Microsoft Bans Halo 4 Pirates, and Some Idiots Absolutely Deserved It
torrentfreak.com
torrentfreak.com
and while i agree that its surprising given the source, they do seem to take a pretty pragmatic view on the issue. i mean we’re not talking about a record industry suing a 13-year-old girl for sharing a few mp3s here.. to have done this you would have had to seriously modify your console and probably violated nearly every line in the service’s terms of use in the process. xbox live is a service after all and they’re under no obligation to continue offering it to those who egregiously abuse it.
Microsoft didn't ban people for having modded consoles, but having a modded console was necessary for this. The jailbroken iPhone with pirated apps seems perfectly analogous, and I think people would be far less friendly to these same tactics by Apple (or Verizon?) in that scenario.
Yeah, no. Free tethering is a much bigger deal than simple piracy.
in this case, they’re denying access to their service to users who both: violated the tos by messing with their devices, and (more importantly) utilized that to steal a product (one that cost likely in excess of $100MM to develop).
even if you’re in favour of less restrictive copyright law, or against closed systems in general, there still are, and in my opinion should-be, limits. and i wouldn’t fault apple either if they locked-out jailbroken iphones that allowed users to freely download paid app-store apps (or music/videos from itunes), and i’m sure the developers of those apps (or content publishers) would agree.
Would it be acceptable for Sony to boot you from Playstation services if they detected you were watching a bootlegged copy of a $100m film from one of their studios?
Should Apple close your iTunes account if Fox's movie studio tells them you're watching $100m films on your Mac?
where i draw the line (and where i personally see a clear distinction), is when the service itself is being utilized to facilitate the infringement. in the examples you cite, the services (playstation network, itunes) are not involved in the infringement, they just happen to be tied to devices on which the infringement is taking place. i think it would be a different if case people were freely streaming (paid) movies from the playstation store or itunes; i feel that’s more analogous to what’s happening here because the connectivity that comes with the service is tied to the product being stolen.
i guess it’s sort of an odd-line to draw, but that’s how i see it.
also, to clarify on my point from above, i didn’t mean to imply that the cost to develop/produce the good ia necessarily a major factor, nor should the fact that it be from the same entity that runs the service; $100MM to microsoft is no-different than a couple thousand to an indie dev and, in both cases, it’s in the service provider’s best interest to prevent theft directly facilitated by their network, and i'd say they’re right to do it.
Now whether or not such a thing would be feasible ... is another story.
there are plenty of hacked xboxes around that, similarly, add/expand functionality. i see nothing wrong with that, and looking at kinect, microsoft dosen't seem to mind much either (and in that case, actually seems to encourage it).
i don’t see the issue here as being one about 'jailbreaking' itself, but rather 'jailbreaking for the purpose of theft'. in your example, you've modified your device to download an app that otherwise would not be available via the app store (i'm assuming it was freely offered). but if you had done the same, but were downloading a paid app, let’s say angry brids, for free, then that’s a different story..
From Enigmax in the comments:
"The issue of the "copying and distributing" of information isn't what i'm complaining about, it's the idiots who want to ruin everyone else's enjoyment of what would otherwise be a first class experience."
Strange, it seems like the distribution of information is exactly what he's complaining about.
What purpose does account suspension serve? People will just initiate a chargeback for their membership fees and create a new account with a new username. Or worse, switch to PS3 and forget all about Microsoft.
According to the article, Microsoft can and did. And they're legally in the right, and probably have the moral high ground too.
> People will just ... create a new account
Accounts are full of things that people like to keep.
> Or worse, switch to PS3 and forget all about Microsoft.
Is it really worse to lose the problem users?
Halo 4 won't be on the PS3. Halo is a Microsoft property. Part of the Xbox lock-in.
More than once for the same console? More than once for the same credit card number? Microsoft can make the ban pretty harsh if they want.
Every now and then a big wave of console bans comes along and eBay is filled with people flogging their banned consoles.
I'm usually tempted by this kind of thing but value my account too much to chance it. I think there are many wishy washys like me who could use another account/console to do piracy properly but aren't really into it at that level, just opportunistic if it's there and easy to do. A small penalty like banning is all that's really needed to deter us.
And there are a (admittedly small) number of people who only pirate things i) that are not available legit ii) as a try before buy, with deletion for content they don't want and purchase for content they do want.
TF usually has sane commentary. And their biases are open and upfront.
A friend of mine actually figured out how much he was paying for the console every year, about $200-$300, and then figured out how many games he had pirated (at what would be $60, roughly, a piece) and came to the conclusion that it was worth pirating all of his Xbox 360 games and face being banned every November. If you own 5 games that were purchased new, that's a console's worth of money right there. We did that for a couple of years until they started banning our accounts for the JTAG exploit.
Microsoft is unethical in what they do when they ban people on Live and corrupt their NAND, but they've probably got legal powers to do that based on the Live EULA.
I thought they'd learnt their lessons from the "Tree of Evil bares bitter fruit" thing.
This 1985 article mentions the tree of evil string. It also mentions MS thinking about dropping copy protection on some software to help get more market share. Kind of scummy behaviour, in my opinion.
(http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=OC8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA8&#...)
(Oh Google, your funny URLs.)
This PDF also talks about the psychological tactic:
(http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/SE-20.pdf) (on page 417).
I seem to remember people actually losing data to this, but perhaps my memory is faulty.
Also, I don't think it's fair to take into account how many games he pirated. He should only count games that he would've paid for in the first place.
Before my xbox was banned 2 years ago, I would pirate almost every game that came out for xbox -- even if I only played it once.
Now that I pay for games, I'm pretty particular about what I buy.
It's also unfortunately not a perfect system. On the original Xbox, there was an autoban trigger for an inordinate amount of negative feedback on an account. It made for some interesting retaliations when you utterly destroyed someone and their friends in a game.
As a fan who has followed the Halo series for more than a decade, I can certainly blame somebody for spoiling the ending. Especially if they're spitefully tricking people into accidentally reading the ending, not just having discussions in threads marked SPOILER.
Seriously, if The Empire Strikes Back had been leaked back in the day and trolls were running around Hacker News saying "VADER IS LUKE'S FATHER!" wouldn't you be annoyed?
> Or worse, switch to PS3 and forget all about Microsoft.
That would be a win for Microsoft. "Hey, Sony, we're sending you some of our customers, for free! They're free because they don't pay for games. Hehehe have fun, much love, Bill"
This is especially true here in the UK for US TV shows, since in many cases there is at least a year between airing in the US and the UK.
Back on point, you can absolutely blame people for playing the game and then maliciously attempting to spoil the ending for others. Pirating is not a passive action. Some people believe information wants to be free, but since my pay is dependent on information/software as currency, I'm not about to subscribe to that ideology. Since I like the products that have come about from people willing to pay for information, I'm not going to evade paying the creators.
... the writing is garbage, but hey, it's pulp fiction.
IIRC they banned people who tried to play on Live, but not people who were signed in but playing singleplayer. At least, that seemed to be the policy.
Welcome to HN!
(apologies in advance for the patronising tone. I really need help and advice about tone in written communication. Sorry.)
In general it's a bad idea to say "Why is this news" because that adds little to the conversation. You will attract down votes for comments like that.
In general it's considered poor form to say that an item doesn't belong on HN. Alternatives are to use the voting system; use the flag system; or just ignore the bad content. You don't have access to down votes yet, and top level items don't have down vote buttons anyway, but you do have up vote rights. It's great when many people visit [new] and up vote good content.
This is a shame because you probably have a good point.
From the Welcome page:
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