Backov, I think you and Igor should be saying fuck you to your 4th grade english teachers for skipping the comprehension part of reading.[/quote]
Sorry for skipping a lot of this bullshit defense of valves business practices, did you not defend it? I’d read it more closely but why bother.
I rescind the fuck you chet then. :)[/quote]
I still have no idea what you are talking about or why you think there is something unique happening with valve and licensing, or what any of that has to do with the issue at hand.
I know you’re smarter than that and just like to fight, but I’ll bite once.
I don’t think it’s unique. I think it’s scummy. I look forward to the day (if it ever comes) that someone challenges a software EULA in court and smites it.
Why can’t an internet cafe buy a piece of software, install it on one (1) computer, and then use it in whatever means they see fit? They bought it.
Here comes the scummy part: Valve says they can’t. Valve says they have to pay monthly for the privilege of using the game they bought.
Logically extend this: Scummy Software Company writes a eula that says that after 12 months, your “license” to the game expires, and to reinstall it, you must purchase a new cd key. Or many other scummy things they can do.
You support this shit by defending it and being a shithead to people (Brad) who are doing something to fight this trend. Get a clue chet.
Eh? What makes you think that? Seems pretty unlikely to me.[/quote]
agreed, thats just a huge assumption. While I think digital distribution definitely has a future it sure as hell isn’t going to replace brick and mortar sales anytime soon. If I had to guess I think the whole VU situation was Valve cutting themselves out of a heavy handed contract that probably went back to the day when they actually depended on VU to patially fund their work (plus I’m sure theres some animosity thrown in as well). Obviously valve has more money than God now and needs no ties to a financially struggling sugar daddy. They’ll find another publisher who will eagerly take a fraction of what VU was getting and they’ll like it.
Huh? How is Brad fighting this? Can you explain that one? By making games that the cyber-cafe’s don’t want? If that is your point, okay I will give you that one.
Because you do know Super Brad has an EULA, for total gaming, right? One even more restrictive than Valve does, right? And he also does not sell you the software, but license it to you, you know that right?. And according to those terms, you may not “Sublicense, rent or lease the SOFTWARE or any portion of it.” But you knew Brad had that, so I must be missing some other point you hope to make about Super Brad. So please, give me that clue because I am lost. How is Brad fighting the Licensing of software.
Hump, Sierra/VUG never underwrote the development of any Valve title.
Because it doesn’t work that way. I’m not a lawyer but I know there are laws that prevent rebroadcast or re-use for profit. The Cybercafe is a business. Therefore if it buys a game for use with its business, it has to pay either royalties or repurchase a license to keep using it. This is why stores can’t buy CDs and play them for their customers. (Really, they can’t legally do this.) This is why bars have to pay the NFL if they want to broadcast games for their patrons.
Since we are end users who don’t use the product for profit - we don’t have to pay extra fees. We don’t have to pay the NFL extra and we can play CDs for our friends. And we don’t have to worry about buying a new license to play Half-Life at home.
Conversely, a video store, regardless of whether it’s mega-corporation like Blockbuster or a simple mom and pop store on your street corner, can go down to Wal-Mart and buy a few extra copies off the Incredibles of the shelf and rent them to make up for demand despite what Disney and Pixar might want.
And there’s no restrictions about bars “broadcasting” any non-sports shows to their patrons.
I’m also obviously not a lawyer, but I suspect that the legality of what you can do for profit with a particular medium, be it a DVD or game, depends mostly on who happened to win a key lawsuit at a particular time, rather than any blanket protection for all for-profit use of products.
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that lancenters would have a relatively strong case to make, provided they bought individual legal retail copies of the games for every computer they rent time on, it’s just that they don’t act as a collective group and get some legal resolution going.
That said, does the accounts provided by Valve to lancenters have extra features you wouldn’t have (or need) in a personal account? That would help their case as well.
I only know the one example, but the difference with the video store is those are rented for home use only. You cannot rent a movie and show it at your bar - that would be illegal, nor could blockbuster rent you the movie if they knew you were going to show it at a bar. That is the distinction for most of these laws, home use vs business use for profit.
This is why every game company that is popular in game centers have such agreements or have such agreements bundled through the publisher.
I think the lancenters would still have an argument to make in the idea that each computer is being used by a single person with a single individually purchased copy of a game.
I would imagine most of the strength behind a lawsuit over a movie shown at a bar would be that it’s a public performance allowing a large number of people to watch the same single-purchased movie.
Since no bar’s gotten in trouble for having a television tuned to non-sports channels, video stores routinely show rental titles on their in-store televisions and retail stores don’t get sued for piping in radio broadcasts over their speakers, I suspect that again it’s mostly down to a matter of who’s had the better lawyers in any particular case, rather than strict laws on every medium out there.
Personally, I don’t really care what happens to lancenters either way. If the current scheme works for them, fine by me. If they want to take legal action to force their protect their ability to simply buy a retail box of the game and put a legal copy on each computer, more power to them.
Nope. Sorry. Because you’re renting that computer to use that license, you’ve violated the license and the law. Unless you arrange a special license letting you “Rent the use of Half-Life 2” to customers.
That’s (probably) not legal Derek. It’s also hard to enforce. It’s not like Disney or any movie company can track what Blockbuster managers do and where they get copies - or even which ones were bought where. There’s a natural disincentive to do this of course, it’s cheaper for video stores to buy them for distributors rather than Wal-Mart. They buy in bulk.
Yes there are. The broadcast nets choose not to enforce them because they thrive on advertising to make their money. It doesn’t make any different to NBC if the eyeballs are at home or at Gary’s Old Time Tavern.
HBO enforces it. Showtime enforces it. HBO enforces it. NFL enforces it. Pay-Per-View enforces it. Your example doesn’t enforce it because their product is far less exclusive. Get it yet?
I would. But then I think I have a better grasp on Fair Use than you seem to. A LanCenter owner can buy a product and use it any way they want to. But once they charge people to use it? They’ve crossed the line.
Are you willing to guarante that Valve will still have the steam servers running to decrypt HL2 5 years from now? How about 20 years? I can still play C64 games on the original hardware without having to worry that Epyx went bankrupt 16 years ago. Once I download Disciples II off of totalgaming.net, I’ve got access to it for as long as I keep a backup copy around.
If there’s any sign of trouble I’m sure Valve will be smart enough to release a “No-steam” patch that will be downloadable for people that wish to reinstall HL2 in 5 years time.
Would imagine? Let me guess, you’ve never done any research or reading on this, and are just going by what you think logically makes sense? Fair Use just doesn’t work that way in the US (although IANAL, etc.). There are many factors that enter in, and the details are open to interpretation, but typically using someone elses work for profit denies you Fair Use, with a couple of limited exceptions like parody, education, or news. Your “single copy per user at the moment” example is not one of the exceptions.
A decent site covering Fair Use is:
In particular check out “Revenge of the Silent Macarena”:
In short Valve’s licensing scheme for lancenters is neither new nor unusual, and has in fact been standard operating procedure for a long time (since the advent of radio stations? I have no idea).
That’s great, I have a Dell laptop and a Dell PocketPC. When I tried to get new memory installed for my laptop, they wanted TWICE as much as it would cost to buy it online. Additionally the flash memory on their site is more expensive than you could find on Froogle. Don’t believe me though, step on the rake yourself. :roll:
Woow, nice insult there, calling me 12 years old. Can you think up of anything better? Now how about you try sifting through the CS changelog and realize that a completely volunteer team added more content faster when CS was a free mod as opposed to now that CS:S is being run by a professional paid team.
Halflife2.net apparently got word from Doug Lombardi of Valve that a new publisher will be handling retail versions of Valve games, so they aren’t going Steam-only just yet.
Are you willing to guarante that Valve will still have the steam servers running to decrypt HL2 5 years from now? How about 20 years? I can still play C64 games on the original hardware without having to worry that Epyx went bankrupt 16 years ago. Once I download Disciples II off of totalgaming.net, I’ve got access to it for as long as I keep a backup copy around.[/quote]
Huh? We are talking about licensing, and how brad is saving the industry from itself, and you come up with this? This is copy protection, this is kicking cheaters off of servers, there are many things valve does, has to do for their customers that brad does not have to worry about. But I am not sure what brad has done about licensing for Backov to be fucking me so much… care to explain that point?
Derek as others have pointed out, you might want to learn a little more about the law before you continue to insist the way the law is or how the industry is.
Igor, jafd - you are both in the same group, people who contribute nothing. You are unable to comprehend simple sentences, so discussons with you are impossible. Igor, you still don’t even get the Dell example, that is just sad.
He might have a license on the software, but he doesn’t sell crippleware. That means that while totalgaming.net actually sells you a piece of software, Valve sells you a bunch of code that only works as long as Valve decides to keep it working.
