That's a strange thing to enact and enforce. Which organization is enforcing this? The UN? This does indeed sound like something I would be against. It's silly to ask other countries to pay for oil in somebody else's currency.

Some have referred to those who manipulate and conspire to control such things - most likely as accurately as one can - as cartels. They are a cooperative of interests whose ends are served by coordinated action. Its not necessarily a circumstance where one has formal domain, because (for one thing) if you establish a formal domain, your activities are easier to track, your identity & agenda are more obvious.

If one wanted to zero-in on specific entities for the Oil circumstance, I would theorize that The World Bank and The Federal Reserve can thwart purchases if they are not in the desired currency... most international country-level banking is done via credit transfer, not hard cash. Ergo, if a bank refuses the transaction, your deal is dead in the water.

If I am to place blame, I prefer it to be on a specific group of individuals rather than some vague entity. You can't influence a vague entity, but you can influence a specific group of individuals with the right resources.

I'm not terribly fond of the vague "us" versus "them" mentality of conspiracy theorists. I prefer to keep my groupings clear and distinct.

Well, our own country had natives in it when we first established it, and I do believe we obtained slaves from Africa at one time.

. . . and if my research is correct, that was a long time ago, as part of the Spanish-American war, which is in our history books, but largely overshadowed by the Civil War and the World Wars. I'm pretty sure that taking over the Philippines was mentioned, but not emphasized.

In any case, I suppose the more important question is what do we do now? We can't change history. We can only take action in the present.

I don't remember that in my history lessons .

When you buy a book you are buying a license. You don't own the contents of the book, just the physical manifestation of it.

When you buy a game, you own the physical manifestation of the game too - the box, manual, CDs, etc. But you don't own the contents.

When you buy a music album...same thing.

Frogboy:

I think psychoak is correct here.  When I purchase a book I'm free to do with it as I wish except for selling its contents or copies of its contents for profit, or else copying it and distributing it indiscriminately, which is also covered by copyright law.  A book isn't a license.

The book doesn't limit my ability to read other books, nor does it wreck the photocopier I use to make as many copies of it as I deem necessary for strict personal consumption.  As long as I don't publish or distribute such copies beyond copyright law, I can do that.

I can write a report on it, quote stuff from it in small snippets, refer to it, and in general talk about its contents freely.  When I purchase a music CD, I am also free to make copies of it as is legal under copyright law.  This cannot be for mass distribution and there are specific instances of breach of copyright, but for the most part, the music doesn't kill my mp3 players when I try to copy it for my personal usages.

In the same manner, when I purchase a car, I do not own the technology that could be construed as the intellectual property content of the car.  I can otherwise do it with as I wish.

People expect to have that kind of control over games they supposedly own.  I don't want a vaguely defined legalese license, goddamit.  I want your game.

CobraA1:

You could read up more on the conduct of your government, stay informed, and have an independent opinion from news you gather yourself from a wide variety of sources.  Americans always say that they didn't expect their government to hoodwink them over the Iraq invasion, but it had precedent - the US also did the same whitewash job on the Philippine invasion.  It still does.

The Philippine-American War is not the same as the Spanish-American War, although the two are related.  American history books prefer to refer to it as the "Philippine Insurrection" to imply that the US was the legitimate governing body of the islands at the period, but it's a con job much like how Japan purposefully ignores the organized serial rapes and sexual slavery of thousands of women in their occupied territories during WW2.

As for industrial espionage, the theft of silk, tea, and porcelain, among other things, are generally celebrated as great heroic tales in the West.  Look it up.  For that matter, Americans generally have no compunctions about stealing the ideas of third world citizens and patenting them at home when they return, seeing it as a genuine and original "discovery."  Many names in Western biology were made by the discovery of species that people have long known to have existed - just not in the West.

Been a long time since I've taken a history class. I dunno if our current books really use that wording or not.

I'm not really a history buff. I prefer programming, math, and science. My shelves are pretty much lined with programming, software engineering, and other stuff like that.

So basically I only have your word. I don't have much to check your claims with.

It's obvious that the Spore backlash was due to one thing: Activation Limits

EA Claims that less than 1% re-install their games, or install on multiple computers. I don't believe this for a minute. First of all, how many years of data do they have on this? Most re-installs would happen months or years after the initial purchase (when you get a new computer, or format your hard drive, etc). I can't count how many times I've installed Diablo 2, Starcraft, Half-life, Quake, etc. 

While providing a way to de-activate an installation is a step in the right direction, I think it could end up being a nightmare - I personally have dozens of games on my PC and I'm about format my hard drive. Now what if all those games had activation limits? It would mean I'd have to spend forever figuring out each games deactivation process, etc -- what a pain! Some of the games I have installed are made by publishers that no longer exist...what then?

Everyone knows that Spore was pirated before the game hit retail, as are most games. EA must know this as well, which means that activation limits have nothing to do with pirates (pirates were the only ones not affected). The only possible reason then must be to limit your rights as a consumer to re-sell the game. What other reason could there be? I'm willing to be that some lawyer somewhere will be able to make the case that this infringes on some basic consumer rights.

The whole idea that there should be limits on activation is just stupid anyways. I mean, really, how is it stopping any pirates?

Truth is, it's not. It's just another thing to frustrate legitimate users. They shouldn't be trying to "improve" time limited forms of activation, they should just be making activation a one time deal and check the activation when you download updates. There is no reason to add a time limit or anything like that to it.

I'm quite late arriving to this thread but I'd like to comment none the less.

I am decidedly pro-consumer.  As a consumer it would be insane not to be. Here are my thoughts on copy protection and the user-publisher relationship in general:

1. A real disk inserted into the tray for installation is ok. The disk should NEVER be required again except for a non-network based re-installation. Imagine if XP or Vista required a disk in the tray to run.

2. One time entering of a CD key at installation is ok.  I would prefer the CD key to be attached to the disk label since some folks have trouble keeping manuals or boxes. There should NEVER be any electronic finger printing of my computer hardware tied to the CD key.  Installation should NEVER be limited to a fixed number or a specific machine. Actual playing of the game MAY be limited to an arbitrary fixed number of machines concurrently (typically 1) for the purposes of internet based play.  Offline and lan based play should NEVER limit the number of machines playing. Let's be brutally honest, online (via internet) is the driving force for games.  No one cares how many people beat the single player campaign.

3. Creation of a user account connected with a CD key for internet based play and patch download is ok.  The only information I should have to provide are a screen name, a valid email, and a password. The user account should NEVER be required for offline play or lan based play since a lan may not be internet equipped. That is, the game still works EVEN IF an account is NEVER created.  The functionality is just REDUCED to offline and lan play.

4. Malware drivers for authentication (a la Securom or Starforce) must NEVER be installed.  They must NEVER take the place of or run in conjunction with my existing system drivers.  They must NEVER reconfigure my system in any way.  They must NEVER change the functionality, security, or contents of my computer from before installation.

5. Planned allowances for legacy software are a must.  A game must NEVER cease to function partially or in whole (with the exception of server based games like MMOs or portions of games using the same model) as a result of age or obsolescence.  You MUST make allowances so that the software will operate fully in 5, 10, 100, or 1000 years.  This ultimately means that all online authentication activities MUST be removed as software goes unsupported. Failure to do this demonstrates definitive hatred of your customers.

6. Latitude for resale is a must. You MUST design your software with the understanding users do, in fact, own something.  This is instantiated in law (at least in the US) as original and successive sales.  Only the ORIGINAL sale is governed by you.  All successive sales MUST be unfettered and UNRELATED to you.  Games MUST work for their new second hand, third hand, thirty-seventh hand owners. Failure to do this demonstrates definitive hatred of your customers.

7. Trust.  You must treat me as a friend and not as an oil field ready to have its monetary goodness sucked out. Trust is shown by not looking over customer's shoulders. If you honestly believe I'm going to betray your trust and give your software to 100000 of my closest friends DON'T sell the software at all. You are far TOO PARANOID for your own good or my own good.

8. An EULA should state in a maximum of 500 words of plain english the agreement between consumer and company.

9. Any consumer who declines to enter into the agreement with the company MUST be allowed to return the disk, in like new condition, for a full refund within say two days of purchase. (This assumes installation was never completed. Enforcing this would be difficult. Perhaps the EULA should be readable without opening the box or, for that matter, without purchasing the game)

10. Any consumer who declares the game will not run on their computer MUST be allowed to return the disk, in like new condition, for a partial refund within thirty days of purchase.

On the subject of DRM... Online activation should never be required unless I A) want to play multiplayer and it involves logging into game publisher servers or want to download the game again. CD keys work well for this, and note I said game publisher servers, LAN doesn't count, there should never be a need for everyone to have a seperate copy at a lan party . Sins has done great with this aspect, props.  Any other DRM is unacceptable, and, quite frankly, pointless. Spore was available in good working order a week before it was released, except it was pirated and DRM-free. There are many working cracks for securom, tages, starforce, the works. The DRM companies claim there aren't any, but they're just lying through thier teeth so that it doesn't look like thier product is comepletely pointless. Hell, the latest version of securom got the shit kicked out of it by an ISO mounting tool a month before it ever made it into production on any CDs.

Pn the topic of secure content delivery.... I hate impulse. I hate any extra software that I have to install to get updates or any other kind of service. The system that was set up at first here, with you logging into your account on the SINS web site, validating your purchase via cd key, and then downloading the patches from a secure web site. Impulse is buggy at best, web sites for something that simple are easy to maintain and you can even have the web site open a slim, simple download/updater client to do the download of the actual patch, saving on company bandwidth. Doing a full suite like impulse is guaranteed to cause issues for a LOT of people, HTML almost always works, and even if it doesn't its usually a 5 minute fix for your support crew talking to the guy.I have issues with impulse not recongizing programs I've registered on it several times already. I registered it once, it was fine. I formatted my PC, installed impulse, logged into my account, bam, gone. Sadly Blizzard has almost the right idea on updating thier software with WoW. Since its an MMO I understand it checking updates right away as soon as you log in. For any game online, it should check updates right away and ask you to install the latest version, but not require it in most cases(with the mmo theres no way to do it but to require it, but thats a different thing from something like sins). First you DL a slim automated bit torrent client, it downloads the patch and automatically opens it and applys it and you don't have to deal with it beyond looking at a progress bar while its doing its job.

Somebody decided that playing the blame game for the copyright and economic woes of other nations was more important than trying to figure out solutions.

This turns out not to be the case. Depending on the wording of the EULA, we generally do NOT own the physical manifestations of computer software. Books and CDs do not have (arguably) legal agreements attached to them restricting the licensee from exercising copyright-guarranteed rights as "owner of a copy".

Specifically, if consumers were owners of a copy, you would have no right to restrict resale in any way, including after-market updates. The first sale doctrine addresses this specifically, and EULAs are how software companies bypass that.

Take, for example, the WoW EULA that was the subject of the Game Cheats Are Illegal? thread. Their EULA asserts Blizzard's ownership of EVERYTHING - software, box, manual, artwork, etc. Stardock's EULAs are not quite so all-encompassing, which ironically makes them far easier to evade. Still, the bald statement "The SOFTWARE is not sold, it is licensed." in the Dread Lords EULA could be read both ways - protecting the program or protecting the program and the disc it's on. You should probably consult legal council about this - I know I'd be interested in hearing an actual lawyer's opinions on these things.

With my spyware, anytime I have to reinstall (hard drive recovery, new computer, ect.) it goes like this.

I submit a request to the support and fill out a verification. Then an email is sent to me with a one time use download link. I download and set up and I'm good to go.

Obviously it is because I am a subscriber to my anti spyware I get the service.

To bad games could not have something similar. I case of some ramdom act of God (Jesus stole my Dell!) I could at least recover the software.

Ofcourse things like that cost money to do, but it could be done like a waranty. You could be gauranteed (x) number of recoveries over the course of (x) number of days. It would be alot nicer form of DRM than limiting the number of activations straight out of the box.  

CobraA1:

Historical context is important.  Many of the most sophisticated pirates reside in the Philippines and China.  These are not two-bit hackers in some basement with a network of computers.  They are backed by millions of dollars in illegal sales and have the hardware and software expertise commensurate with that budget.

While I may sound critical of the US, the only real suggestion I made was that US companies ought to mind third world sales markets more in order to squelch potential markets for piracy - that is a sound business plan and a good action plan IMO, for the marginalization of piracy activities.

As for historical context, please view Agoncillo works or if you prefer Henry William Scott works.

psychoak:

You need to review facts as well.  Aguinaldo was a scumbag and he did accept the 30 pieces of silver and exile after long years of fighting what must have seemed like a lost cause.

That said, I have no illusions about his nature and that he was any kind of savior.  He was just another revolutionary.  Of course, he did declare Philippine independence despite all that, and the US did kind of have an agreement with his nascent government-in-exile.  Regardless of how much of a scumbag the guy was, it doesn't change the fact that the US invaded a country that had declared itself independent, and into which it had made agreements with.

There is no whitewashing this.  It's pure treachery in the name of imperialism.