Proposed Texas Property Rights in Software Act

hackenberg

hackenberg

Heading for Lost Vegas
Dear Folks,

I am seriously burned with Steam not letting me sell my old discs. The situation with Steam is the equivalent of purchasing a car, driving it for a few years and being told that you can not sell it because it has a license plate and registration.

So I did what any red-blooded American should do. . . Contacted my state legislator with the following proposal:

TEXAS PROPERTY RIGHTS IN PHYSICAL MEDIA STATUTE

  • A resident of Texas who is the holder of legitimate mass-produced software media (CD, DVD, storage card or other media) is the de facto and de jure licensee of the software.
    Nexus for the purposes of this act shall be the direct or indirect transfer of any software to within the boundaries of the State of Texas for retail sale or serving as an anti-piracy system for the registration of retail software sold within the boundaries of the State of Texas.
    No fees or restrictions may be placed on the transfer, sale, re-activation or re-registration of software that is on legitimate physical media to or from residents of the State of Texas.
    This law shall preempt any licensing agreements or terms of use.
    Any entity that interferes in the rights of a Texas resident in the transfer or re-registration of legitimate media shall be required to re-purchase the physical media at the current retail price.
    This provision shall only apply to holders of physical media; software sold online shall not be subjected to the provisions of this law.
    Any additional programs that shall be sold through online delivery for activation of software held on physical media shall be considered registration and part of the refundable price of the software.

I sent this to my friendly local member of the Texas House of Representatives http://www.house.state.tx.us/

This is a good way to nibble Steam to death at the state level.
 
sea said:
If rights are going to change then it means we need to redefine the terms they are sold under.
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You are talking as if EULAs are actually legally enforcable in most parts of the world. Unless by "we" you mean the US, in all its consumer-unfriendly glory, in which case, carry on.
 
sea said:
Sorry, but games aren't your property. You buy a license, not an object. This applies both to digital and physical copies.
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Luckily not in Germany. hence why a few of Steams ideas have no meaning here. Like the right to sell a used copy. If you bought the game you can sell it to who ever you want. Sadly games are connected to you with your Steam account.

sea said:
(As a side note, I live in Canada, and I'm pretty sure our government has absolutely no idea what to do when it comes to stuff like EULAs and videogames).
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Why not ? The idea or if you want issue we have with games and DRMs now isn't something new. Certain software developers like Corel Draw I think tried something similar in the past as well years before game developers/publishers even thought about it. Though it never worked in Germany/Europe because actually it had no meaning here.
 
Crni Vuk said:
Sadly games are connected to you with your Steam account.
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The same is with Games for Windows LIVE I think.

Anyway, Autodesk has done this with their Max and Maya long ago, they even blocked support and called it illegal to use their soft bought second-hand, as well as publishing models made in them. And that's no good, considering price of 3DS Max (standalone license is worth almost 3000$).
 
you know that always supported my theory that those DRM features actually are not mainly because of piracy but to kill the second hand market. Far fetched ? I don't think so. In some german gaming magazine EXACTLY that is what some game developer explained. One of the bigest market they don't reach is people selling their used games. I think the numbers have been something like for every new game 2 used one change their owner. Think about the money they lose.

Piracy is theft. There is no way to argue about that. And any company sure has the right to fight it. But even with the best DRM you will NEVER EVER reach the pirates. Why ? They don't buy games. As simple as that. So you will not gain anything from it. I think thats the reality.

But with accounts and DRMs as we have them with Ubisoft and EA or GFWL ... you can very effectively eliminate the market for used games. As said. Just my theory
 
Crni Vuk said:
you know that always supported my theory that those DRM features actually are not mainly because of piracy but to kill the second hand market.
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Some DRM is, yeah. A lot of DRM is just disc-checks and stuff, it's aimed at piracy. And yes, DRM works in that sense. Not for long, but for the most annoying, invasive DRM, it can take days to properly crack it in a way that makes it accessible to non-hardcore pirates. Those days are very important to publishers.

But it's true, a lot of DRM is about the second hand market. Publishers hate the second-hand market. EA Live, Games for Windows Live, Steam, they're all aimed at that. And that's not a theory, they've often explained as much themselves. Google Project $10.
 
Brother None said:
Some DRM is, yeah. A lot of DRM is just disc-checks and stuff, it's aimed at piracy.
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I am not talking about the Disc-Checks which is acceptable in some way. I mean such nonsense like being forced to use some Games for Windows Crap account or EA accounts just to play the god-damn game you payed for (like you mentioned as well ;) ). Third party software-accounts which we never needed in the past and now suddenly become a mandatory for the usual user forcing us to suck on the tits of either Microsoft or any other company (see the Baning of Biowaregamers for "criticism"). What I see now is a heavy incapacitation of the gamer and many even applaud them swallowing either Steam or any other "software" because it connects them with some social life network or what ever. To say that I am not so stupid to deny the positive points of systems like Steam for example. I like it for what it can give you. But you said it by your self. Why ling to your self about what it really is (DRM) ? And on top of that some games require from you to use Steam AND GFWL now for example ...

I don't know. Piracy sure plays a very important role. But one has to agree that quite a lot of it is inflated (on both sides a company wants to get moeny for their product and pirates are no pedophiles). I mean I would be actually interested to see how much they actually earn by this restrictive DRM when you consider 2 things. Die hard pirates will not buy it. Either way you see it. They simply love to crack/download. Many don't even play the downloaded game so they are somewhat out of the picture. The other group are honest consumers (like me) which refuse to buy the game (assassins creed sure looks like fun but I will never know because I dislike their Ubi-crap-system so much). So what is left is a third group of undecided gamers. But how big are they even really ? I guess there is no real (unbiased) research around it.

As said I base my opinion on what I think one developer said (he was working for Crysis ? No clue ... my memory fails me >.< ) and that one big concern are those used copies of games which change the owner and the game company gets nothing for it! But he might have been some individual and not presentative of the whole buisness.
 
Crni Vuk said:
And on top of that some games require from you to use Steam AND GFWL now for example ...
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Ho ho ho! I made the mistake of buying GTA IV via Steam. That means I have to boot up and log into Steam, GFwL and Rockstar Social Club (optional) to run the game, and I believe it runs another DRM on top of that.

It was heavan.
 
There was also the Steam-GFWL overlap for Dawn Of War 2. Not only was GFWL DRM, it also caused command lag (as much as 2 seconds sometimes), didn't allow for fast patching (1 month certification time, yay) and came with an horrible ranking system that was bad enough for console FPS, let alone RTS. Good times. Now there's only Steam and ye olde Elo system, but maintenance sometimes kicks you out of games :(.
 
Brother None said:
Crni Vuk said:
And on top of that some games require from you to use Steam AND GFWL now for example ...
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Ho ho ho! I made the mistake of buying GTA IV via Steam. That means I have to boot up and log into Steam, GFwL and Rockstar Social Club (optional) to run the game, and I believe it runs another DRM on top of that.

It was heaven.
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THAH! You know you're a man with more patience then I because I get actually already a collapse when I just see GFWL.
 
GTA IV is a pretty shitty port too. It's got memory leak issues, big ones. I love the GTA series but IV and its expansion were discount buys for me, too much shit piled up in the fringes.
 
I don't get it. The company won't lose any real money this way. And that car example really explains a lot abut AAA game companies today.
You can compare it to a used bicycle even.

Game is not the same thing as a social network like Facebook, especially if it doesn't have multiplayer. Even if it bonds someone for seeing highscore which it doesn't, the idea of logging to play offline game is stupid. I think they want to get the same thing that WoW gets every day, or any MMO, a lot of easy money. In fact that means if you don't play the game for any reason now and wait a year or more, the company might get broke in that time or they stop updating the game and you can't log in anymore or god knows what problem with the server, what then ?
Only banks function like that, but they are used for real cash or things. Not imaginary logs so you can assess something you have a legal right to posses.

I agree with Crni on pirates and want to add, the companies lose shitty amount of money compared to how the game will spread by ilegal selling. And if it's not good and you can't return it if you don't like it, pirates are a remedy for that situation. I don't see how would demo show you much, DA2 demo surely did but some other game?
 
you know I have this weird nightmare that one day we will have to pay monthly fees just to play ANY game ... crazy ? wasn't there some idea by Microsoft to get users to pay for their multiplayer games or something.
 
no that is actually the time to say thx to the publishers/developers because you have another reason to spend more time with doing sport/meeting friends and spend times with other not PC/console game related hobbies.

I like to play computers games. But really the current evolution is a very shit future for videogames. The really sad thing is that either gamers don't care or they started to swallow everything by the companies. No clue.

Hope this will change at some point.
 
LinkPain said:
And that is the time when we go out and start a war!
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Just stop playing games...become a parent, have children, live in the mountains, grow your own food, polish your guns at night...talk to your wife, make love to her in front of an open fire, look at the night sky, wonder about the universe, study cultures and languages, hunt small furry animals, build your own home with a friend, grow grapes, make wine, read 1000 great books, listen to the Rolling Stones, and then some Jazz albums, wash yourself in a cold mountain stream, pick flowers, count the trees, feed the birds, smell the earth, write a novel, feed your chickens, collect their eggs, cook an omelet, teach your kids...games aren't even that important if you think about it - maybe it's time to stop feeding the industry. :mrgreen:
 
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