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After you die, your Steam games will be stuck in legal limbo (arstechnica.com)

submitted 4 months ago by inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world to c/pcgaming@lemmy.world

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Saw a article on a large number of gamers being over 55 and then I saw this which I believe needs to be addressed in our current laws.

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[–] helenslunch@feddit.nl 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

I understand the complications of copyright infringement. The unfortunate reality is that lots of people feel entitled to any work that is reproducible, and they're going to get it. Shoveling in DRM, and serving media as a service, only serves to degrade the experience for paying consumers and actually encourages copyright infringement. Because why am I going to pay for a shitty experience when the pirate experience is so much better? Why am I going to pay the same amount of money for Netflix in 720p (because they don't support Linux) when I can get all the same content in 4k by pirating, and without using their shitty interface?

[–] bitfucker@programming.dev 1 points 4 months ago

Yes, that is the actual problem that I really wanted to discuss. A simple DRM like Steam I'd argue is not too obstructive but still solves the easy low hanging fruit of copy and pasting. So DRM can be made just to hinder those low hanging fruit because for people who don't understand technology, they can "accidentally" infringe upon copyright.

As I alluded to before, license keys are a perfect example of simple prevention of copy and pasting in the old days before the internet. At most those licenses will get to what? 50 people? But with the internet, the model breaks down because transferring data is easier than ever.

Those who are still entitled to wanting content for free will just sail the high seas anyways. But at least people will know that they cannot just copy and paste copyrighted digital goods. And this is why I said that I don't have a problem with DRM, it solves a problem of Digital Rights Management. My problem is when the DRM is overly restrictive and hinders actual users.

And yes, people are that ignorant. You and I may be well educated in this topic and the intricacies of the problems, why it exists in the first place, and other nuances. But can you say the same for your parents? Or the newer generations? Heck, if I remember correctly, even lending a movie is technically a copyright infringement (because the movie has to be viewed at the license owner house or something along those lines).

Now, I also said before that I do have problems with not being able to transfer my license but that was the term that I agreed to when purchasing. But I do think it is a problem that needs to be addressed by the law. There are so many things that need to be addressed and that is not my job. But, being ignorant on the topic deliberately is not helping either. Saying you own the software is misleading at best. If licenses can be just ignored, then Linux wouldn't get this far since companies can just copy it and not make the changes public since GPL too is a license.