cannard: OK so rules are rules are rules but still HB's rules regarding this still make no sense, especially with regards to games already owned.
No. You feel personally disincentivized into making negative effort in understanding them.
You don't own a game. The copyright holder owns a game. You just get a permission (a license) to play it.
With HIB, you buy permissions to play games in sets, or bundles. Permissions are a "yes or no" boolean deal. If you get it twice, thrice, 117 times (hello Alquist), then guess what, nothing happens.
cannard: And so it is a "unit," but why does that mean we cannot do what we want
within legal boundaries with what is
contained in that unit? I understand things like creating copies of keys, selling keys, etc. being unethical/illegal but just giving single one-use keys away that you purchased legitimately?
It means redistributing keys is
not within legal boundaries. You have purchased a permission to play a game with keys that are intended for your own personal use, not to give them to other people. It's the same reason why you are not allowed to torrent an installer that GOG lets you download to use within your household.
cannard: And Humble Bundle may be the proprietor of these "units," but the keys themselves are for and from third-party services. For that reason I don't see why Humble Bundle themselves should have a say on what anyone does with anything outside the initial purchase of the bundles besides outlining the blatantly illegal things done with game keys.
When you "buy a game" thorough a service, be it GOG or HIB or Steam or whatever, you are paying the IP holder for a permission to play that game, the service is an intermediary. Humble Bundle gets to have a say what happens to the keys because they're the one who negotiated a deal with the copyright holders in the first place. And the distribution deal Humble has negotiated with the license holders is that permissions are distributed in bundles.
The outcome where you end up with permissions to play games that you are not interested in (they suck or you already have a permission) is 100% intended. Consider that the recommended price tends to be around $25, and you have the option of reducing and redistributing your payment. If the bundle has repeats or razzies, just divert no money to the respective IP holders.
(I'm going to switch the two sections of your post for the explanation to flow better.)
cannard: If not, wouldn't it be also similarly problematic for my RIse of the Triad giveaway (when I preordered the new Rise of the Triad and received the Blake Stone games but an extra of the original Rise of the Triad which I already had)? I don't know what GOG's rules are on that but all I know is no mods locked my thread and I was able to successfully give away my extra copy.
GOG is a different service, they have a different business model and have evidently negotiated a different deal. Note that the new GOG store automatically adds complimentaly games you don't have to your account when you purchase the main title.
Tradeable GOG gifts are Steam gifts are not "licenses" or "copies" or "games". They are digital tokens that the service can accept in exchange for issuing a license to the person providing the token.
cannard: And what makes this different than any of the other "giveaways" on the site? For instance was it possible that when games like Duke Nukem 3D and Torchlight were offered for free that you could "gift" them a multitude of times (I would imagine that GOG considered this in hindsight and put a strict block on it) to give away after the free sale was over?
Again, this is the agreement GOG struck with the IP holder. It was (and still is) possible to either buy a household license for Torchlight or GOG's promise to issue a license in the future. For a limited time, the price of the license or promise was $0. You might consider it overgenerous or wasteful on part of the IP holder, but keep in mind that:
(1) pirate copies of GOG games are available
(2) people who actively trade GOG keys are also likely to have been aware of the offer
(3) it was a purely promotional offer to get more people to sign up on GOG, so giving away free stuff was kind of the point.
cannard: As much as I want to respect what rules HB has set out at the same time I also really think HB should do a better job of explaining
why exactly they do not want you giving away individual keys even in cases when it's a game you already have, why it's unethical, what they are trying to prevent by setting such rules, and browsing their Terms of Service I could not find the section relevant to this matter after trying to decipher so much legalese.
HIB's business model is a new one,
made for the digital age and rooted in "fairness" and "perceived value". They are not a charity giving out free games for "poor" gamers, they are trying to make a living for themselves, the devs, and raise money for actual charities at the same time. That money has to come from the customers.
To that end, they have implemented a set of rules and mechanisms to squeeze the money out of people who are very much aware they can get that stuff for free. The "pay-what-you-want" of Humble is promotion. The money comes when a person goes through the checkout, sees a pitiful $0.5 assigned to the EFF and adjusts the total to something more respectable, and it also comes when you play a bundled game you weren't interested in, think it's awesome, tell all your friends and buy the next one on release.
Breaking and disrespecting Humble's TOS also sends a message that no matter how fair and honest the offer is, gamers will still be license-breaking assholes, which in the eyes of publishers justifies draconic DRM. As a dude at a yesterday festival said, "This fest sucks. Last year, the badges and stickers were free. Ah, those were the days. I just walked in and filled my backpack with the goodies. Come to think of it, maybe that's why..."