Locked out of Steam/Civ V because of PayPal security

deanej said:

This is America. Common sense is illegal.

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This is the World, theft & corruption is also illegal.
I'm sure the current civil war in Libya isn't about common sense either.
Thus, we're on a standstill debate that leads nowhere but into discovering where injustice is.

Please don't feed the troll.

Moderator Action: Use the report post button if you feel someone is trolling.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

deanej said:

Not even what the law says. Precedence matters more than what the law actually says. Courts will rarely contradict precedence, even if it means contradicting the law.

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All of the published research on the Supreme Court in the last twenty years contradicts your claim. The Supreme Court votes on ideology. Lower courts fear reversal and tend to try to rule in the manner they believe the Supreme Court will rule.

In either case, if that means tearing up and burning precedent, then that's what happens.

Senethro said:

Payment wasn't received so it's prudent for Steam to lock the account in case it has been hijacked in order to prevent more fraud being potentially committed on it. Last thing Steam wants is more zombie accounts sending out phishing messages to their users.

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If that's the fear, then lock the function the phisher wants during the period of the dispute: communication.

deanej said:

This is America. Common sense is illegal.

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Since you're siting welfare, I'll point out that the often-cited welfare person that works on the side and leaches off the system to get money is seen by nobody - it's always "I know someone who knows someone who knows someone who saw that person". Why? Because that person doesn't exist. They were concocted by the right wing to attack welfare.

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I dated a woman for a bit who actually was leeching off the system. She would pay doctors to write false medical documents describing why she "can't" work, then leech off unemployment. My sister wound up in the Foster Care system for years, where she became one of the children who gets rounded up to get her foster-parents the tax write-offs. I went to high school with several families where nobody worked, because they could pay everything with their welfare. These people are hardly "concocted."

The same is true with consumers. You can't point to any specific consumers that are like that because they similarly don't exist (or are at lease exaggerated). They were invented by companies like Valve to justify DRM.

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Moderator Action: <snip> Linking to warez sites is not allowed.

If the problem wasn't real, DRM wouldn't exist. Why? DRM is expensive.

And yes, the Internet is causing a change. Under the free market system, companies whose business model doesn't work with the change should go die. Unfortunately we have an oligopoly who just gets the courts and congress to change the rules so that they don't die. Combined with our national security policy it's enough to make me want to leave America to a country that actually cares about people other than the rich. My worldview is that companies exist solely to provide a service to society and that any profit is just a bonus. Sadly the US subscribes to the paradigm that companies exist solely to make a profit and that nothing else matters, not even morals.

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Who does the work for the company? Generally speaking, companies are manned by workers- and run by leaders. Leaders sometimes work their way up through the chain, or buy their way in. Like it or not, this is the American Dream come to fruition. If you are the sole shareholder of a company, you can give those shares to your children and guarantee they have all of the tools to live comfortably until they die.

Your view is comparable to Socialism- which isn't a bad thing, but I personally believe to be unrealistic and counterintuitive. I believe that "true" socialism only works in small societies- that once the economic system gets large enough, it collapses from corruption and the cost of logistical support. It doesn't get much bigger than "The Internet", and all of those workers need to get paid- and as such, the company needs to make a profit. Not for the game designer- but for everyone involved at every level.

Oh, and in your example with the fictional steam-free civ5, steam would detect the crack unless you never let it run again.

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Once you swapped the executable, it wouldn't check in with Steam if you launched directly from the executable rather than through Steam. You would only lose access to Steam's patches. This is a known exploit of Steam, and might actually be the reason that Firaxis chose to only create a Steamworks version of the game.

Not even what the law says. Precedence matters more than what the law actually says. Courts will rarely contradict precedence, even if it means contradicting the law.

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Not true... there is a reason it's called "the letter of the law." Laws are not subjective. If you murdered 97 people in your home, and a cop broke into your house and found all of the evidence linking you to those murders... if the cop can't provide reasonable cause to enter your home, none of that evidence is permissible in court. You now have a reasonable chance to evade punishment for the murder of 97 people- simply because that evidence was procured illegally.