The beauty of collecting exabytes of data about average citizens "just in case" is that if you, for whatever reason, decide to get into politics, public life, legal trouble or any other situation that suddenly makes details about your life valuable, there they are. It allows for amazingly accurate retroactive targeting to eliminate enemies. Maybe you think your government today has good intentions, but will you think the same in 20 years? If not, how do you get your personal information back?
Many of the big tech companies backing the bill have been sold on it as it is a legal "get out of jail free" card for any and all abuses of personal information that might otherwise be actionable.
I would be surprised if there was even one general counsel at any tech company likely to be affected by CISPA recommending against the bill.
If they wanted to release a new game that substantially deviated from the form and function of previous editions, they should have given it a different name. By continuing to use the "SimCity" brand, they not only succeeded in driving big $ in presales, but also jacking up player expectations. Further, the tightening of the DRM screws, ignoring quality and playability for moment, made what you get for the big $ worth something less since they effectively destroyed any resale potential the game had. Take that, consumer.
Here are some ideas that might help EA:
- Recognize playability and quality impacts the amount of both paid purchases and piracy for any game, but high quality causes paid purchases to increase at a faster rate.
- Diminishing the playability and quality of your products in an attempt to reduce piracy usually results in a more dramatic impact on paid purchases.
- DRM doesn't cause potential players to switch from being pirates to being paid purchasers.
- Paying customers recognize and resent you for taking away important playability characteristics from the games they enjoy and will think twice before purchasing additional titles from you in the future.
- An important segment of the buying public (i.e. the educated ones) recognize that you are placing more focus on manipulating market behaviors instead of building quality, playable games. The rest just think you are incompetent crooks who took their $60.
The really idiotic part of this is that the way it is written, anyone for any reason can install a rootkit and start collecting unspecified data. Sure, there is the BS about "suspicion", but that's a pretty low bar.
The unwritten part is that the only ones permitted to do this legally will be the content monopolies and, of course, the government(s).
Assuming this sees the light of day, I can't wait for clever citizens to figure out how to intercept, isolate and decrypt the data being collected and start publishing the embarrassing habits of government officials and industry executives.
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You don't have anything to hide until you do
The beauty of collecting exabytes of data about average citizens "just in case" is that if you, for whatever reason, decide to get into politics, public life, legal trouble or any other situation that suddenly makes details about your life valuable, there they are. It allows for amazingly accurate retroactive targeting to eliminate enemies. Maybe you think your government today has good intentions, but will you think the same in 20 years? If not, how do you get your personal information back?
Pragmatic for legal reasons for big tech companies
Many of the big tech companies backing the bill have been sold on it as it is a legal "get out of jail free" card for any and all abuses of personal information that might otherwise be actionable.
I would be surprised if there was even one general counsel at any tech company likely to be affected by CISPA recommending against the bill.
Naming Problem
If they wanted to release a new game that substantially deviated from the form and function of previous editions, they should have given it a different name. By continuing to use the "SimCity" brand, they not only succeeded in driving big $ in presales, but also jacking up player expectations. Further, the tightening of the DRM screws, ignoring quality and playability for moment, made what you get for the big $ worth something less since they effectively destroyed any resale potential the game had. Take that, consumer.
Re:
I hate ironing, so I take my shirts to the dry cleaners.
Here are some ideas that might help EA:
- Recognize playability and quality impacts the amount of both paid purchases and piracy for any game, but high quality causes paid purchases to increase at a faster rate.
- Diminishing the playability and quality of your products in an attempt to reduce piracy usually results in a more dramatic impact on paid purchases.
- DRM doesn't cause potential players to switch from being pirates to being paid purchasers.
- Paying customers recognize and resent you for taking away important playability characteristics from the games they enjoy and will think twice before purchasing additional titles from you in the future.
- An important segment of the buying public (i.e. the educated ones) recognize that you are placing more focus on manipulating market behaviors instead of building quality, playable games. The rest just think you are incompetent crooks who took their $60.
There is no such thing as an "orphaned" work.
RIAA will claim ownership by default as the artists' advocate.
Who, what and why?
The really idiotic part of this is that the way it is written, anyone for any reason can install a rootkit and start collecting unspecified data. Sure, there is the BS about "suspicion", but that's a pretty low bar.
The unwritten part is that the only ones permitted to do this legally will be the content monopolies and, of course, the government(s).
Assuming this sees the light of day, I can't wait for clever citizens to figure out how to intercept, isolate and decrypt the data being collected and start publishing the embarrassing habits of government officials and industry executives.