Open Letter to Steam and Firaxis Games

[Dinner]

I'm not sure about American law but in Dutch law piracy doesn't equal theft. It's even so that downloading stuff is never illegal.

America is a highly corrupt society where moneyed interests are literally able to buy politicians with direct cash payments. As such moneyed interests are able to buy what ever they want and I can tell you, with abosolute 100% accuracy, downloading stuff, if you get caught, will cost you tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands and if you cannot pay, because you are a regular person, then you will go to jail for a long time. If you are rich and can pay then you won't do any time. America is all about how much money you have.

[wodan11]

America is a highly corrupt society where moneyed interests are literally able to buy politicians with direct cash payments. As such moneyed interests are able to buy what ever they want and I can tell you, with abosolute 100% accuracy, downloading stuff, if you get caught, will cost you tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands and if you cannot pay, because you are a regular person, then you will go to jail for a long time. If you are rich and can pay then you won't do any time. America is all about how much money you have.

Oerdin, why in the world did you feel the need to resurrect (by responding to a post from 3 months ago), a OT discussion (belongs in its own thread) of legality of piracy (against forum rules) by spinning it into unsupported allegations (trolling) against the country of the largest percentage of the civ community (even bigger trolling).

I mean, come on.

[Ming]

America is a highly corrupt society where moneyed interests are literally able to buy politicians with direct cash payments. As such moneyed interests are able to buy what ever they want and I can tell you, with abosolute 100% accuracy, downloading stuff, if you get caught, will cost you tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands and if you cannot pay, because you are a regular person, then you will go to jail for a long time. If you are rich and can pay then you won't do any time. America is all about how much money you have.

I only have one thing to say... "Firefly"...

[wodan11]

I only have one thing to say... "Firefly"...

[CEO Aaron]

I used to feel exactly as you did, only it was when I bought Half-Life 2. Well, after some initial discomfort, I have to conclude that Steam is an OUTSTANDING program. The ability to connect with my friends, seamlessly messaging across games, is very cool. The Steam deals are sometimes annoying, but for me, I wouldn't have bought Civ 5 in the first place if it hasn't been offered at 40% off on Steam. The agent is very lightweight, you can integrate most non-steam apps to take advantage of the messaging system, and it takes care of patch management automatically.

My advice to you is: Relax. Take off the tinfoil hat, Steam isn't watching you while you sleep.

[self biased]

I only have one thing to say... "Firefly"...

ZING!

[Dinner]

That doesn't change the fact that America is corrupt and money buys you Congressmen.

[MikeH]

I must admit I like the fact that I originally purchased from Steam on the Win XP side, and when they came out with the Mac version I just had to log in on that side and download. Great!

I didn't know you could do that. Great.

[CEO Aaron]

That doesn't change the fact that America is corrupt and money buys you Congressmen.

You must not read much news, because EVERY government contends with corruption. It's not a question of whether it's there, it's a question of degree. Whether you're talking about Egypt's kleptocracy or the U.K. MP expenses scandals, people in power have tremendous opportunities to leverage their power to enrich themselves.

[Ming]

Yep... corruption can be found in most governments. To think there isn't would be a shocker.

[Dinner]

While it is true that most governments have corruption such a statement completely ignores degrees of corruption. IMO the out and out selling of offices and official legislation is pretty ****ing out of control in the US; so much so that it is the standard and it is surprising when you actually find an example of an honest actor.

[Ming]

Please prove that it is actually worse in the US than other countries... Good Luck!

Oh... FIREFLY

[Dinner]

It's true that we beat most 3rd world dictatorships but I'd like to set my sights a bit higher then second worst in the 1st world for corruption according to Transparency International's 2010 report. But hey, we beat Uruguay and France, right? Just because we lost to Qatar and Chile doesn't mean we need to massively improve, right?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/oct/26/corruption-index-2010-transparency-international

Oh, and TI only counted illegal corruption which officially broke local laws and didn't count legalized corruptions such as congressman lining their pockets directly with "campaign donations" which often get laundered into personal income. "Oh, I use it to pay my staffers and my wife is my best staffer so she [i]totally deserves her $300,000 per year salary paid for with campaign money" or "I sometimes conduct campaign business in my house so I think it's reasonable for the campaign to pay my mortgage with campaign funds". There are a million ways to legally launder that bribe money so officials can personally enrich themselves.

[wodan11]

Oerdin, you DO realize that the corruption index measures perceived corruption? And thus, freedom of the press, degree of groundswell journalism (bloggers etc), level of government persecution of the same, and desire/ability of government to hide corruption all have a factor. In other words, while the corruption index is interesting, it does not measure the true state of affairs. It does the best they can, but it simply cannot be taken at face value as you are doing.

[SpencerH]

Piracy is clearly theft of intellectual property (unless its google, youtube, etc doing the "pirating" in which case it appears to be something else).
Companys and individuals have the right to protect there intellectual property. AFAIK, they have a requirement to do so in order to protect their rights to the intellectual property.
OTOH, methods to prevent piracy that involve the installation of software that cannot be monitored by the PC owner are invasions of privacy that should be illegal.

Steam was previously caught installing clinet versions that automatically activated online mode despite being turned offline.
There is evidence that the current Steam client "pings" to the Steam servers despite being offline.
Steam reserves the right to modify the Steam client at any time without your consent (and has done so).
The Steam client uploads data from your PC without your consent or knowledge of what is being uploaded (AFAIK this is illegal in the EEC but has yet to be challenged in court).

If the government installed the Steam client (a program that is essentially a rootkit) on your PC you'd be (rightfully) incensed about the invasion of privacy. I cannot understand the rationale for anyones acceptance of its installation simply because it is installed by a business.

I dont doubt that Steam is a good service that benefits many gamers and gaming companies but I wont install it. As a result, I have no new games to play and I'm forced to post here at poly in order to pass the time.