illegalyouth: software is just as much a piece of culture as a book. and yet, when i purchase a book, which is a copyrighted material, i am not purchasing a license, i am purchasing a product. i have certain rights with that product -- i have the right to share it, lend it, sell it, read it on a train, in my room, carry it wherever i want, etc.

illegalyouth: richardprice, that's really the difference between the two mediums, though. computers only work because they make copies of information -- even when playing on a single computer, the information is copied multiple times on the same computer (between the hard drive and RAM). but we also have to keep in mind user expectations. any review of the history of copyright will show that courts do take into consideration how people expect to be able to interact with their culture, and software shouldn't be any exception.
software is just as much a piece of culture as a book. and yet, when i purchase a book, which is a copyrighted material, i am not purchasing a license, i am purchasing a product. i have certain rights with that product -- i have the right to share it, lend it, sell it, read it on a train, in my room, carry it wherever i want, etc. there are expectations of what i can do with a book, just as there are expectations about what people can do with games. for a long time, we've expected to be able to play any kind of game, whether physical or virtual, with multiple people using only one copy of the game. i don't think that software should be any different in this regard. i don't think that it is unreasonable to assume, as we have been for many years, that a game with multiplayer can be played by multiple people at once.
but the software industry does think itself special. courts have said that simply calling software a license doesn't make it one. there is a single transaction and a physical good passes hands. that's enough for US courts to deem software a product, not a license. and the legality of EULAs are questionable -- some lower court cases have held them legally binding, others have not. so instead of finding a legal pathway, software companies are coming up with technological quick-fixes to things they don't like, such as dropping LAN support making it near impossible to play a multiplayer game with a multiple people with a single copy. gamers swallowed that without a fight. one expectation that they have been successful in changing, it seems, is the expectation that multiple people can play a multiplayer game with a single copy.

illegalyouth: bladderofdoom, there is a big difference between wide, free distribution and sharing amongst friends/family. if we apply your example to music, then the cassette recorder would have been outlawed. in fact, this was tried by the music industry, but the courts shot that attempt down. people made cassette tape copies (then later CD-R copies, and then raw mp3 file copies) of albums to give to their friends and family, an expected practice which the courts agreed did not violate copyright law. sharing a copy of a game amongst friends in order to use that game's multiplayer function isn't any different in my opinion.

richardprice: The problem is, 'the courts' have many times upheld copyright infringement with regard to software.
Copies made within the scope of normal usage of the application is acceptable within the terms of copyright law, meaning copies made to disk and to ram are fine but this does not extend to arbitrary copies made for multiplayer usage.
Copy methods are not illegal, copying without a license is - that is the crux of the 'Betamax decision' (which is what it is called in legal circles) .
You are completely wrong when you say that making copies (tape, CD, mp3 et al) and distributing them is an 'expected practice which the courts agreed did not violate copyright law' - the reality is completely the opposite, in that courts agree that the above is indeed a copyright violation that you can be found guilty of (and there are both civil and criminal penalties attached to such a violation in most jurisdictions).
In short, your view of copyright law is pretty much wrong.

Luned: In other words, you can be prosecuted for making unauthorized copies of books and passing them out, just as you can be sued for making illegal copies of software.

illegalyouth: copyright is a legal term, and to suggest that courts uphold "copyright infringement" is a misunderstanding of what copyright law is and it's history. copyright law is relatively new to civilization, beginning with the invention of the printing press. and it was used as a means to control information -- to control what gets published and what doesn't. in england, the king had the sole right to make copies of any books. when adopted by the united states, the framers of the constitution recognized that copyright was a necessary evil. so when they wrote out the copyright clause, they set copyright to a limited time, and for works that promote the useful arts and sciences. so any decision from the courts, is the final word on what copyright law means -- courts cannot uphold "copyright infringement" because copyright is a legal definition.

illegalyouth: you are only partially correct about the sony corp. of america v. universal city studies, inc. case -- the courts also upheld that making personal copies of entire TV programs for the purpose of time-shifting does not constitute copyright infringement.

illegalyouth: i'm quite aware of these facts, but i think that there is yet to be a case against software use in this manner. seeing that multiplayer is an integral function of the software itself, the function requires that people have multiple copies on mulitple computers. therefore, in order to use the software that you have purchased to it's fullest extent, you have to make copies of it. again, like in the sony v. universal case, the courts upheld copying that was for personal use (playing a game among friends would count, in my opinion) and was not for the purpose of distribution.

illegalyouth: i don't really have time to get into the philosohpical reasons why copyright is overreaching, and i can see where this conversation will go, so i'm not going to respond further. i'd just suggest people read copyrights and copywrongs by siva vaidhyanathan and code v2.0 by lawrence lessig.

simon_vd: Just buy it once for you, and then buy it as gift for every copy you need.