Qhimm.com Forums
Off-topic forums => Completely Unrelated => Topic started by: Kudistos Megistos on 2009-08-14 00:32:04
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Like many of the things I post here, I stole this story from Sancom :-P
The UK now has its own official Pirate Party. Unfortunately, this is not a party for the traditional kind of pirate (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLsJyfN0ICU), but a party dedicated to the reform of copyright law :cry:
Here's an article about them. (http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39714323,00.htm)
Whilst this may be slightly questionable:
It is proposing an exemption from copyright law for non-commercial file-sharing
I am intrigued by their policy of reducing the length of copyright on works from creator's life + 70 years. I've never understood why something so long is needed.
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So the children's children's children can milk it for all it's worth until long after no one cares anymore.
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I've never understood why something so long is needed.
Because Disney is greedy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act).
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Isn't "Arrrr" supposed to be "Argh"?
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Hurray! Thanks for sharing the news, totally going to spread this all over Facebook :-D
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Isn't "Arrrr" supposed to be "Argh"?
no, because "argh" is a sound of frustration or something while "arrrr" is a pirate's grunt lol
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Isn't "Arrrr" supposed to be "Argh"?
no, because "argh" is a sound of frustration or something while "arrrr" is a pirate's grunt lol
Yarrrr! :-D
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*off-topic* is sephy truly a panda's name? lolo
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Of course it's a panda's name. All panda's are called Sephy, just like all orangutan's are called Clyde :roll:
BTW:
haha... hey kudistos, change ur user to "Sephiroth the Bear" or something like that lmao i bet it be funny and every1 will be like "who the f*** is this?" lmao
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Of course it's a panda's name. All panda's are called Sephy, just like all orangutan's are called Clyde :roll:
BTW:
haha... hey kudistos, change ur user to "Sephiroth the Bear" or something like that lmao i bet it be funny and every1 will be like "who the f*** is this?" lmao
is that why u changed it? cuz of that? lol
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It won't be permanent. :-P
I'll change it back soon :wink:
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LOL check it out! my name! hehehehe!~ :lol:
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LOL check it out! my name! hehehehe!~ :lol:
(http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/9550/chiyochanrage.gif)
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LOL check it out! my name! hehehehe!~ :lol:
(http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/9550/chiyochanrage.gif)
lol im just bored that is all, forgive me? :cry:
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Okey-dokey
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hey wut about this username? hehe
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hey wut about this username? hehe
Let's see how that works out :-D
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hey wut about this username? hehe
Let's see how that works out :-D
nah, i don't want to upset him... i'll change my user to something else... but wut hmm...
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Go to wikipedia and click "random page". The page title will be your new name :-P
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When you see it....
(http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/dd138/obesebear/thegame.jpg)
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Go to wikipedia and click "random page". The page title will be your new name :-P
second thought, i'll resume back to my old username hehe! tis was fun while it lasted hehe :-D
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Go to wikipedia and click "random page". The page title will be your new name :-P
second thought, i'll resume back to my old username hehe! tis was fun while it lasted hehe :-D
Lemme guess, the random page was an embarrassing medical condition :-P
When you see it....
obesebearlostthegame.jpg
:-D :-D :-D :-D
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I think my username change shall be permanent.
You can figure out who I am, right? :-P
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I think my username change shall be permanent.
You can figure out who I am, right? :-P
lol of course, well, I know, I dunno about any1 else tho hehe
@ Kudistos: um, it has something to do with goverment stuff lol
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Yep. Thankfully, people can't change their postcount, so there hasn't been any confusion :roll:
I think my username change shall be permanent.
You can figure out who I am, right? :-P
lol of course, well, I know, I dunno about any1 else tho hehe
@ Kudistos: um, it has something to do with goverment stuff lol
Which government? :-P
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idk lol i just exited out lol i think if i recall correctly... somewhere Iberville - Napierville... something like that lol
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Yeah, that's no fun.
But hey, you could always roll again and see if you get to a page with some hilarious title :roll:
I just got Wrony, Lower Silesian Voivodeship (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrony,_Lower_Silesian_Voivodeship)
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Next time, make it "Sephiroth the Fat Walrus".
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OK! Next time, I shall be the walrus (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yNcE8c3j2M)
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Next time, make it "Sephiroth the Fat Walrus".
hahaha @ both of yous
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On a more serious level, it's hard to make a decision one way or another about the pirate parties. On one hand, I agree that copyright crushes innovation, but on the other hand, it also breeds higher quality efforts. Look what this forum could do without the Final Fantasy VII copyright. On the other hand, would there even be a Final Fantasy VII without copyright to protect the efforts invested in it? Probably not.
The current system is a reward system. You work your ass off, you get paid money. It works. How many companies would still be pumping out games today if they had to make them for free? People need to eat. Or even worse, imagine games with advertisements periodically breaking the momentum. Sponsored gaming companies. I don't see that working out well.
In conclusion, yeah copyright is a crap concept, but it's the lesser of two evils in my opinion. sh*t rolls downhill. We can argue all day that it's only the top CEOs or whatever who are being hurt by piracy, but they're going to keep their money no matter what. They don't take smaller cuts because you steal from them, they'd rather just start firing people to save costs.
On the flipside, picture a world without copyright. Basically, take every A-list game and toss it. Only play indie games. Yeah, it'd be like that. People would have no income from developing and thus have to hold a job. Holding a job takes time, and leaves want for spare time. All this is less time to develop a game. Teams wouldn't come together like they would with the lure of money.
And mind you, this is only concerning games. It's not even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to copyright. Our ENTIRE CIVILIZATION is based on a community, reward-based system. You put up with crap 8 hours a day so that in the end, you are given more luxury and better products that can only come from a massive team effort. Sure, you can get rid of that, but then you'd have to kiss so many modern conveniences goodbye.
Copyright sucks, but it could be a hell of a lot worse. Maybe there's a solution out there, but it's not abolishing copyright completely. There still needs to be that reward.
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I quite agree, but I think that a lot of copyright laws are either stupid or used stupidly. I have absolutely no idea why an artistic work doesn't become public domain until 70 years after the creator dies. In this case, there's no way that anyone can argue that it's to protect the creator's rights and allow him to make artistic works for a living. Not only is he dead, but his children are dead and probably his grandchildren as well.*
Questionable too are cases where it's obvious that the company whose works are being stolen are losing exactly £0.00. Modding video games that haven't been on sale for years is an example, as are cases where people have had videos taken down from YouTube because they contained 30 seconds of a copyrighted song that is barely audible over everything else that's going on. I don't know about anyone else, but I find it very hard to sympathise with the victims of these "crimes".
*Yes, I used a masculine pronoun. Sue me :-P
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Both good points, I never understood the issues with YouTube myself. The quality is low enough that nobody is seriously going to want to convert the audio to MP3 most likely anyways, there's absolutely no comparison between the video and the real McCoy. Mods should be allowed entry into fair usage in my opinion. There's a few rare cases of crap changing ratings or whatever, but for the most part mods extend the life of games and build communities. One need only look at Morrowind and Oblivion to know this. Copyright has crept into that, even. One of the biggest breakthroughs was quickly shutdown by Bethesda: A program that essentially imported Morrowind into the Oblivion engine. Nevermind the fact it would have increased sales for Morrowind by effectively turning it into a retro expansion for Oblivion, IT'S BREAKING TEH COPYRIGHT LAWS!!! :x
Porting content from one game to another of the same company and still breaking the law... sound familiar to anyone here? :roll:
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I never understood the issues with YouTube myself. The quality is low enough that nobody is seriously going to want to convert the audio to MP3 most likely anyways, there's absolutely no comparison between the video and the real McCoy.
Really? The slightly lower sound quality on YouTube music videos has never bothered me, and I can see lots of people making mp3s from them. Maybe you're just an audiophile :-P
However, I can't see anyone making an mp3 of a song playing on radio during a GTA playthrough, seeing as one usually doesn't hear the whole thing and it's drowned out by car noises and gunshots. Nevertheless, I have a friend on YouTube who has had two accounts banned for this.
Mods should be allowed entry into fair usage in my opinion. There's a few rare cases of crap changing ratings or whatever, but for the most part mods extend the life of games and build communities. One need only look at Morrowind and Oblivion to know this. Copyright has crept into that, even. One of the biggest breakthroughs was quickly shutdown by Bethesda: A program that essentially imported Morrowind into the Oblivion engine. Nevermind the fact it would have increased sales for Morrowind by effectively turning it into a retro expansion for Oblivion, IT'S BREAKING TEH COPYRIGHT LAWS!!! :x
Porting content from one game to another of the same company and still breaking the law... sound familiar to anyone here? :roll:
This really makes me wonder how companies operate and how they decide who to prosecute. If mods are making a game more popular then I can't see any logic at all behind banning them. I sometimes think that some companies have lawyers whom they pay for every C&D they send out; it seems like the best explanation, because they shut projects down just because they can. Srsly, the fact that you can enforce your copyright doesn't mean you have to.
BTW, a few months ago, Avril Lavigne's song "Girlfriend" was the most watched video on YouTube. Now, Evolution of Dance has overtaken it. Interestingly, Avril's video can't be watched where I live, and it might be unavailable in several other countries as well. It would seem that copyright enforcement has taken away a potential marketing tool there :-P