I have always believed emulation should be allowed for shut down MMORPG. Offer the game at cost to consumer to run or source code.
I am heavily invested in Microsoft digital games because it is cheaper to buy digital most times than 2 disc in a dual Xbox household. What happens if MS decides to get out of console market. Will I lose rights to access all of my games?
Imagine Steam is forced to shutdown. Should they be forced to give there gaming services to the public to at least access their game library or are they just gone?
This is what I'm getting at: it isn't a binary choice for Pubs or Devs to either shut the server down or lose all copyright/trademark protection. That's a false dichotomy used to push the idea that private server administrators are all scumbags trying to steal precious IPs from pubs/devs.
In fact, there's literally a legal agreement created specifically to give the parties other options: licensing agreements.
Nobody is saying lose copyright. If I pay for a game I should be able to play. Fine you shut down the service then I should be able to run my game at cost since it has been abandoned. This is not playere creating a new game off the IP. Just using the software they purchased.
I'm pretty sure I payed for Win 95. It won't work today. Just because I bought a copy of Win 95 doesn't mean that Microsoft is still obligated to support it. If I tried to release a pirated version of Win 95 today, I would expect Microsoft (and their many, many lawyers) would have something to say about it.
The City of Heroes game you bought was a client version that allowed you to connect and process proprietary signals from their server. You couldn't buy a copy of that server then, nor now. They (NCSoft) decided it wasn't worth their time and effort to continue providing that service. Nowhere was it implied that you should be able to run your copy of the game past the date that the service was provided. So, your argument has a major fallacy -- you were never sold the right to operate the COH client indefinitely, only as long as the service was in operation.
Nailed it, I couldn't think of an applicable analogy but yours is pretty spot on.
People have long failed to grasp when "buying" an "online" game you only have a right to play it as long as the "service" is available.
Could be 20 years, perhaps only 6 months, its a risk you take unless the game has an offline component, but few do these days.
And maybe it shouldn't be that way. Nobody is ignorant of how things are. Just doesn't mean we have to agree with how they are.
My opinion is if you fail to provide the service any longer the players themselves should be able to step in. Windows 95 just isn't supported. Microsoft would not stop users from supporting Windows 95 with patches. They won't shut down computers running it if they log on.
But they didn’t fail the service or no longer support it, they terminated it. Which they have every right to do so, you even agreed that they could when you signed up.
Secondly, you didn’t buy a product, you bought access to a service through a client. In reality you don’t own anything. This contrary to owning an actual OS, supported or not.
COX players aren’t being owned anything, some are however tampering with the IP and thats illegal. It really isn’t hard to understand, and with the ‘sympathy factor’ taken out of the equation nobody would disagree. But, because of feelings some think the lines can be blurred. Understandable? Yes. Right? No.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
We all understand the law. The sympathy factor isn't really a sympathy thing so much as knowing the companies have other avenues infinitely more amenable to both themselves and the players if they just offer the avenue, bit they don't.
And, since I'm not naive enough to believe some true arbiter of justice determined the laws in place, I can avoid committing the crime myself while not giving two fucks about the woes of any company whose product was discontinued like this and now shows up in private server form.
NCSoft has pretty much shown they have no more interest in the IP and even denied a few groups from purchasing the rights.
The fact that they were not willing to part with the rights, directly refutes your statement. That entire sentence is one large contradiction. You've obviously never dealt with any form of intellectual property law.
This thread should be closed, pretty sure MMORPG.com doesn't condone this type of activity. Emulation is barely allowed and this certainly goes well beyond that.
I do find it weird gamers will defend a game company to death (so to speak), no matter what. Companies are not someones friend, they are out to make money.
MY PERSONAL OPINION ONLY:
I'm pretty sure most people realize that, but those who are saying that this is theft of intellectual property are siding with the law. It's pretty simple. This code was stolen from NCSoft. This was distributed without any input from NCS, further exacerbating the theft exponentially.
Literally nothing in this world lasts forever and it's simply shocking how many believe they are somehow entitled to play a game forever if a company decides to stop its service irrespective of how popular it is at the time.
Do I think it would buy good faith if companies did release code for dead games? Absolutely. Do I condone the theft and distribution of the code just because they did not? Absolutely not.
Theft is theft and it's wrong.
Taxes are theft if you want to be honest with yourself. Who dictates the existence of taxes? The government. If everyone in America said no more taxes, do you think the governments going to comply with their request? Since the government represents the people and not the other way around?
We can argue right and wrong all day and it won't get us anywhere because for one, only people in power dictate what is right or wrong. Such as corporations and government. Unless of course, enough of us wee little people piss and moan to change something, but than again, that happens once in a blue moon. NCSoft has pretty much shown they have no more interest in the IP and even denied a few groups from purchasing the rights. I'm sure there are better ways of dealing with such obvious flaws in "laws" we must live by.
Theft has been wrong since the dawn of time, long before THE MAN came about. This code was admitted to have been stolen and distributed without permission. Even in the 21st Century, theft is STILL wrong.
NCSoft has pretty much shown they have no more interest in the IP and even denied a few groups from purchasing the rights.
The fact that they were not willing to part with the rights, directly refutes your statement. That entire sentence is one large contradiction. You've obviously never dealt with any form of intellectual property law.
This thread should be closed, pretty sure MMORPG.com doesn't condone this type of activity. Emulation is barely allowed and this certainly goes well beyond that.
Actually, private/emulated servers have an entire sub-forum here.
I guess people forget, sometimes those in charge of the law aren't always thinking in the best interest of everyone. Salem witch hunt comes to mind. The Holy Inquisition also being abuse of power.
I just want to let everyone know that I was born in Salem, Massachusetts and that I am not a witch, but merely, a warlock. This is my contribution to the thread .
Catch me streaming at twitch.tv/cryomatrix You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
I guess people forget, sometimes those in charge of the law aren't always thinking in the best interest of everyone. Salem witch hunt comes to mind. The Holy Inquisition also being abuse of power.
Just because the laws dictate now that CoX can't be played simply because NCSoft said so, doesn't make it right. If enough complaints are made about it, I'm sure laws can be changed to meet or at the very least compromise with consumers.
I would honestly prefer that these companies merely offer some kind of standardized licensing agreement that holds the admins accountable to being a non-profit endeavor while simultaneously protecting the trademarks of the company.
But that takes both sides acknowledging there's a much better way to do this cooperatively. But why would they? We got folks literally condemning other gamers merely for wanting to continue playing a game they like (no interest in profiting off the endeavor, in many cases); an act that does zero harm whatsoever to the creator at the point in the game's lifecycle we're discussing.
Corporates are weird to leave money on the table. I couldn't play COH after awhile because of the combat for reasons I no longer remember. There was a still a profitable business they closed that they could have spun off.
If we don't get consumer rights for online gaming services and digital libraries the industry is slowly pushing towards we will be losing whole generation of games. All it takes is a majory provider to fold.
Each game I stockpile on my Xbox I wonder about the day I won't be able to play games on it anymore.
I guess people forget, sometimes those in charge of the law aren't always thinking in the best interest of everyone. Salem witch hunt comes to mind. The Holy Inquisition also being abuse of power.
Just because the laws dictate now that CoX can't be played simply because NCSoft said so, doesn't make it right. If enough complaints are made about it, I'm sure laws can be changed to meet or at the very least compromise with consumers.
I would honestly prefer that these companies merely offer some kind of standardized licensing agreement that holds the admins accountable to being a non-profit endeavor while simultaneously protecting the trademarks of the company.
But that takes both sides acknowledging there's a much better way to do this cooperatively. But why would they? We got folks literally condemning other gamers merely for wanting to continue playing a game they like (no interest in profiting off the endeavor, in many cases); an act that does zero harm whatsoever to the creator at the point in the game's lifecycle we're discussing.
Corporates are weird to leave money on the table. I couldn't play COH after awhile because of the combat for reasons I no longer remember. There was a still a profitable business they closed that they could have spun off.
If we don't get consumer rights for online gaming services and digital libraries the industry is slowly pushing towards we will be losing whole generation of games. All it takes is a majory provider to fold.
Each game I stockpile on my Xbox I wonder about the day I won't be able to play games on it anymore.
Considering these private groups are spinning up functional servers without the cooperation with the pub/dev in the first place, I highly doubt these groups would demand to make a profit off of doing the same while under a license agreement basically stating they're operating under the conditional acceptance of the creators.
Hell, nothing stops them from demanding a nominal fee be paid for the license, either. You don't think CoX players would throw money at a crowdfunding campaign to purchase a server license from NCSoft?? They definitely would.
So, your argument has a major fallacy -- you were never sold the right to operate the COH client indefinitely, only as long as the service was in operation.
That's what publishers will argue, but they have to convince a jury that the publisher has such claims on their consumers post sale.
Sellers don't normally have the right to impose many conditions on a consumer post sale. They may have rights to prevent resale, or prevent commercial use, but no seller has the right to determine how and when a consumer will enjoythe things that are sold.
The clients bought software that was designed to work in conjunction with a service. As far as what they weren't sold (the right to operate a CoH service), this is moot, because they didn't need to operate a service to operate their software at the time of purchase.
But there is no service anymore. One might say the software is now, in essence, broken. Furthermore, it was the seller who broke it. It is unable to be used in the way the seller intended. But just because it is unable to be used as the seller intended does not give the seller rights under consumer contract law to determine that a consumer has no right to fix that which the seller broke, refuses to fix, and refuses to let others fix.
That's why game publishers are hesitant to actually sue or prosecute people who reverse engineer servers and such; they don't want to have to go into a courtroom to sell the definition you just gave to twelve citizens motivated by common sense. Because it makes no sense that a person can pay good money to enjoy something, and have the publisher withhold your enjoyment of it whenever the publisher damn well pleases.
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
I guess people forget, sometimes those in charge of the law aren't always thinking in the best interest of everyone. Salem witch hunt comes to mind. The Holy Inquisition also being abuse of power.
Just because the laws dictate now that CoX can't be played simply because NCSoft said so, doesn't make it right. If enough complaints are made about it, I'm sure laws can be changed to meet or at the very least compromise with consumers.
I would honestly prefer that these companies merely offer some kind of standardized licensing agreement that holds the admins accountable to being a non-profit endeavor while simultaneously protecting the trademarks of the company.
But that takes both sides acknowledging there's a much better way to do this cooperatively. But why would they? We got folks literally condemning other gamers merely for wanting to continue playing a game they like (no interest in profiting off the endeavor, in many cases); an act that does zero harm whatsoever to the creator at the point in the game's lifecycle we're discussing.
Corporates are weird to leave money on the table. I couldn't play COH after awhile because of the combat for reasons I no longer remember. There was a still a profitable business they closed that they could have spun off.
If we don't get consumer rights for online gaming services and digital libraries the industry is slowly pushing towards we will be losing whole generation of games. All it takes is a majory provider to fold.
Each game I stockpile on my Xbox I wonder about the day I won't be able to play games on it anymore.
Well CoH aside (which like I said and others, actually DID steal the source code)
I find it weird people are helping spread games as a service? It makes no sense unless they want to help screw gaming and the consumers. Games as a service never used to be a thing until EA thought it up one day as a way to make junk games for high profit. I dunno why anyone would advocate for that unless they as well profited from it in some way?
It is the reality of the gaming. Until you can get people to stop spending money in cash shops the corporations will take their money. So on that end I feel we need some consumer rights. Likely won't happen because gaming and politics don't mix.
There's a lot of differing opinions here, I'm.. quite biased because of the fact I am totally stoked to be able to play a game I played during my childhood, as a grown adult now. Even if it's just for a couple hours to go through the character creation and starting zone again to relive my nostalgia a bit.
As far as laws go, at least from my limited time on this planet, I've noticed one thing. People don't mind breaking them as long as they get what they want, even if just temporarily.
I know for me, personally.. I won't be losing any sleep over the fact I logged into a game for a few hours, or days that's been shut down for 7 years. I didn't lose any sleep over the fact I sold my WoW account because I'm done with Blizzards terrible decisions. And I won't be losing any sleep when I watch a stream of my Leafs beat the Bruins tonight either.
Call me a criminal, I guess.
When all is said and done, more is always said than done.
Fairly certain the people acting like petulant children are those demanding rights they legally don't have, even though most freely agreed to the terms of service.
Throwing up various strawmen irrelevant to the situation doesn't change anything on what is legal and what is not.
Wearing my lawful good hat here.
The terms of service can't apply if the service that set such terms no longer exists. That agreement was terminated the moment the service was taken down.
This isn't a matter of contractual rights. This is a matter of property rights.
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Fairly certain the people acting like petulant children are those demanding rights they legally don't have, even though most freely agreed to the terms of service.
Throwing up various strawmen irrelevant to the situation doesn't change anything on what is legal and what is not.
Wearing my lawful good hat here.
The terms of service can't apply if the service that set such terms no longer exists. That agreement was terminated the moment the service was taken down.
This isn't a matter of contractual rights. This is a matter of property rights.
Regardless if they did, most ToS do not qualify as "readable" to the average consumer by any objective measure (something those laws don't acknowledge much, if at all). ToS, as the law stands, is a mere one step removed from writing the damn things in Latin.
There's a lot of differing opinions here, I'm.. quite biased because of the fact I am totally stoked to be able to play a game I played during my childhood, as a grown adult now. Even if it's just for a couple hours to go through the character creation and starting zone again to relive my nostalgia a bit.
As far as laws go, at least from my limited time on this planet, I've noticed one thing. People don't mind breaking them as long as they get what they want, even if just temporarily.
I know for me, personally.. I won't be losing any sleep over the fact I logged into a game for a few hours, or days that's been shut down for 7 years. I didn't lose any sleep over the fact I sold my WoW account because I'm done with Blizzards terrible decisions. And I won't be losing any sleep when I watch a stream of my Leafs beat the Bruins tonight either.
Call me a criminal, I guess.
Same here. All things considered, I get what the law says, I just don't give a shit if someone runs afoul of it in these specific kinds of instances.
If you or anyone else was hawking a server for a fee, I'd feel differently. But they're not.
Fairly certain the people acting like petulant children are those demanding rights they legally don't have, even though most freely agreed to the terms of service.
Throwing up various strawmen irrelevant to the situation doesn't change anything on what is legal and what is not.
Wearing my lawful good hat here.
The terms of service can't apply if the service that set such terms no longer exists. That agreement was terminated the moment the service was taken down.
This isn't a matter of contractual rights. This is a matter of property rights.
That's an interesting point.
Also, holy shit! Long time no see!
You and Bill Murray should just get a room already!
And I won't be losing any sleep when I watch a stream of my Leafs beat the Bruins tonight either.
Call me a criminal, I guess.
Umm, Boston teams for the win, watch the Boston teams sweep all championships in all four major sports. But I digress.
I watched the Red Sox last year on streams and I felt guilty about it. I told myself, this year, i'll buy the MLB package. I haven't bought the package yet because I have watched like 3 innings of baseball all year. I am not sure I'll be able to watch the Red Sox this year as I only watch them while I'm at work. It's great being on the west coast when games start at 4:30 PM.
Overall, stealing is stealing, but as we are humans, we rationalize a lot of things. For example, I'll still watch the Patriots on streams without hesitation. I do that because I tell myself, I live in California and if i was in Boston, the games would be free, so I watch them. I'm not paying $300-400 for direct TV crap. But i truly admit that I am wrong in doing it. I should pony up the money but i'm not perfect.
In terms of CoH, I can see both sides of the picture. I could see someone playing the game without regrets justifying it by saying NCsoft is a garbage unethical company so I will do the same. That's what my justification would be at least.
I can also see someone saying it is wrong to play it because someone stole the IP and is wrong in using it as a service. Of course, if I was NCsoft, I'd tell the private server, to fork over some money to keep it up and running and get something out of it, but perhaps, it is a naive position.
Cryomatrix
Catch me streaming at twitch.tv/cryomatrix You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
Fairly certain the people acting like petulant children are those demanding rights they legally don't have, even though most freely agreed to the terms of service.
Throwing up various strawmen irrelevant to the situation doesn't change anything on what is legal and what is not.
Wearing my lawful good hat here.
The terms of service can't apply if the service that set such terms no longer exists. That agreement was terminated the moment the service was taken down.
This isn't a matter of contractual rights. This is a matter of property rights.
Regardless if they did, most ToS do not qualify as "readable" to the average consumer by any objective measure (something those laws don't acknowledge much, if at all). ToS, as the law stands, is a mere one step removed from writing the damn things in Latin.
They are rather verbose and extensive. But when you understand the obligations and liabilities these publishers take on when they run services like these, you gain an appreciation for why they look like they do.
It's hard enough to publish software to a general public that has so many different combinations of hardware, software, capabilities, and preferences, and have it work to each customer's satisfaction. It's even more challenging when you design the software to work with online components and periodic updates. You take that challenge up beyond that when you sell software that works in conjunction with other users, in real time, that you take up the responsibility to coordinate and oversee. That's a lot that can go wrong, and a lot of statutory responsibility you can incur.
So the TOS is designed to mitigate the liability by offering disclaimers to the consumers, explaining what the service can and cannot do, what the service is and is not, and what rights the service provider is entitled to exercise as a condition of service use. Compliance is typically enforced by restricting access to the service.
But whatever conditions and disclaimers existed at the time the service was open are no longer relevant, because there is no service anymore. The software, however, is still owned by those who own it, stored by those who store it, and choose to keep it at their own pleasure and expense. Their rights to enjoy the things they purchased and own exist independently of the rights of a service provider to provide a service.
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Fairly certain the people acting like petulant children are those demanding rights they legally don't have, even though most freely agreed to the terms of service.
Throwing up various strawmen irrelevant to the situation doesn't change anything on what is legal and what is not.
Wearing my lawful good hat here.
The terms of service can't apply if the service that set such terms no longer exists. That agreement was terminated the moment the service was taken down.
This isn't a matter of contractual rights. This is a matter of property rights.
Regardless if they did, most ToS do not qualify as "readable" to the average consumer by any objective measure (something those laws don't acknowledge much, if at all). ToS, as the law stands, is a mere one step removed from writing the damn things in Latin.
They are rather verbose and extensive. But when you understand the obligations and liabilities these publishers take on when they run services like these, you gain an appreciation for why they look like they do.
It's hard enough to publish software to a general public that has so many different combinations of hardware, software, capabilities, and preferences, and have it work to each customer's satisfaction. It's even more challenging when you design the software to work with online components and periodic updates. You take that challenge up beyond that when you sell software that works in conjunction with other users, in real time, that you take up the responsibility to coordinate and oversee. That's a lot that can go wrong, and a lot of statutory responsibility you can incur.
So the TOS is designed to mitigate the liability by offering disclaimers to the consumers, explaining what the service can and cannot do, what the service is and is not, and what rights the service provider is entitled to exercise as a condition of service use. Compliance is typically enforced by restricting access to the service.
But whatever conditions and disclaimers existed at the time the service was open are no longer relevant, because there is no service anymore. The software, however, is still owned by those who own it, stored by those who store it, and choose to keep it at their own pleasure and expense. Their rights to enjoy the things they purchased and own exist independently of the rights of a service provider to provide a service.
Would the publishers not argue, though, that the consumer should've known that the company provided the only legal means for the required servicing of the client? That seems like the argument to make in response to the ToS expiration justification for gamers feeling entitled to private server services: "The customer knew that we were the only entity who could legally provide the servers needed to experience the client when they purchased the title, and that we made no guarantee the service would continue."
Playing devil's advocate with regards to my own position, of course, but you seem knowledgeable about the matter, so I didn't wanna miss the chance to bend your ear for more information while you were here.
If games were treated like music, it actually be a lot better
Old music often (not sure if always so I'll go with often) ends up losing its copyright over time and becomes fair use.
However you always have the music you bought. You can listen to it forever on the phone, or on radio if its one of those old fashion DvDs...radio stations will play that music quite often as well. There are radio stations that ONLY are made to play the old music of the 80s or 70s or 60s or whatever. (post edit: But the stations almost certainly pay to play the old style music, so why can't games be treated the same way as music?)
Music isn't treated as a service thing like conartist EA came up with that others took the bait with for some strange reason. And while music piracy is a thing (more so in nations that have a horrible economy and exchange rate, but that is to be expected in those nations), its a ton better these days with how easy it is just to buy music for 99 cents or whatever and have it easily available on any device
The difference with online games is that they require ongoing costs like servers and support that music doesn't have. Back in the day with single player games, there were no servers, and you buy once and it is yours.
Now with online games, you can't but make it so they charge the person on a service based to pay for ongoing costs.
Catch me streaming at twitch.tv/cryomatrix You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
If games were treated like music, it actually be a lot better
Old music often (not sure if always so I'll go with often) ends up losing its copyright over time and becomes fair use.
However you always have the music you bought. You can listen to it forever on the phone, or on radio if its one of those old fashion DvDs...radio stations will play that music quite often as well. There are radio stations that ONLY are made to play the old music of the 80s or 70s or 60s or whatever. (post edit: But the stations almost certainly pay to play the old style music, so why can't games be treated the same way as music?)
Music isn't treated as a service thing like conartist EA came up with that others took the bait with for some strange reason. And while music piracy is a thing (more so in nations that have a horrible economy and exchange rate, but that is to be expected in those nations), its a ton better these days with how easy it is just to buy music for 99 cents or whatever and have it easily available on any device
While I agree with you that there are areas with software that need to be examined, I will caution that the evolution in the music industry has made it tougher to become a "career" musician (at least, in the traditional 3-5 piece, popular music band setup we're talking about here). What's debatable is A) how much harder it's made things, and whether or not making it harder is actually a net loss on the music industry.
Artists can't coast on the profits of a popular album anymore, unless it's just super popular worldwide. However, is it such a bad thing that performers who want to make a career out of being a musician now, more than ever, need to actually go out and perform their music to do so?
Would the publishers not argue, though, that the consumer should've known that the company provided the only legal means for the required servicing of the client? That seems like the argument to make in response to the ToS expiration justification for gamers feeling entitled to private server services: "The customer knew that we were the only entity who could legally provide the servers needed to experience the client when they purchased the title, and that we made no guarantee the service would continue."
Playing devil's advocate with regards to my own position, of course, but you seem knowledgeable about the matter, so I didn't wanna miss the chance to bend your ear for more information while you were here.
Let me offer, then, a disclaimer of my own to say that I'm just looking at this as an interesting debate, and my responses shouldn't be taken as official legal advice.
It is not up to a private entity to determine who or what is "the only legal means for the required servicing" of anyone. That is a power reserved for public entities who perform public functions. What a private entity can do is create a contract granting the party an exclusive right to provide services. For example, a city might enter into an exclusive contract with a catering service to provide coffee. The terms might dictate that the contract prevents the city from going to other caterers to service their events.
However, a contract goes two ways. The exclusivity exists so long as the exclusive party provides the service. If the catering company does not provide coffee, and shows no willingness or ability to ever provide coffee, the catering service can't prevent the city from seeking somebody else to provide coffee. If the exclusive party does not provide the service, and the exclusive party has made it clear that it is unwilling or unable to ever provide the service, the contract will typically not be sufficient to prevent the city from seeking coffee elsewhere. The law will typically declare the contract is void.
Now in the example argument you would give, if somebody were to actually argue that, they would probably not fare well. Because nobody makes promises to others who can't guarantee they will uphold their side of an agreement; they make promises on the good faith assumption that the agreement itself guarantees compliance on both sides of the agreement. If, indeed, the publisher declares itself "the only legal means," then why aren't they providing those means? And if they cannot guarantee that they will provide those means, then they cannot equally say that other legal means may be employed to gain what the provider is unwilling or unable to provide.
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Comments
And, since I'm not naive enough to believe some true arbiter of justice determined the laws in place, I can avoid committing the crime myself while not giving two fucks about the woes of any company whose product was discontinued like this and now shows up in private server form.
This thread should be closed, pretty sure MMORPG.com doesn't condone this type of activity. Emulation is barely allowed and this certainly goes well beyond that.
We'll just have to agree to disagree.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
If we don't get consumer rights for online gaming services and digital libraries the industry is slowly pushing towards we will be losing whole generation of games. All it takes is a majory provider to fold.
Each game I stockpile on my Xbox I wonder about the day I won't be able to play games on it anymore.
Hell, nothing stops them from demanding a nominal fee be paid for the license, either. You don't think CoX players would throw money at a crowdfunding campaign to purchase a server license from NCSoft?? They definitely would.
Sellers don't normally have the right to impose many conditions on a consumer post sale. They may have rights to prevent resale, or prevent commercial use, but no seller has the right to determine how and when a consumer will enjoy the things that are sold.
The clients bought software that was designed to work in conjunction with a service. As far as what they weren't sold (the right to operate a CoH service), this is moot, because they didn't need to operate a service to operate their software at the time of purchase.
But there is no service anymore. One might say the software is now, in essence, broken. Furthermore, it was the seller who broke it. It is unable to be used in the way the seller intended. But just because it is unable to be used as the seller intended does not give the seller rights under consumer contract law to determine that a consumer has no right to fix that which the seller broke, refuses to fix, and refuses to let others fix.
That's why game publishers are hesitant to actually sue or prosecute people who reverse engineer servers and such; they don't want to have to go into a courtroom to sell the definition you just gave to twelve citizens motivated by common sense. Because it makes no sense that a person can pay good money to enjoy something, and have the publisher withhold your enjoyment of it whenever the publisher damn well pleases.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
As far as laws go, at least from my limited time on this planet, I've noticed one thing. People don't mind breaking them as long as they get what they want, even if just temporarily.
I know for me, personally.. I won't be losing any sleep over the fact I logged into a game for a few hours, or days that's been shut down for 7 years. I didn't lose any sleep over the fact I sold my WoW account because I'm done with Blizzards terrible decisions. And I won't be losing any sleep when I watch a stream of my Leafs beat the Bruins tonight either.
Call me a criminal, I guess.
This isn't a matter of contractual rights. This is a matter of property rights.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
If you or anyone else was hawking a server for a fee, I'd feel differently. But they're not.
I watched the Red Sox last year on streams and I felt guilty about it. I told myself, this year, i'll buy the MLB package. I haven't bought the package yet because I have watched like 3 innings of baseball all year. I am not sure I'll be able to watch the Red Sox this year as I only watch them while I'm at work. It's great being on the west coast when games start at 4:30 PM.
Overall, stealing is stealing, but as we are humans, we rationalize a lot of things. For example, I'll still watch the Patriots on streams without hesitation. I do that because I tell myself, I live in California and if i was in Boston, the games would be free, so I watch them. I'm not paying $300-400 for direct TV crap. But i truly admit that I am wrong in doing it. I should pony up the money but i'm not perfect.
In terms of CoH, I can see both sides of the picture. I could see someone playing the game without regrets justifying it by saying NCsoft is a garbage unethical company so I will do the same. That's what my justification would be at least.
I can also see someone saying it is wrong to play it because someone stole the IP and is wrong in using it as a service. Of course, if I was NCsoft, I'd tell the private server, to fork over some money to keep it up and running and get something out of it, but perhaps, it is a naive position.
Cryomatrix
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
It's hard enough to publish software to a general public that has so many different combinations of hardware, software, capabilities, and preferences, and have it work to each customer's satisfaction. It's even more challenging when you design the software to work with online components and periodic updates. You take that challenge up beyond that when you sell software that works in conjunction with other users, in real time, that you take up the responsibility to coordinate and oversee. That's a lot that can go wrong, and a lot of statutory responsibility you can incur.
So the TOS is designed to mitigate the liability by offering disclaimers to the consumers, explaining what the service can and cannot do, what the service is and is not, and what rights the service provider is entitled to exercise as a condition of service use. Compliance is typically enforced by restricting access to the service.
But whatever conditions and disclaimers existed at the time the service was open are no longer relevant, because there is no service anymore. The software, however, is still owned by those who own it, stored by those who store it, and choose to keep it at their own pleasure and expense. Their rights to enjoy the things they purchased and own exist independently of the rights of a service provider to provide a service.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Playing devil's advocate with regards to my own position, of course, but you seem knowledgeable about the matter, so I didn't wanna miss the chance to bend your ear for more information while you were here.
The difference with online games is that they require ongoing costs like servers and support that music doesn't have. Back in the day with single player games, there were no servers, and you buy once and it is yours.
Now with online games, you can't but make it so they charge the person on a service based to pay for ongoing costs.
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
Artists can't coast on the profits of a popular album anymore, unless it's just super popular worldwide. However, is it such a bad thing that performers who want to make a career out of being a musician now, more than ever, need to actually go out and perform their music to do so?
It is not up to a private entity to determine who or what is "the only legal means for the required servicing" of anyone. That is a power reserved for public entities who perform public functions. What a private entity can do is create a contract granting the party an exclusive right to provide services. For example, a city might enter into an exclusive contract with a catering service to provide coffee. The terms might dictate that the contract prevents the city from going to other caterers to service their events.
However, a contract goes two ways. The exclusivity exists so long as the exclusive party provides the service. If the catering company does not provide coffee, and shows no willingness or ability to ever provide coffee, the catering service can't prevent the city from seeking somebody else to provide coffee. If the exclusive party does not provide the service, and the exclusive party has made it clear that it is unwilling or unable to ever provide the service, the contract will typically not be sufficient to prevent the city from seeking coffee elsewhere. The law will typically declare the contract is void.
Now in the example argument you would give, if somebody were to actually argue that, they would probably not fare well. Because nobody makes promises to others who can't guarantee they will uphold their side of an agreement; they make promises on the good faith assumption that the agreement itself guarantees compliance on both sides of the agreement. If, indeed, the publisher declares itself "the only legal means," then why aren't they providing those means? And if they cannot guarantee that they will provide those means, then they cannot equally say that other legal means may be employed to gain what the provider is unwilling or unable to provide.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE