since they put this article online I should sue them twice!. Ohhh...except the newspaper has a big fat wad of money and probably a lawyer on staff. It's so much easier when the defendant can't spell and owns so little property that one lawsuit is going to bankrupt him.
The kicker, though, is that when this "carreer-damaging" email actually made it to someone who gave a damn (namely the plaintiff's boss), it was completely ineffective. The boss assumed, as it was natural to assume given that the source had a history of erratic behavior, that the email was a lie. He then encouraged the lawsuit just to make sure that no one else accidentally believed it. This means that at no point did the offending message convince anyone of import that the plaintiff really was a grave robber.
Still, even ineffective libel is libel. Libel just means saying something intended to harm - it doesn't actually have to harm anyone. We should punish all cases of this behavior with equal force of the law. But I've got a few targets we should go after first. News Corporation, for a start. Both political parties in this past U.S. election. SCO would be a good target too, as would Microsoft. These companies libel each other, and whoever else stands in their way, without any legal repercussions. Maybe we should go after them first, instead of that guy with the mean chain letter.