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Courts: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime

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Re: Courts: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime

#131

Post by gregknicholson »

alphaalpha101 wrote: post #77
nothrabannosir wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be illegal for companies like Twitter to forbid this. Users should be free to access their data, and free to use any tool to do so. The revered network effect is anti consumer and it must be broken. This is the one regulation that could save a nation from FB, Twitter, Instagram and their ilk. Any politician to run on this could shoot somebody in the middle of a crowded street without losing my support.

The one regulation that could save a nation from FB, Twitter and Instagram is to ban advertising. All of it. Ban all advertising anywhere for any reason.

You may not advertise this proposed regulation.

Re: Courts: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime

#132

Post by Mindwipe »

asfdsfggtfd wrote: post #103
tedunangst wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd put my Twitter handle in the game to build a following so even more people download my next free game. Make it up in volume.

∞ × 0 = 0

I think that's the joke, but yes.

Re: Courts: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime

#133

Post by Mindwipe »

Asooka wrote: post #124
kaspiCZ wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's try to flip the perspectives. Let's say you created a game. Let's pretend you want to make money off of it, because you put quite some time into it. Time you could have used to make money by other means. How would you go about it?

I know why people pirate, having pirated a lot of software and games in my time, so I won't really feel bad about it. Most people will buy the game if they can, but the world economics are such that for 90% of your potential user base, 60$ represent an insurmountable financial investment. Which is partly why Steam with its frequent discounts and region-specific pricing is so effective at combating piracy. So yeah, if…

> Most people will buy the game if they can, but the world economics are such that for 90% of your potential user base, 60$ represent an insurmountable financial investment.

Bulllllllshiiiiiiiiit.

> As just one example - consider game rentals. Consoles have incredibly low piracy rates, but a healthy (or at least used to be) game rental scene. If someone can only give me 5$ for my game, why should I snub that money?

There's no game rental scene. Like zero. And consoles have incredibly low piracy rates because they have very effective DRM and closed platforms, which a certain contingent of Hacker News likes to pretend is the cause of piracy.

Re: Courts: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime

#134

Post by maze-le »

bactrian wrote: post #26

Oracle is downright evil in the most corporate way. No one with other options should be a customer or employee. Oracle needs to die with Comcast and the rest.

> Oracle needs to die with Comcast and the rest.

And what makes you think, that what comes after (there will sureley be a company that fills the void) would be better in any way? The problem is not so much the frivolous lawsuits of oracle and the likes, but the incentives to pursue this behavior.

Re: Courts: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime

#135

Post by Mindwipe »

Endy wrote: post #120
analognoise wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#this I can't believe people here don't think it's piracy or stealing, just because it doesn't deprive someone else of their object (as in the case of a physical good). If I took your journal entries from your room, and copied them all, and put them on the internet - that's not stealing, because I returned the journal? No, that's still theft. If someone stole bread, how would you feel about It? Screw that person righ…

> If I took your journal entries from your room, and copied them all, and put them on the internet - that's not stealing, because I returned the journal? No, that's still theft. No, that's merely duplication and proliferation of media and information into the public domain; information wants to be free & media calls for an audience. The sole concern at that point would be how you gained access to the media - did you…

> In other words, let's say you're my friend. You come in to my room, I leave my journal entries open and you surreptitiously copy them while I'm getting coffee for us. You leave the journal undamaged and make your duplicates public. The only harm you did was cause me to not trust you personally and no longer allow you in my home.

That's not even remotely true (incidentally this would be illegal in the UK and a court would grant an injunction on publication under breach of confidence, precisely because it's such a shitty thing to do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breach_of_confidence_in_Englis...).

Re: Courts: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime

#136

Post by pennaMan »

Mindwipe wrote: post #133
Asooka wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know why people pirate, having pirated a lot of software and games in my time, so I won't really feel bad about it. Most people will buy the game if they can, but the world economics are such that for 90% of your potential user base, 60$ represent an insurmountable financial investment. Which is partly why Steam with its frequent discounts and region-specific pricing is so effective at combating piracy. So yeah, if…

> Most people will buy the game if they can, but the world economics are such that for 90% of your potential user base, 60$ represent an insurmountable financial investment. Bulllllllshiiiiiiiiit. > As just one example - consider game rentals. Consoles have incredibly low piracy rates, but a healthy (or at least used to be) game rental scene. If someone can only give me 5$ for my game, why should I snub that money? T…

Back when I was a teen 60$ was about 25% of my household income.

Since then and present day I still don't know a single console owning person that has not hardware modded it to work with pirated games.

Re: Courts: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime

#137

Post by xrisk »

asfdsfggtfd wrote: post #103
tedunangst wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd put my Twitter handle in the game to build a following so even more people download my next free game. Make it up in volume.

∞ × 0 = 0

No that's just ill-defined.

Re: Courts: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime

#138

Post by Dudenoso »

Mindwipe wrote: post #133
Asooka wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know why people pirate, having pirated a lot of software and games in my time, so I won't really feel bad about it. Most people will buy the game if they can, but the world economics are such that for 90% of your potential user base, 60$ represent an insurmountable financial investment. Which is partly why Steam with its frequent discounts and region-specific pricing is so effective at combating piracy. So yeah, if…

> Most people will buy the game if they can, but the world economics are such that for 90% of your potential user base, 60$ represent an insurmountable financial investment. Bulllllllshiiiiiiiiit. > As just one example - consider game rentals. Consoles have incredibly low piracy rates, but a healthy (or at least used to be) game rental scene. If someone can only give me 5$ for my game, why should I snub that money? T…

>Most people will buy the game if they can, but the world economics are such that for 90% of your potential user base, 60$ represent an insurmountable financial investment. >Bulllllllshiiiiiiiiit. The third world is numerically bigger than the first world. 60$ is a lot for places without a strong currency. Have you ever lived in a third world country with a wage that wasn't above the richest 5%?

Yeah, I'm a long time lurker and created an account just for that.

Re: Courts: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime

#139

Post by george3383 »

justinjlynn wrote: post #6
prepend wrote: post #2

This is positive news. It seems like the more liberal approach taken when protocols were written is being challenged more by young users who grew up under more stable rules that accepted terms of service as very strong. When I was growing up you went by what the protocol allowed. If an http response came back you have access, if it prompted for credentials, then you didn’t have access. The mere idea that a web server…

It's not that young people grew up with stable rules. It's that young people grew up under the influence of industrial information warfare tactics and propaganda. As someone that was prevented from distributing Linux at high school because the administrators thought that any copying was piracy (thanks to the Software Publishers Association and the friendly local Microsoft rep), this conditioning to get kids (and less…

>It's that young people grew up under the influence of industrial information warfare tactics and propaganda.

Uuuuh that's a dangerous argument. What if we applied it to abortion or homosexuality?

Re: Courts: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime

#140

Post by nahom1 »

saurik wrote: post #18
prepend wrote: post #2

This is positive news. It seems like the more liberal approach taken when protocols were written is being challenged more by young users who grew up under more stable rules that accepted terms of service as very strong. When I was growing up you went by what the protocol allowed. If an http response came back you have access, if it prompted for credentials, then you didn’t have access. The mere idea that a web server…

I continue to be shocked that Twitter convinced an entire generation of software developers that you need to obtain something called an "API key"--which can somehow be refused or even revoked once granted--in order to write a client for their protocol. "Back in my day", we just reverse engineered the official client and used whatever algorithm it used to talk to the server and called the war won :/.

isn't this fair to a large extent? You can create a complete clone of twitter and FB by using their APIs and then log the user data yourself, share nothing with Facebook, run ads on your app and earn billions. What about the poor fellow who did the runt work to build the network in the first place, by putting years of hard work only for you to take away their pize?
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