Posted November 26, 2014
high rated
(cont’d from my previous post)
9. WHAT YOU CAN'T DO WITH GOG SERVICES
This entire section is worded very broadly in ways that I suspect impose unintended restrictions on GOG users. Some of my specific concerns are highlighted below.
9.1 (a) Only use GOG services or GOG content for your personal enjoyment (for example, don't use them to
make money).
I suspect you meant this to cover things like "renting" access to your account or games you download through your account. However, as written, it would also seem to preclude making a review video using footage captured from a GOG game and then monetizing that video on youtube (thus "[using] GOG content... to make money"). Please make this paragraph more specific as to what sorts of non-personal enjoyment uses would constitute a breach of this agreement.
9.1 (b) We want you to be free to use your own GOG content and back it up etc, but equally we need to have legal rules to protect against misuse of the GOG content. So (unless you have prior GOG permission) please don’t modify, merge, distribute, translate, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or create derivative works of GOG services or GOG content – unless you’re allowed in this Agreement or by the law in your country.
Again, this seems like it would capture behaviour that probably wasn't intended. For example, it seems like applying a third party mod or patch to a game would count as "modify[ing]... GOG content", which I'm sure isn't what you had in mind.
9.1(d) Don’t create or use cheats, exploits, automation software (aka 'bots') or other software or do anything
else to give you an unfair competitive advantage regarding GOG services or GOG content (or try to circumvent or harm software meant to stop these things).
It seems like this is specifically meant to prevent cheating in online multiplayer situations, so it should probably specifically say so. (You hint at this with the words "unfair competitive advantage", but in my opinion that's not specific enough as "competition" doesn't necessarily have to be directly against other humans, so this could be interpreted as applying to offline play, and I don't think it's any of GOG's business whether I use cheats, trainers, etc. in my offline single-player games.) And before someone points this out, yes, I'm aware that there's no way GOG would ever know about me using offline cheats, and even if they did, it's extremely unlikely that they would try to enforce the Agreement against me for that reason - again, please just accept that I am a crazy person when it comes to precise use of language. :p
12.1 For fan work (e.g. works like fan mods, machinima, parodies, homages, 'Let's Play' or other videos or artwork), you need to check with the content owner (e.g. the developer or publisher) if they are OK with it and if so you should get permission from them. The reason is simple – the GOG content is the property of the respective owner, not GOG.com’s.
I suspect that the intent here was simply to create a "cover your ass" clause for GOG in case a user runs afoul of intellectual property law while doing something inadvisable with GOG content. However, it seems to me that this paragraph goes further than it needs to and actually creates (or attempts to create) an enforceable obligation on the part of the user to contact content owners before using their content. I have an issue with this - much of the "fan work" you describe arguably falls under fair use exceptions to copyright law and thus arguably would not require the content owner's permission, and while I appreciate that this is a serious legal gray area, any issues that arise are between me and the content owner and I don't think GOG has any business imposing an obligation on me to ask a content owner for permission irrespective of whether I am otherwise legally obligated to do so. Especially since I think GOG could adequately satisfy its own legal needs here simply by replacing this paragraph with a disclaimer that says something along the lines of "If you wish to make fan works, you are responsible for obtaining any permission that you may require from the content owner in order to use the GOG content in that way. GOG assumes no responsibility for any legal trouble you get into by creating fan content without the necessary permissions."
The Privacy Policy
9. WHAT YOU CAN'T DO WITH GOG SERVICES
9.1 (a) Only use GOG services or GOG content for your personal enjoyment (for example, don't use them to
make money).
9.1 (b) We want you to be free to use your own GOG content and back it up etc, but equally we need to have legal rules to protect against misuse of the GOG content. So (unless you have prior GOG permission) please don’t modify, merge, distribute, translate, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or create derivative works of GOG services or GOG content – unless you’re allowed in this Agreement or by the law in your country.
9.1(d) Don’t create or use cheats, exploits, automation software (aka 'bots') or other software or do anything
else to give you an unfair competitive advantage regarding GOG services or GOG content (or try to circumvent or harm software meant to stop these things).
12.1 For fan work (e.g. works like fan mods, machinima, parodies, homages, 'Let's Play' or other videos or artwork), you need to check with the content owner (e.g. the developer or publisher) if they are OK with it and if so you should get permission from them. The reason is simple – the GOG content is the property of the respective owner, not GOG.com’s.
The Privacy Policy
8.1 We will use the above information in the following ways:
(a) To enable GOG.com functionality that helps you and your friends keep updated about what you’re doing within GOG services, e.g. notifying you and your GOG.com friends about who is playing what games.
This is just a general comment, but I hope that when you implement these features they will be optional (i.e. that I will have an option to tell the Galaxy client not to tell my friends what games I own/am playing). I don't necessarily want my friends to see my 500+ hours logged on "Barbie Horse Adventures", mmkay?(a) To enable GOG.com functionality that helps you and your friends keep updated about what you’re doing within GOG services, e.g. notifying you and your GOG.com friends about who is playing what games.
Post edited November 26, 2014 by Azilut