Bay 12 Games Forum

No, there was a co-op mode added later in the game's lifetime, a sort of cooperative mini-dungeon crawl. Was fairly solid.

There's actually still some servers lingering about for playing Nox, last time I checked (earlier last year).

Reminds me of this other image I've seen (That I don't know where came from, because it was cropped out of its original medium) that had a guy with two kittens attached to his chest via duct tape, right across the nipples. I vaguely remember there being text along the lines of "What do you do in this situation" involved.

All I can think is tentacoo [redacted]. Possibly involving the actual cast.

Less tentacles and more membranous flaps, please. E: Also, some of that "hair" needs mouths at the end of them. Just sayin'.

BECAUSE DRUG DEALERS ARE ALL AS BAD AS RAPISTS AND MURDERERS AND JAYWALKERS! And pirates. And counterfeiters and everything else that involves prison time.

Wait, what does this have to do with piracy again?* Maybe this thread?

*Back on topic discussion slaves! *whip crack* Rational debate for the logic throne!

On land, anyway

Alligators aren't too bad, really, so long as you're not too stupid around them. They're cute and fairly personable when they're young. Still fairly cute when they're grown, too, and most reptiles are tactilely pleasing.

And yes, it's generally illegal to have them as pets. Big fines if caught. I just played with it, not owned it, heh.

Cats are pretty awesome, though. They'll almost certainly go extinct after 'gators do.

General copyright thread.
Thread specifically dealing with copyright infringement.


The arguments are within those~

Why is the creator of a work entitled to control or grant control of distribution? More specifically, what about the act of creation entitles an individual to compel others through threats and force to refrain from recreating that work?

Nothing, really, but it was miraculously discovered that giving the creator of a particular creative work some degree of control over its distribution incentivized the creation of more creative works, a thing considered to be a net plus.

Sane copyright is both a good thing and societally beneficial, fairly well proven to give more than it takes. The current system is way damn far from sane, but that doesn't invalidate the concept on the whole. It's a good idea and has been, at times, fairly well implemented.

The mere fact of me having been the "first" to introduce an idea, or a work to this world does not entitle me to prevent others from introducing those same ideas or variations on them. Neither the technological means they use to create or adapt that work, nor the precision or medium of the  recreation change this.

Nothing really entitles you to not be violently accosted and stolen from, either, but society kinda' figured things work a bit more smoothly when that sort of act isn't generally allowed. We're working on sussing out where exactly that point lies re: information.

As the general moral point, it's been fairly well agreed that when folks are profiting off of someone else's creative works without consultation and fair compensation to the mentioned creator (assuming they're alive and haven't ceded the work to public or free use), that the distributor is definitely doing something immoral. If nothing else it's really damn impolite and something society should probably frown upon (Tip: Punitive laws are one of the ways society frowns on things, in an ideal situation).  Things get more complicated when there's no profit (read: Money beyond, say, CD purchase for burning and shipping) involved. But all that's been covered elsewhere! And we're trying to deal more strongly with piracy than copyright in this thread, I believe.

Why?

Those linked threads! In them is your answer! Or at least numerous and varying explanations.

Why is a corporation that distributes the creative work of a third party entitled to prevent others from recreating and distributing those materials themselves?

Because the corporation has negotiated with said third party for either exclusive or semi-exclusive right to control of distribution (instead of simply distribution)... ideally, anyway.

The non-ideal aspects meander off into (currently utterly bullshit) copyright law, copyright theory, draconian contracts, and a cultural system that's been somewhat heavily structured by those very companies demanding control over distribution as part of their services... among who knows what else.

People are continually complaining about a lack of facts about lost revenue; they are there, merely ignored.

Well, some facts are

That study, at least from what you presented, came to the (should be blindingly obvious, but very, almost violently, underplayed*) conclusion that piracy doesn't take money out of the general (luxury/entertainment) economy, but at least that bit didn't address possible financial damage to individual companies; the 'lost sales' in relation to specific titles would be covered under something like that. There's a point of discussion on the subject of smaller scale damage, obviously.

It's a bloody good start, though!

*Not by anyone here, so far! But the messages from larger media corps definitely like to give the frightening message that piracy is somehow crippling the entertainment industry and making money magically disappear from the economy. Which is so hilariously fallacious that message should be taken as sheer nonsense, but it's often taken more seriously than it has any right to be

I have some facts to contribute.

Problem: All ancedotal and not statistically significant Important, yes, but the individual scale impact of piracy is fairly minor; again, on the small scale it's not significantly more immoral or damaging than sharing a book or movie. If there's trouble, it's going to be on a much larger scale.

Something to think about:  Ok.  World of Goo had a 90% piracy rate.  So let's say a hypothetical 10,000 copies were sold and 90,000 copies pirated.  Why do you automatically assume that piracy had a negative effect on the number of copies sold?

In cript's defense, I don't think he's necessarily assuming that; the conclusion he's building to is seems to be that among that hypothetical 90k pirated copies, at least some are lost sales. The piracy might have had a net benefit, but it's fairly reasonable to assume there was some loss, too.