• Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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    24 hours ago

    that he got rich doing what he loves

    What he loved doing was taking away consumer rights and pocketing the profit as the one who did it the best. Before Steam, you actually owned your games and could resell them without asking anyone permission. Steam bypassed all copyright laws by saying, “But what if we sold a steam key instead of the game.” It’s the same “It’s not illegal if we do it on a computer” law sidestep that techbros learned from Gabe and copied.

    Before Apple sold restricted ownership music and before Amazon sold restricted ownership books, their was Steam paving the way to our current economy where you own nothing.

    • Axolotl@feddit.it
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      56 minutes ago

      be noted that steam added DRM in 2008 and DRM exist since '90s, one of the first companies to use it was Nintendo, before the 2000 the USA made the DMCA (i think?) 2001, 2003 and 2004 the EU also passed some law about copyright protection(and maybe DRM?) in the early and mid 2008 many companies before valve started to also use DRM (see Spore, assasin’s creed, etc etc) during the later 2008 and early 2009 DRM was also added by EA, Ubisoft and Atari, alonside Valve

    • paultimate14@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      Steam was launched in 2003.

      By that point the ships had already sailed. You didn’t own software, and micro transactions already existed. Steam did not “bypass” copyright laws- the facilitated a storefront that sold based on already established and litigated law.

      This goes back tk the 1960’s with the origin of computers, when they were gigantic. Manufacturers like IBM would lease the hardware to institutions that used it, and the software was just included for free. This practice ended because of antitrust lawsuits in 1969, which led to IBM charging for software seperstely.

      It’s funny you mentioned Apple, because one of the foundational cases of software copyright law was 1983’s Apple vs Franklin case that ruled against a company making Apple II clones, who argued that machines readable code was similar to machinery designs and thus not subject to copyright law. 20 years before Steam existed.

      But I guess you can just ahead and make things up on the internet to jump aboard a hate train.

      • FishFace@piefed.social
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        21 hours ago

        In 2003 it was pretty normal to sell your used games, on CD (or DVD) at a car boot sale or whatever.

        • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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          20 hours ago

          The person who disagrees is too young to know that was ever possible. They have grown up in a dystopia so they don’t know the law is being broken or know that other countries, unlike America, stopped Steam from violating consumer laws.

      • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        Of course you don’t “own software” like you don’t own the right to distribute to reproduce a book you bought. This is about resale rights.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

        The Supreme Court ruled and Congress ratified into law that once a copyrighted work is sold, the owner gives up the right to control resale. The specific case was book publishers who added a disclaimer that the book couldn’t be resold cheaply after purchase.

        This is exactly what Steam prevents.

    • turdas@suppo.fi
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      21 hours ago

      You haven’t been able to resell your used PC games since the invention of the CD key and SecuROM.

      • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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        20 hours ago

        That is absolutely not true. You sold your game with the key. Nothing about CD keys nor secure rom stopped this. The CD key gave the game the location of the specially stamped spot on the CD to verify it was the original CD. SecureRom kept people from selling copies. It did not stop selling the original.