Out of Pod Experience

And this is why.

I'll say it right now, I have no idea how to feel about this. It could be a really good thing, or it could just inspire companies like Valve and EA to put us through more consumer hell just so they keep their control at the cost of our experience.

It has fire reaching ramifications on everything that is sold digitally, and could as noted in the article even have consequences for companies who are developing their next-gen consoles around digital copies and restricted re-sale.

G.G Sir European Judge. You just started a turkey shoot, either way this goes.

That doesn't make steam comply with this though- It has to be an actual re-sale, and if the license is indefinite you need to remove any restriction on the users right to re-sell.

And I don't think steam current facilitates this having just processed it in my thinking-device between the ears. Bleh, this has really ****** with my head tonight.

Thats my concern. The ruling is too easy to skirt, but as I said, has many, many far reaching consequences.

Wait, this was from a lawsuit that *Oracle* lost? ROFLMAO, best irony this year, thank you (cannot directly explain why, but see what they did to Solaris).

On that note, anyone see the implications in the OS market yet? Microsoft may be in for an interesting ride as well.

As for games, I had a year's subscription with GameTap (monthly fee to download and play any games in the library), was OK. If Steam went to that model I'd have to see the fees first before deciding. They have enough games of different genres that they could easily create 'packages' similar to cable companies.

wont work because 1 people would turn to other sources including and well on steam for them it would be realatively simple to set things up their end so people can resell the games, when its sold it removes it from your list of steam games the game you've resold and moves it over to the owners account, also nothing saying steam cant charge a % for the service which is what I suspect they will do.



again wont work because people would just turn to other sources for said products including piracy, plus personally I don't think people would buy said products if they "expire" in x number of years, mainly because sooner or later someone will come along with something similar to steam etc but any game sold on there not have the x years contract of use AND the ability to resell said game if they choose from their service forcing the rest into adopting the new business model anyways.
MS has already tried in the past to tie the windows license to a specific PC, so the license went with the PC if it was resold, problem with that is faulty PCs get broken down into parts and the parts reused so which piece of hardware does the license go with? MS lost their court case iirc in the EU again and ever since it's the individual who's licensed so if you sell off said PC you keep your windows license, same goes for installing a copy of window on 2 PCs, your allowed to do so just only ONE of them can be switched on/in use at any given time, per the license.

Legally, but practically there's a lot of resons.

Companies who complain about piracy have made their own bed. They try their best to make us pay more for less. You get softwares, music albums, movies, games, with constant prices over the years, yet less and less content so to speak.

Developping/manufacturing costs rise but digital distribution make product delivery costs fall, so we end up with digital material downloaded over the interweb with no packaging, no printed manuals, no media and tied down to one computer or one account, but it's "virtual" and because it's virtual, the rights owners want to increase their control over the use we make of their products, through various means of content control like DRM because the technology and monopoly of some platforms allows it, because you know, you don't own it, they just gave you the right to use it how they deem appropriate.

Slowly, those things acquired in digital form, lose their overal value in the eye of the customer, because the ownership feeling is lessened by the medium itself, you don't really own a digital album like you own a good old record. If Valve decides you breached some EULA, they can shut it down for you and you're screwed, but if you bought a bootleg record of a band in another country that isn't distributed in your own country, what can they do about it? also, because of the legal bunkers the distributors have put in place, you can't offer/trade/exchange what you supposedly own, the way you could before the digital era. This is subtle, but is a way for the distributors to generate more sales if they can manage to lock down their digital product enough. They're further supported by governments who vote laws under the lobbying pressure to increase their control over their products' usage. ACTA/SOPA to name a few.

I can't speak for other countries, but here, in France, the situation is worth a Kafka story. We have taxes adding up at every possible levels to raise more and more funds for the rights holders, and this isn't the authors, but the majors/companies. Those companies managed to make the governments vote taxes in so many ways that they earn money at every step of the supply chain and even more. You pay the copyrights when first purchasing a song, then you pay copyrights when downloading it because the provider has to pay a tax that is added to the monthly fee of your internet access, then another tax is included in the purchase price of each storage device capable of storing digital medias, be it flash cards, hard drives, cdroms and extending to every device including a drive like cameras... The DGFiP (french IRS), also has a historical tax on TV sets you have to pay when you own a TV, whether you bought it or had it from a relative, that also covers the copyrights.

I often buy records on a website called discogs, it's a platform allowing people to buy and sell used records, either vinyls, cd or even tapes, I can get records that were never sold in France, but if I want to listen to those tunes on a MP3 player, I have to rip it myself or get it through P2P, because the super clever companies selling tunes have adapted to the digital era and sell tunes online, but they still apply 20th century licensing and those records I could buy from a belgian guy, I can't buy them digitally because beatport, juno, djdownload, doesn't have a license to sell some tunes to some countries. I can bypass that with use of a proxy system, but then it makes my digitally purchased copy, illegal in my country despite the physical copy stored in my record box. So getting it through P2P is far less of a hassle.

Also, there is still some contents, video games, movies, albums, with delayed releases over the world even though they're digitally distributed. While I can understand that 10 years ago, shipping logistics could be a meaningful cost and a real nightmare, with the internet that barrier is removed, but they continue to operate with this same old fashion.

It is these very same companies, that will always complain about their products being cracked and hacked and how much money they lose over it, that will pressure the governments to vote laws granting them more and more control over their customers, that generate the will to hack/crack their products with their abuse of outdated processes that in fact restrict their customers from accessing the products even when they want to legally buy them.

So yeah, there's little excuse to piracy, but they don't do anything to entice people in buying their products, and I won't discuss the quality of today's music/movie/game hits, tailored to be marketted "for the public" and generate the buzz (read, advertise and sell for 4 months then forget).

TrackMania Original. The patches are required to play and they have not been cracked :)

What about apps purchased from app stores? (like apple) Those are now resaleable?

Didn't really see them list app stores, mostly steam and such. My comment I suppose is more about thier ommision. Was suprised they only covered video games and not apps, or even app games.

What do you want them to do, if their Intellectual Property Rights violated are just ignored? It is very clear, that their IP rights are being violated, but it is too widespread for the authorities to arrest everyone, so they come up with a moderate solution that puts taxes on media carriers... Is that really so horrible?



Doesn't a company have a right to market/sell their product as they wish? Why should they be forced to sell stuff in France, if they don't want to/aren't ready/whatever?



Again, if you do not like something... absolutely no one is forcing you to download new games/films/music. Go play indy games, create your own media or just use the old stuff.

Piracy is sooo widespread by now, too hard to stop it now... but glorifying it is just stupid.