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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1250 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 6, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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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.

Isn’t the only reason these licenses exist because they provide the legal framework to challenge piracy in court? Otherwise, I could simply copy my “digital product” and sell it to fifty thousand people, right?

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.

I thought the difference was that book republishing is subject to centuries of established law specifically about reprinting printed works, whereas digital copyright law is very recent and incomplete, so the ‘perpetual license’ served as a blanket assertion that resale (or copying and distribution for free) was prohibited.

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.

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.

See, what I'd do is not buy the bag or wear it. I wouldn't steal it, or have a Chinese copy made of it. 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.

What's the justification for using the product without paying for it? 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. It's the way people that loot stores justify their actions, on the basis that the owners and corporations are all against them, or that the insurance covers it anyway so there's no real loss, or other vague marxist noises.

I'm not saying I'm perfect: I use anna's archive and dodge paywalls and run adblockers and play ROMs and I'm not by any means meticulous about the IP ownership when I watch something online.

But we should admit that we do it out of greed, convenience, venality etc. If a seller offers their product in an unfair manner, the ethical thing to do is to simply refuse to purchase it, one is not justified in stealing it.

It's not a great analogy because copyright infringement (what you've been psyoped into calling piracy and theft) does not deprive anyone else of the good.

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.

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.

I think that the looter who smashes the window of a store to take a TV believes that is what he is doing: unilaterally forcing a healthier and more appropriate relationship between himself, the supplier, and the product. It's the same philosophical leap. The individual is deciding that the owner of the property is not allowed to control the property, because the owner has transgressed some ad-hoc ethical line that the individual has drawn. Online piracy tends to point to, variously, exploitative monopolistic practices, advertising, wokeness, the size of the corporation, lack of alternatives. BLM-adjacent looters point to, variously, racism, capitalism, exploitative monopolistic practices, and lack of alternatives to justify their behavior.

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.

Of course they can if consumers are never willing to pursue alternatives. I'm consistently amazed by the contrast between the tremendous stated desire of consumers to regulate what companies are allowed to do, and their complete unwillingness to choose goods made ethically at a slight cost/convenience premium.

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.

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