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[Mongrel]

LOL, I know a bunch of Russians... Good luck collecting on THAT

[Saturn]

Bush signs PRO-IP act into law, the same one that passed DUE TO THAT 250 BILLION FIGURE THAT WAS COMPLETELY MADE UP

 

[JDigital]

Refusing to legalize cannabis costs the American economy 800 billion dollars a year and has cost over three thousand American lives over the past decade. See, I can invent facts too!

[Brentai]

Apparently the strength of this bill is that it's universally broad and full of loopholes.  Hoo-ray.

[Thad]

Like the DMCA.

It's pretty much up to the courts to decide which parts of it are obvious bullshit.  On the plus side, they've gotten much better at that.

[sei]

Recent legislation in Florida, Utah, Wisconsin, and Rhode Island has made it more difficult to sell used CDs in those states than it is to get a driver’s license. In Florida, for example, anyone attempting to sell used CDs to a retailer must present identification and be fingerprinted, and any retailer looking to sell those same CDs must apply for a permit and submit a $10,000 bond with the Department of Agriculture and Human Services.

[Brentai]

...yeah, I don't have anything but 

[sei]

In the first move of its kind against online copyright infringement, New Zealand's government has introduced a law that could force ISPs to disconnect customers they only suspect of distributing copyright material.

The Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Act 2008 is due to become law next February and echoes a similar proposal that failed to win acceptance in the EU earlier this year.

Recording Industry Association chief executive Campbell Smith has said it would be "impractical and ridiculous" for copyright owners to prove the guilt of infringers in court before demanding they be cut off from the Internet.

[Mongrel]

Jesus Christ, we're going down like dominoes.

Is there no country on the planet with testicles or a leader with even a fractional understanding of these issues? I mean, sure the whole thing can come tumbling down for the most part, but there ought to be SOME exceptions.

[Dooly]

I think ThePirateBay is still alive only because Sweden's view on the whole piracy thing is "we have more important stuff to worry about."

[Thad]

videogaming247: Epic boss proposes doing an end-run around first sale doctrine by making games impossible to finish without registering.

[Brentai]

At least now they're being pretty honest about their efforts to punish legitimate users.

[Pacobird]

videogaming247: Epic boss proposes doing an end-run around first sale doctrine by making games impossible to finish without registering.

The limits of Copyright control of after-market products is pretty well-established.  Capps is blowing smoke out his ass unless he's willing to get Congress involved, and he would basically be fucking the entire rental market for pretty much everything.

[TA]

Well-established, and constantly under attack by the EAs and the Valves of the world.

This is not a big step from current online activation, which is telling of how vile that shit is.

[Pacobird]

They are able to make the case for online activation for their games because it is arguably the most effective way available to fight piracy/digital copying, which is an illegal activity that would otherwise be spectacularly easy to carry out, since their games are playable solely as computer files. 

Gears of War, as a console game, requires the physical disk to play, so the rampant piracy and distribution that justifies what Valve argues for is nowhere near as feasible.  This is completely distinguishable.

[TA]

... except that online activation is completely ineffectual at preventing piracy.  It is, in fact, effective exclusively at preventing legal second-hand purchase.

[Brentai]

We're not talking about used PC games here.  That hasn't been a real industry since the mid-80s, for obvious reasons.

They're talking about doing the Steam thing for console games, which pretty much fucks over your chances of buying or selling used, or renting.  Not that I'm exactly going to weep for the massacre of Blockbuster and Gamestop but it should be noted that I do most of my console gaming that way, considering how horribly uneconomical buying everything you want to play brand new is (which is, oh the irony, one of the reasons why piracy is so common for PC games.)

[Thad]

The limits of Copyright control of after-market products is pretty well-established.  Capps is blowing smoke out his ass unless he's willing to get Congress involved, and he would basically be fucking the entire rental market for pretty much everything.

Well, you're the lawyer, not me, but I think history shows plenty of cases where publishers introduce odious, anti-consumer copy protection which a reasonable person would know fully well is illegal and wait for the lawsuits to roll in before they stop.  The Sony rootkit is the most obvious example.

[Alex]

I'm with Brentai here (on lol PC gaming, not shedding tears over GameStop and brand new games).  As it stands, with brand new games at $60 is terribly uneconomical considering the industry really could care less about anything other than whether or not you buy their games.

I think that if they really REALLY wanted to see their hardwork pay off while at least giving the used game industry a light slap in the face, new games would be at $40 or less.  That way, they would be making the price of things attractive enough to convince people to actually buy them (most reasonable human beings who aren't made of money would definitely prefer to buy 3 games for $120 rather than 2 games at $120) and giving the used game industry a light slap in the face (hopefully).

Who knows though, I could be talking without having any idea of what's going on for realz. 

[Brentai]

The used games industry doesn't need a light slap in the face.  They've done nothing wrong (other than being generally overpriced, which is certainly not hurting the producers).  Saying you need to curtail second-hand purchases is like saying you need to take care of the fact that you're making cars that run for more than a year without needing to be replaced.  When I buy a physical copy of Gears of War 2, I reserve the right to give that CD to anybody else I want, to sell it, to toss it out into the street for whoever to grab it, or to stick it up my ass.