The European Commission released their full position now on the Stop Destroying Videogames initiative, and it's not the response many will have been hoping for.
That is a huge part of the IP issue. Even Value has tried to argue that Steam is a subscription service and that you don’t own Steam games but rather licenses to games on Steam. And it was for the exact reason you mentioned: a user was banned from Steam but wanted access to the hundreds of games he purchased.
That is the practical side of the problem. The logical side of the problem is the erosion problem. For example, SWTOR was planning on being retired and eventually offlined when the new SW title releases (thereby replacing it). Under SKG, the new title would effectively be forced to compete with the old despite the fact that the IP holder doesn’t want that. They would have limited power over how their IP is being used. A group could take SWTOR, add content, and have people donate/pay for it despite the IP holder not wanting their IP used that way. The IP would in essence be fighting the IP. That is erosion. You have the rights but those rights become more limited.
Honestly, most people here are commenting with their feelings (not you, just in general) and anything that isn’t fanatical level support for SKW is instantly attacked with absurd ideas how things “should work”. There is legitimate reasons to support SKW and there is legitimate worries to how SKW is handling things.
Even Value has tried to argue that Steam is a subscription service and that you don’t own Steam games but rather licenses to games on Steam.
If you open a printed, physical book, you’ll likely see something like this printed on the first page: “copyright [author name], all rights reserved”. If the book was printed in the last year, it might also include language explicitly forbidding AI training and other forms of data mining.
If you look at the back of the packaging of physical movie releases (so for example a DVD or Bluray case) you’ll find find something like “this movie has only been licensed for personal used. Public exhibition is not permitted”
Because media has always been licenced. The question therefore is less about license vs ownership and instead about what makes a fair license. SKG argues, that the licensing as it currently exists is deeply unfair. Unfair enough that it possibly already violates EU law. That’s what the lawsuit in France is about.
A group could take SWTOR, add content, and have people donate/pay for it despite the IP holder not wanting their IP used that way.
Not really. The game has, as you yourself noted, been licensed to you. The granted rights don’t include commercial activity. Publishers could even put the videogame equivalent of the language from the movie cases into their licenses to spell that out.
Disregarding license/ownership and asking if that license is fair use. That is one thing I really do agree with. As I mentioned, some things with SKG make sense, others not so much. MMOs is where the community breaks down on that, though. In no world would fair use licensing include handing over server code to the public at a product’s end of life. A publisher could if they chose to, but realistically that isn’t something that would happen and legally shouldn’t/wouldn’t be something a law would written to enforce. For something like a singleplayer game requiring online checks that’s different though. Its the scope of SKG and blanket opinion without real thought that I think is the main issue.
For MMOs, the question of fair use is interesting. When Blizzard shut down TurtleWoW they cited copyright infringement of their game assets. That includes game art. So one interesting question there (regarding the scope) what is fair use of the game assets? If I’m licensing those assets, under what constraints can I use them? Can I use to them to market my private server? Can I use them standalone outside the game or in a different project? I would think its obvious that you can’t just use them however you see fit, but I’m seen users here basically say they believe they own them outright which just isn’t true.
It’s not really about fair use because European law doesn’t really have that as a concept. I’m talking about contract law, since licenses are contracts. Now, I’m not a lawyer and shit gets complicated real fast but basically EU law states that contracts need to be fair. Unfair clauses are invalid (again really simplifying here). SKG argues that this is the case for games.
If you don’t want to engage with anything that disproves your stance, like new legislation that the civil rights movement fought for, then sure. If the “erosion of IP” is the continued availability of something that people already paid for, and the consequences of that are that now the producer is going to have a hard time selling its successor, then I think that’s absolutely the obvious thing that 1.3M people signed a petition to have changed rather than relying on existing laws that clearly aren’t serving the consumer. We’ll see what parliament comes up with in the Digital Fairness Act and how California’s efforts go.
Cool story, but no you just argue with your feelings instead of actual facts or do any research. If you did, I would consider it, but since you haven’t what is the point? Even now, “we’ll see what parliament comes up with”. What does Parliament require for revisiting existing laws? You didn’t even look that up did you?
Parliament doesn’t just change existing laws. That requires a new commission proposal to start a binding revision so they know what should be changed if anything. You can’t just get turned down by a commission and go to parliament. You’ll just get sent back to a commission.
See? What is there for me to explain when you can’t even be bothered to research how EU laws work? You just comment with your feelings which no one (least of all the EU Parliament) cares about.
You didn’t even research the legislative changes for women’s suffrage or civil rights, which you probably ought to have been taught in elementary school if you couldn’t be bothered to go to Wikipedia. Actual members of European parliament seem to be confident in what they’re able to achieve without a win on this citizen’s initiative, going from today’s press conference, and I trust that they have a better idea of it than you do.
Under SKG, the new title would effectively be forced to compete with the old despite the fact that the IP holder doesn’t want that.
chad_yes.jpg
Publishers shouldn’t be able to erase existing games consumers have purchased so that new games don’t have to compete with them. That’s the equivalent of Disney confiscating all DVDs of the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy and destroying them so that the new MCU movies don’t have to compete.
If their new products aren’t good enough to compete with the old, tough shit. Not an excuse to confiscate and destroy what consumers already paid for.
So, that’s the thing: what did you pay for? I’m speaking specifically for SWTOR as that’s a good case to work from. When you bought it, did you buy the servers and infrastructure behind it or did you buy just access to that service or did you buy a standalone product?
They aren’t taking your discs. You bought that, right? They are turning off a computer they have on their end. That’s their property, right? If they don’t have a right to take your property, do you have a right to take theirs?
Then you get into private servers. Do you have the right to their software that they didn’t sell to you?
That’s the funny thing about this. If you have the right to take something from them you didn’t pay for, do they get the right to take something from you that you did pay for.
Do you understand the difference between the law as it currently is and wanting to change the law to be something else? Because you’re arguing that the law is what it is and everyone else is arguing that the laws should be changed because what currently is is fucking ass.
Currently we don’t access to whatever infra software companies run to keep the games working. One of the possible solutions to what SKG wants is that when you buy the game you also essentially get the server software as well so that if the company decides to pull the plug you just go “cool. I’ll get my own hardware and run it myself”.
And would you defend the same shit when it came to physical goods? Let’s say a car came with a software solution that makes the car ring home to make sure you’re allowed to turn your car on. Your argument in essence is that this is fine because you own the car and the fact that you can’t turn on the car once the car manufacturer shuts down their service is completely fine. Would you be happy with a car that the manufacturer can permanently disable whenever they want? This goes back your previous IP argument as well. The old car model is competing with the new car model so to keep your arguments consistent you should be in favor of having your car be permanently disabled because a new model came out.
In case you want an actual example of something similar, do you think the people who got outraged by BMW introducing a subscription service for heated seats were stupid? After all there are no laws that prevent BMW from doing this so people should just suck it up. Or are you’re going to argue people should push back if they think it’s a stupid idea. In that case what the fuck do you think we’re doing right now?
You currently don’t have access to infrastructure software because you didn’t buy that. You bought a game that uses it.
Given your BMW mention, if you buy a car, do you own the road it operates on? No.
Well, maybe that’s separate right? BMW doesn’t own that road, so what about the factory it was made? Do you own that? No.
I do online banking. I own that too. If they shut down for some reason, I should have access to their codebase? No.
I have an Amazon account. Do I own AWS infrastructure code? I mean I paid for that, right? No.
It’s not that laws can’t be changed, nobody made that argument.
It’s about feasibility. Is it feasible for me and justified for me to own AWS infra because I paid for an Amazon account? No.
In this analogy, can the car you paid for still be driven? Because the problem SKG wants to address is that the games people paid for cannot be played, and I don’t think your analogy makes any sense with regards to that.
You currently don’t have access to infrastructure software because you didn’t buy that. You bought a game that uses it.
Well, depending on the game I do. Some games come with server binaries that let me run my own server and regardless of what the developer or publisher does in the future I can still play those games. And once again, that could be the solution to the SKG movement wants solved. Maybe all games should come with the infrastructure software.
Given your BMW mention, if you buy a car, do you own the road it operates on? No. Well, maybe that’s separate right? BMW doesn’t own that road, so what about the factory it was made? Do you own that? No. I have an Amazon account. Do I own AWS infrastructure code? I mean I paid for that, right? No.
It’s not that laws can’t be changed, nobody made that argument. It’s about feasibility. Is it feasible for me and justified for me to own AWS infra because I paid for an Amazon account? No.
Ookay, I’m not even going to bother trying to decipher whatever the fuck this is. Either try again or don’t bother me with this again.
Analogies should have a point. What point is in your meth-induced analogies? I don’t have a problem with analogies, I have a problem that you think I should somehow understand what your brain-broken thought process vomited out.
Ad hominen attacks are insta-win for the other side. You have no valid argument so you just try to attack the person instead of the idea. That ends the debate. I just won.
If you bought a game, and they’ve made it so you cannot play the game that you paid for, they are taking the game from you. This is the whole point of Stop Killing Games.
That is a huge part of the IP issue. Even Value has tried to argue that Steam is a subscription service and that you don’t own Steam games but rather licenses to games on Steam. And it was for the exact reason you mentioned: a user was banned from Steam but wanted access to the hundreds of games he purchased.
That is the practical side of the problem. The logical side of the problem is the erosion problem. For example, SWTOR was planning on being retired and eventually offlined when the new SW title releases (thereby replacing it). Under SKG, the new title would effectively be forced to compete with the old despite the fact that the IP holder doesn’t want that. They would have limited power over how their IP is being used. A group could take SWTOR, add content, and have people donate/pay for it despite the IP holder not wanting their IP used that way. The IP would in essence be fighting the IP. That is erosion. You have the rights but those rights become more limited.
Honestly, most people here are commenting with their feelings (not you, just in general) and anything that isn’t fanatical level support for SKW is instantly attacked with absurd ideas how things “should work”. There is legitimate reasons to support SKW and there is legitimate worries to how SKW is handling things.
OK, I’ll bite.
If you open a printed, physical book, you’ll likely see something like this printed on the first page: “copyright [author name], all rights reserved”. If the book was printed in the last year, it might also include language explicitly forbidding AI training and other forms of data mining.
If you look at the back of the packaging of physical movie releases (so for example a DVD or Bluray case) you’ll find find something like “this movie has only been licensed for personal used. Public exhibition is not permitted”
Because media has always been licenced. The question therefore is less about license vs ownership and instead about what makes a fair license. SKG argues, that the licensing as it currently exists is deeply unfair. Unfair enough that it possibly already violates EU law. That’s what the lawsuit in France is about.
Not really. The game has, as you yourself noted, been licensed to you. The granted rights don’t include commercial activity. Publishers could even put the videogame equivalent of the language from the movie cases into their licenses to spell that out.
Ok, see that is a logical argument!
Disregarding license/ownership and asking if that license is fair use. That is one thing I really do agree with. As I mentioned, some things with SKG make sense, others not so much. MMOs is where the community breaks down on that, though. In no world would fair use licensing include handing over server code to the public at a product’s end of life. A publisher could if they chose to, but realistically that isn’t something that would happen and legally shouldn’t/wouldn’t be something a law would written to enforce. For something like a singleplayer game requiring online checks that’s different though. Its the scope of SKG and blanket opinion without real thought that I think is the main issue.
For MMOs, the question of fair use is interesting. When Blizzard shut down TurtleWoW they cited copyright infringement of their game assets. That includes game art. So one interesting question there (regarding the scope) what is fair use of the game assets? If I’m licensing those assets, under what constraints can I use them? Can I use to them to market my private server? Can I use them standalone outside the game or in a different project? I would think its obvious that you can’t just use them however you see fit, but I’m seen users here basically say they believe they own them outright which just isn’t true.
It’s not really about fair use because European law doesn’t really have that as a concept. I’m talking about contract law, since licenses are contracts. Now, I’m not a lawyer and shit gets complicated real fast but basically EU law states that contracts need to be fair. Unfair clauses are invalid (again really simplifying here). SKG argues that this is the case for games.
I’m guessing you blocked me, but these are mods, and they’ve existed for a long time.
No, you just don’t have any good points so there isn’t anything for me to engage you with.
If you don’t want to engage with anything that disproves your stance, like new legislation that the civil rights movement fought for, then sure. If the “erosion of IP” is the continued availability of something that people already paid for, and the consequences of that are that now the producer is going to have a hard time selling its successor, then I think that’s absolutely the obvious thing that 1.3M people signed a petition to have changed rather than relying on existing laws that clearly aren’t serving the consumer. We’ll see what parliament comes up with in the Digital Fairness Act and how California’s efforts go.
Cool story, but no you just argue with your feelings instead of actual facts or do any research. If you did, I would consider it, but since you haven’t what is the point? Even now, “we’ll see what parliament comes up with”. What does Parliament require for revisiting existing laws? You didn’t even look that up did you?
Parliament doesn’t just change existing laws. That requires a new commission proposal to start a binding revision so they know what should be changed if anything. You can’t just get turned down by a commission and go to parliament. You’ll just get sent back to a commission.
See? What is there for me to explain when you can’t even be bothered to research how EU laws work? You just comment with your feelings which no one (least of all the EU Parliament) cares about.
You didn’t even research the legislative changes for women’s suffrage or civil rights, which you probably ought to have been taught in elementary school if you couldn’t be bothered to go to Wikipedia. Actual members of European parliament seem to be confident in what they’re able to achieve without a win on this citizen’s initiative, going from today’s press conference, and I trust that they have a better idea of it than you do.
Cool story! Anyway…
chad_yes.jpg
Publishers shouldn’t be able to erase existing games consumers have purchased so that new games don’t have to compete with them. That’s the equivalent of Disney confiscating all DVDs of the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy and destroying them so that the new MCU movies don’t have to compete.
If their new products aren’t good enough to compete with the old, tough shit. Not an excuse to confiscate and destroy what consumers already paid for.
So, that’s the thing: what did you pay for? I’m speaking specifically for SWTOR as that’s a good case to work from. When you bought it, did you buy the servers and infrastructure behind it or did you buy just access to that service or did you buy a standalone product?
They aren’t taking your discs. You bought that, right? They are turning off a computer they have on their end. That’s their property, right? If they don’t have a right to take your property, do you have a right to take theirs?
Then you get into private servers. Do you have the right to their software that they didn’t sell to you?
That’s the funny thing about this. If you have the right to take something from them you didn’t pay for, do they get the right to take something from you that you did pay for.
Do you understand the difference between the law as it currently is and wanting to change the law to be something else? Because you’re arguing that the law is what it is and everyone else is arguing that the laws should be changed because what currently is is fucking ass.
Currently we don’t access to whatever infra software companies run to keep the games working. One of the possible solutions to what SKG wants is that when you buy the game you also essentially get the server software as well so that if the company decides to pull the plug you just go “cool. I’ll get my own hardware and run it myself”.
And would you defend the same shit when it came to physical goods? Let’s say a car came with a software solution that makes the car ring home to make sure you’re allowed to turn your car on. Your argument in essence is that this is fine because you own the car and the fact that you can’t turn on the car once the car manufacturer shuts down their service is completely fine. Would you be happy with a car that the manufacturer can permanently disable whenever they want? This goes back your previous IP argument as well. The old car model is competing with the new car model so to keep your arguments consistent you should be in favor of having your car be permanently disabled because a new model came out.
In case you want an actual example of something similar, do you think the people who got outraged by BMW introducing a subscription service for heated seats were stupid? After all there are no laws that prevent BMW from doing this so people should just suck it up. Or are you’re going to argue people should push back if they think it’s a stupid idea. In that case what the fuck do you think we’re doing right now?
You currently don’t have access to infrastructure software because you didn’t buy that. You bought a game that uses it.
Given your BMW mention, if you buy a car, do you own the road it operates on? No. Well, maybe that’s separate right? BMW doesn’t own that road, so what about the factory it was made? Do you own that? No. I do online banking. I own that too. If they shut down for some reason, I should have access to their codebase? No. I have an Amazon account. Do I own AWS infrastructure code? I mean I paid for that, right? No.
It’s not that laws can’t be changed, nobody made that argument. It’s about feasibility. Is it feasible for me and justified for me to own AWS infra because I paid for an Amazon account? No.
In this analogy, can the car you paid for still be driven? Because the problem SKG wants to address is that the games people paid for cannot be played, and I don’t think your analogy makes any sense with regards to that.
This is regarding MMOs as already stated. Your comment is irrelevant.
Well, depending on the game I do. Some games come with server binaries that let me run my own server and regardless of what the developer or publisher does in the future I can still play those games. And once again, that could be the solution to the SKG movement wants solved. Maybe all games should come with the infrastructure software.
Ookay, I’m not even going to bother trying to decipher whatever the fuck this is. Either try again or don’t bother me with this again.
I’m sorry you don’t work with analogies. And you chose to post, I didn’t request your feelings as input, but whatever.
The first quote still stands. “SOME GamEs i DO!!” is just ignoring the server infrastructure point, so go cry elsewhere.
Analogies should have a point. What point is in your meth-induced analogies? I don’t have a problem with analogies, I have a problem that you think I should somehow understand what your brain-broken thought process vomited out.
Ad hominen attacks are insta-win for the other side. You have no valid argument so you just try to attack the person instead of the idea. That ends the debate. I just won.
If you bought a game, and they’ve made it so you cannot play the game that you paid for, they are taking the game from you. This is the whole point of Stop Killing Games.
This is regarding MMOs as already stated. Your comment is irrelevant.
Why would that make it irrelevant? MMOs should not become unplayable either. All games should be preserved, regardless of genre.