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Sharing Keys?
Tsetzufu
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
A friend of mine got this game, he said I should try it, could I use his key? or do I have to buy my own?
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You're drawn to my eccentric Brawl Code: 4596 9143 4529
Sure, and would you like some super models too?
If I buy Halo 3 on the Xbox 360, I am done playing it, I loan it to a friend. No problem. No questionable legalities, doubtful even crazed fanboys would question my act.
I buy a PC game, such as Rain Slick. If I even consider loaning it somehow to a friend, immediately people (even myself) feel I have committed some terrible act of quasi-theft.
It's really unfortunate for PC gaming that things are so restricted. Both as a necessity of the platform and the general mentality of the companies and consumers involved.
Resale isn't really that moral in either case, in a certain sense, since the developers see exactly the same amount of profit for a resold game as they do for a pirated game.
Just like the people at the furniture factory dosn't see more money when people resell their furniture, are you arguing that you shouldn't be allowed to own secondhand stuff?
Do you also think it is wrong to buy a DVD or a music CD and watch or listen to it with your friends, since they may not all own a copy of that?
I really hope you can see what society would be like if you were forced to only buy only new stuff, god the waste would be insane (the waste in todays society is already very high). I am going to leave it at this.
EDIT: Have to say, then again I am not american. Here in Denmark it is 100% legal to crack copy protection if you have to, it is 100% legal to make back up copies of anything you like and you can make as many as you want, just don't start selling them to people (or otherwise distribute them).
EDIT2: None of the above is in anyway supportive of piracy, it is on the other hand very supportive of the second hand industry in all its formats, be they games, furniture or clothes. Remember when a game is resold it is still only one game copy, one game copy can be played by one person at a time and therefore the people behind that game lose no customers and gain no customers in the transaction.
You can't pirate furniture, though.
Intellectual property is an inherently fuzzy issue. If it's important that the creater be compensated for others taking advantage of his work, why are second-hand sales legal? If it isn't important, then why is piracy illegal?
In my opinion, the idea that you can own an idea or a creative expression is fundamentally flawed. However, since it's extremely useful as a means of motivating people to create things, society strings itself along, dodging real analysis of issues like these so that the system can be maintained.
Ontopic: Being pure software as it is, you lending the key to someone else sadly dosn't carry the same inherent one copy one person promise that you lending the CD to a friend would have, therefore it has to be disallowed, I am not fond of the fact either but it is the case.
When I read that, my eyes went wide. What a potent metaphor for the evils of software piracy.
Alright, lets go! Imagine you're a carpenter (like jesus?!!) and you craft a chair. Then you sell it to, oh, say, judas, your trusted friend. But like the dumb elves in LoTR, you are deceived.
If it was possible to do this, Judas would grip the leg of the chair with a kind of meta-glove, holding not the chair itself, but the metaphysical form of the chair. Then, pulling his arm back, he copies the chair - withdrawing a complete clone. You take days to make one, he buys it and makes hundreds in a minute! He's rich, you're poor, and you did the work!
The carpenter can't have the intellectual property for a chair, but that's because it's fairly simple, and anyone who wants to make one has to spend hours crafting it. Alright, now we have factories that can mass-produce, but still, you need materials, shipping, blah blah...
In the realm of ideas floating in digital soup, your physical graft is now a mental one. You spend hours crafting the idea; not just a flimsy, ten-word "what if", but layered and thick and hours long, woven so tightly that a computer must interpret it for the consumer. That is your graft, the ultra-concept, thought and logic wound tightly into a tangible construct of rules and art.
Anyone who wants to mass-produce it doesn't need to understand it. You do that. That's the service you get paid for.
And it takes minutes to copy it and distribute it for free.
I'm not gonna judge it, except to say that I wouldn't, but that totally interested me when you said that furniture thing. I'ma go now.
I can understand a viewpoint by which this sounds like a reasonable thing to say. I think it's interesting, however, that this sounds like a much more unreasonable thing to say about books.
Resale isn't really that moral in either case, in a certain sense, since the authors see exactly the same amount of profit for a resold book as they do for a pirated book.
I have to say that I strongly defend the principle that once a copy of a creative work is sold once, the copyright holder's control over that particular instance is over. This is a principle of copyright law that has long been legal and as far as I can tell is perfectly moral.
As for the original poster, however: Dude -- buy a freakin' key.
This kind of thing has been on my mind lately, as I've been reading Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture, which I find I can highly recommend.
Give your friend 10 bucks, he gives you the key. Everybody happy!
Or rather, the OP is happy, his friend is happy, and no one else is happy.
The main point is you can do (ALMOST) whatever you want with the key you purchased, as long as no more than 1 game is ever run at the same time with the key. In reality you really should disable your copy of the game so that it cannot be run while your friend is using your key.
If you own 2 computers, and you want to play the game on both of them at the same time, you need 2 different keys.
-alternative phrasing-
The point of software copyright laws is to make sure that digital content is used the same way as hardware content. That if you buy 1 of something, you use 1 of something.
If you want to sell your key to a friend you can, as long as you transfer it to them entirely: you cannot keep the key yourself or use it ever again unless they sell it or transfer it back to you; at which time they relinquish control or use of the key.
See this is what is the worst part about the RIAA campaign against music piracy. It teaches people to be stupid and to abdicate their fundamental property rights.
It is your game.
You can sell it or give it away.
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It isn't a consumer's moral obligation to ensure the developer makes money. That's not what makes piracy immoral.