> If you are selling cars with the hoods welded shut and all systems permeated with DRM, are you making the world better, because, hey, cars are good?
My cellphone might as well be welded shut - because of system-on-a-chip design. I can't replace the GPU, the CPU, the memory, or any number of things I've repeatedly replaced on my desktops with my current lack of soldering skills or equipment. Is SOC design also immoral? Even as it enables access to the internet to an ever growing number of people, something some have been calling a human right?
But let us return to your analogy instead of playing analogy ping pong.
> If you are selling cars with the hoods welded shut and all systems permeated with DRM
Assuming the price remains around the same, I'd simply not buy that car because it's stupidly designed, and going to be a pain to maintain. I'd also not buy a car where I had to replace the engine block to replace the front headlights, no matter what percentage of it's software is GPLed, or how many of it's parts have 3D printer schematics available for me to replace them in my own basement. Neither choice is based on ethics.
I also think it's good we have government laws forcing car companies to make their maintenance documentation etc. available to 3rd party mechanics. Cars are expensive enough to maintain that society is well served by competition. And while proprietary systems aren't inherently immoral, unexpected predatory pricing based on vendor lock-in certainly can be a problem. I've seen the short end of that stick enough times to know it sucks. I think it's worth limiting what a car company can do to help avoid the circumstances that can even lead to that, even if some of the things we're prohibiting them from doing were perfectly ethical for them to do on their own.
But you'll be hard pressed to convince me it's a problem for your $3 copy of Canabalt. It doesn't need an oil change. With several games, I complain if 3rd parties figure out how it works - when multiplayer suddenly becomes plagued with aimhacks, wallhacks, maphacks, and other unfair competition.
If I owned a car, it might as well have been welded shut – I am not a mechanic. Does this fact make it ethically OK for someone else to sell a “closed” car to me?
> […] I'd simply not buy that car […]
That was not the question. The question was if would be ethically OK to sell that car, not if you (or anyone else) would buy it or not.
> But you'll be hard pressed to convince me it's a problem for your $3 copy of Canabalt.
It also wouldn’t really be a large issue with a simple enough car or car-like conveyance, like maybe a bicycle, or a Segway. Does this make it OK?
> It doesn't need an oil change.
Software needs updating. Static software is dead code.
> If I owned a car, it might as well have been welded shut – I am not a mechanic. Does this fact make it ethically OK for someone else to sell a “closed” car to me?
That's not the deciding factor. I've no particular ethical qualm with it if you know full well what you're getting into and choose it.
>> […] I'd simply not buy that car […]
> That was not the question. The question was if would be ethically OK to sell that car, not if you (or anyone else) would buy it or not.
"Neither choice is based on ethics." The ethics of the sale would depend on the other particulars, but if we assume those other particulars were all ethical, then yes, I'd say it's ethically OK to sell you that car.
Let's take a few concrete examples where a car has indeed been welded shut.
- I'm selling you the car for you to resell at a profit as scrap metal.
- I'm selling a clunker I tried to "repair". A few poorly followed DIY guides later and... well, I made some mistakes.
- In a fit of mental illness, or for the sake of a harmless prank, I welded my car shut intentionally.
In which circumstances should I feel guilt trying to sell it to you? To me, it's the ones where I'm trying to mislead you. That could be any of the above (I lie and say it's not welded, lie about the scrap tonnage, I try to convince you welded cars are in vogue, etc.) or none of the above (I'm upfront about the facts and ensure you know what you're getting into.)
>> But you'll be hard pressed to convince me it's a problem for your $3 copy of Canabalt.
> It also wouldn’t really be a large issue with a simple enough car or car-like conveyance, like maybe a bicycle, or a Segway. Does this make it OK?
I didn't say you'll be hard pressed to convince me it's a "small enough" issue or problem to fly under some ethical radar or waterline. I'm saying you'll be hard pressed to convince me it's a problem, period.
>> It doesn't need an oil change.
> Software needs updating. Static software is dead code.
I disagree with your assertions. You might want to update it, but there's a big difference between want and need. Plenty of old DOS and cartridge games are still quite playable. And for the purposes of archival and preservation of the commons, I think a focus on emulation provides more bang for the buck than trying to modernize every abandoned application - and, it should be noted, doesn't require updating the software.
EDIT: On the subject of unanswered questions, I'll repose my original one to you since the original poster isn't answering.
Do you actually think my day job - making (proprietary) games - is immoral? A daily dose of evil?
> I've no particular ethical qualm with it if you know full well what you're getting into and choose it. […] I'm upfront about the facts and ensure you know what you're getting into.
One could make the same argument about any laissez-faire economical proposal, like “Do I have the right to sell myself into slavery?” Some things are prohibited, even though people are, in theory, well aware of what they are doing. One could argue that this is one of those things that ought to be prohibited.
> You might want to update it, but there's a big difference between want and need.
I would argue that it is my right to update the software to changing circumstances. Otherwise, it’s like a solid-block car with DRM; unchangeable, and (once support is dropped) increasingly unusable due to changes in its environment. These characteristics (pay for a limited time of support, after which it becomes practically unusable) is more akin to renting than buying. If I buy a thing, I would expect it to be my right to modify it according to my circumstances for all time, since I now own it. For software, I can’t practically do so without the source code.
> Do you actually think my day job - making (proprietary) games - is immoral? A daily dose of evil?
Words like “evil” have unreasonable amounts of emotional attachments, so since you are pressing me, I feel like you are setting an rhetorical trap, so I will refuse to use that word. I will say, though, that you are quite possibly making the world slightly worse instead of better. The fact that people are taught to be helpless and powerless is a bad thing. Whether you are, on the whole, doing a bad thing depends on whether any positive impact of your game (your game, mind you, as compared to any possible replacement game) is large enough to offset this. This could possibly be true, and perhaps not – I do not feel competent to judge this.
> Words like “evil” have unreasonable amounts of emotional attachments, so since you are pressing me, I feel like you are setting an rhetorical trap, so I will refuse to use that word.
Please note this thread started with some rather emotionally attached wordage applied broadly. And with me very explicitly responding to that wordage. The entire basis of my question centered around that phrasing. It's what I responded to. If you're not interested in handling it... what exactly are you trying to help explain from davorb's post? Are you sure that what you're explaining was in davorb's post?
I think the difference between you and I is a simple one of opinion. Correct me if I'm wrong: You see providing ease of modification as a rights driven moral mandate. I see providing ease of modification as a virtue worth encouraging - sometimes through law - especially when the good to society outweighs the burden or harm to the authors. But I do not see it as a moral mandate, because I do not see 'ease of modification of another's work' to be a right. I do not see it as a right because I see imposing that much burden on the author to be a clear violation of their rights. I have no right to demand a novelist's draft notes or plotline sketches, the LaTeX documents that generated their PDFs, none of it.
Where rights collide, one must strike a careful balance. Let us suppose that one has a right to modification: I think the current length of copyright is unreasonably long, unreasonably in favor of the author, harming the commons and that 'right to modification'. But I agree with the original principle of copyright - to provide an author a means to support themselves via temporary monopoly of the fruits of their labor - and feel that demanding they make it easy to subvert that monopoly from the very get go, to be unreasonably against the author. And although I'm fine with e.g. legalizing jail-breaking a phone, I feel I've no right to demand it be easy.
My ideal world involves much shorter copyright durations (somewhere between 5-20 years max?), better enforced (and perhaps simply by being more reasonable, it will be more respected?), with a richer commons at the end. You could even try to make these rights balance against each other: e.g. for software only providing the protections of copyright only to those who provide their source code.
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>> I've no particular ethical qualm with it if you know full well what you're getting into and choose it.
> One could make the same argument about any laissez-faire economical proposal
I'm not arguing about "any" laissez-faire economical proposal, I'm arguing about a car I welded shut.
I'm also not arguing that there aren't other particulars that must be considered.
A mugger clearly explains to you so you know what you're getting into and offers you a choice: Give him all your money in exchange for not shooting you. I'm not saying that's ethical!
> like “Do I have the right to sell myself into slavery?” Some things are prohibited
Tell that to a court-martial when you change your mind about enlisting after a war starts. I have many ethical concerns about military recruiting and some of the incentive structures around enlistment, but no particular problem with allowing enlistment. I absolutely cannot fathom those who would want to do this, however, as to me, they very much are selling themselves into slavery - a potentially very dangerous slavery - a slavery which may very well last for the rest of their lives.
> These characteristics (pay for a limited time of support, after which it becomes practically unusable) is more akin to renting than buying. If I buy a thing, I would expect it to be my right to modify it according to my circumstances for all time, since I now own it. For software, I can’t practically do so without the source code.
Do you consider free as in beer - but proprietary - software to be immoral? You didn't buy it. Do you consider free as in beer - but proprietary, and subscription requiring - software to be immoral? You're clearly renting it. Do you consider renting out to people to be immoral?
I can sympathize a little with the "I thought I was buying it but all I got was renting a license" argument. Enough I could potentially agree with, say, an argument that DRMed music is immoral. I'm of the opinion that invasive and negligently DRMed music is immoral (see: Sony rootkits.) But I certainly don't assume I'm buying a DRM-free game complete with source access when I buy a game off Steam - nor I think do most gamers. And being okay with subscription payment model, but not okay with a one time fee payment model, requires some level of cognitive dissonance I simply don't have. I also have no fundamental moral issue with rental, software or otherwise.
> Words like “evil” have unreasonable amounts of emotional attachments, so since you are pressing me, I feel like you are setting an rhetorical trap, so I will refuse to use that word. I will say, though, that you are quite possibly making the world slightly worse instead of better.
You're quite suspicious of me. But to your credit, you're at least not jumping to conclusions.
> The fact that people are taught to be helpless and powerless is a bad thing.
Given just how rampant piracy and cracking, or hacking and modding is, it's a hard sell to me to say that proprietary software is actually teaching this. In fact, I'd argue just the opposite - it's clear any and all barriers proprietary software devs try to come up with to protect their profits are overcome by the users with time. And by "with time" I mean a possibly negative amount of time, where cracked versions of the game release before the non-cracked version does. Vibrant and awesome modding societies pop up around proprietary games - including those that were intentionally hostile to modding (e.g. in a bid to make lives more difficult for cheaters.) Some good, some bad.
And while I'd generally agree with your statement, I admit - I wouldn't consider it a bad thing if pirates felt a bit more helpless and powerless when it comes to intentionally and willfully draining a dev's resources (server bandwidth, support resources, etc.) under false pretext ("I totally bought your game!") while giving nothing in return. Because that's simply not a fair or equitable exchange.
> Whether you are, on the whole, doing a bad thing depends on whether any positive impact of your game (your game, mind you, as compared to any possible replacement game) is large enough to offset this. This could possibly be true, and perhaps not – I do not feel competent to judge this.
And yet I feel judged. To be fair, I asked to hear it, so thank you for responding. But: surely it's only fair to compare the positive impact of my game against the positive impact of the activity that would have replaced it, not against every possible activity? Otherwise, even if I've done zero harm, I'm left competing with "solving world hunger, cancer, and heart disease" all at once. Even if we limit it to games, there was that protein folding puzzle game, wasn't there?
> what exactly are you trying to help explain from davorb's post? Are you sure that what you're explaining was in davorb's post?
One can never be sure about what someone else is thinking, buy davorb did link to the FSF page “Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software” (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....), and since I am fairly familiar with the FSF’s world view, I thought I could clarify, since you seemed to have actual trouble even conceiving any other point of view than the contrasting Open Source one. I suggest that you simply read the linked page, it explains it more explicitly and at more length.
Regarding copyright in general, I am personally very suspicious of the concept (as explained by many others elsewhere). But the FSF’s view is more narrow, focused on software, and your work is producing software, which makes this relevant. And the FSF’s argument why, for software, the right of modification (with implied source code) is important, is, I think, a compelling one.
(You can’t argue that selling yourself into slavery is OK since enlisting oneself is allowed. If that was not the argument you were trying to make, I don’t understand it.)
> Do you consider free as in beer - but proprietary - software to be immoral?
I would have to say yes. It is offering something nice which contains a hidden trap.
> Do you consider free as in beer - but proprietary, and subscription requiring - software to be immoral?
I don’t think so. What you are paying for is not the software, but the service, of which the software is a tool the provider uses to provide the service. Of course, this has other dangers (privacy and dependency), but it is not, I think, necessarily inherently a bad thing.
> I can sympathize a little with the "I thought I was buying it but all I got was renting a license" argument.
It also dilutes the very concept of “owning”. When the Playstation was remotely downgraded by Sony, I saw the argument made that of course Sony had a right to do that to everybody’s Playstation, since it was, and I quote, “their [i.e. Sony’s] console”. People actually had the idea that, even though people had paid money for a console and owned it, it was still, and forevermore, within the domain of Sony, and that Sony therefore had the right to do whatever they wanted to it. This is a dangerous dilution of the concept of ownership.
> And being okay with subscription payment model, but not okay with a one time fee payment model, requires some level of cognitive dissonance I simply don't have.
It’s a question of what causes people to dilute the concept of ownership, and what teaches people to be more downtrodden, helpless, dependent, and afraid. I am against that which does this. Technically the same deal, presented differently, might not have this effect, in which case I would not object to it (on these grounds, at least).
> And while I'd generally agree with your statement, I admit - I wouldn't consider it a bad thing if pirates felt a bit more helpless and powerless
Who are you referring to when you say “pirates”? Are they the ones who crack the game? Those people are incorrigible and will only be aggravated by more copy protection and DRM. Are you instead referring to those which use a cracked copy of the game? Those people are impossible to make more helpless than your regular users. Your regular users, however, will be made to feel helpless if only DRM and online-only play (and no modding tools or source code) is provided.
> Because that's simply not a fair or equitable exchange.
I’d be more sympathetic if 99% of the server components of modern games weren’t only for their DRM-like properties (online-only play even for single-player campaigns, etc.) If, on the other hand, the servers were an optional component, you might solve the ethical problem by simply charging a recurring service fee for the server access.
> And yet I feel judged.
Them’s the breaks.
> But: surely it's only fair to compare the positive impact of my game against the positive impact of the activity that would have replaced it,
> I thought I could clarify, since you seemed to have actual trouble even conceiving any other point of view than the contrasting Open Source one.
Ahh, I see. Thank you. But it's not that I have trouble conceiving the the point of view put forth by the FSF and others. I can see their concerns, their desires, the benifits of a right of modification and the many ways people (including myself) have been harmed by not being able to enjoy such a right, suffering vendor lock-in etc.
What I have trouble with is understanding the jump to the more absolutest position, to say that there is no exception to the rule, to say that all proprietary software is immoral. Certainly, some hold this position - I would say RMS probably does - but I see it as a harmful stance and a rare stance. Those who appear to hold it usually have a fundamental difference of opinion - one that neither of us will make any headway trying to convince the other of in debate - or are speaking hyperbolicly, in which case I would point out the harm of that.
> I suggest that you simply read the linked page, it explains it more explicitly and at more length.
I have, a couple of times at least.
> (You can’t argue that selling yourself into slavery is OK since enlisting oneself is allowed. If that was not the argument you were trying to make, I don’t understand it.)
I'm arguing we allow a form of slavery, in the form of enlistment. This doesn't make it moral. I think in some circumstances it can be moral - but this is an unbacked and unsubstantiated opinion, presented only to help provide my point of view.
>> I can sympathize a little with the "I thought I was buying it but all I got was renting a license" argument.
> It also dilutes the very concept of “owning”. When the Playstation was remotely downgraded by Sony
They were rightfully slapped with lawsuits for advertising a feature and then pulling it. This is wrong regardless of ownership. You could be renting or leasing your console and it'd still not be right. Ownership doesn't grant you the right to do anything you want with it - but that works both ways too.
> Who are you referring to when you say “pirates”?
I was specifically referring to people using the software without paying the license holder for it, in a copyright infringing manner. This does not include people using a no-cd crack on a copy of the game they own, this does not include people buying copies second hand. It didn't include the creators of cracks either, although my opinion would still apply to them. (EDIT: Subject clarity.)
> Are they the ones who crack the game? Those people are incorrigible and will only be aggravated by more copy protection and DRM
They will also be delayed, which is generally the goal of companies applying these techniques (sometimes successfully.)
> Are you instead referring to those which use a cracked copy of the game? Those people are impossible to make more helpless than your regular users.
They cannot be made more helpless, but they can be deterred (sometimes successfully.) I do recognize this reality.
> Your regular users, however, will be made to feel helpless if only DRM and online-only play (and no modding tools or source code) is provided.
I am not made to feel helpless when lightweight DRM doesn't get in my way. I am not made to feel helpless when I can't play Planetside offline, because the game makes no sense to play offline. Make no mistake though - I don't buy games with heavyweight DRM, and I don't buy games with stupid online-only requirements (I'll not buy the latest Sim City, for example.)
> I’d be more sympathetic if 99% of the server components of modern games weren’t only for their DRM-like properties
This is hyperbolic to the point of being untrue. I suspect you know that. Were it true, I would still ask you not to judge the "1%" by the actions of the other "99%" - if for no other reason than your own self interest in giving that "1%" (however small) a reason to not become 0% (however small that reason also is.)
>> But: surely it's only fair to compare the positive impact of my game against the positive impact of the activity that would have replaced it,
> Yes.
>> not against every possible activity?
> That was not my intention.
Cool. Then as part of the "1%" building games with optional server components, I'm doing better than the other "99%" - I like my chances.
My cellphone might as well be welded shut - because of system-on-a-chip design. I can't replace the GPU, the CPU, the memory, or any number of things I've repeatedly replaced on my desktops with my current lack of soldering skills or equipment. Is SOC design also immoral? Even as it enables access to the internet to an ever growing number of people, something some have been calling a human right?
But let us return to your analogy instead of playing analogy ping pong.
> If you are selling cars with the hoods welded shut and all systems permeated with DRM
Assuming the price remains around the same, I'd simply not buy that car because it's stupidly designed, and going to be a pain to maintain. I'd also not buy a car where I had to replace the engine block to replace the front headlights, no matter what percentage of it's software is GPLed, or how many of it's parts have 3D printer schematics available for me to replace them in my own basement. Neither choice is based on ethics.
I also think it's good we have government laws forcing car companies to make their maintenance documentation etc. available to 3rd party mechanics. Cars are expensive enough to maintain that society is well served by competition. And while proprietary systems aren't inherently immoral, unexpected predatory pricing based on vendor lock-in certainly can be a problem. I've seen the short end of that stick enough times to know it sucks. I think it's worth limiting what a car company can do to help avoid the circumstances that can even lead to that, even if some of the things we're prohibiting them from doing were perfectly ethical for them to do on their own.
But you'll be hard pressed to convince me it's a problem for your $3 copy of Canabalt. It doesn't need an oil change. With several games, I complain if 3rd parties figure out how it works - when multiplayer suddenly becomes plagued with aimhacks, wallhacks, maphacks, and other unfair competition.
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