4 ms·

You might've missed the following: That not everyone cares about all that legal intellectual property stuff, and, that it was probably fun to make.

rektide 4y ago
In a better world, companies would support & embrace this kind of creative exploration. It's just a sad chilling legal regime that rules us. Control is prioritized over fun, for fear that the fun get out of hand or come to not reflect well on the corporate image.
- CyberRabbi 4y ago
  - rektide 4y ago
    What is Microsoft being defended from here, by these laws which prohibit this? This isn't a pirated work. This isn't distributing keys: they explicitly say you need to get your own key. I'm honestly not sure your claims are at all valid, that the laws you are describing are the ones protecting against awesome works like this. If they are, then what a shame that those laws would be so overbroad, would threaten & wreck such innocent & virtuous remix-culture, would deny the world any of their agency & enforce top down corporate control.
    - CyberRabbi 4y ago
      > This isn't a pirated work. Distributing software without the permission of the author is the definition of software piracy. This is literally software piracy. The laws that prevent what you consider awesome work like this also prevent people from stealing your work. If we didn’t have these laws, we couldn’t have a software economy. It would be nearly impossible to make a living as a software engineer. The people who created these laws had the prudence to judge that the ability for programmers to securely make a living for their work is more important than the ability for programmers to take someone else’s work and do whatever they want with it.
      - rektide 4y ago
        That sounds reasonably accurate. It seems silly that software that protects itself from unauthorized use via a key would be entitled to such prohibitions. It seems silly software which is generally downloadable (such as windows10 here[1]) would be entitled to such restrictions. But yes, the corporations have rule. [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
        CyberRabbi 4y ago
        rektide 4y ago
        You updated your post to add this after I said I agree: > Distributing software without the permission of the author is the definition of software piracy. This is literally software piracy. It's disagreeable that you'd make such a drastic change under my feet. So to update my previous stance, I there may be some technical ground but I think users have a right too, to archival, to exploration. Leaving the software with all copy protection intact & in an unusable state for a user is pretty obviously difference than the hard fast clear case you make this out to be. This is pretty obviously different. Technically it's probably not up to snuff but the law is probably not competent in technics & needs to reel itself in to maintain legitemacy. There is significant public interest in being able to look at & understand & see our past. Microsoft doesnt wish to be a part of that past but I dont believe it grants them the right to make the world forget & become ignorant.
      - mopsi 4y ago
        > If we didn’t have these laws, we couldn’t have a software economy. It would be nearly impossible to make a living as a software engineer. Considering that this was made more than a decade after Microsoft stopped selling Windows XP, I fail to see how playing around with such abandonware would destroy software companies. What a ridiculous hyperbole. If anything, it's a good example of IP laws being disproportionally in favor of IP holders. Microsoft is already one of the richest companies on the planet, how much more penny pinching must we bear?
  - hakfoo 4y ago
    This just feels like it's a very debatable relative perspective. Even as a professional software engineer, the value of being able to obtain and hack on "the rest of the software universe" would be far greater than the value I can obtain by being able to deny others that right on my relatively minor scope of work. Copyright tends to enable one software business model above others: selling canned bits with no extra work. If you're not in that business, you have little to fear, and only free publicity to gain. If we eliminated copyright tomorrow, you could torrent a copy of $work_monolith with no repercussions. There would probably be little demand, as it's in-house tooling for a niche industry that requires non-trivial infrastructure to use. I would still have a job, because I'm still among the best-qualified people to manage updates, bugfixes, and compliance needs. Hell, now I have multiple potential buyers for consultancy and development services! I think you can also say that there is something inherently sad about squandered value. Nobody ends up better off in the current scenario. Microsoft has little to no interest in selling Windows XP, but there is a cadre of users who are interested in it. I've seen a fair number of people who want to build "the dream gaming PC of their childhood" now that they have the disposable income to do so, or people with technical "we can't replace the extremely specific software/hardware that controls the $5 million industrial machine with anything newer" lock-in. They lose out on being able to legitimately build something they want, and it's not like Microsoft was going to convince these people to buy Windows 11 for that use case instead. There may be some Rube Goldberg chain of downgrade rights you can invoke, but I doubt it's as simple as "buy a Win11 key and enter it in the XP installer's prompt", nor is it the sort of thing that's widely communicated. I always figured the compromise solution was a (likely state-mediated) mandatory licensing board. You want Windows XP and the vendor won't sell it? Buy a concession license at a negotiated price from the licensing authority instead, and your "acquired somehow" copy is now legally sanctioned. That would ensure permanent availability of "back-stock" content, and the concession funds could be funneled back to the original authors, providing an effortless trickle-source of revenue on otherwise unsaleable products.
    - CyberRabbi 4y ago
      > I always figured the compromise solution was a (likely state-mediated) mandatory licensing board. The majority of your argument seems to be based on the premise that you do not have rights over your own work. That the perceived public benefit has priority over your will over your own work. The day that the state ceases to enforce copyright based on that premise is the day that many types of software businesses will cease to exist. The incentives just won’t be there to create software that thrives under business models that require enforcement of copyright. Microsoft, as the owner of Windows XP has the right to do with it as they see fit. It’s not anyone else’s concern whether they are not making the best use of Windows XP. Especially not a mandatory governmental board. It’s their property, it’s their choice.

rektide 4y ago

In a better world, companies would support & embrace this kind of creative exploration. It's just a sad chilling legal regime that rules us. Control is prioritized over fun, for fear that the fun get out of hand or come to not reflect well on the corporate image.

CyberRabbi 4y ago
- rektide 4y ago
  What is Microsoft being defended from here, by these laws which prohibit this? This isn't a pirated work. This isn't distributing keys: they explicitly say you need to get your own key. I'm honestly not sure your claims are at all valid, that the laws you are describing are the ones protecting against awesome works like this. If they are, then what a shame that those laws would be so overbroad, would threaten & wreck such innocent & virtuous remix-culture, would deny the world any of their agency & enforce top down corporate control.
  - CyberRabbi 4y ago
    > This isn't a pirated work. Distributing software without the permission of the author is the definition of software piracy. This is literally software piracy. The laws that prevent what you consider awesome work like this also prevent people from stealing your work. If we didn’t have these laws, we couldn’t have a software economy. It would be nearly impossible to make a living as a software engineer. The people who created these laws had the prudence to judge that the ability for programmers to securely make a living for their work is more important than the ability for programmers to take someone else’s work and do whatever they want with it.
    - rektide 4y ago
      That sounds reasonably accurate. It seems silly that software that protects itself from unauthorized use via a key would be entitled to such prohibitions. It seems silly software which is generally downloadable (such as windows10 here[1]) would be entitled to such restrictions. But yes, the corporations have rule. [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
      - CyberRabbi 4y ago
      - rektide 4y ago
        You updated your post to add this after I said I agree: > Distributing software without the permission of the author is the definition of software piracy. This is literally software piracy. It's disagreeable that you'd make such a drastic change under my feet. So to update my previous stance, I there may be some technical ground but I think users have a right too, to archival, to exploration. Leaving the software with all copy protection intact & in an unusable state for a user is pretty obviously difference than the hard fast clear case you make this out to be. This is pretty obviously different. Technically it's probably not up to snuff but the law is probably not competent in technics & needs to reel itself in to maintain legitemacy. There is significant public interest in being able to look at & understand & see our past. Microsoft doesnt wish to be a part of that past but I dont believe it grants them the right to make the world forget & become ignorant.
    - mopsi 4y ago
      > If we didn’t have these laws, we couldn’t have a software economy. It would be nearly impossible to make a living as a software engineer. Considering that this was made more than a decade after Microsoft stopped selling Windows XP, I fail to see how playing around with such abandonware would destroy software companies. What a ridiculous hyperbole. If anything, it's a good example of IP laws being disproportionally in favor of IP holders. Microsoft is already one of the richest companies on the planet, how much more penny pinching must we bear?
- hakfoo 4y ago
  This just feels like it's a very debatable relative perspective. Even as a professional software engineer, the value of being able to obtain and hack on "the rest of the software universe" would be far greater than the value I can obtain by being able to deny others that right on my relatively minor scope of work. Copyright tends to enable one software business model above others: selling canned bits with no extra work. If you're not in that business, you have little to fear, and only free publicity to gain. If we eliminated copyright tomorrow, you could torrent a copy of $work_monolith with no repercussions. There would probably be little demand, as it's in-house tooling for a niche industry that requires non-trivial infrastructure to use. I would still have a job, because I'm still among the best-qualified people to manage updates, bugfixes, and compliance needs. Hell, now I have multiple potential buyers for consultancy and development services! I think you can also say that there is something inherently sad about squandered value. Nobody ends up better off in the current scenario. Microsoft has little to no interest in selling Windows XP, but there is a cadre of users who are interested in it. I've seen a fair number of people who want to build "the dream gaming PC of their childhood" now that they have the disposable income to do so, or people with technical "we can't replace the extremely specific software/hardware that controls the $5 million industrial machine with anything newer" lock-in. They lose out on being able to legitimately build something they want, and it's not like Microsoft was going to convince these people to buy Windows 11 for that use case instead. There may be some Rube Goldberg chain of downgrade rights you can invoke, but I doubt it's as simple as "buy a Win11 key and enter it in the XP installer's prompt", nor is it the sort of thing that's widely communicated. I always figured the compromise solution was a (likely state-mediated) mandatory licensing board. You want Windows XP and the vendor won't sell it? Buy a concession license at a negotiated price from the licensing authority instead, and your "acquired somehow" copy is now legally sanctioned. That would ensure permanent availability of "back-stock" content, and the concession funds could be funneled back to the original authors, providing an effortless trickle-source of revenue on otherwise unsaleable products.
  - CyberRabbi 4y ago
    > I always figured the compromise solution was a (likely state-mediated) mandatory licensing board. The majority of your argument seems to be based on the premise that you do not have rights over your own work. That the perceived public benefit has priority over your will over your own work. The day that the state ceases to enforce copyright based on that premise is the day that many types of software businesses will cease to exist. The incentives just won’t be there to create software that thrives under business models that require enforcement of copyright. Microsoft, as the owner of Windows XP has the right to do with it as they see fit. It’s not anyone else’s concern whether they are not making the best use of Windows XP. Especially not a mandatory governmental board. It’s their property, it’s their choice.