For rarer games, and those shipped on DRMed/copy protected media, it's certainly possible to get into a situation at risk of losing all known copies of the binaries!
civil disobedience in my mind is when private citizen stand's up to what he perceives as unjust system or law. And I can't see what unjust you see here in this case.
The way I see it is simple a lost property returned to an owner, and reward for person who found it
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
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.
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.
The number of hopeless herbs on here who have so thoroughly internalized "legal == moral" is depressing.
I agree with you, it is completely unethical and totally self-serving.
https://iapp.org/news/a/ethics-and-the-privacy-harms-of-wiki...
http://www.npr.org/2010/11/30/131699467/is-wikileaks-release...
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/zorn/ct-wikileaks...
http://theconversation.com/wikileaks-journalism-ethics-and-t...
https://www.seeker.com/wikileaks-the-ethics-of-revealing-sec...
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/02/11/februar...
It's not their property, it's copyrighted. He indeed had no right to publish the contents but also no obvious obligation to return it. IMO he did a lame thing, the only worse option being uploading it anywhere before the © expires and getting into legal trouble.
http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/macpaint-and-quickdraw-...
Carmack released the Quake1 and QuakeWorld sources, and I think also q2 and q3 eventually too.
StarCraft is ancient and the source is of no commercial value to them any longer. They don't benefit from its secrecy, but we do benefit from its release.
Then again, this is the company that sued open source developers who re-implemented a server (bnetd) for one of their proprietary protocols. It was that day I resolved to never give them money again.
They are doing a remaster right now. It would be reasonable to assume that it has at least some of the original code in it. I also suspect that Blizzard has used the same code base and modified it little by little over time.
It's not like you found the source to the latest Halo game or something.
This is like finding the source to the original Halo game, of little to no commercial value but of immense cultural value.
Where possible these artefacts are archived so they will be around long after the companies have folded.
Unfortunately it's just not possible most of the time as companies end up taking their software to the grave.
Which makes this all the more depressing. This was an incredibly rare opportunity to archive something of cultural significance to millions of people, completely wasted because it fell into the hands of someone not equipped to deal with the situation properly or contact someone that does.
Abandonware is a thing and I remember there being some legal headway made recently in that respect, but Starcraft isn't abandoned. They just released a compatibility patch and made it free to download.
I don't think it's reasonable to argue against archiving when it clearly has cultural significance.
Reading and learning from said source code is, and should not ever be illegal.
Sure, legally. But the question is whether we care. Ethics are relative.
>whether we care
But I'm glad that there are those who get it.
This would effectively limit copyright to the products' natural lifecycle and prevent hoarding the bits "just because I can", thanks to copyright imbalance.
The source by itself is hardly (monetarily) valuable, pretty much to anybody. Blizzard clearly still has other copies, and anybody else wouldn't be able to do much of anything commercially with the code.
It's quite possible somebody has even already reverse engineered much of it, rendering it even less valuable by itself, even to copy-cats.
Starcraft reverse engineered to run on ARM: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7372414
Pretty much nulls all of the 'no commercial value' arguments I see here.
The code doesn't give you the legal permission to distribute and brand a game Starcraft. The reality is the code has no commercial value, the brand on the other hand may as well be a license to print money.
Even if the code was still similar to the original one, the non-HD version is given away for free...
Q: How did you go about replicating all the unexpected “bugs” that made BW micro
so special? Did you simply reuse code from the original game, or did you find a
solution to replicate the nuances of BW’s gameplay?
A: StarCraft: Remastered is able to achieve this effect as it uses all the same
gameplay code as Brood War. This means that Dragoons and Goliaths are still a
bit derpy in how they react to movement commands. The Reaver’s shot doesn’t
always find a target. Mutas stack.
The fact is that the gameplay is identical enough that old replays from 1.16
will play and work just fine under StarCraft: Remastered.
It's a bit like losing Leonardo Da Vinci's paint recipes - it's a loss, but it's not a big loss. The important thing about his art is the art itself. The same is true of Starcraft.
I found one on Lincoln, but it was just some cat photos and backups of selfies from the cessation of the Civil War at various Reconstruction projects.
...its not?
Chiefly because Starcraft is not a normal game.
This is a game that defined a cultural generation in South Korea, established e-sports singlehandedly and in many ways made the RTS genre what it is today.
It should be archived. Even if it can never be released due to copyright or other legal nonsense it shouldn't be left to a commercial entity to ensure it survives.
Starcraft influenced the culture and politics of an entire nation and became a national sport. It pioneered "e-sports". It's a piece of history, and this disc is standalone a piece of history as well.
I think I know right from wrong, but I would still have absolutely no idea what to do if that disc landed on my doorstep.
Edit: I cannot believe this is such a controversial thing to say. Shame on the people who think this is an easy decision to make, put yourself in someone else's shoes for a while.
To poorly translate Victor Hugo : "The principle is twofold, let us not forget it. The book, as a book, belongs to the author, but as thought, it belongs - the word is not too vast - to the human race. All intelligences are entitled to it. If one of the two rights, the right of the writer and the right of the human mind, should be sacrificed, it would certainly be the right of the writer, for the public interest is our sole preoccupation, and All, I declare, must pass before us."
If you didn't know anything about Blizzard, what would you speculate? Someone elsewhere in the thread for example is speculating Blizzard would destroy the copy -- if I thought that'd be a possibility, I would personally never send it their way and you could in no world convince me it's moral to send a piece of history to its demise.
As for morality, I apply the golden rule: if someone found the code I wrote for a groundbreaking piece of software, and I didn't want to open source it, I'd really like for them to respect my wishes and return it.
Edit: I'm unable to reply further, but to clarify I was referring to the maxim of reciprocity or "do unto others". If the positions were reversed I'd want my property returned. If I find someone's wallet I'd return it if possible, as I'd want someone to return mine.
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" is my favorite Star Trek quote, but I don't think it applies in this situation as it was intended as a motivation for a personal decision to sacrifice, not to force someone else to sacrifice. That line of thought can get pretty dark pretty fast.
Is that really the golden rule? What about "the good of the many"?
Returning it to Blizzard directly is good for Blizzard. Returning your code is good for you. Realistically, it has little monetary value (all the "value" will be spent on lawyers arguing what the value is), so maybe it's only good for you because it's simpler for you.
What if your sense of morality is not in line with everyone else's sense, and I'm returning code to someone who will not do "the moral thing" afterwards? Does that make me immoral?
Point is, this is not an easy decision at all. It's not an easy answer at all. I'd be petrified and I believe anyone else who spends time to consider the implications would be too.
That's like saying that robbing Bill Gates and distributing the money to millions of poor people is morally good because it's good for many people.
Unless you systematically take most of the money away from billionaires, which could be totally justified if society wanted to enact such a tax.
In the case of 20 year old source code, there's not really an important norm to uphold.
Your reasoning for that is "it degrades property rights", but you're for publicly releasing Blizzards property for "the good of the many"?
You want the source to be available and you're trying to back into it with some sort of moralistic argument instead of just admitting that you want the work to be available but have no real basis for it outside of personal preference.
Because that's what happens when you try and make a rational argument for why you just want something. You get ridiculous arguments like "it's not ok in this case because property rights, but it's ok in this other case despite property rights".
just the information on the cd, obviously.
degradation of property rights has nothing to do with copyrights.
and suddenly it's very clear, if the round bit of plastic was very valuable (maybe it's gold, maybe it's the only copy), then yeah obviously you're doing right if you give it back.
after you made a copy.
There are different kinds of property rights.
The property rights for the money you have in your bank account are important. (But if we wanted to add a rule-based tax across everyone that would be okay.)
The intellectual property rights for recently-made things are important.
The intellectual property rights for 20 year old code are not at all important. It's okay if we file off that specific corner of the law.
we had to invent copyright to mean anything at all, it didn't exist before. but even animals have some basic concepts about actual property rights (they can get righteously angry about it, for instance).
it's the word "property" in "intellectual property" that is misleading (deliberately, like the word "patriot" in "patriot act"). it's just a legal term, it didn't (quite) magically turn information into physical property when we came up with it (just one or two centuries ago).
oh wait.... something is wrong with that thought process, but I'll let you split another hair in your attempt at a meaningful dichotomy.
I can't wait until you find out that sufficiently old intellectual property goes public, while sufficiently old houses don't go public! Have fun blaming that on me splitting hairs when it wasn't my idea.
More seriously, intellectual property is a number of different things lumped together, and they serve different purposes. Copyright exists to encourage new works, and while you can make arguments that there are some benefits from copyright being long-lasting on the creation of works like books and pictures, it's basically impossible to make a similar argument for code.
Blizzard's IP hasn't expired, your argument here holds no water.
By the way, I'm not making any arguments about morality. I'm just pointing out that IP is different from physical property in important ways.
Under the law, damages have occurred, especially if someone then takes that source code and makes it public.
So whether you have 2 copies or 1 copy or umpteen copies, if you've economically affected someone, you will lose that fight in court.
But this is not relevant to this discussion and I think we should keep on topic.
The point is this:
Dylan16807 is just trying to rationalize something that he wants, which is for the source code to be public.
It doesn't matter how IP differs from owning a house. It doesn't matter if it can be copied (and thank you for having the arrogance to explain that on board full of developers, btw...).
None of this matters. What matters is that Blizzard paid for the creation of the code, and they're afforded protections under the law.
It's very simple. I'm saying we should look at the upsides and downsides of each type of IP. This (20+ year old source code) is a type of IP that has no upside. Therefore while it's against the law, there's no purpose in it being against the law, and it's not immoral. Easy peasy.
> What matters is that Blizzard paid for the creation of the code, and they're afforded protections under the law.
You don't think it's possible for the IP rights given by law to have a mismatch with the IP rights that are most moral? Because this conversation thread was about what is good or bad, aka what the law should be, not what the law currently is. Of course it's against the law as it is right now. That's not the only thing to discuss.
First, I never argued that it was or wasn't against the law.
Second, it's not clear that releasing the source would economically affect Blizzard. It's not like someone could start releasing competing StarCraft games. They still don't own the brand etc.
> (and thank you for having the arrogance to explain that on board full of developers, btw...).
I mentioned it because of your argument about a house being 20+ years old.
Even if you ignore the fact that Blizzard owns the rights to the code. Which you shouldn't, but some people here seem to think that's alright.
EVEN IF you ignore that, SC is still televised in South Korea. Releasing that code could affect the integrity of the competitive scene for SC.
But you won't accept that because this isn't really about what's fair, it's about what you want.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_StarCraft_competi...
> Over US$4,000,000 in prize money has been awarded in total, the vast majority of which comes from tournaments in South Korea.[3] For several years after the release of StarCraft II, competitive StarCraft: Brood War was no longer televised. However, in early 2015, the game returned to Ongamenet's televised lineup.
well THAT is actually an interesting argument, unlike rehashing the old argument of whether it makes sense to ignore the enormous fundamental differences between IP and physical property, and getting all worked up when people don't want to play along and pretend to weaken the definition of theft.
how will it affect the integrity of the competitive scene? and will it do so in a bad way, or maybe just change things up a bit?
I actually think that's a way more compelling moral argument than worrying about Blizzard's IP rights.
Actually, no, it's not. I'm not even arguing that the source code shouldn't have been returned to Blizzard. I'm only pointing out that most of the arguments (that I've seen here, anyway) against it haven't been good ones.
> EVEN IF you ignore that, SC is still televised in South Korea. Releasing that code could affect the integrity of the competitive scene for SC.
This actually strikes me as one of the more defensible arguments I've seen here.
because I can make up constructs all day that suffered more damages either way.
No.
To expand on this, it's good in general to return leaked code of active-development projects because that helps the social contract of turning work into something that can be sold. So if I found jakebasile's 2015 code in an alley, it would be in some sense good for everyone for me to return it.
But that doesn't apply to a 20 year old master for starcraft. There is no promotion of the useful arts in returning the CD in this specific case, and it's a hugely relevant cultural artifact.
TBH this makes me think of the old practice of smuggling jade artifacts out of China. Hey, it's culturally important, so clearly that means it's ok for other people to take it, right?
And I didn't say that cultural importance is an automatic justification. The new star wars movie also has cultural importance, but there would be large downsides to free-for-all piracy of it during its release year. Downsides that don't exist with 20 year old source code.
If some distributed the source code, what would happen? It's not like people could start releasing new StarCraft games to compete with Blizzard. And it seems unlikely that the source code is going to give someone some kind of an advantage it creating other competing games against Blizzard.
Obviously legally it's Blizzard's right to keep the code private, and there are times where it's advantageous to do so, but this doesn't really seem like one of those times.
I don't see why. Even if the code was leaked, it would still be illegal for people to use that code. Blizzard still owns the copyright, and I doubt it would be hard to show that a game was just StarCraft reskinned.
> Blizzard doesn't want people making money off their IP, plain and simple.
I'm sure they don't, but it's not clear that it would have any real effect on them. If they've released the game for free, would it harm them in any way?
I don't know if it's right or wrong to distribute the source or to return it to Blizzard. Obviously it's against the law to redistribute it, but I'm not sure that it would be immoral. Mostly, I see a lot of half-baked black-and-white arguments in the comments on this article, and I'm just trying to point that out.
The golden rule is, like most other unilateral rules, an oversimplification. Of course, that's what makes it attractive — it's an effortless substitute for having to think through the complex and messy realities of any given situation. But let's not kid ourselves that something is automatically good because we would want that thing in Blizzard's situation, case closed.
so does "do unto others", if you follow it.
additionally you just argued that the same moral rules and rights that apply to you, a living breathing individual with an inner drive to enact right over wrong, can be transferred to an entire corporation, a legal construct blind to ethics unless forced by legal rules. which is kinda inhumane.
and, the golden rule is only a good moral yardstick if your choices in what you'd want to have others do unto you are moral in the first place. not a very nice thing to question, sorry, but your hypothetical example does feature you writing groundbreaking software but wanting to keep it closed source. depending on the software and how groundbreaking it is, that's an open question, very much up to discussion.
What if you said that after the copyright had expired? Would you still say it's immoral to release it against your wishes?
If you believe in private property rights, then sure. If not, then no. Some such as Max Stirner, 19th century philosopher, would disagree with your assertion that it is a moral issue.
Now everyone's free to be the gremlin sitting on the sack, but if that sack literally is a masterpiece that shaped the whole of civilization, one day people will gently hoist you aside and replace the sack beneath you with a sack of similar monetary value, to put your original sack in museum.
Sorry if that's inconceivable in a black and white worldview. And no - its not communism, that is civilization. A right to destroy art does not exist.
No moral or ethical issue whatsoever. Nobody's rights violated. Everybody wins.
It's like I taught my children... even if you don't know whose it is, you know it isn't yours.
And in this case it is even known.
The amount of moral flexibility in these comments astounds me, although it probably shouldn't.
I would say it astounds me to find people who are as rigid as you are, but truthfully, it doesn't.
these are all different from each other. and more importantly, orthogonal to each other.
by orthogonal I mean that given a choice, deciding whether it is right, should be done independently of whether it's legal or easier/harder. think about it. even if you had the power to change law, making something legal won't make it any more right, and vice versa.
it seems to me that this guy made his choice of returning the CD vs releasing the code on the basis that the former is legal and doing the latter (somewhat securely) is harder.
not so much on whether preserving the code, in light of the cultural historical importance is right or wrong.
(you don't need to agree with me, but I'd love to hear a solid argument why the latter would be wrong, that doesn't conflate right/wrong with legal/illegal)
and even then, it's not entirely indefensible to base your actions just on what's legal or easiest. ethics is hard and especially the law provides a nice shortcut if you don't like to think for yourself too much. Just, don't go pat yourself on the back for doing the right thing. You don't get to do that. He does get a ticket and goodies from Blizzard, though. Sweet. Shouldn't taste bitter at all, at least for a while.
The argument in favor of releasing the source code just seems to me to be a dressed-up version of "but I really waaaaaant to!". Wanting something doesn't make it right.
IP rights are a creation of law and not usually (even by those adhering to a view of natural property rights) not viewed as a reflection of natural rights, so you seem to be both rejecting and endorsing legality as the basis of the wrongness here.
This is not always true. Laws for `X` often only exist because a few `donations` were made to the right organizations and some politicians were taken to a nice, fancy dinner by some lobbyists to "talk" about things. In an ideal world, lobbyists educate politicians to make better decisions. In reality the practice is closer to bribery by wine and dining politicians and making large donations to their organizations/charities/political party. So I do not agree with this claim - because I don't believe a large portion of society gives a damn about IP protection laws. Especially in instances where society "loses" because of it (eg. unused patents)
Yes, it explicitly does.
> It merely protects them.
Some people believe that certain legal rights reflect pre-existing natural rights. As I stated in GP, it is quite uncommon, though, even among proponents of natural property rights, to view the legal rights in intellectual property as being in that category.
If you believe the IP rights at issue here are natural rights, that's fine, but you should explicitly make the case (or admit that it's a moral axiom you adhere to), rather than just assuming it's an uncontroversial position, because, simply put, it's not.
The entire idea of IP rights as natural rights (and more generally natural property rights in things which aren't naturally limited in concurrent use the way real and tangible personal property both are) is quite controversial, and even the idea of IP rights as useful policy independent of being natural rights (the position implict in the US Constitution and it's provision authorizing creation of such legal rights) is somewhat (though notably less) controversial.
> You're the first person I've ever see suggest that it's controversial to say that authorship == ownership.
The Free Software Foundation is among the many organizations and individuals explicitly rejecting the position that copyright is a natural right.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.en....
In any case, I'm not sure arguments regarding copyright of written works are really all that interesting when talking about closed-source source code anyway. The source code isn't being published to begin with, so all of the usual arguments regarding length of copyright protection are kind of meaningless.
Sure, but that's immaterial. FSF (and many others; again, this is the fairly explici Constitutional rationale) views copyright bit as a natural right, but as a legal right which is desirable, within certain bounds, because managed properly it can produce certain public benefits.
This is at odds with your apparent view that copyright is a natural right.
> The source code isn't being published to begin with, so all of the usual arguments regarding length of copyright protection are kind of meaningless.
The lack of publication actually doesn't render the arguments for time limitations moot, only the argument that copyright in such works provides a public benefit (though that can be remedied by altering the terms of mandatory deposit to apply, instead of within a set time after publication, to apply within a set time after creation, and to adopt as a consequence of deposit failure forfeiture of copyright.)
I don't think anyone disagrees that, when you create the first copy of a new work, that you own that copy (assuming it's not a work-for-hire or something).
There is definitely disagreement around whether you should be able to prevent other people you have given a copy from creating further copies. That ability is what it means to "own" a copyright. And I would argue that that is clearly not a natural right, though possibly something we nonetheless want to enable for some period of time.
Unless an owner of code decides something should run as FOOS, it's basically their own.
As far as I remember, the StarCraft game is already free (which is pretty awesome) [1]. So, maybe it's a matter of time until the source code might be free, too. However, it's up to them.
For the truly curious (which are arguing about the cultural value and so on), it is still possible to look into it using a decompiler. It is messy, but it is possible.
Shit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Fox_vault_fire
Happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_MGM_vault_fire
If something is culturally significant then it should be preserved and these two hyperlinks should easily make the case that preservation requires distribution.
People make mods for tons of games without source code. People are making up excuses and flimsy reasons to get what they want.
This would be relevant if we were discussing US law, but myself and others in this thread are posting replies derived from reasoning beyond Kohlberg's fourth stage of moral development, so please forgive me for saying that the significance of your point here is lost on me.
The preservation of culturally-significant works of art is considerably more important than any definition of ownership found in any law from any country in any time period that you can cite.
> It isn't going anywhere, so even by your own assertion there is no moral right to preserve the source, which isn't needed to enjoy the cultural artifact it creates.
You make an excellent point here, but I'm not convinced that there is no moral obligation to preserve the source code. Granted, it isn't the product, but I don't believe that its preservation value can be easily dismissed given that the product is well-preserved. I will have to think more on this.