nyankoframe (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nyankoframe) wrote2005-07-21 09:05 am
nyankoframe) wrote2005-07-21 09:05 am
GTA:SA rating changed, and "getting the most out of your purchase"
Rating changed from M (15+) to AO18+
While I think it was not a particularly good idea on Rockstar Games' part not to disclose to the ESRB that GTA contained such hidden content when submitting it for rating, I feel part of the blame should also lie with the person(s) who created the patch and encouraged its widespread distribution.
From a purely utilitarian/economic perspective, it does make sense that when you pay for something, you expect to be able to use it without any restrictions as long as no one else is harmed by your actions. At this point, the legal concept of "fitness for use/sale" also comes in.
Given this premise, if a product is crippled in some way (whether deliberate or otherwise) it may be your legal right to circumvent the limitations and make the product acceptable for your use. However, I don't think it is particularly clear legally whether doing so results in IP (copyright / patent / etc.) infringement.
See, for example, Andrew "Bunnie" Huang and Microsoft, where he was sued because he published the technical details necessary to mod the XBox to run non-digitally signed software (such as Linux). [As an aside, it was very interesting to find his book in the UQ bookshop, and I was thinking of purchasing it until I realized I had no need for it.]
Or Dmitri Skylarov and Adobe, where he reverse-engineered the encryption algorithms present on PDF documents and was then sued by Adobe under the DMCA (and arrested).
Or even the existence of programs such as 98Lite and IELite, which claim to remove the integrated Internet Explorer from Windows (and do so), although whether the tradeoff is acceptable is another matter entirely. Not surprisingly, I believe that it isn't, and that other factors besides the integration play a more important role in determining whether a computer is secure, such as not using an administrator account for day-to-day use. You can use Firefox and exclusively non-MS software and patch them religiously, but running as an administrator means that all your hard work can come to naught if a vulnerability in one of those programs is exploited. There are also, AFAIK, no serious/exploitable privilege escalation bugs in the Windows kernel. Having said that though, LUA support isn't as good as it could be and is completely off-topic for this post.
In all these cases (as well as in the GTA case), the justification outlined above for the patch seems questionable (leaving aside the question of whether some form of infringement has taken place) in that the products actually did work as advertised / sold for a majority of the people who bought them.
The other likely explanation for why the patches were created is to protest against the false advertising of the manufacturers.
However, if that was the aim of the people who created these patches, then a better (and more legal?) way would have been to launch some kind of grassroots advocacy campaign not to purchase those products, although that doesn't quite work for Windows, but that's their problem, not mine.
While I think it was not a particularly good idea on Rockstar Games' part not to disclose to the ESRB that GTA contained such hidden content when submitting it for rating, I feel part of the blame should also lie with the person(s) who created the patch and encouraged its widespread distribution.
From a purely utilitarian/economic perspective, it does make sense that when you pay for something, you expect to be able to use it without any restrictions as long as no one else is harmed by your actions. At this point, the legal concept of "fitness for use/sale" also comes in.
Given this premise, if a product is crippled in some way (whether deliberate or otherwise) it may be your legal right to circumvent the limitations and make the product acceptable for your use. However, I don't think it is particularly clear legally whether doing so results in IP (copyright / patent / etc.) infringement.
See, for example, Andrew "Bunnie" Huang and Microsoft, where he was sued because he published the technical details necessary to mod the XBox to run non-digitally signed software (such as Linux). [As an aside, it was very interesting to find his book in the UQ bookshop, and I was thinking of purchasing it until I realized I had no need for it.]
Or Dmitri Skylarov and Adobe, where he reverse-engineered the encryption algorithms present on PDF documents and was then sued by Adobe under the DMCA (and arrested).
Or even the existence of programs such as 98Lite and IELite, which claim to remove the integrated Internet Explorer from Windows (and do so), although whether the tradeoff is acceptable is another matter entirely. Not surprisingly, I believe that it isn't, and that other factors besides the integration play a more important role in determining whether a computer is secure, such as not using an administrator account for day-to-day use. You can use Firefox and exclusively non-MS software and patch them religiously, but running as an administrator means that all your hard work can come to naught if a vulnerability in one of those programs is exploited. There are also, AFAIK, no serious/exploitable privilege escalation bugs in the Windows kernel. Having said that though, LUA support isn't as good as it could be and is completely off-topic for this post.
In all these cases (as well as in the GTA case), the justification outlined above for the patch seems questionable (leaving aside the question of whether some form of infringement has taken place) in that the products actually did work as advertised / sold for a majority of the people who bought them.
The other likely explanation for why the patches were created is to protest against the false advertising of the manufacturers.
However, if that was the aim of the people who created these patches, then a better (and more legal?) way would have been to launch some kind of grassroots advocacy campaign not to purchase those products, although that doesn't quite work for Windows, but that's their problem, not mine.
no subject