Used Games are simply another form of Piracy (THQ joins EA to stop the used games market)

[Maze1125]

Because that particular copy has become the property of the buyer when it left the store.

Except, it hasn't.

If the game became entirely the property of the buyer when it left the store then piracy couldn't be illegal.

Reading comprehension... You should try it.

" that particular copy "

I spoke nothing of manufacturing licenses or intellectual properties. I spoke of the particular CD/DVD bought with the transaction, as well as the single set of data (that you do not have the right to copy or modify) that was added to it during the manufacturing process.

Since most of your end post I either agree with, or it was based on faulty comprehension of what I actually said, I shall leave it alone.

If that particular copy was yours, in its entirety, then you could make copies of that copy and, as you completely owned that copy, any copies made from that copy would also be yours. Yes, copies made from some other copy wouldn't be yours, but copies made from your copy, would have to be, as they would have been made only from things that you own yourself.

But you do not own that particular set of data, all you own is the right to use that data, not the data itself.

And, just as a friendly tip, I generally find it a good idea to check my own reading comprehension before I tell someone else to check theirs.

 

[Zacharine]

Because that particular copy has become the property of the buyer when it left the store.

Except, it hasn't.

If the game became entirely the property of the buyer when it left the store then piracy couldn't be illegal.

Reading comprehension... You should try it.

" that particular copy "

I spoke nothing of manufacturing licenses or intellectual properties. I spoke of the particular CD/DVD bought with the transaction, as well as the single set of data (that you do not have the right to copy or modify) that was added to it during the manufacturing process.

Since most of your end post I either agree with, or it was based on faulty comprehension of what I actually said, I shall leave it alone.

If that particular copy was yours, in its entirety, then you could make copies of that copy and, as you completely owned that copy, any copies made from that copy would also be yours. Yes, copies made from some other copy wouldn't be yours, but copies made from your copy, would have to be, as they would have been made only from things that you own yourself.

But you do not own that particular set of data, all you own is the right to use that data, not the data itself.

And, just as a friendly tip, I generally find it a good idea to check my own reading comprehension before I tell someone else to check theirs.

It seems you are assuming that I include intellectual property rights into the sentence 'That particular copy'.

I do not, as I already clarified.

Hence all you say following that, is meaningless.

To copy the software or the product falls under manufacturing licenses, license to copy, or intellectual property rights. None of those are required for ownership of said product.

 

[Brotherofwill]

I am sick and tired of seeing threads like these. I cannot believe to what levels game companies have stooped to. And i cannot believe there are people out there who defend ideas as ridiculous as: "Used Games are simply another form of Piracy".

It is the right of every customer to sell a product that they have paid for, and own. Second hand sale is a common thing to all industries. And no, i don't believe the games industry is that different as to require preferential treatment. That is complete BS in my opinion.

Amen. I'm not amazed to see game publishers are going down that route, but I'm amazed to see people backing them. I mean...what? Why are you siding with this? You buy something, you own it, you resell it. Bam! That's life.

It's actually rather ingenious the way companies are preaching like this is ruining their jobs. It's like Kotick found another devious scheme and has taken the role of Satan to spread rumours around the community and turn them against one another. Jesus.

 

[thethingthatlurks]

Sorry OP, but you're an idiot
Second hand buying has about as much to do with piracy as pirating games does with large sailboats, black flags, cannons, and pricks with wooden legs.
Second hand buying has always been legal, and will always be legal. In fact, my native Teutonia makes it illegal to prohibit the sale of physical property, and I'm sure it's not the only country. But let's look at it this way:
Buying used - person A buys a game, gets bored with it, and friend B buys it for ~20% of the original price. A perfectly legal transaction, A no longer has the game, B legally owns it now, and the publisher received all the money to which they are legally entitled
Piratebay - Person A gets a hold of a game, puts up a torrent and pricks 2-99999999 get it for free. A and 2-999999999 now all own a copy of the game, and the publisher received nothing. Not legal in any way.
So please tell me how they are in any way the same?

Oh, and I went to Half-Price Books on Friday and bought around $60 worth of DVDs and books. Does that make me a book-pirate now? Cuz that would be a really cool thing to call myself...

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

someone already paid for said game.

they shouldn't care.

For that one copy, sure. However, that customer could of bought a NEW copy, since USED game sales don't give a cent to the developer.

 

[Maze1125]

Because that particular copy has become the property of the buyer when it left the store.

Except, it hasn't.

If the game became entirely the property of the buyer when it left the store then piracy couldn't be illegal.

I could go home with the game I own, to the PC I own and use that PC to make 500 copies of the game that I own onto discs that I own.
And, as I owned everything involved their production, those 500 copies of the game would be entirely my property. I could then resell those 500 copies can make a tidy profit. Which would be entirely legal as I would entirely own everything I was selling.

you're wrong of course, you own the game, you don't own the copy right. Those are two separate and very different things and conflating them like that just muddles the issue. Under the law, EULA or no EULA, you own that disk and can do anything you want with it as long as it doesn't break any laws (in this case copyright infringement, meaning you can make back ups under fair use.)

Yes, you own the disc, of course you do, you just don't own the data on the disc.
If you blanked out the data on the disc first, you'd obviously be perfectly with-in your rights to resell it. The question only arises when you try and sell the disc with the data still on it.
Of course, as pointed out, some publishers do explicitly give you the right to resell if you don't retain any copies and, even if they didn't, the courts still support it.

But the point still stands, that even though you own the physical presence of the data, you don't own the data itself and, as such, you don't intrinsically own the right to resell it.

 

[Caliostro]

It's not another form of Piracy.

Second hand marketing has been around for ages, and nobody has complained about them before. We have all been OK with second hand stores for clothing, buying used Television sets, flea markets, the works. But now, because video game publishers say it's hurting the industry, it's suddenly wrong?

Fuck no, it's not wrong.

Yeah. When things are around for a long time, that means they're perfectly valid! Like piracy, or slavery, or torture, or burning people for being of a different religion, or burning people essentially because you can, or racism, or pedophilia. If those things weren't right, they wouldn't have stayed around for hundreds of years before they were made illegal!

Hell, the American Bill of Rights has 10 original "rights" and 27 additional amendments, but who's counting right?

If I'm tired of something I own, something I either can't get enjoyment out of,

You can. They're not saying don't play it, they're saying don't sell it to other people for profit.

or something if it's something I want to replace with something better,

Something something...something?

Anyways, what if I simply wanna get something better with my money to begin with? Your logic validates piracy in that situation.

should I simply have to throw that thing away?

You can give it away.

Why can't I make a profit and sell it to someone else who needs it?

First, because nobody needs it, but second, why can't I simply give copies away to people who want it?

Am I a bad person for helping someone acquire something they want for an even cheaper price than at the store? No, I'm not. I'm a good person for giving someone that opportunity.

Am I a bad person for helping people acquire something at no cost? No. I'm just helping out.

See, personally I find it hilarious that the same people who bitched and moaned at me when I posted piracy wasn't a big deal, are now trying to defend used games retail. The hypocrisy is hilarious. Here's the bottom line: Piracy is illegal, whether we think it's right or not, because it's estimated to cause loss of potential costumers. Someone is getting the game, without paying the developer for it. There are a lot of variables nobody considers, but that's the reason piracy is illegal.

Used games accomplish the exact same. Someone is getting the game, and the developers are not getting paid for it. Worse, piracy is relatively free, so it's hard to tell how many of those people who acquired an item for free had the capacity to shell out 60 bucks for it. Nobody is making a profit from it. If I give out Ferraris today you can beat more Ferraris will go out of the factory today than ever before, in all of history. Used games cost money. They usually cost a price relatively close to the original price, almost never less than 50%, and have to be bought from someone who will make a profit out of it... Someone who isn't the developer. There's also a considerable difference between "totally free" and "slightly less than new". It's hard to argue that someone who shelled out 45 bucks for a game couldn't wait a week or a month to get 10 or 15 more to actually support the developers.

Do I think used games should be illegal? Fuck no. But for that to happen you need to give piracy a lot more leniency. You can't punish people who download a game with jail time or million dollar lawsuits for defrauding the developers and be cool with used games markets. That's just incoherent.

 

[Thoric485]

They cut out the developers and ultimately hurt the studios. The only benefit is increased exposure of their games.

-Sound like anything else?

Heheh, gotta remember that one.

And if you're gonna make your games unresaleable atleast publish the re-releases in the stock box and not a ugly plastic one slapped with a caligraphic crime against humanity on top. Thanks.

 

[GBlair88]

So buying a used car is the same as stealing one? Buying a legally purchased used copy isn't the same as getting an illegal copy.

Also this thread has been done.

 

[crypt-creature]

Again. I disagree.
Second hand clothes, toasters, cars dont have same value as a second hand game. Used clothes may be in some way damaged, have bleached colors, wont last for as long etc. There is a valid reason why those things are that much cheaper than brand new. All those things just arent as good as they would be if bought new from shop. You pay less for a flaw in performance/usability.

This isint the case with games tho. You still get the same game, with same features, same gameplay time. Nothing changes, the game wont become shorter or less playable because its used and the only person that benfits from such sale is the guy you bought it form. No the devs, not the publisher, noone in the actual game industry.

Now why is it worst than piracy? Because you spend money on the game but the game industry doesnt get this money. You just give it to some random guy .

'Value' is relative to the company who is throwing a fit about their product. Many things could be more 'valuable' if the company wanted to restrict used sale on a product.

Depending on the game some things will become shorter and less playable. Online/downloaded content doesn't stay around forever you know, so my having bought a game that no longer has support for either of those is basically buying half a game.
Not only that, developing companies can and are disband by the publishing or major company that hired them.
My buying a new game wouldn't help that developing company/branch that created the title I enjoy, because it doesn't exist anymore. It'd go to their parent company/publisher, as a free pat on the back. I don't have to support that kind of action.

So, now it's worse to buy something legally that has been legally distributed by the parenting creators, than to download an illegal copy from a place or site that the company does not support?
No, it's not worse.
In fact, if companies start restricting games and making it harder for people to buy used they better do a few things.
- Make their games more enjoyable so people will want to buy them in the first place.
- Put more developing time into their game and not feel so anxious to compete with title 'X', and produce a half-assed game.
- Price games lower. Used games are bought for a reason; they're more affordable for everyone.

 

[Maze1125]

It seems you are assuming that I include intellectual property rights into the sentence 'That particular copy'.

I do not, as I already clarified.

Hence all you say following that, is meaningless.

To copy the software or the product falls under manucaturing licenses, license to copy, or intellectual property rights. None of those are required for ownership of said product.

Well, in that case, your original claim that "After the game has been purchased however, it is legal to sell it forward. Just like a bicycle or a car. Because that particular copy has become the property of the buyer when it left the store." was simply wrong.

Because the right to sell a set of data comes with the intellectual property rights, and if you recognise that you haven't necessarily bought any part of them, then you can't assume you've bought the right to resell.

 

[Zacharine]

But the point still stands, that even though you own the physical presence of the data, you don't own the data itself and, as such, you don't intrinsically own the right to resell it.

Out of curisoity, does that also apply to car fuel-injection control chips or GPS systems and cell-phones?

As in, you buy a brand new car with all the toys. Therefore selling that car is illegal as long as the fuel-control chip and GPS-system (both containing software that you do not own) are hooked in?

It seems to me that you and me have either hit a language barrier regarding the precise meaning of some words, or are using an different legal system as basis. Because we seem to mostly agree, just in different words.

 

[Zacharine]

Because the right to sell a set of data comes with the intellectual property rights, and if you recognise that you haven't necessarily bought any part of them, then you can't assume you've bought the right to resell.

Yes I can, because it was the manufacturer who knowingly put the data within the media, and carted it of to the retailer, who then sold it to me, fully aware that I have the right to sell that media forward without making any changes (and indeed, prohibiting me from making any changes) to the data within the media.

 

[Qracle]

Just making an additional point here, but many companies stop selling/manufacturing/supporting their games after only a few years. What is going to happen to games that require you to connect to a company server to play when that company is gone.

Why should they expect perpetual profits from services they no longer manufacture?

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

Welcome to the economics of scarcity guys. It happens with every form of digital media.

If I wanted to reproduce the data or coding on the CD or DVD of a game, movie or film, or the downloaded data of same, I can do so for as much as my storage can fit in. The other day I bought a 5MB music track off Amazon's mp3 store for 69p. I could reproduce that same music track on my 500GB hard drive just under one hundred thousand times, at negligible cost to myself. I could distribute it on the Internet, through various means, just as easily, again at negligible cost to myself. Let me make it clear that I DON'T do this, I'm just pointing out how easy it would be.

Since I can reproduce a piece of data - which is all a game, film or music track is - an infinite amount of times at basically zero cost, it follows that the game, film or music track has zero inherent value. Therefore, the record, game and film companies can't sell it to me as a purchase. Instead they sell a "licence to play" the record, game or film.

As an individual I have no incentive to not reproduce something and distribute it to everybody I know, so the big companies put obstacles in my way to stop me from doing it.

The first obstacle is technical - DRM. (Please note that Amazon's music tracks do not have DRM attached, and yet the Amazon mp3 store is still very much in business and doing well.) I think we can all agree what a colossal folly most forms of this are, but it's not a new invention. Ever tried to play an American DVD on a British DVD player, for example? Now try and buy a DVD player with no region-coding and see how far you get. There is no reason for this - it doesn't prevent piracy - all it does is p-ss off people like me who regularly order stuff from overseas.

The second obstacle is even more simple. If you are caught "stealing" music tracks, games or films, you can be prosecuted, because you have broken the "licence". Cases like Jammie Thomas, for example, are meant to act as a deterrant to file-sharing. Of course this doesn't work either, because hardly anybody believes they'll get caught until they actually are. There's a massive potential for abuse of prosecution in this case, and many documented cases of this happening.

So a lot of people make a lot of money that essentially relies on a business model that involves selling deliberately crippled goods, with the intention of suing their customers if those customers knowingly de-cripple them or use them in ways the business in question hadn't intended. So that must mean all digital media suppliers are evil, right? WRONG.

The fact is that although I would never defend some of the more preposterous measures that these companies have taken, their job is to distribute media in such a way that makes them, and the media's creators etc, a profit. (And yes, I know there are plenty of abuses here as well - the amount some people are paid for their creations by the distributors is ridiculously low - but bear with me.) The problem is that with so many ways to get the media for free nowadays, the individual has less and less of an incentive to actually pay money for the data. But if nobody pays money for it, there's no incentive for creators to MAKE it. Right? Again, wrong!

The fact is, the price and complexity of making movies, games and music has gone down so dramatically over the past twenty years or so that there is far MORE media out there, not less. It's got to be so much that there are search engines like IMDB dedicated to finding the correct media that people are looking for. Look at the flash game popularity explosion, etc.

And along with these new tools for creating media, you've got a whole host of new ways to distribute and pay for them. Games feature advertisements, as does the likes of video hosting site YouTube. (And yeah, I hate obtrusive "in-game" advertisements as much as anybody, but there are certain advantages for a company to be funded that way as long as they're not so obtrusive that they annoy that company's customers.) Bands sell memorabilia and concert tickets.

So what needs to happen? The big distributing companies need to adjust their business models, or become obsolete. It's that simple. They can't keep relying on an outdated recording industry model that relies upon DRM and the threat of lawsuits to keep working.

 

[tweedpol]

How hard can this be to understand?
Prototype:
8 pounds? sure!
35 pounds? fuck off.
if i had to buy new, i'd never play games

I choose to see it like 'sure i don't give money to the makers, but maybe some of the people who buy new and trade in wouldn't buy new if they couldn't make some money back by trading in, so they do benefit!'

Truly I am a modern day saint.

 

[MetalDooley]

I am sick and tired of seeing threads like these. I cannot believe to what levels game companies have stooped to. And i cannot believe there are people out there who defend ideas as ridiculous as: "Used Games are simply another form of Piracy".

It is the right of every customer to sell a product that they have paid for, and own. Second hand sale is a common thing to all industries. And no, i don't believe the games industry is that different as to require preferential treatment. That is complete BS in my opinion.

Amen. I'm not amazed to see game publishers are going down that route, but I'm amazed to see people backing them. I mean...what? Why are you siding with this? You buy something, you own it, you resell it. Bam! That's life.

It's actually rather ingenious the way companies are preaching like this is ruining their jobs. It's like Kotick found another devious scheme and has taken the role of Satan to spread rumours around the community and turn them against one another. Jesus.

Agreed.Publishers must be laughing themselves silly that people are actually agreeing with them on this

The ironic thing is that removing used game purchases would probably hurt the industry more.I'm sure there's millions of people worldwide who,like myself,use trade ins as a means of funding new game purchases.I know that if I couldn't resell old games then I would buy a lot less games

 

[RJ Dalton]

I don't get mad. I get stabby.