That can hardly be the only reason, because they impose way more restraints than that. And copyright law covers that case anyway: you own a physical book in all respects but you can't legally make 50,000 photocopies of it and sell them. There's no reason you can't give away, share, edit or inherit software and media in the same way that you can with the book, except that it's mildly more annoying to handle the DRM and the companies want to maximise copies sold.
In practice there's a huge amount of space devoted to control freakery: 1980 Nintendo's insistence on signing all games released for their console so as to protect their family-friendly brand, for example.
You seem to be talking past me. The point isn't what some looter thinks he is doing, the point is the actual case in question, which I have argued is different.
Do you agree that it is different in at least some respects, or do you believe that everything I'm writing is the delusion of a thief convincing himself theft is moral? In the former case we can discuss where the moral line actually sits, in the latter I don't think we have anything useful to say to each other.
if consumers are never willing to pursue alternatives.
I am not 'consumers'. I am a consumer. 'If everyone only...' never ever works.
I guess I could see the logic for jailbreaking a game you already own, or downloading a copy of it for more convenient use, or pirating a new server for an online game that's dead.
But the logic of "the big corporation are greedy and unfair and just want to take advantage of me, maaaaaaaaan, so I'm justified to take what I want without paying" is the ethics of a shoplifter.
Right, that's what I'm saying. There's a spectrum. The more boneheaded and aggressive the company's behaviour, the more justified I feel in circumventing it. For example, I own a copy of Bloodborne but no longer own a PS4, so that game is useless. I would therefore feel completely justified in downloading the ROM and playing it on an emulator. The same for something that isn't offered in my region. If you buy software at full price, but they deliberately content behind premium purchases or a system deliberately designed to feel like you can grind them out but you can't... I probably wouldn't pirate it but I would mind considerably less about people who did. Likewise lootboxes.
I feel like there is an awful lot of scope, in a world where games are not just a product but a sophisticated content delivery and monetisation system, and the walled-garden strategy is pursued ruthlessly, for business norms to produce practices that are genuinely inappropriate and don't earn my sympathy.
There is a big difference in my mind between say:
- Playing a multiplayer game on PC for free: dude, you couldn't be bothered to sign in to steam and pay $20 for it?
vs.
- Playing a multiplayer game on Switch 2 for free: dude, you couldn't be bothered to buy a $500 dollar games console to replace the $500 games console you bought 5 years ago that had basically the same functionality, and then spend $20 on the game, and then spend $10 a month on Nintendo's multiplayer service offering?
I personally believe that one should be honourable: there is scope for circumventing anti-consumer bullshit and the milking machine in different ways, but you should try to buy a copy somewhere and if you are playing everything for free then you are likely doing it wrong.
I don't believe that unilaterally forcing a healthier and more appropriate relationship between you, the supplier and the product is necessarily wrong, and I think flat out saying that, "there is no meaningful difference between downloading a cracked game that's not otherwise available on your device, and smashing the window of a store to take a TV" is overly reductive.
Not least because I would consider such a product/company so wildly unethical that I wouldn't want to support them, even spiritually by honoring their product.
Honestly, I don't think this works. There are too many whales in the world, the industry can stay unethical pretty much permanently as far as I can see. I'm not necessarily willing to accept a choice between jumping through every bullshit and expensive hoop placed before me, or just flat out boycotting massive chunks of the industry. I don't pirate, actually, but I feel increasingly less sympathetic to the corporations who complain about it. Steam proved decades ago that piracy is a service problem not a price problem, and if the industry refuses to learn that lesson because they make more money and have more control this way then I'm disinclined to oblige them.
Corvos
23hr ago
Life involves thousands of decisions in which one can be pro or antisocial at little or no cost.
That cuts both ways, does it not? Are console exclusivity and restrictive EULAs pro- or antisocial?
There is literally no way that you can legally buy a game. You can only purchase a revocable, non-transferable, full-price license to play the game until the publisher changes their mind or the servers shut down. That license is gimped in a dozen different ways, not least of which is that they do not permit it to work on a general computing device but only on their special hand-marked and very expensive machine. It's as though you bought a Hermes bag but were only allowed to wear it if you had your entire outfit from the same store.
We are not talking about normal products and we are not talking about normal markets.
Corvos
1d ago
If someone talks about their deep cultural connection to a foreign country and you think that is a foreign loyalty, then you're going to have to exclude Irish-, Italian-, Swedish-, Mexican- etc Americans as well.
Roosevelt's speech about hyphens as daggers is a perennial classic for a reason.
Corvos
1d ago
So you want to secretly nuke Israel, with full plausible deniability so you don't get blamed, in order to make it clear to everybody what happens if they cross you?
Corvos
1d ago
Except, honestly, I think those Jews and atheists were kind of wrong to swear an oath on a book they didn't believe in. It's kind of weird that in considering the reversal, Denis Prager effectively says, "I would rather an elected official start their time in elected office as a liar and a hypocrite, as long as they swear allegiance on my tribe's book."
It's a power thing. It's saying, "even though I don't agree with you, you retain sufficient cultural pull that I feel forced to pretend to". That's much more reassuring than, "I'm not one of you and there's nothing you can do about it".
Look, from my perspective, 9/11 happened before I could even remember it, and the entire GWOT happened while I was too young to know much about it at all, and everyone hated it.
Wow, now I feel really old...
Basically, a huge proportion of Americans and the White House were determined to lead a punitive expedition on Afghanistan and anybody else who had hidden Osama Bin Laden. The British PM was very clear that we had to keep the Americans close no matter what (common culture with the Americans had been our most important diplomatic relationship since WW1) and so we went in to support them, with the UK government manufacturing excuses to allow it to do so.
The major complication of our military support is that, under American direction and with the goal of keeping that relationship strong, we had essentially retooled our entire army to be a support wing for the American army. We do reconnaisance, intelligence, and a few other things really well, but we don't have a full stack any more. Everything we have is either purchased from America, or was designed to be interoperable with NATO (American) supply chains and nothing else. It was a very slow thumbscrews process, essentially: we continue to get American support to project power on the global stage, as long as we retool our army and economy so that we can never act independently or ally with anyone except the Americans. Then, as with software, enshittification arrived once we had no other options. The level of influence the Americans gave us declined, the level of support we were expected to provide increased.
The main thing that we really needed to get out of an alliance in this specific case was aid in 2016. A post-Brexit softball trade deal for 20 years would have given us a roaring start, shown confidence in us, and allowed us to negotiate much better terms with the EU. But we didn't get that support when we needed it for internal political reasons:
- Obama hated us for Empire, and was attached to the EU.
- Trump liked us and wanted to support us in theory, but cared way more for looking hardball on trade deals. (We also utterly sabotaged that relationship with TDS, exacerbated by UK Remainers wanting to prevent a trade deal in order to tie us back to the EU, but Trump was never going to produce a trade deal that didn't exploit our weak position rather than shoring it up.)
- Biden hated us because of Ireland.
So basically our military and economic support for America has resulted in hamstringing our military and letting us down in the moment we really needed it. You say that this is good reason to break up, and in theory I agree with you, but I can't help feeling that the balance of support is very much in our favour and it would be appropriate to bring it back to equal before that. Also, the UK government and civil service (and anyone over 40) just isn't emotionally ready for that.
Corvos
2d ago
Generational wealth, and / or optimism. Everyone is clinging to assets because they're terrified of the future.
Corvos
3d ago
A: You're a shitty friend.
B: I helped you move house.
A: Sure, but that was weeks ago. What have you done for me lately? And anyway, you wouldn't do it again.
B: Since it got me this, I sure wouldn't.
A: See, you don't want to be my friend anyway!
You see the issue, right?
Corvos
3d ago
Last time it went really badly, and not 25 years later Americans are calling us the worst allies ever. We’d have to be insane to do it again.
Corvos
3d ago
I hope this means we drop Europe even harder, because they are far worse allies than Israel is
Remind me, which of those shed blood and treasure when America asked them to go into Afghanistan to avenge 9/11?
Corvos
3d ago
Having owned smaller phones in the past, I think it's a double-edged sword. It doesn't actually mean you stop using it less, it's just less pleasant and involves more eyestrain.
But also there are visible costs in the short term that the government seems to have had no interest in, and resultant long-term problems that the government doesn't seem to have had any interest in mitigating. For example, hobbyists can no longer legally buy drones from China, or which use Chinese parts.
In theory, this is the first step in creating a big beautiful American drone industry. However, the replacement American manufacturer is shoddy, way more expensive, and focused on military use. It is also part-owned by Trump's son. And it uses American labour, so even in the best case scenario the prices are never going to be as good again. Even in the best case scenario, hobbyists (plus photographers etc.) aren't going to be able to buy DJI-quality drones for years.
Yes, it's not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. But for this group something they liked has got suddenly worse, it's going to be worse for a while, and there is no guarantee it's going to get better. Scale that up 100x and you have a lot of annoyed people.
Corvos
3d ago
Big new phone is really addicting
Sounds awful. Which awesome new phone is this? Asking for a friend.
Corvos
4d ago
Sure. I wasn't being pointed, I checking my assumption that you feel it's important for people to at least gesture towards knowing that bribery is wrong.
Corvos
4d ago
I'm not sure that's good. I would have thought you'd appreciate having this stuff in the open where people can get mad about it, rather than buried in the bottom of a balance sheet about providing teddy bears for orphans.
Corvos
4d ago
Class in the UK is genetic, of course, and used to be more so. You get some children who fall out, and some bright talents who climb up.
I think Rowling was drawing on this at least a little bit, though probably not consciously. Notably the Squibs in the books aren’t failsons, they’re lower-class coded (Filch, the cat lady). But smartest-in-the-class, daughter-of-two-dentists, charitable-work Hermione is definitely the kind of person rising through the upper-middle-class.
Corvos
4d ago
My understanding is that (now) disabilities include mental disabilities, which are trivial to fake.
No doctor and no government wants to be the guy to say to an angry and potentially violent veteran, "You were in Iraq, but you never actually got into combat. I don't believe that you really have PTSD from that time your buddy's drinking-partner's friend got blown up driving out of Helmand".
It's easier to pay them all off with a lifetime pension.
I'll look into that, I wasn't aware. You may be right, but I do think that current licensing has remained extremely restrictive long after better arrangements could have been sorted out, primarily because publishers find the extra restrictions extremely beneficial in other ways. They have consistently resisted attempts to organise e.g. inheritance of digital property.
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