This might be of interest to Objectivist gamers.

[TuringAI]

I've just opted to create a petition to protect gamers who like the creations of highly pro-DRM companies. The reasoning behind this is that when purchasing articles of intellectual property, any inability of the consumer to use the software legally is a form of fraud. Furthermore, the basic thing stopping the continuity of the contract between the user and the producer is the fact that all data and infrastructure to make use of such data that's necessary to run a DRM intensive game gets destroyed when a company goes out of business. Way back in this country's history, problems like this could be solved simply by having someone buy the assets. Antitrust legislation makes this prohibitive, and common law simply provides no way for the owners of certain forms of businesses to be held accountable. This law fixes both things.

Government should allow successful economic entities to buy off assets of failing economic entities in the event that consumers who bought products from said failing entities had a perpetual, mutual obligation with consumers that involves said asset.

Any individual human being who does or assists in doing the destruction, hiding, or other form of abuse or neglect of said assets, whether they were political agents (such as government) or private agents (such as the failing entities) would be held accountable for a violation of the consumer's property rights regardless of any immunity laws (such as sovereign immunity or corporate immunity) in existence.

The new owner of said asset will then have the responsibility to continue to offer whatever goods or services the contracts obliges them to offer. Under no circumstances may the party that holds the assets terminate said contracts, nor may they make any revisions to any aspect of the contract except on an individual scale with the individual consent of any willing consumers.

This petition indicates that people recognise their right to consumers of products whose usage is dependant upon the perpetuity and mutuality of contracts to keep the fruit of their purchases even if the entity with whom they had a contract goes out of business, and any politician or businessperson who tries to breach said contract becomes liable for damages.

What do you think? I will be submitting this to a few places and would like to be able to bring people who have IM services into contact with each other for the final step, but you don't have to worry about that now, since right now I'm more into looking for suggestions in general on how to improve my petition.

[DavidOdden]

You should provide the proposed law. Is this a serious proposal for a real federal law, or a campaign to introduce 50 such state laws?

[TuringAI]

You should provide the proposed law. Is this a serious proposal for a real federal law, or a campaign to introduce 50 such state laws?

Right now I'm just trying to spread the petition and learn who would actually want this. As for writing the law, I believe that I would need to either find someone who knows law to write one in accordance with this petition, or learn some law myself.

[DavidOdden]

Right now I'm just trying to spread the petition and learn who would actually want this. As for writing the law, I believe that I would need to either find someone who knows law to write one in accordance with this petition, or learn some law myself.

I think then you need to reconsider what you claim you are doing. A petition is rather specific, and your proposal (which I take to be exactly what you posted here) is vague. A petition is addressed to someone (someone with a form of power) and says "We wish you to do this". Your document is not clearly addressed to someone, and you do not say what you are asking them to do. A petition should be addressed to a specific person or entitity, either "The CEO of AIG" or "The faculty of the department of proctology at MIT", and not something vague with no known extension like "anyone who buys computer games" or "anyone who knows how to program". The petition should clearly be sumarizable as "We want you to do X". What is that sentence that describes what you want who to do.

[JMeganSnow]

I think that attempting to introduce any *new* legislation to somehow "solve" the DRM issue is a bad idea. Why? Because it would consist of dictating to gaming companies what their relationship should be with gamers and making the government the arbiter of those companies' behavior.

The proper solution to this problem comes from *the market*. If you don't like a particular DRM scheme, don't buy games that use it. The companies will go out of business. Problem solved.

If you're interested in more information on DRM practices in the games industry, I highly encourage you to visit http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/ because Shamus Young does a fair bit of writing about this very topic.

The only real reason why DRM is a problem is because piracy is rampant and prosecution for same is nonexistent: there is almost no means by which the game companies can protect their investment and they are behaving stupidly as a result. Punishing the victim won't help--the only proper action of the government is to help these companies establish legal methods for protecting their property.

[funandlearning]

Turing AI, are you proposing to address the issue of the ban on online gaming in general inside the US of A - specifically poker/casino?