Originally posted by Kael:
Imagine that there was only 1 game publisher and all games required an online registration each time you played. Would you still think it was reasonable reprisal for hacking one game if you weren't allowed to play any games anymore? What if the music industry consolidated and refused to sell music to anyone who had downloaded an illegal mp3? What if the music, movie, television and video game companies agreed to operate under one contract and banned anyone from all of their products if they commited an infraction against any of them?
Here's another one! What if aliens took over Earth and decreed that no one who has ever masturbated could eat pizza again?
Now, I'm not just saying that to be a jerk (well, maybe a little ). My point is, you're giving us examples that are so far removed from the situation we're looking at with Valve's actions, that they have the same value in analyzing the situation as my uptight alien invaders example. We're not looking at a situation where we've got a single game distribution system, and there are no indications that one is going to appear. Even if all the media companies improbably consolidated or banded together, there would be all sorts of antitrust issues with these types of actions that don't exist with the Valve situation.
It's easy to make all sorts of leaps and presumptions to create absurd scenarios like the ones presented here, but it's not very valuable in determining whether Valve's real world actions are proper.
Blackhawk wrote:The crime was the theft of one thing, one product.
I suppose that depends on how you define the crime. If you view the crime as stealing HL2, then your argument seems more plausible. If you view the crime as defrauding Steam, then your argument seems less plausible.
What I'm not clear on is exactly how CS (the old one) works nowadays. I've played it on LANs and never needed to authenticate against Steam, so I'm not sure why you need to authenticate against Steam on the internet unless you are playing on Steam's servers.
You said earlier that you could play on other servers - but they would be empty. That implies you can play MP without having to authenticate against Steam.
I dunno, I just bought the Silver Pack and uninstalled every old Valve product I had, so I don't care how the old game works.
It seems to me that regardless of whether or not you bought CS 4 years ago, if you engage in fraud on someone's "free" service - the providers of that service are entitled to no longer provide you with that "free" service.
And in banks across the world
Christians, Moslems, Hindus, Jews
And every other race, creed, colour, tint or hue
Get down on their knees and pray
The raccoon and the groundhog neatly
Make up bags of change
But the monkey in the corner
Well he's slowly drifting out of range
Originally posted by Kael:
Imagine that there was only 1 game publisher and all games required an online registration each time you played. Would you still think it was reasonable reprisal for hacking one game if you weren't allowed to play any games anymore? What if the music industry consolidated and refused to sell music to anyone who had downloaded an illegal mp3? What if the music, movie, television and video game companies agreed to operate under one contract and banned anyone from all of their products if they commited an infraction against any of them?
Here's another one! What if aliens took over Earth and decreed that no one who has ever masturbated could eat pizza again?
Now, I'm not just saying that to be a jerk (well, maybe a little ). My point is, you're giving us examples that are so far removed from the situation we're looking at with Valve's actions, that they have the same value in analyzing the situation as my uptight alien invaders example. We're not looking at a situation where we've got a single game distribution system, and there are no indications that one is going to appear. Even if all the media companies improbably consolidated or banded together, there would be all sorts of antitrust issues with these types of actions that don't exist with the Valve situation.
It's easy to make all sorts of leaps and presumptions to create absurd scenarios like the ones presented here, but it's not very valuable in determining whether Valve's real world actions are proper.
These desisions don't exist in a vacumn. To determine is appropriate action was taken sometimes its helpful to try to draw the line for appropriate behavior outside of the context of the situation. I am not making the "slippery slope" arguement, im not trying to say that if we don't stop them now this is what will happen. Im just trying to wrap up both ends of the spectrum so we can draw the line we consider reasonable.
So the question I was asking to those who considered Valve's actions reasonable (which I am one of) was, where is the line, does this sort of action ever become unreasonable?
Originally posted by Kael:
To determine is appropriate action was taken sometimes its helpful to try to draw the line for appropriate behavior outside of the context of the situation.
But there has to be a limit to how far out of context we're willing to go. The further out of context you go, the less applicability to the current situation we're going to find. With the hypotheticals presented, we're looking at vastly different gaming, social, and political landscapes in our world, and my worldview would likely be quite a bit different in that world than in our real world. I'm not prepared to speculate as to how I might feel in that situation.
Originally posted by Kael:
So the question I was asking to those who considered Valve's actions reasonable (which I am one of) was, where is the line, does this sort of action ever become unreasonable?
To get a little more realistic, I'd argue that it becomes less acceptable to me if Valve were to cut off access to Steam for actions that were not illegal/in violation of licenses, or if Valve were to implement something that scanned your harddrive looking for illegal games/files, or if Valve were to somehow cause harm to your computer and/or unrelated data as the result of using the stolen CD key. I think those are more realistic scenarios (although not necessarily likely) that may help to set the boundaries you're looking for.
). My point is, you're giving us examples that are so far removed from the situation we're looking at with Valve's actions, that they have the same value in analyzing the situation as my uptight alien invaders example. We're not looking at a situation where we've got a single game distribution system, and there are no indications that one is going to appear. Even if all the media companies improbably consolidated or banded together, there would be all sorts of antitrust issues with these types of actions that don't exist with the Valve situation.
