Don’t like it? Dont buy it.
This article on Slashdot talks about a couple upcoming PC-based games that may (or may not, depending on who you listen to) require Internet access even for single-player action.
This is alleged to be because the portion of the game that tries to ensure you’re playing a paid-for copy of the game (always an intriguing segment of game-play) needs to phone home every 10 days.
Now, a precept of the US Justice system is that a suspect is innocent until proven guilty. I don’t know that this necessarily applies to software. Now, in light of previous DRM-gone-mad scenarios (the Sony rootkit and MS WGA problems leap to mind) my attitude is that commercial software can’t be trusted. If there is suspicion or allegation of unsatisfactory behavior, or breaches of the user’s privacy, the market should withhold its money until the software vendor proves the allegations false and the suspicions unfounded.
Yes, it’s an assumption of guilt until innocence is proven. Yes, it goes against the format of justice for humans in this country. Let me ask you this, tho… if there was an animal which exhibited symptoms that made it look like it had rabies, what would you do? Invite it in for a cookie? Offer to intorduce your toddler to it? Not bloody likely. You’d call Animal Control, and they’d probably call in a cop, who’d probably euthanize the animal (gunshot to the head) right on the spot. I’m not proposing BANNING the allegedly offending software. I’m suggesting that each of you commercial software customers has the power to send a clear message to these companies. Don’t buy the offending product.
Think of it this way: If you bought the product, didn’t like it, sued the software company and won (unlikely) the most you’d be entitled to is the purchase price of the software, but you’d have all these legals bills, and untoward software on your machine that you couldn’t be sure of removing without an OS re-install. If you simply don’t buy the software until the software company satisfactorily demonstrates that the software doesn’t violate your rights, then you’ve saved yourself and the company unnecessary legal bills, and you’ve saved yourself the hassle of an OS re-install.
I don’t like the way commercial software companies operate, and I don’t use commercial software. Microsoft is missing out on thousands of dollars of retail sales for my home systems alone. If they produced a superior product that I felt I could trust, I’d buy it. Happily, they don’t.
I run Free and Open-Source software, and am happy as a clam. If I suspect that a F/OSS program is violating my privacy, I can remove it or alter it. It cost me nothing to acquire, and virtually nothing to remove.
Do what you want with your money, I guess… but I’m getting tired of people whining about how they’re being abused by software and media companies, and then doing NOTHING about it. I say put up or shut up.
I got tired of commercials on TV. Know what I did? Stopped watching TV. I got tired of the “pusher-man” tactics of commercial software companies (first one’s free, once you’re hooked the prices keep going up and the payoff gets smaller and smaller), so I stopped using commercial software.
…and another thing: As much as these software companies bitch about piracy, they secretly depend on a little bit of it (and always have). Piracy of, for example, MS Windows means that there’s a larger installed base of users, which means wider secondary sales (MS Office, MSN advertising, HALO 3, et cetera) and broader interoperability. One thing software companies really depend on is that if I produce something with their software, you can look at it. If I produce a spreadsheet using some commercial program that is used by only one other person, then I can only share my results with one other person in the native format of the program. If, on the other hand, there are millions of users around the world, then I have a broad range of people I can share my work with, if I choose to do so. Software NEEDS market penetration to be commerically viable. If you don’t want YOUR market penetrated, it’s time to start ACTING like you don’t want your market penetrated.