A point of contraversy (part 1) - Buying a game used is as bad as pirating?

[WaruTaru]

*sigh* the order of the words on the paper is a part of the product, but it is not the only part. I'd like a book with an intact cover and no questionable stains, too. Besides, you're still laboring under the delusion that selling copyrighted material is about licensing the copyright. It's not. It's about the right to make and sell copies. Heck, the right of first sale first came into being because a book publisher tried to overstep the bounds provided by copyright law; game companies are trying to do just this, and they're doing it using some psuedo-legal mumbo jumbo that, if the courts had any sense, would not fly.

Okay, okay, I'll throw in the cover and print it on new paper. I'll even include an autograph. And a picture. But you still get numbered words and the same instruction. Is that value for money? No? How about I throw in another copy for free? You can sell the extra copy at full price. Do we have a deal?

A very simplistic definition of license. Note the part saying "Trademark and Brand Licensing". Its what Hollywood pays when they turn a book into a movie. That means the brand itself is the selling factor, and one needs to pay a certain fee to distribute products under said brand.

Game shops are selling used games containing the developers Logo, Brand, Game Name, Art, Sound, Music, etc. Without asking for a license to do so. First-hand sales are fine because the developers were paid for it. Selling the same copy of game more than once? Where did the game shop's rights come from? As far as I'm concerned, they are infringing on trademark.

I'm sounding more and more like a lawyer now. Bad...

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

*sigh* the order of the words on the paper is a part of the product, but it is not the only part. I'd like a book with an intact cover and no questionable stains, too. Besides, you're still laboring under the delusion that selling copyrighted material is about licensing the copyright. It's not. It's about the right to make and sell copies. Heck, the right of first sale first came into being because a book publisher tried to overstep the bounds provided by copyright law; game companies are trying to do just this, and they're doing it using some psuedo-legal mumbo jumbo that, if the courts had any sense, would not fly.

Okay, okay, I'll throw in the cover and print it on new paper. I'll even include an autograph. And a picture. But you still get numbered words and the same instruction. Is that value for money? No? How about I throw in another copy for free? You can sell the extra copy at full price. Do we have a deal?

A very simplistic definition of license. Note the part saying "Trademark and Brand Licensing". Its what Hollywood pays when they turn a book into a movie. That means the brand itself is the selling factor, and one needs to pay a certain fee to distribute products under said brand.

Game shops are selling used games containing the developers Logo, Brand, Game Name, Art, Sound, Music, etc. Without asking for a license to do so. First-hand sales are fine because the developers were paid for it. Selling the same copy of game more than once? Where did the game shop's rights come from? As far as I'm concerned, they are infringing on trademark.

I'm sounding more and more like a lawyer now. Bad...

And <link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright>here's a very simple definition of copyright. Copyright already gives all of the legal protections these companies need; the license agreement is just a few words on a piece of paper that they can point to any time they want to violate the right of first sale, or any of the other things about copyright that are supposed to be good for the consumer. As for the order of the words, you got me; that book would be worthless. But it also wouldn't be the material they had copyrighted, it would be a completely different work, and therefore would be a completely different product. And you accuse me of using strawmen?

 

[WaruTaru]

So you have no sympathy for, say, a farmer who lives out in the middle of nowhere by necessity, can't get internet, but still wants to play a videogame that he, as you pointed out, probably paid full price for in the first place? Because DRM hurts the paying customer, not the pirates, who strip it out before they do anything else.

As for one man indies making a $60 game, where does that come into play at all? You do realize that there is a $10 price point for low end PC games, right? They're sold in a jewel case with very little else in the way of packaging, and they contain the game and not much else. Popcap sells their stuff like that all the time, as did a lot of AAA publishers back in the days when games dropped significantly after they had been out for a year or two. Half off is nothing; when I was a kid (not all that long ago) I could buy a brand new AAA game that had been out for a year or so for $10, and that $10 was almost pure profit for the publisher and the dev, because the game had already paid for itself at the $40 price point several times over.

I seriously doubt they are as far off from civilization as you claim. If they have no internet, what good is this and this? With regards to DRM, hold that thought. I am waiting for a certain someone who claims that "1% piracy impact" to get back to me with the source.

Must be losing my marbles when I posted that. I was going on a different train of thought. I retract that "one-man indie making $60 game" bs and concede the point cause I have no idea what tangent I was going on.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

So you have no sympathy for, say, a farmer who lives out in the middle of nowhere by necessity, can't get internet, but still wants to play a videogame that he, as you pointed out, probably paid full price for in the first place? Because DRM hurts the paying customer, not the pirates, who strip it out before they do anything else.

As for one man indies making a $60 game, where does that come into play at all? You do realize that there is a $10 price point for low end PC games, right? They're sold in a jewel case with very little else in the way of packaging, and they contain the game and not much else. Popcap sells their stuff like that all the time, as did a lot of AAA publishers back in the days when games dropped significantly after they had been out for a year or two. Half off is nothing; when I was a kid (not all that long ago) I could buy a brand new AAA game that had been out for a year or so for $10, and that $10 was almost pure profit for the publisher and the dev, because the game had already paid for itself at the $40 price point several times over.

I seriously doubt they are as far off from civilization as you claim. If they have no internet, what good is this and this? With regards to DRM, hold that thought. I am waiting for a certain someone who claims that "1% piracy impact" to get back to me with the source.

Must be losing my marbles when I posted that. I was going on a different train of thought. I retract that "one-man indie making $60 game" bs and concede the point cause I have no idea what tangent I was going on.

It really depends on where you are. There are large swaths of the midwest (prime farming country) that just don't get internet access, or if they do, they only get dial up or, even worse, satellite internet. Satellite internet in particular is painfully slow, costs a fortune, and has pathetic bandwidth restrictions that make using it for videogames a terrible idea. And it's not just out west. I live in Florida, and even here, in one of the most heavily wired states in the country, there are areas that do not get high speed internet. I have a good 10 megabit down, one megabit up connection, but there's a town less than half an hour from me that doesn't have high speed at all, just dial up. In 2011. We're a long way off from universal high speed internet, especially since we don't even have universal internet, period.

 

[Lesd3vil]

Here's a thing nobody seems to have realised:

Retailers buy x copies of a certain game from publisher.

When they sell out of x copies, they buy more copies of the game to carry on selling it.

If they are constantly cycling through second-hand copies of the game, they're not purchasing more copies from the publisher, because they don't need to.

That's how second-hand game sales hurts the gaming industry. (To say nothing of the fact that I've seen retailers slap ridiculous mark-ups on used games, taking it for £5 and selling it for £22.99 for example :|)

Admittedly, there are probably better ways than 'wah wah, you can't play our game if you buy second-hand' to deal with this, but the gaming industry's still relatively young, so it's bound to have a few teething troubles. Actually, it's probably going through puberty right now. Expect acne, rebellion, and sticky tissues under the bed >>

 

[WaruTaru]

And <link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright>here's a very simple definition of copyright. Copyright already gives all of the legal protections these companies need; the license agreement is just a few words on a piece of paper that they can point to any time they want to violate the right of first sale, or any of the other things about copyright that are supposed to be good for the consumer. As for the order of the words, you got me; that book would be worthless. But it also wouldn't be the material they had copyrighted, it would be a completely different work, and therefore would be a completely different product. And you accuse me of using strawmen?

From the very same wiki,

"In most jurisdictions copyright arises upon fixation and does not need to be registered. Copyright owners have the exclusive statutory right to exercise control over copying and other exploitation of the works for a specific period of time..."

The number-worded book is derived from my original copyright of the perfect-wording book because I have the right to exploit my own copyright and exercise my control over how the words are organized. Sure, they may be two different product, but that means I can price the books differently, and you can choose which price you want to pay (And it wasn't me calling you strawmen.)

And since you agree on how worthless that book is, the same can be applied to a game. By saying that the book is worthless because the words are out of order and makes it impossible to read, you are buying the book for the abstract-story. The "goods" are just a medium. They are of little importance.

Games are not goods either. The "goods" you paid for is the disc. If I do to a game what I did to book, does it not end in the same way? The value of a game is its playability, just like how a book's value is its readability.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

And <link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright>here's a very simple definition of copyright. Copyright already gives all of the legal protections these companies need; the license agreement is just a few words on a piece of paper that they can point to any time they want to violate the right of first sale, or any of the other things about copyright that are supposed to be good for the consumer. As for the order of the words, you got me; that book would be worthless. But it also wouldn't be the material they had copyrighted, it would be a completely different work, and therefore would be a completely different product. And you accuse me of using strawmen?

From the very same wiki,

"In most jurisdictions copyright arises upon fixation and does not need to be registered. Copyright owners have the exclusive statutory right to exercise control over copying and other exploitation of the works for a specific period of time..."

The number-worded book is derived from my original copyright of the perfect-wording book because I have the right to exploit my own copyright and exercise my control over how the words are organized. Sure, they may be two different productt, but that means I can price the books differently, and you can choose which price you want to pay (And it wasn't me calling you strawmen.)

And since you agree on how worthless that book is, the same can be applied to a game. By saying that the book is worthless because the words are out of order and makes it impossible to read, you are buying the book for the abstract-story. The "goods" are just a medium. They are of little importance.

Games are not goods either. The "goods" you paid for is the disc. If I do to a game what I did to book, does it not end in the same way? The value of a game is its playability, just like how a book's value is its readability.

The book itself is a good. An alphabetical list of every word contained in a book isn't an exploitation of your own copyright; it's an entirely new piece of IP, and it would need to be copyrighted as such to be protected. And they are goods. This argument was decided in 1908, when the right of first sale was established. The videogame industry apparently missed that court case, and wants to try for an exemption because they're new, even though both sides admit there is no material difference between a book and a videogame.

 

[WaruTaru]

The book itself is a good. An alphabetical list of every word contained in a book isn't an exploitation of your own copyright; it's an entirely new piece of IP, and it would need to be copyrighted as such to be protected. And they are goods. This argument was decided in 1908, when the right of first sale was established. The videogame industry apparently missed that court case, and wants to try for an exemption because they're new, even though both sides admit there is no material difference between a book and a videogame.

Yes, the book itself is goods. But are you buying the book because its a book, or are you buying it because you want to read a story? If you are buying a book because its a book, then the content itself matters not. If you are buying a book for the story, you are buying the book for the abstract content, not the physical goods. This is an important distinction: are you paying for an item or an idea?

And I am exploiting my own copyright. It has the same cover, same trademark, same logo, same everything save the way I arrange those words. Call it a sequel if you will, but it still contains the same things, or near enough.

1908 is a long time ago, before the rise of digital medium. Just because its good law in 1908, doesn't mean its good law in 2018. And it is changing. Thank god for that. Now I just need to keep my fingers cross and pray that it applies to all the other entertainment media. They should be recognized for their abstract values, not because they are "goods".

 

[TheDooD]

The industry can cry me a river for all I care. They didn't earn that money, because they were already paid for the copy that I bought. What this whole argument has taught me, really, is that piracy really isn't a problem at all. No industry in the history of humanity has gone under because it was outcompeted by its own used market. If the games industry is in danger of having that happen, it deserves to fold. Further, if the used market is really more damaging than piracy, then let me sign up to pirate some stuff, because it must be downright good for the industry.

Or alternatively, piracy is worse because, you know, pirates introduce new copies of the game into the marketplace and drive the value down, while used markets require each copy to be sold new at some point, and helps it to sustain a higher initial value, because people are able to recoup some of their initial investment by reselling. One of the two.

Basically, this argument is just making me wish a crash on the industry. Such a crash wouldn't affect the indie developers, since they don't generally distribute their products through major channels, and they're just about the only game companies left that treat their customers with any modicum of respect. If the games industry wants me to support them, they'd darn well better treat me like a valued customer, and not like something they just scraped off of their shoe.

hmmmm words in my mouth. Tasty.

I never said Piracy was better, I never said it was worse. I compared an argument you made about used game sales to a common argument used to justify piracy. In fact none of my points we're about piracy. I'm simply arguing that used sales is bad for the entire industry. You don't seem to understand how it's terrible for the industry, and because of that, you want to see it collapsed? You want to see thousands of people lose their jobs?

Nobody wants to see 1000's lose their jobs yet higher ups and publishers need to get their heads out their asses. If those guys don't learn that the used market isn't the problem fast more people are gonna be compelled to pirate. More people are willing and know how to build their own PC so they don't need to rely on consoles like that. Their consumers work hard for their money. Punishing them just because they didn't preorder and or buy new is stupid. Cutting whole parts of content, DRM, project 10$ is udder bullshit for a honest consumer stand point because they at lease bought a hardcopy. Instead of downloading a cracked version.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

The book itself is a good. An alphabetical list of every word contained in a book isn't an exploitation of your own copyright; it's an entirely new piece of IP, and it would need to be copyrighted as such to be protected. And they are goods. This argument was decided in 1908, when the right of first sale was established. The videogame industry apparently missed that court case, and wants to try for an exemption because they're new, even though both sides admit there is no material difference between a book and a videogame.

Yes, the book itself is goods. But are you buying the book because its a book, or are you buying it because you want to read a story? If you are buying a book because its a book, then the content itself matters not. If you are buying a book for the story, you are buying the book for the abstract content, not the physical goods. This is an important distinction: are you paying for an item or an idea?

And I am exploiting my own copyright. It has the same cover, same trademark, same logo, same everything save the way I arrange those words. Call it a sequel if you will, but it still contains the same things, or near enough.

1908 is a long time ago, before the rise of digital medium. Just because its good law in 1908, doesn't mean its good law in 2018. And it is changing. Thank god for that. Now I just need to keep my fingers cross and pray that it applies to all the other entertainment media. They should be recognized for their abstract values, not because they are "goods".

The book is the story.[edit]Or rather, the story is a huge part of the book; if you change the story, you change the book.[/edit] There is no difference between digital IP and IP that needs to be printed on paper, which is why the 1908 ruling is still valid. Re-arranging the words makes your copyrighted book into a diffent book. For example, let's say I copyright the sentnce "I am totally awesome." If I rearrange the words to "am awesome I totally" you can't argue that it's the same sentence, or that the broken English that it represents even has the same meaning. But that's exactly what you're trying to do with your ridiculous book argument.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

The industry can cry me a river for all I care. They didn't earn that money, because they were already paid for the copy that I bought. What this whole argument has taught me, really, is that piracy really isn't a problem at all. No industry in the history of humanity has gone under because it was outcompeted by its own used market. If the games industry is in danger of having that happen, it deserves to fold. Further, if the used market is really more damaging than piracy, then let me sign up to pirate some stuff, because it must be downright good for the industry.

Or alternatively, piracy is worse because, you know, pirates introduce new copies of the game into the marketplace and drive the value down, while used markets require each copy to be sold new at some point, and helps it to sustain a higher initial value, because people are able to recoup some of their initial investment by reselling. One of the two.

Basically, this argument is just making me wish a crash on the industry. Such a crash wouldn't affect the indie developers, since they don't generally distribute their products through major channels, and they're just about the only game companies left that treat their customers with any modicum of respect. If the games industry wants me to support them, they'd darn well better treat me like a valued customer, and not like something they just scraped off of their shoe.

hmmmm words in my mouth. Tasty.

I never said Piracy was better, I never said it was worse. I compared an argument you made about used game sales to a common argument used to justify piracy. In fact none of my points we're about piracy. I'm simply arguing that used sales is bad for the entire industry. You don't seem to understand how it's terrible for the industry, and because of that, you want to see it collapsed? You want to see thousands of people lose their jobs?

Nobody wants to see 1000's lose their jobs yet higher ups and publishers need to get their heads out their asses. If those guys don't learn that the used market isn't the problem fast more people are gonna be compelled to pirate. More people are willing and know how to build their own PC so they don't need to rely on consoles like that. Their consumers work hard for their money. Punishing them just because they didn't preorder and or buy new is stupid. Cutting whole parts of content, DRM, project 10$ is udder bullshit for a honest consumer stand point because they at lease bought a hardcopy. Instead of downloading a cracked version.

And if they don't get their heads out of their asses, nobody should cry if they go out of business, because they brought it on themselves, and maybe whatever new industry that rises out of the ashes will be better for consumers. That was my point with that statement; capitalism isn't the right to make a profit, it's the privilege to be able to try.

 

[TheDooD]

Passive or not, they designed something that has no reason to break so that it would break when it changed hands, and not a moment before or after. That is exactly the situation of GM pulling out the compressor, or at least having it hooked up to the internet in a way that it disables itself when it checks the VIN and sees that the car has changed hands. Thank you for admitting how illegal it is, though -- I never thought I'd see an industry person do that.

You could just buy the game new and not have to deal with content removal. Just sayin.

Except it's not worth $60; even if I had money coming out of my ears, it wouldn't be worth that to me. I'd go to Busch Gardens or Six Flags for a day instead. Besides, the content removal we're talking about shouldn't be happening in the first place; it's just an attempt to squeeze a few more pennies out of someone who has already paid his dues.

Then don't buy it. Or wait until the publisher sells it for less. No one is forcing you to buy the game at launch.

Or, you know, buy it used, which is even cheaper than the price "drop," which is rarely all that much. As for your earlier comment about buying things to support the industry, all I have to say is, you are exactly the customer that they want. In a capitalistic society, consumers should only be looking out for their own benefit, while producers should only be looking out for their own. Somehow, the game industry has found a way to not only look after their own benefits, but to get their customers to look after the industry's benefit as well, to the detriment of what's best for them as a consumer. Doing that is bad for the consumer; you wind up paying more for less product. I don't understand how so many people don't get this.

The weakness about that is when a bad game gets released and many of them get returned because the customers disliked it. Are they suppose to keep a used game at full price sitting right beside the new versions. They have to get rid of those used copies or they'll be forced to throw them away. that's why used versions are cheap on the return and the buy because they really don't want another disk taking up space. Normally a publisher won't drop price unless a game sells a lot basically the "greatest hits". If they don't hit that plateau they'll stay at full or 10% reduced for a long time. Again its another disk taking up space they have to move the older and or used software so they can have space for the newer stuff so I see nothing wrong with them selling used games for less.

 

[WaruTaru]

The book is the story. There is no difference between digital IP and IP that needs to be printed on paper, which is why the 1908 ruling is still valid. Re-arranging the words makes your copyrighted book into a diffent book. For example, let's say I copyright the sentnce "I am totally awesome." If I rearrange the words to "am awesome I totally" you can't argue that it's the same sentence, or that the broken English that it represents even has the same meaning. But that's exactly what you're trying to do with your ridiculous book argument.

The book is not a story. The book is a book. I can put empty pages into it and still call it a book. Can you put absolutely nothing into the disc of a game and still call it a game? Can you print video games on paper and play it? See the difference?

Yes, its a different book, but it is still under the same copyright. It is a derivative work from the original IP. "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" and "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" and subsequent "Harry Potter" books all fall under a single "Harry Potter" IP. You do not create a new IP everytime you make a new Harry Potter book. In my "book argument", I did say I would number them.

"I am totally awesome." = "(2)am (4)awesome. (1)I (3)totally" [Instruction: Follow the numbers to the left of the word to read the sentence]. What difference is there? The end result is still "I am totally awesome."

 

[StriderShinryu]

3) The used car analogy is appropriate, no matter what kind of spin you people attempt to place it on. The key argument is precisely the same... Each time someone buys used, we (the publisher) are losing a sale. This thinking is entirely false as again, independent research has PROVEN most people who purchased a game used for $30 or whatever, would NOT have purchased it new for full price if it were the only alternative. The actual dollar amounts or comparison between the two items as commodities does not matter. Game publishers are basing their argument off of the actual belief I would have purchased their crappy new game for $60 IF there hadn't been the same thing sitting there used for $40. They seem to not understand that games range between awesome to absolute shit and not everyone will want to spend $60 (the asking price for any new game, regardless of what it is) to find out what their own subjective opinion on it ends up being.

If so many others here are so extremely dense, it would seem that it's a condition easily transmitted through forum communications.

First, what independent research? You state research various times in your post but never give a source. Not saying it doesn't exist, but if you're going to lean so heavily on it then you should probably actually post it.

Second, is there really any argument that someone wouldn't buy a game for $60 if they've mentally set a price for it at $30? That's only logical, and yet it doesn't at all address the problem of typical GameStop pricing, which is where the issue really lies. You brush this off and say it doesn't matter but make no mention of how it doesn't matter because you jump back to "defending" a $20 price difference, which does not exist. If I could draw a picture here for you I would, but since I can't I'll just try to state it simply.

New copy of Game A costs $60. Used copy of Game A costs $55. Consumer chooses to buy Used copy for Game A when there is almost no chance that they couldn't have just as easily bought New copy for only $5 more. It's pretty easy to follow along and see that a New copy sale has been lost.

I'm really not sure what all the ranting about game quality and price is about or how it connects to this topic. We all know that games aren't always great and that sometimes they aren't worth the money we pay for them. Thing is, that's the case no matter how new the game is, whether you buy it new or used, or how much you pay for it. The only thing any consumer can do is study up on a game before they buy it. There are so many sources for information on games now a days that, outside of a situation such as a PC game that just won't run with your specific set-up for some reason, there really is no excuse for not knowing a good bit about a game before you buy it.

In short, what we're discussing here is the real world. We're not talking about a magical place where you can choose to buy a new copy of a game for $60 or a used copy of that same game for $30. We're talking about the real world and the game industry's reaction to parasitic pricing policies used most notably by stores like GameStop but also used by almost every other used game retailer.

Oh, and we're also not talking about used cars where they sell for at most 75% of the new price when sold used and still often have direct payment lines running back to the originating company via warranties, parts, licensed maintenance providers, etc.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

The book is the story. There is no difference between digital IP and IP that needs to be printed on paper, which is why the 1908 ruling is still valid. Re-arranging the words makes your copyrighted book into a diffent book. For example, let's say I copyright the sentnce "I am totally awesome." If I rearrange the words to "am awesome I totally" you can't argue that it's the same sentence, or that the broken English that it represents even has the same meaning. But that's exactly what you're trying to do with your ridiculous book argument.

The book is not a story. The book is a book. I can put empty pages into it and still call it a book. Can you put absolutely nothing into the disc of a game and still call it a game? Can you print video games on paper and play it? See the difference?

Yes, its a different book, but it is still under the same copyright. It is a derivative work from the original IP. "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" and "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" and subsequent "Harry Potter" books all fall under a single "Harry Potter" IP. You do not create a new IP everytime you make a new Harry Potter book. In my "book argument", I did say I would number them.

"I am totally awesome." = "(2)am (4)awesome. (1)I (3)totally" [Instruction: Follow the numbers to the left of the word to read the sentence]. What difference is there? The end result is still "I am totally awesome."

The book is a book, but it's no longer a novel; just like the disc is a disc, but it's no longer a game. As for derivative works, a list of every word in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone isn't a derivative work. It's just a list of random words.

Spoiler: A Very Potter Musical is a derivative work.

Edit: oh, also, each book in the series falls under the same overarching IP, but its specific contents are new IP, and they're also each a derivative work of the first book. You don't seem to understand what the word means.

 

[WaruTaru]

The book is a book, but it's no longer a novel; just like the disc is a disc, but it's no longer a game. As for derivative works, a list of every word in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone isn't a derivative work. It's just a list of random words.

Spoiler: A Very Potter Musical is a derivative work.

It will be a novel when I put the words into it, in any arrangement I prefer. A disc is a game when the content is put into it. There are two ways to say it is a derivative work. My way, which is to number those words and give them instructions, is a derivative work. Just like translated versions of it. The other way is claiming it as a work related to the original fiction.[/link] JK Rowling sued the person who tried to release his Harry Potter lexicon as his own work. The lexicon has no story so to speak of. They are a a bunch of random words sorted alphabetically. Courts said no to the man and upheld JK Rowling's rights because the lexicon IS derived from the "Harry Potter" IP even though the lexicon is a list of words relating to the Harry Potter world.

The musical falls under fair use so long as he is not making money from it and there is no reason for JK Rowling to make him stop. The musical is not doing any harm to JK Rowling's IP.

Edit: Show me 7 "Harry Potter" IPs.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

The book is a book, but it's no longer a novel; just like the disc is a disc, but it's no longer a game. As for derivative works, a list of every word in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone isn't a derivative work. It's just a list of random words.

Spoiler: A Very Potter Musical is a derivative work.

It will be a novel when I put the words into it, in any arrangement I prefer. A disc is a game when the content is put into it. There are two ways to say it is a derivative work. My way, which is to number those words and give them instructions, is a derivative work. Just like translated versions of it. The other way is claiming it as a work related to the original fiction.[/link] JK Rowling sued the person who tried to release his Harry Potter lexicon as his own work. The lexicon has no story so to speak of. They are a a bunch of random words sorted alphabetically. Courts said no to the man and upheld JK Rowling's rights because the lexicon IS derived from the "Harry Potter" IP even though the lexicon is a list of words relating to the Harry Potter world.

The musical falls under fair use so long as he is not making money from it and there is no reason for JK Rowling to make him stop. The musical is not doing any harm to JK Rowling's IP.

And you know what? Rowling lost that case, as she should have. That falls under the commentary exclusion in fair use.

And as for the novel thing, quit it. You're just too dogged to admit you lost quite a while ago.

 

[WaruTaru]

And you know what? Rowling lost that case, as she should have. That falls under the commentary exclusion in fair use.

And as for the novel thing, quit it. You're just too dogged to admit you lost quite a while ago.

[...He said he ruled in Ms Rowling's favour because the "Lexicon appropriates too much of Rowling's creative work for its purposes as a reference guide"...]

How is that a lost?

Prove that I lost. I used your own example and showed you it results in the same thing.

Edit: I'm still waiting for that 7 Harry Potter IPs.

 

[RedMore Trout]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with buying used games. This wouldn't even be an issue if the greedy developers charged a more competitive price for games. I'm just not willing to shell out 60-70 bucks on a game. I'll wait a few months and pick it up for 20-30 bucks used.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Ten pages of circular arguments about a topic that started over a century ago. I guess things never really change do they?

So, I'll try to explain the topic and recap as best as I can:

PREFACE: It's critical to know that it's the *information* that copyright protects; regardless of the medium (Digital, paper. Disc or book) and regardless of the type of information (video, audio, story, etc).
This isn't interpretive or debatable; it's a hard legal fact. Arguing against it is pointless.
We do have exceptions for this ala "Fair Use", but those remain as VERY SPECIFIC forms of exception and are in no way relevant to this topic.

Copyright and First Sale Doctrine are diametrically opposed to each other. Why?
Normal/Private Goods (Rival, Excludable) such as cars, blenders, baseballs, etc are physical, tangible objects that inevitably wear out as time goes on. (I use economic definitions for clarity here; because they follow the same general logic that copyright law follows).

Video games and books fall under the Natural Monopoly type (Non-Rival, Excludable): because the INFORMATION on that tangible medium is what's important; you were never being sold just the book or disc, but the information on that disc.
Historically, First Sale still applied to books because that information (at the time) was still limited to a tangible medium that was subjected to wear-and-tear. Today though, the cost of reproducing any work is negligible once it's converted into a digital format; which, even though it can indeed "wear and tear" is easily and cheaply transferred to another format or similar medium.

In fact, it's so simple that anyone with a computer can do it. So, the problem for the Publisher becomes two-fold: They can EASILY and CHEAPLY distribute their works, but so could anyone else. Before, customers were limited to buying books, which historically, were not feasible for your average person to copy in a timely or economical manner.
Additionally, the cost of printing books/records/etc limited the Publisher's market reach without the usage of retailers.
But now they don't need that for the majority of their target market. They can publish via the tubes and make far more money per unit at the same price.

And because of this, we are faced with two new unique problems:
1) "Piracy" (simple copyright violation really. This problem is much older than the gaming industry; it's just evolved in its size and scale)
2) "Arbitrage" (the Gamestop model, and the only point that has any actual controversy, seeing how Piracy is a blatant crime)

Keep in mind that this does not apply only to video games: It applies to anything where the intangible DATA is the actual product. Movies, music, books and works of art* all fall under the same exact product type and are thus subject to the same logic under copyright law (with their own legal nuances, but the principle is still the same).

So the point of controversy lies in this: Do we suspend the First Sale Doctrine so that the publisher can FINALLY get paid for each copy of their product sold? Or do we retain it as a way of keeping those older products on the market for longer?

This is really just Publisher vs Consumer, and economic law at work. Retailers like Gamestop ideally wouldn't be necessary; they're a "necessary evil" middleman who distributes goods and takes a cut. Of course, Gamestop has magnified the problem tenfold by mass-organizing and then mass-exploiting arbitrage.

Honestly, this wouldn't have even been an economic problem if video game lifespans weren't so bloody short in retail.

*Yes, art. Many artists reproduce their works for profit. Others limit the number of works to inflate their value, but the artist NEVER lost the right to copy their original work even if they choose not to use it. And yes, it's illegal to make replicas of non-historic works without the artist's consent.