My ghost will haunt GoG’s corporate offices until they relent and transfer my games to the person who’s name I keep creepily spelling with frost on their mirrors & windows.
No. Intellectual property is not real, so nothing is being stolen by you.
If it’s a small developer, and you like the game, make sure to support them if you can. If it’s a mega studio, don’t feel bad about not paying anything.
People should be rewarded for their mental labor, but that’s not the same as saying they have created intellectual property.
A thought or concept is not an object that can be stolen. An idea cannot be a scarce resource that is used up.
If concepts or ideas can be “stolen” then that means somebody is being deprived of them. But unless you somehow erased the idea from all parts of that person’s brain and transfered it into yours, nobody has been deprived of anything, and thus nothing has been stolen.
The results of your ideas are real, the outcomes and impacts are real. The mental labor you do is valuable, but none of it is “property.”
If your thoughts and ideas and concepts are property that can be stolen, then please explain how you can be deprived of them.
Thinking hard about something is labor, but it’s not property, it can’t possibly be property, because it lacks all of the aspects typically required to define property.
Possession of property isn’t the same as property itself. Although I agree with you that I am sceptical of property in general, at least physical property makes some sense when defined. Intellectual property just makes absolutely no sense.
You cannot be “deprived of profit.” That makes no sense. Nobody is owed any profit for simply trying to sell something.
If I create art to sell, and nobody buys it, I haven’t been robbed of anything at all. And that fact doesn’t change if somebody walks past my art booth, looks at my painting, admires it, and then walks away. They didn’t “steal” anything from me. I haven’t been deprived of anything. Unless you want to make the claim that they are a thief now that they enjoyed my painting without paying my anything for it.
If that’s true, then everybody who walks through an art fair or gallery but doesn’t buy any art is a robber and should be arrested and charged.
The idea that IP protects the little folks who are struggling artists is a capitalist myth perpetuated primarily by corporate advocates that are the actual beneficiaries of IP laws. It’s used by mega-corps to lock down massive amounts of content, make billions off of it, exploit actual artists to perpetuate their monopoly on creative expressions of characters.
It’s also used by pharma corps to artifically restrict supply of critical drugs to the population in order to make billions in profits and enrich their shareholders.
And the whole, “nobody would create anything if copyright/patents didn’t exist” is yet another capitalist myth, disproved by countless examples. As if the entire internet doesn’t run on the back of Linux, a free and open source project spanning literal decades, Wikipedia, the largest single encyclopedia of human knowledge in dozens of languages, all the millions of pages of fan fiction and hobbiest artists that have created passion projects with no expectation of making money. Etc etc.
IP laws are not the only way to ensure a creator is compensated for their work. Money isn’t the only possible compensation, and modern IP law doesn’t protect most small time creators. It protects mega-corps and their monopolies on content/products/services.
It stifles competition and progress, not enhances it.
Digital is not the problem. Lack of true ownership is the problem. GoG is DRM free. Steam isn’t great on this, but it’s better than other alternatives for now. Sailing the high seas is the best option in many cases.
It’s not all or nothing, you can take small steps to stop supporting the worst offenses. First step, don’t use any game streaming services where you just subscribe to a rolling catalogue each month/year. PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass are examples of this.
Nintendo is awful too, their games should be ripped from physical media if possible and emulated, or otherwise aquired on the seven seas and emulated. It’s a great way to play their games without supporting their evil practices.
Support FOSS games and FOSS-friendly companies. Valve is a good example. Although not perfect by any means, they have proven to be far friendlier to FOSS apps, games, and platforms than most other companies. If you have to get DRM-locked games, get them through Steam. At least they have offline mode and allow full access to all your game files so you can save them to a separate location for archives/backups.
It starts with small things, but if lots of people start doing this, it will have a noticable effect.
Holy shit yeah lol. Obviously nothing like that! I was confused as well why anything other than the generic Linux full disk encryption would be needed.
This would be in a server closet, so not on drives that I would be transporting copyrighted media into other countries anyways.
Not trying to be rude, but the fact that you are asking this question demonstrates the fact that you shouldn’t.
If you want to contribute to free and open information, set up a VPN, bind QBitorrent or another FOSS torrenting software to it, and seed as much as you can.
Help digital archivists and data horders if you have the storage.
Spread accurate information on this stuff to help others.
If you really want to help build out the grey and black market infrastructure for data and digital goods, you need to learn advanced infosec and programming skills and that takes a long time and lots of study.
I’ve had this question looking at the Quake con sale, and Call of Cthulhu Dark Corners of the Earth is for sale on both platforms. I ended up buying it on GOG. What is your opinion?
Concord is shutting down on September 6. (blog.playstation.com)
GOG will let you bequeath your game library to someone else as long as you can prove you're actually dead (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Crazy rumour suggests Microsoft are preparing $16 billion offer for Valve (www.altchar.com) angielski
Nintendo Goes After 8,535 Switch Emulator Backups In Mass Takedown (kotaku.com) angielski
Welcome To The Bog, A Horrible Place To Live In Cities: Skylines (aftermath.site)
Trying to fuck over a district of a city in Cities: Skylines turned out to be a hard and a fun task.
Embracer exec says laying off hundreds of people was an 'agonising process,' but that restructuring is 'how we win' (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
"We know it's a necessary thing for us to hit our new and needed goals. So overall, good progress and we push on."
AITAH for pirating games before buying them?
Nowadays, the absolute vast majority of games that I play are shit tbh....
Leaked Xbox Boss Email Perfectly Explains Why Game Publishers Are Eating Themselves Alive (kotaku.com) angielski
What torrents should I seed for yarrr angielski
I’m feeling pretty down and pretty injured, I almost lost an eye the other day, so what torrents can I seed to make yarrr happy?
Sanity Check Setup angielski
Just making sure I’m not missing something obvious:...
How could I start a torrent site and not get caught? angielski
edit: in minecraft
If the same game is available and on sale on GOG and Steam, on which platform you rather buy it?
I’ve had this question looking at the Quake con sale, and Call of Cthulhu Dark Corners of the Earth is for sale on both platforms. I ended up buying it on GOG. What is your opinion?