Comment on someone's Comment on DRM | thread | feb 2017

"I'm sure there are some people who are willing to buy a game if they can't pirate it but I doubt it's a huge number. Most people probably either fall into piracy only or buy only but we'll never get to know for sure."-Bluth54, neogaf http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1339781&page=2

Indeed, here's the thing. Unless someone has cash around and gamer friends pushing heavily for that particular title. There's plenty of legally free games of equal or superior quality. The complexity and graphics of low cost and even free games is increasing over time. You're competing against free and often superior products.

DRM cannot stop copying of digital data, it can only impede you playing a copy for a while. And as automated intelligent means of cracking are developed, systems that might be able to analyze at faster than human speed and see more complex patterns than humans can catch, expect any drm to be cracked within hours perhaps even minutes of release in the future.

I often buy a title on multiple platforms, even at full price. But if it has draconian drm, that can easily be up to half a dozen sales lost from me. I'll only buy one copy if that, and when it's sold at peanuts heavy discount, or I'll play something else.

Resident Evil 7, I was probably buying for xbox one, ps4, steam(and eventually on likely future android and ios), but now it'll be highly discounted on a single platform if that.   If I can't find a disc, I might buy it again, but now that won't be the case either, I'll buy digital where it's linked to a platform at heavy discount on a single platform, if that.

nice news

EFF sues US government, saying copyright rules on DRM are unconstitutional

DMCA's "anti-circumvention" rule has rankled hackers and scholars for a long time.-source

DMCA affecting physical stuff

"Victory! Carmakers Can't Use The DMCA To Make Working On Your Car Illegal

Possibly the most bizarre application of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act finally got the exemption us car enthusiasts have deserved.

Recently some automakers (with support from the EPA of all places) tried to argue that they own the code in your car, and messing with that code would violate their copyright."-source link

The DMCA(wikipedia link) is an abomination, the only thing it did right was the protection of online sites by limiting liability, iirc.

Now in the above article it says how an exemption was given for cars and how it will be rereviewed 3 years later again.   What sort of law opens the possibility that a person can't even fix their own car, the possibility of making fixing your own property illegal?  Needing exemptions to not make what are your RIGHTS, your RIGHTS over your own property something up to the whims of bureaucrats?

"As of right now, since farmers don’t enjoy the exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that gearheads managed to secure, it’s still illegal for a farmer to even attempt to diagnose an issue with their own tractor. That means even trying to check if a code a, say, John Deere 8235 R tractor is throwing means a huge issue or just a filter at the end of its cycle. "-link to source

Amazing, people not being allowed to fix their own property, saying they don't really own what they bought.  This is ridiculous nonsense, and is proof that those who voted for such legislation are not fit to legislate.   The world works by survival of the fittest, but human society exists in a bubble where the unfit guide the world.  Thankfully a temporary thing, the advent of a higher form of intelligence will once again ensure that the planet is governed by the fittest lifeforms.