Lets back up a little. What if the device was a record player which plays LPs. When you brought the record, the store clerk didn't make you sign anything. Money changed hands, product changed hands. A simple transaction. You now own that LP. While you don't own the copyright of the music on the LP, you do own that copy of the recording.
What would happen if you made and recorded your own music to play on that LP. Is that wrong? I am not arguing whether piracy is right or wrong, that has been established. The question is whether I am allowed to play my own music or music from some third party without interference from the record player's manufacturer, especially if said interferrence destroys or redenders the player unusable. The answer is of course I have that right.
Instead of electricity, it's vibrations holding that data. Yet the same would hold true if the record player ran on and was base on electricity.
So the "good" is just the machine itself and thus it is only required to exist and manipulate electricity, and the carts which receive electricity. The "service" is the non-good data in the machine itself and the data on the card and subject to the provider's whim to let you access (as is the case with Steam), and while illegal to stop it for false reasons, the onus is on the affected party to seek redress, which the content provider is banking on nobody doing out of intimidation of taking on a large company or realizing they'd have to admit to piracy at the outset and would immediately lose said lawsuit.
There is a very significant difference between Steam and a brickable DS. Steam will not brick your machine should you use a non-steam product. Nor could they ban your account should you commit a crime unrelated to Steam, civil or criminal. So even if you committed piracy without using Steam, even if it was a game available on Steam you would still win access to your account. Of course you would potentially have to answer for your crimes, however, Valve would have to explain themselves as to why they had so much access to the users personal data in order to make the claim in the first place. It's a MAD scenario. Both sides would lose. Your problem would be civil, while theirs would be federal. It's a line they can't cross.
I brickable console would cross that line. With Steam, the games would be considered a service, but convertable to a good. However just because it is a service, it is still considered intellectual property, a form of good. An intangible good. The DS, which is clearly a good, is also partially intellectual property. The look and feel, the boot ROMs contained within, the manufacuring process. Just because a good contains intellectual property, does it, by extenstion render the good a service or vis versa.
Also agree that oohhboy is wrong with that whole pirating isn't hurting anybody. It spreads from one user to the next, at first a few people might be doing it but if unchecked then millions more will follow.
You're theory about "it's a good and not a service" doesn't hold up as well. There's clearly a service agreement when you purchase the console, if you disagree, fine go make your own nothing stopping you. Any company has the right to protect it's profits.
When I brought my DS, there was no such "Service agreement". I did not sign anything. It contained warnings about potential health effects like cigarettes. There were no click through agreement, that is assuming such an agreement would ever hold up in court. How an obvious good can be made a service just because one said so is utterly ridiculous. It goes back to the muffin example earlier. There is one minor difference. While the baker has not right or ability to dictate how you use your muffin, a console maker also has no right, but has the technological ability to do so. In essence, write their own laws.
Piracy doesn't hurt anybody because the harm caused and the good it also causes is un-quantifiable. It has the obvious, but immeasurable harm of letting someone use the software without paying. It also functions as an opposing force to the manufacture's want to increase prices, but I am not saying that price is zero as that would make as much sense as setting the price to infinity as a response. By providing, abet unwillingly, free entertainment, reduce crime by keeping people busy. In a perfect world neither copyright infringement or theft would occur, but given the choice as to which one I rather have people commit, I rather have them commit CI.
The above doesn't hold true for
counterfeiting. Whether the customer was knowing or otherwise, the customer had placed a price with the counterfeiter drawing that money away from the manufacture would have received. Very real harm has been done. The lost revenue has been actualised, stolen. If the game was faulty and the person didn't know it was a counterfeit, they would blame the manufacture, damaging the brand.
Of course all of the above doesn't ask a very important, overriding question. What happens to the false positives?, and there will be false positives. Instead of saying, no, I will not run this, it bricks itself. What happens if the contact was a little dirty, providing a less than complete connection? The NES or DS will lock up or display an error or garbage. But with the fuse would it mean that when this happens, it would think you are trying to run unsigned code or trying to bypass security. How would it know the difference? It would be the equivalent of shooting someone dead for jay walking or causing a fender bender.
There is reason why nobody has used this fuse for the many years of it's existence, as they cannot answer the question of false positives.
Topic: Nintendo 3DS Takes Piracy Prevention 'A Step Further' (Read 18962 times)
