Judge Recommends Banning Xbox Imports to the US
- Thread starter Karloff
- Start date
Recommended Videos
Exactly, ideas don't belong to individuals, they belong to society. Every idea is an evolution; a logical next step in the growth of society as a whole.subtlefuge said:
IP was only supposed to protect development costs so that developing new ideas is just as viable as copying or adapting existing ones. The original point was to encourage growth but instead they have been twisted to the purpose of stifling innovation and maintaining the status quo.
How much does Microsoft owe to Sony and Nintendo for paving the way for the Xbox? Should we resurrect Atari and give them the entire console market because they were the first to put games into the home(may not even be the first just as far as I can remember)?
An proper IP law should protect innovators and investors just long enough for them to make back their investment plus a little extra. Then it is up to them to keep coming up with better ideas and keep moving forward. Instead they just lobby congress to lengthen their patents and stifle the innovations of everyone else.
Okay, so they still bought it. Motorola spent resources (solely money in this case), for the right to use and distribute it; with the intent of licensing it to recover that cost. Microsoft did not.subtlefuge said:
IP law is about innovation. Even if this particular case is a grudge match. 1. It stops people from just copying each other instead of trying something different. 2. In the event where Motorola holds the screws to Microsoft with it, Microsoft will have incentive to come up with a better product on their own.
It is also very much about money. Whether your goal is to produce tech to make money, or make money to produce tech, you still need money. Without protection, like IP, to make that money back, there is very low incentive for innovation. Why spend money to try new things if you can't make that money back? How can you spend money on the next thing if you threw it all at a project that went nowhere, or a project that went well, but then everyone copied and you didn't make one cent off of it?
All of them are about money, one way or another. Apple, Motorola, Microsoft, Sony, Google. Whether it they consider it a means or an end, they need it. To believe that any one of them is less or more "corrupt" or "noble" is irrelevant.
Yeah, poor Sony. The Walkman, 3.5" floppy disks, CDs, DATs, Hi8, miniDV, DVD (collaborative), Digital8, HDV (with JVC), and... oh yeah, Blu-Ray (with a little help from their friends). They just can't catch a break.
Because Microsoft (seriously, drop the damn dollar sign thing, it's not clever and it makes you look like a pompous ass) are, of course, the only company who have ever used shady tactics in business.Bloodysoldier said:
Wow, that's quite the Taliban on Alamo the 360's. To think this happened to Microsoft, the USA's most precious pearl, harbor of countless successful products is more than just a Malcolm Little surprising. If things continue liKKKe this, Microsoft may have to embark on a Trail of Tears, but then again, Microsoft is hardly a Little Boy (more of a Fat Man) in the business. Forgive me for sounding like My Lai-ttle Pony, but the future still looks bright and white, power outages probably still being the biggest concern to Microsoft. All these copyright infringement cases seem like comparing Abu Ghraibs and Agent Oranges to me anyway.
Oh I definitely think that everyone is corrupt. I just think that the idea behind this specific instance is infinitely more corrupt than most. Formats and compatibility issues kill competition, which is bad for everyone. In this case, Microsoft had the awful choice of paying Motorola's outrageous royalties, leaving out features, or ignoring the problem and hoping that nobody noticed.Nuke_em_05 said:
They may have chosen the worst of the options, but it's not like the system gave them great ones to begin with. It ultimately has to do with how stupid it is that format patents stay around until it's time for the next format to come out, ensuring a monopoly for whoever wins.
Fuck. You. Microsoft.
I bought a new 360 every time my current one broke (so far going on 4 replacements since 2005; that's a system failure every 2 years). Despite this, I remained loyal.
I cursed underneath my breath when you told me Gold passes were getting a price boost from 50$ to $60 for no fucking earthly reason. But I ponied up the extra $10 in good faith.
I gritted my teeth when you turned the dashboard into a generic, non-customizable grey-and-white void with Mii ripoffs, shitty navigation and a plethora of splash ads. But I stuck around.
I felt my blood pressure rise when I learned that now, to this very day, I still need to be online to PLAY THE ARCADE GAMES I PAID FOR and WATCH THE MOVIES I BOUGHT IN THE VIDEO MARKETPLACE. The best part is I have to load the Zune applet to watch videos on my hard drive... That's right. I have to download, install and load software for a media player that is no longer even manufactured anymore, just so I can view things I bought with MS points. Bravo.
Not a single credit card I've owned ever works with Xbox Live's billing system. I've used a Mastercard, a Visa and a Discover... all of them return the same error when I hit Purchase. I've checked with my credit companies all three times and none of them see a problem. I've called Live support and even they don't know what the fuck is wrong with the checkout. It simply does not accept my money. If I want something and it doesn't have a redeem code or cost MS points, I am screwed.
There are never any sales or freebies on Xbox Live. Okay, I take that back. The Guild was free on the video marketplace. But only because they got Sprint to sponsor them. Oh, and one day they let people download Undertow for free. This was all the way back in 2010.
And now...
Now when these dirtbags are caught up in a legal dispute with another company and have no alibi, they want to use their customers as a sympathy shield?
Fuck that.
I'm pawning my Xbox 360 right now. Assuming it's still worth anything.
I bought a new 360 every time my current one broke (so far going on 4 replacements since 2005; that's a system failure every 2 years). Despite this, I remained loyal.
I cursed underneath my breath when you told me Gold passes were getting a price boost from 50$ to $60 for no fucking earthly reason. But I ponied up the extra $10 in good faith.
I gritted my teeth when you turned the dashboard into a generic, non-customizable grey-and-white void with Mii ripoffs, shitty navigation and a plethora of splash ads. But I stuck around.
I felt my blood pressure rise when I learned that now, to this very day, I still need to be online to PLAY THE ARCADE GAMES I PAID FOR and WATCH THE MOVIES I BOUGHT IN THE VIDEO MARKETPLACE. The best part is I have to load the Zune applet to watch videos on my hard drive... That's right. I have to download, install and load software for a media player that is no longer even manufactured anymore, just so I can view things I bought with MS points. Bravo.
Not a single credit card I've owned ever works with Xbox Live's billing system. I've used a Mastercard, a Visa and a Discover... all of them return the same error when I hit Purchase. I've checked with my credit companies all three times and none of them see a problem. I've called Live support and even they don't know what the fuck is wrong with the checkout. It simply does not accept my money. If I want something and it doesn't have a redeem code or cost MS points, I am screwed.
There are never any sales or freebies on Xbox Live. Okay, I take that back. The Guild was free on the video marketplace. But only because they got Sprint to sponsor them. Oh, and one day they let people download Undertow for free. This was all the way back in 2010.
And now...
Now when these dirtbags are caught up in a legal dispute with another company and have no alibi, they want to use their customers as a sympathy shield?
Fuck that.
I'm pawning my Xbox 360 right now. Assuming it's still worth anything.
While they are all terrible, I really have no sympathy for Microsoft when it comes to IP. Their entire business model from the start has been "steal everyone else's idea". Most of current IP law in software was written in response to Microsoft's practices.subtlefuge said:
They had another option: come up with their own solution. Again, however, innovation isn't Microsoft's strong suit.
I don't see anything worth disusing here.
MS did shit, broke the law and it MUST be punished.
If the average Joe can be punished with 200k$ and jail for just few songs which he didn't sell, MS must be punished even more.
For fucks shake, they sold millions of xbox consoles illegally. It is basically the same as piracy. So if 10 songs are 200k, 1 million consoles at the same price would be 20.000.000.000$ (20 Billion bucks)
Hey, it's not me speaking. It's the law which says everyone is equal speaking.
MS did shit, broke the law and it MUST be punished.
If the average Joe can be punished with 200k$ and jail for just few songs which he didn't sell, MS must be punished even more.
For fucks shake, they sold millions of xbox consoles illegally. It is basically the same as piracy. So if 10 songs are 200k, 1 million consoles at the same price would be 20.000.000.000$ (20 Billion bucks)
Hey, it's not me speaking. It's the law which says everyone is equal speaking.
Dryk said:
I think you misunderstand.
The X-box is largely an American product. If it's shut down this way it pretty much give two foreign products domination of this arena of the US market, which Microsoft has largely been dominating. The loss of inertia also means next console generation they will have to fight an uphill battle domestically if they wind up losing support.
Despite the terms being used and talk about consumers, there is a valid point here, making a ruling against Microsoft is going to cripple the US's competition in a multi-billion dollar industry. Not selling those X-boxs also deprives the goverment of the taxes involved both on them, and the games that people buy to play on them.
Now, Motorola is also a big American company, and the cellphone market is big, but it's also been getting hammered. I think they wound up losing billions and had to seriously re-organize last year or something like that (I don't follow this kind of tech too heavily). For them a huge cash payoff from Microsoft would be a godsend, but right now despite being a name, they are in a fairly shaky position.
Now, the big picture is debatable, but Micosoft is basically argueing that it's better for the country if the Judge doesn't pass this kind of ruling.
Invoking the consumer is probably a way of trying to argue it as "public interest". While it rarely comes up, in civil law before a Judge, the Judge can occasionally make a ruling based on public interest, acting himself as a sort of third party. It doesn't happen very often, but the basic idea is that if the collateral damage of a specific outcome (financial or otherwise) is going to be catastrophic to unrelated parties, he can rule based on that, or refuse to make a ruling and toss it out. How this works, and how far it goes, can vary state my state. Mostly you see this kind of thing going on in local courts with towns using public interest to stop things the people there don't want, usually followed by an appeal and trying to get a higher court to step on a local one. It all depends on where you are and the specifics.
In this case Microsoft wasn't so much asking for a ruling, but a lack of action at the current time due to the fallout. The arguement being that it would not be in the public interest, for Microsoft to be gimped, allowing foreign businesses to dominate this market while they have their hands tied. It's NOT a totally unreasonable arguement, it has some weight. Of course the judge disagreed (as we see). He's not wrong to disagree, my only point is that what Microsoft was trying to do is a little more reasonable than it at first seems.
Also before anyone jumps on me, this is not meant as a specific run down on laws. It's described with extreme generality.
So in this capitalist society how are game developers supposed to make their money if they can't protect their intellectual property?alj said:
It not that simple. It is not Microsoft went out and stole the patents, they had original deal with Motorola for the patents, that deal expired, instead of renegotiating for them, Motorola decided not to renew. Microsoft has no replacement for that technology, so it did what it had to do, keep making the consoles and let it be settled in court. I can understand wanting to go through high price court litigation, but blocking the sales of devices is taking patent trolling to far.BiH-Kira said:
Except rushing it increases the chances for mistakes to be made. Potentially we end up with a system worse than the 360.Epidemiix said:
This whole thing makes me sick to my stomach. I want to stomp on this judge's foot for even uttering the word ban, but then I also want to slap Microsoft upside the head with a cricket bat for thinking they could skirt by this. It's not new territory, plenty of other companies and people have tried to ignore pre-existing patents and ended up in trouble before.
It's not infringing. Microsoft broke the law and now they are going to be paying for it. When you really think about it, though, this is a rare case of a corporation doing what regular citizens have done and actually getting busted publicly for it. And yet you want to blame it on government conspiracy? Get your act together.Kurt Cristal said:
Jesus Motorola, sharing is caring. Didn't your mother ever tell you that?
No patients doesn't mean zero IP protection. You could still hold a copyright on "creative work." I'm pretty sure video games are considered creative work. (That's my understanding anyway.) But it would also help if they make a quality product that people like in the first place.Farther than stars said:
Last time I checked Windows uses a H.264 codec as part of WMP. So we're not out of the woods yet.blackrave said:Oh, no
How will I live with this tragedy
Wait a minute- I'm one of the glorious PC master race, so it doesn't affect me
A good day to be playing PC
So, after reading through the articles related to all of this, I now realize I have absolutely no idea what's going on.
So, I can only imagine that this is going to be a very smooth and effective lawsuit and will not, at all, affect the distribution of Microsoft's Xboxes at all.
So, I can only imagine that this is going to be a very smooth and effective lawsuit and will not, at all, affect the distribution of Microsoft's Xboxes at all.
No, not government conspiracy. Let's not jump the gun here and please don't rope me into such shenanigans. I'm just against the "arguement from authority", wherein some people here have simply stated this is wrong solely on the basis that it's "against the law" and law instantly equals morality. So yes, by upholding a law, law (AKA gov't) itself is impeding free market. That is all.samsonguy920 said:
And no, I don't feel like arguing laisez-faire economics nor libertarianism on this thread, it'd completely derail this topic. Just saying it's not wrong JUST because it's against the law.