Better yet, would be for the backend software to allow both an image and a link.

That’s actually good news compared to whatever the fuck happened to OP’s drive. You might be able to swap the controller board and get it working again if you need the data off it or something.

LOL, that comment:

It sounds silly but I think this should probably be fixed for 0.19.4 so that people are updated before all the cake days in June start, there will be many first cake days

Meanwhile, lemmy.world is still on 0.19.3 as I type this. sad trombone noises

That sounds plausible to be one problem, but it’s also weird that it’s different in two different places. There’s some duplicate code that probably ought to be consolidated.

No, it’s not. In stark and diametric contrast to copyright, ownership of actual property is a natural right.

Read the Constitution: copyright law has the express purpose “to promote the progress of science and the useful arts.” It is nothing more than a means to that end. And in particular, it is absolutely not, in any way whatsoever, some sort of entitlement for creators.

resulting in widespread stealing of the game.

That’s a lie. Copyright infringement and theft are not the same thing, and the difference is as meaningful as the difference between murder and rape.

Quit using dishonest loaded language. I do not accept your framing of this debate.

The copyright cartel claims you don’t own your copy. That’s a lie: you do own your copy. Owning a copy of something does, in fact, give you all the rights to that copy, so claiming it doesn’t is wrong.

Legally I think you own the book, but not it’s contents? So legally it would be the same? (The content is copyrighted so you can’t reproduce it etc)

You own the book and you own your copy of its contents, but you don’t hold* the copyright.

Why do people have such a hard time phrasing it clearly like that, and instead say things like “you don’t own the contents?”

(* A copyright is a temporary monopoly privilege granted by Congress. It isn’t itself property and is therefore “held,” not “owned.”)

Legally speaking, there is almost zero difference between a computer game disc/cartridge and a paper book. Are you so deluded as to argue that you don’t own your copies of books as well?

Let’s face it: the situation today is the way it is because some software industry shysters saw the opportunity to pull one over on the courts (with technology-illiterate judges who think “X on a computer” is somehow suddenly different than “X” because ⋆˙⟡ magic ⟡˙⋆) and took it.

A copy of a game, even a physical one, only licenses you to play it. And yes. That is a license.

No, that’s a property right.

Because what you’re claiming is that just because you own a copy of a game (a “LICENSE” to play it) you also own the rights to the IP?

Do you understand the difference?

Clearly, you’re the one failing to understand the difference!

Imagine being required by law to follow specs you have to pay to know.

Relevant case law:

• Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc.
• Veeck v. Southern Building Code Congress Int’l

TL;DR: once “annotations” or “model codes” or whatever are incorporated into the actual law, they are no longer eligible for copyright.

That doesn’t stop organizations like SAE and ISO from trying to bully and trick you into agreeing to pay them for copies that you obtain directly from them instead of trudging down to the local law library and making copies yourself, however. (And it’s even worse when you want convenient electronic copies instead of paper, because then they try to apply EULA bullshit, which I’ve already debunked in another comment.) IMO it’s probably best to get the documents from some third-party source so you never get on the standards org’s radar for a shakedown to begin with.

Being banned from accessing services isn’t the same as being prohibited from using your property. You are still perfectly legally entitled to play your game single-player (for example) no matter how many VAC bans you get.

But that’s not how things actually are. Right now, you can completely lose access, and unless you’re a lucky millionaire with a passion for fighting unjust laws and the luck of the gods, you can’t do shit to bring that account back.

But even if you lose access to the Steam account, you still own your copy of the games. Valve doesn’t have the right to somehow force you to stop playing the games, assuming you still have your copy in your possession.

Remember, products (e.g. a copy of a game) and services (e.g. a Steam account itself) are two different things. I was never arguing that you owned a service, only that you own products.

No, copyleft licenses work differently. In particular, the thing that makes them valid (in contrast to EULAs, which are not) is that they actually offer consideration to the licensee.

Take the GPL v2 (which I mention because I’m most familiar with it) as an example:

Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program).

What it’s doing there is affirming the user’s ownership – not mere “licensure” – of his own copy. It’s pointing out, in contrast to the lie of EULAs, that the licensor doesn’t have any right to restrict the copy owner’s property rights. In other words, you don’t have to “accept the GPL” in order to use GPL software that somebody gives you; the license only kicks in if you want to do something with it that copyright law itself otherwise prohibits, namely, distributing copies or publishing modifications.

What EULA writers think they rely on – and what they’ve managed to bamboozle some, but not all, courts into accepting – is the notion that because computer programs require copying into RAM (if not also installation into a hard drive) to use, that that incidental act of copying somehow entitles publishers to impose additional restrictions in “consideration” for the mere use of the copy the user already bought. In reality, however, there’s an explicit carve-out in 17 U.S. Code § 117 (a) (1) that pulls the rug out of that argument and renders most shrinkwrap and clickwrap EULAs total bunk because the owner already has the right to use his property and there is therefore no consideration. (Admittedly, Steam might be an exception to this, since Valve could try to argue that keeping track of your games for you and making them available to re-download whenever you want is “valuable consideration” – but that’s the exception, not the rule.)

(Also note that there are other problems with the validity of EULAs, such as the fact that they’re contracts of adhesion, but I’m tired of writing so I’ll leave that for another time.)

TL;DR: Copyleft licenses are valid because they offer the copy owner privileges they didn’t already have: namely, permission to distribute copies under certain conditions. In contrast, EULAs are bunk because they attempt to restrict mere use of the thing the copy owner already owns while offering nothing in return.

You’re confusing copyright law with property law. Sure, you can’t make and sell copies (fun fact: you can make copies for certain other purposes, though), but that’s not a limitation on what you can do with your own copy, which is your property.

Ownership of the right to copy and ownership of the copy itself are entirely different things.

That’s what the copyright cartel claims, but it’s a goddamn lie. Stop serving the enemy by parroting their lies.

Steam is lying – you do own the games. The problem is that the courts are too corrupted by the copyright cartel to enforce the laws properly.

Just because they push that self-serving disinformation doesn’t mean we have to parrot it!

Considering that, especially with federation, editing or deleting stuff doesn’t really make the old version go away, I personally think the better move would be to pull a Slashdot and just not have the ability to edit or delete at all to begin with. That way, it makes it clearer what is inherently true: that once you post something, it’s out there for good.

Having to play whack-a-mole banning on a per-instance basis if the account’s home instance admin isn’t cooperative isn’t exactly ideal, either.

Perhaps what we need is to implement some sort of happy medium, such as having instance bans be “votes” towards some threshold that, if met, would result in banning the account network-wide?