I've been playing [External Link] Shadwen. Great fun, and the stealth works, although it can get a bit slapstick sometimes, with barrels, crates and wagons flying through the air and then hearing the stock guard responses of "I thought I saw something there...".

Also nailed a bit of time into Battlevoid:Harbinger. It's a slow starter, but has a really nice FTL vibe after a few hours. I think I might be a hooked now, 9 hours in.

Finally, I got round to playing Kingdom Rush: Frontiers. Like the original, only better. Probably the best tower-defence game out there.

And for some reason, I found myself playing a few hours of Borderlands 2. I think that was a subconscious response to hearing Feral's announcement regarding Mad Max. Bring on the 20th!

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Loving the "sexy voice" comments on tonight's stream. Liam has an admirer.. but I think I'll stick to ShadowSigyn's stream myself though! Just as well you two don't clash. Don't make me choose between you!

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Quoting: ElectricPrismSteam Survey 3 months in a row.

Random, but awesome comment. I got it two months ago too - first time in years. Literally, years.

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They've been aware that voice chat is broken on Linux since release and have done nothing about it. I don't trust those guys to not break this game again in future. Their next project, Payday 3 is pretty much dead to me, to be honest. This one is a pretty good shooter too, so a real loss.

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Quoting: voyager2102

Quoting: scaineInteresting! But a bit of googling seems to completely disagree with your example of German Law. Can you point me in the right direction? What I've found appears to suggest that German law is very close to UK law - you can make copies for your own use, but copyright law is still in effect - that is, only the author of the works is allowed to redistribute/reproduce it for anything other than personal backup purposes. There appeared to be a debate around this in Germany around 2002/3, but nothing I can find suggests that the law changed significantly.

Your google-fu is bad ;)

German law interpreted by a lawyer [External Link], please use goole translate or the like to translate it. The paragraph is linked from there, too

From that article, it's crystal clear that copying in Germany is ONLY allowed:

for their own private use without profit
and this not be distributed or published

So your example of making a copy for your friend is still obviously illegal.

Quoting: voyager2102

Quoting: scaineBottom line, ask yourself how you'd feel about selling one hundred copies of your work, only to discover 100 thousand such copies were being enjoyed by the masses? I'd be pissed off. How about you?

It's true - I really don't understand anyway who defends piracy. At all. Happy to be "educated" however, but that education must address not just laws and jurisdictions, but more importantly how that defender-of-piracy would justify and accept living on the street if they were the artist with no income and not the pirate.

I actually answered that in your other post (going bottom up). It is a mental excercise - you need to overcome the reflexes learned in countless hours of education, TV, advertisement etc.

Ask yourself:

1) Are you going to prevent piracy with any form of protection? No, you are just going to make life harder for your paying customers and maybe prevent the pirates to use if for a while. Everything gets cracked sooner or later - law of nature ;)
2) Why did those evil pirates download your software? There are different groups:
a) The ones that do it because they don't care about you and download it to save a buck. Those are a lost cause <snip!>

You're getting confused here between "is piracy legal?" and "is DRM a good thing?". I don't care about your justifications for why people pirate material. I'm asserting that in most (relevant) countries, the answer to that first question is "no, piracy is illegal".

And as for this:

Quoting: voyager2102Now that you ask - I actually would expect people to download and pirate it as that is the way things are. If they can't afford to buy it they are indeed welcome to download it for free and if they wouldn't have bought it anyways and read it because they pirate it then all the better - maybe they will find it fun and pay me afterwards or buy my next work!.

Well bravo. We agree to differ and you're a bigger man than I. But it sounds like you can afford that attitude because you don't rely on copyright law to pay you for your work. My point was that if you were starving on the street because, despite your talent, piracy deprived you of income, I'm pretty sure there's not a human being in the world who would defend piracy let alone advocate it.

It sounds like both sides are pretty entrenched here though, so like Liam I'll try to duck out of this now. No promises though...

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Quoting: voyager2102Anybody who discounts that there is a severe difference between a physical and a digital good can't be taken serious, I'm sorry. Of course there is a fundamental difference between me taking an apple from a tree and me copying the technique that the apple farmer uses to keep the birds off of the apple tree. In one case I dimish what he has and in the second case I do not unless I take away from his customer pool.

So if you write a book, stick it on Amazon for six euros, you'll be cool when I and thousands of others download the torrent instead? It's only digital, right? I wasn't going to buy it anyway!! Apparently I'm entitled to your cultural contribution without paying?

Man, I'm really trying here, but I just can't understand it.

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Quoting: voyager2102

Quoting: scaineBut in the musician example above, we're not talking about piggy-backing a live performance, a closer example would be a copied CD. You're paying nothing for a perfect copy of what other people did pay for. You are stealing. This can't be debated. It just is.

Wow... another one of these judgmental phrases so devoid of any actual fact, yet, oozing with sense of mission! You are moralizing. You just are ;)

Counter example of what you say: In Germany copyright law says that you can take a CD that you bought, bring it to a friend and even make a copy for him as long as you don't charge for it.

The law explicitly allows this and here you come and say it's stealing an "that is just so"! Wake up! We should adopt the Jolly Roger as our new flag!!!1!

Interesting! But a bit of googling seems to completely disagree with your example of German Law. Can you point me in the right direction? What I've found appears to suggest that German law is very close to UK law - you can make copies for your own use, but copyright law is still in effect - that is, only the author of the works is allowed to redistribute/reproduce it for anything other than personal backup purposes. There appeared to be a debate around this in Germany around 2002/3, but nothing I can find suggests that the law changed significantly.

I looked at a few sites, but this is the cleanest: http://limegreenip.hoganlovells.com/article/33/copyrights-copyright-protection-germany [External Link]

Bottom line, ask yourself how you'd feel about selling one hundred copies of your work, only to discover 100 thousand such copies were being enjoyed by the masses? I'd be pissed off. How about you?

It's true - I really don't understand anyway who defends piracy. At all. Happy to be "educated" however, but that education must address not just laws and jurisdictions, but more importantly how that defender-of-piracy would justify and accept living on the street if they were the artist with no income and not the pirate.

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Quoting: buenaventuraIt simply echoes what you wrote in your article. Using "arguments" like "that's just how it is" or "it's just a fact" or "you say something else but I am right so buzz off", even "this is my site and look, a lot of people repeat my baseless "it's a fact, you are just entitlement sillies" statement over and over, thus it is true", it would have been better to just disable commenting for this article - you do not seem like you want to read or respond to anything but people agreeing with you. Perhaps a like-button on your articles would be better than letting people actually write, if you are just looking for hurrah's.

The article has generated lots of views - many of your comments have had likes, as have many of the counter arguments. Gaming On Linux has never been "in it for the hurrah's". The near-complete lack of advertising should attest to that.

There's some nice irony that you're getting upset because not everyone agrees with you, so you're attacking the editorial and website... because you don't agree with it.

BTW, the idea about liking an article is a good one. I don't think it would stifle discussion either. Right now, the only gauge to an article's popularity is the Views count at the top of the article. That's useful, but people like yourself are engaging with this article despite (or because of) not agreeing with it. A like button would be cool gauge of support for a given article.

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Quoting: emphy

Quoting: scaine

Quoting: Colomboscaine: Piracy is not stealing. Stealing is taking from someone. Piracy is piracy. Its like listening to musician who is playing behind fence for audience that paid for it. Musican isn't directly losing anything, audience who paid for it isn't directly losing anything.

..
But in the musician example above, we're not talking about piggy-backing a live performance, a closer example would be a copied CD. You're paying nothing for a perfect copy of what other people did pay for. You are stealing. This can't be debated. It just is.

Sure, there is nuance, but when people start talking about digital vs physical, that's just rationalisation for the fact that pirates deprive artists of revenue. Weren't going to buy it anyway, hence not a sale? Largely false, because if you weren't going to buy it anyway, then why did you pay peanuts for a pirate copy? Don't think it's worth the asking price? Wait for a sale, or debate that price.

But piracy is stealing. Fact.

Erm, no. Piracy is copyright infringement: breaking a legally enforced monopoly on copying.

There is something to be said for calling it stealing when copies are being sold, since in that case you can demonstrate the buyer was prepared to pay. Even then, the one buying it is not stealing, but buying 'stolen goods', and the seller is the one who is stealing.

I... think we're agreeing on everything except some semantics on the names. So... good? Unless you're trying to shift blame somehow - the buyer might not be technically stealing, but that doesn't absolve them from the crime. Unless they genuinely didn't know? So I guess this argument is valid for the likes of the g2a sites. Buyers there might not realise that the keys are stolen. This article, however, to get back on point is making it clear that if you did know that the keys are dodgy, you don't get to cry victim about high prices, or wanting to support the porting house.

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Quoting: Colomboscaine: Piracy is not stealing. Stealing is taking from someone. Piracy is piracy. Its like listening to musician who is playing behind fence for audience that paid for it. Musican isn't directly losing anything, audience who paid for it isn't directly losing anything.

That's a terrible metaphor, I'm afraid. By all means, listen to the radio, or even your friends CD of an artist: that's not piracy.

But in the musician example above, we're not talking about piggy-backing a live performance, a closer example would be a copied CD. You're paying nothing for a perfect copy of what other people did pay for. You are stealing. This can't be debated. It just is.

Sure, there is nuance, but when people start talking about digital vs physical, that's just rationalisation for the fact that pirates deprive artists of revenue. Weren't going to buy it anyway, hence not a sale? Largely false, because if you weren't going to buy it anyway, then why did you pay peanuts for a pirate copy? Don't think it's worth the asking price? Wait for a sale, or debate that price.

But piracy is stealing. Fact.

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