Friday Facts #303 - Under 100 bugs (but still not stable)

[mmmPI]

Note also that, unlike what you say, breaking copy protection is still illegal if you're using it in order to use your private copy exception exception, and is, like "normal piracy" (= one-person counterfeiting) punished by up to 3 years in jail and a 300k€ fine.

Thankfully, in practice, the courts seem to have decided that that (2006) law was bullshit, since they've declared the association that tried to force their hand as irresponsible because it was a case of force majeure.

The first link is broken !

I would say something like: you can lobby the deputees and senate as much as you declare, it's legal in france, they can write laws that exactly fits the need of the lobbist. But then when it's brought to court, the judges need to decide. And it's foribidden to give THEM money so that they do what you want.

In the official text, isn't there still a law that prevent woman from wearing pants ? yet in practice it is considered "archeological", and is never applied. The whole noise with DRM and "force majeure" is just the barkling of a dog that cannot bite but still try to be scary to my eyes.

There are (at least ofc) 2 differents articles that are related to those case, one is the 122-5 of the "Code de la propriété intellectuelle". official french laws website This one is more generic about intellectual property, more for song videos photographs, drawing, architecture etc. This has a lot to do with private copying for personnal use.

The other one is more precise about software it's 122-6, and detail the cases where and why one is allowed to copy and reverse engineer it. 122-6

There are constant changes to those laws, so maybe it is a bit different the day i'm writing this but the two laws were updated/revised since 2006, in 2018 at least, for some reasons.
And while we are here, this very law is said to be quoted in a decree made the 05 of august 2019, but this one looks even more of a brain-torture to read, i guess that's the whole point of writing laws in such a complex manner that you need to be lawyer to understand it which is in blatant contradiction with the principle that "everyone should know and obey the law".

It's exactly supply and demand and "amount of work" also means "value of work"

I agree with the first part, i was confused when i wrote "supply and offer" the debate is still open on the second part, but that doesn't belong to this thread

[BlueTemplar]

Link fixed.
Interesting, software itself (unlike other digital works of art) might then be under slightly different rules that might even allow for legal breaking of copy protection ?

[mmmPI]

Link fixed.
Interesting, software itself (unlike other digital works of art) might then be under slightly different rules that might even allow for legal breaking of copy protection ?

The law you are refering to the 2006 one , was mostly replaced in 2009 with HADOPi from what i know and then further modified in 2018/2019. ( it seems that there is a corelation, causality ?, between the frequency of those change and the lengh of political terms )

The thing that is allowed for EVERY digital piece of code, is to know if it is potentially harmful to your system, in a way, and also to use it in an inter-operable fashion from what i understood from the principles of the laws in this country .

This would mean the right to reverse-engineer the software, and doing so you are allowed to bypass the copy protection (provided you can,if not you are allowed to hire someone who can x) ). You are not allowed however to use the things you discover to make a copy of the software, or a replicate similar functionnality using your findings. Justice is in charge to decide wether or not you took inspiration, or just happen to have the same idea.

There was one long case covered by press about skype source-code that was retro-engineered by employee of a military-contractor company, 115 page pdf where they did utilize those legal possibilities, justifiying that if sensitive information was to transit using this software, precautions were to be taken. That is one of example. This ofc means that copying in the process is allowed.

Another aspect for other digital works of art, are the historical perspective. One may argue that the historical conservation of a MMORPG doesn't only include the client-side experience. It would be like keeping old videogames cartridge without their console, limited testimony over time. In those aspects there are/were some debate about wether or not it should be legal for institutions to access some of the source code that allow to run servers even after the company that is the legitimate rightholder has stop finding financial interest in doing so. AFAIK it is tolerated for now, as i have never heard of a company bringing to court a video-game museum, but i do not know very far maybe this has happen already .

[Koub]

[Koub] The subject is interesting, but quite off topic nonetheless .

[Novgorod]

2) Note speculative purchasing is a thing if you decide to throw your game onto a bundle. Take that into consideration as any game you put on a bundle is highly likely to have EXTREMELY LONG TERM impacts on your sales. Scammers will buy a game in bulk at whatever tier it ends up on, then dump the game until the end of time on scam websites. Scammers will be selling your bundled game for YEARS afterwards on scam websites. Aka dont put your game on a bundle unless you're desperate or are well aware that its at the end of its lifecycle

How is that a scam? It implies a crime, which you're not naming. Almost all of business is based on someone buying products in bulk and selling them at a profit.