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Comment by gottam | Hacker News Reader

Like I said, from a black and white legal standpoint it was the right move.

But so much was lost from not simply uploading it somewhere from an internet cafe.

It enters the same ethical flexibility as things like wikileaks in my opinion

As much as I would love to see blizzard's code, it is their intellectual property. This is nothing similar to wikileaks. Wikileaks publishes information that should have been public because it is of public interest and relates to the public yet it is not available to the public.

Why isnt a culturally significant game's source not considered public interest? Especially when the game is no longer being sold?

Because they might want to withhold their right to milk it for successive generations and not have to bother with making original games.

In this particular and narrow instance, it does seem like Blizzard is making good on going back and updating and maintaining the old code. You can argue the reasons, I suppose, but this seems in line with exactly what copyright is supposed to be protecting here. They're reviving support for the game, updating it for modern machines to receive, and making the previous iteration accessible.

I would love to have it to, but it's hard to fault Blizzard here for anything but "hey it would be really nice if you..."

There is still a vested interest in protecting this game from Blizzard's point of view, and it sucks, but in this case they have a fairly good justification and have been holding up their end of the bargain (re-releasing)

They've been real champs about these older games, like Diablo II getting updates. My heart skipped a beat when we finally got a native OS X client update that wasn't a Carbon app - that was really going above and beyond in my opinion, and their support was great for it despite the hiccups on release.

It was being sold up until about a week ago. I'm sure that you can find a store that still sells it on CD.

Blizzard is making a StarCraft remaster right now; who knows how much original source is still in there. My guess is probably a lot, since they want to keep the same mechanics.

Parent's usage of "Interest of the Public" here typically means "the welfare or well-being of the general public; commonwealth" and you seem to be meaning the "lot's of people are curious -- culturally significant" kind.

Doesn't mean he didn't take a backup!

there is no ethical issue with keeping the secrets of others you have no obligation or commitment to keep.

Does this mean that if you find a random person's diary, there is no ethical issue with publishing it?

Liberating proprietary software is a moral good. Full stop.

The number of hopeless herbs on here who have so thoroughly internalized "legal == moral" is depressing.

You're the one who is making that connection, not me. I never implied it.

Yeah, sorry, I didn't at all intend that as a slight against you specifically.

> It enters the same ethical flexibility as things like wikileaks in my opinion

I agree with you, it is completely unethical and totally self-serving.

Your ethic smells bad.

Well, at least i'm not the only one who smells this way:

https://iapp.org/news/a/ethics-and-the-privacy-harms-of-wiki...