ARGH!!!

[dorjun driver]

Yeah.  Strangely enough, the paper work was safe, the backups weren't (CDs, tapes (get off my lawn).)  Did you ever have one of those years when nothing seemed to go right?  Well, this is shaping up to be one...

[Cmdrcain]

ORIGINAL: Nessaja

I lost my original download after a house fire, and even with my serial number, order number, credit card number &c &c, Digital River would not allow me to re-download. So I repurchased WitP in May for ninety-some-odd bucks in expectation of needing it for AE. Forking ice holes.

No Problem, i have register my Games by Matrix. I become my serial numbers and i can download my games every times...

I think its only if you bought extended d/l

Its "2 years" but Matrix says the link never expires if did.

If D/l without buying extended... 30 days and expires..

[Rapunzel]

Well this time i will buy the extended download too... .

[whippleofd]

I've found Matrix to be very responsive to the issues I had concerning my digital downloads. I can't for the life of me see the need to go somewhere else to re-download the game.

I no longer had the credit card the purchase was made with, but I did have the serial number which I supplied and with in a few days I had the link to get the download again.

Can't ask for better service than that; especially considering how hard other companies make it to do the same thing.

Whipple

[Ambassador]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

piracy, which is simply theft.

[puts his ADA hat]
Nope.

It "simply" isn't the same. I'm litterally fed up with that analogy that is being promoted by the media industry. Theft and piracy (or rather copyright infringement, to use the right word) are not the same thing.[:@]

Theft is illegally taking away someone else's property from its rightful owner without (prior or concurrent) consent of said owner. Do read "taking" & "from" : it really is the fact of depriving someone of his property that constitutes the offense, and I should add "with fraudulent intent". The actual definition varies from country to country, but this is a generalization that is valid in most of Europe and North America (South America too I guess, although I've never studied their penal laws thoroughly).
As such, this is an offense that does not lend itself "simply" to materials that can be duplicated at infinitum, like music, software, videos, etc. Hell, the simple act of "downloading without due legitimacy" is not an offense in a lot of countries : copyright infringement applies mostly to the act of publishing something without authorization. This is not to say that P2P is "safe" : you need to "publish" something to be able to download, so if you happen to upload a restricted material, you're going too far.
You might see an example of this in the problems that our countries have in closing websites that release music, videos, software, etc, outside of P2P - that is, "pure" download. In this case, the host country has to agree to close the website when its law is not as restrictive as ours (eg the case of Russia).
Besides, some countries are planning to extend the definition of copyright infringement to such "pure" downloading. But again, this is no theft, and they need to link this to the copyright infringement. By the way, some governments claim (like in UK) that this behaviour is already illegal, when it's not.


So, say that people should not download, that file sharing might be copyright infringement, etc, but stop equating those to "theft". This is profundly irksome for all lawyers and law-related profesionnals.
In short, just because theft and copyright infringement both are criminal offenses does not equate one with the other. Just like saying USS Essex is similar to USS Iowa is utterly wrong, even if both are warships. There's a world of difference in both cases.

[puts his ADA hat off]

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Cmdrcain
I think its only if you bought extended d/l
Its "2 years" but Matrix says the link never expires if did.
If D/l without buying extended... 30 days and expires..

Actually, by default you have a year to re-download. If you buy the extended download service, you can re-download forever. That's the reality of it, despite what the store says (DR requires us to say 30 days and 2 years).

Regards,

- Erik

[Curious]

ORIGINAL: Ambassador

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

piracy, which is simply theft.

[puts his ADA hat]
Nope.

It "simply" isn't the same. I'm litterally fed up with that analogy that is being promoted by the media industry. Theft and piracy (or rather copyright infringement, to use the right word) are not the same thing.[:@]

Theft is illegally taking away someone else's property from its rightful owner without (prior or concurrent) consent of said owner. Do read "taking" & "from" : it really is the fact of depriving someone of his property that constitutes the offense, and I should add "with fraudulent intent". The actual definition varies from country to country, but this is a generalization that is valid in most of Europe and North America (South America too I guess, although I've never studied their penal laws thoroughly).
As such, this is an offense that does not lend itself "simply" to materials that can be duplicated at infinitum, like music, software, videos, etc. Hell, the simple act of "downloading without due legitimacy" is not an offense in a lot of countries : copyright infringement applies mostly to the act of publishing something without authorization. This is not to say that P2P is "safe" : you need to "publish" something to be able to download, so if you happen to upload a restricted material, you're going too far.
You might see an example of this in the problems that our countries have in closing websites that release music, videos, software, etc, outside of P2P - that is, "pure" download. In this case, the host country has to agree to close the website when its law is not as restrictive as ours (eg the case of Russia).
Besides, some countries are planning to extend the definition of copyright infringement to such "pure" downloading. But again, this is no theft, and they need to link this to the copyright infringement. By the way, some governments claim (like in UK) that this behaviour is already illegal, when it's not.


So, say that people should not download, that file sharing might be copyright infringement, etc, but stop equating those to "theft". This is profundly irksome for all lawyers and law-related profesionnals.
In short, just because theft and copyright infringement both are criminal offenses does not equate one with the other. Just like saying USS Essex is similar to USS Iowa is utterly wrong, even if both are warships. There's a world of difference in both cases.

[puts his ADA hat off]

This has got to be the finest example of legal hair-splitting that I've seen in a long time. The software pirate is depriving his victim of the victim's livelihood. The pirate is taking food out of his victim's mouth and the mouths of the victim's family. Lawyers can split hairs until they turn blue, but that sounds like theft to me. And intellectual property is still property. It sounds like the "difference" between theft and piracy is more a matter of semantics than reality anyway.

CB

[Ambassador]

ORIGINAL: Curious

This has got to be the finest example of legal hair-splitting that I've seen in a long time. The software pirate is depriving his victim of the victim's livelihood. The pirate is taking food out of his victim's mouth and the mouths of the victim's family. Lawyers can split hairs until they turn blue, but that sounds like theft to me. And intellectual property is still property. It sounds like the "difference" between theft and piracy is more a matter of semantics than reality anyway.

CB

No, not really. Only because I did not delve in the details and did not compare the consequences of both. And "software piracy" is even easier to discuss than "music piracy", so it removes a lot of hair-splitting.

This "difference in semantics" that you call "hair-splitting" actually is the reason why the government of your country can't edict a law tomorrow that punishes the fact of posting messages on a forum, whatever their content, and punish you for the post you just did today. Because it wasn't illegal prior to you doing it, you can't be prosecuted for it. Same goes for copyright infringement : some acts simply are not banned (yet - and let's hope never, for my opinion).



Or as a friend of mine sometimes says: "lawyers are hair-splitters because the divide between a true democracy and a tyranny is thinner than the thinnest hair".[&o]

[Terminus]

No difference, except in the eyes of the apologist. Software piracy = theft. The end.

[Erik Rutins]

Locking this up before we end up in a flame-war over piracy.