Comments on: Microsoft carries out mass XBOX Live bannings

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 04:01:49 +0000

There’s a lot under the surface… Since there are a lot of people playing games, a whole culture of gamers is being influenced by what’s out there. Likewise, as with any media, the content creators have to figure out what to do next, who to target, how to target them. It’s the same as any other media, only it’s interactive. But the key principal of creator feeding audience feeding creator stands. It’s very manipulative – a word that comes off as ominous, but it’s the sort of thing we deal with in all aspects of media.

Is there a lot of hard news? No. But there is still plenty of serious being thrown around every time we make the transaction, every time we opt to consume.

By: Holly Green

Holly Green — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:42:38 +0000

I think that’s a great point. This business is pretty straight forward, there’s really not a lot of real “journalism” to be done.

By: Rhody

Rhody — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:50:02 +0000

People need to stop acting like video games are srs bznss enough to warrant the effort one would give a political scandal or something. The Xbox 360 failure rate is pretty much the only thing that´s important enough to care that much about.

By: Holly Green

Holly Green — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:38:46 +0000

Ah, I see TOBEFAIR. I should dig up an article that you might enjoy very much, about the state of video game journalism and how it barely exists anymore. There just aren’t many people out there pursuing stories instead of regurgitating pres releases. Example: the story on the RROD scandal and the research done to unearth it–journalism. The stuff you see on IGN daily…sooooo not.

By: Christian Ponte

Christian Ponte — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:41:06 +0000

Brian is correct. Legally, backups are OK… if you can find platforms that allow it. Unfortunately, Nintendo’s, Sony’s, and Microsoft’s EULAs prohibit the creation and use of user-created backups of games for their platforms. Thus, they can’t sue you for backing up games (unless of course you’re distributing these backups), but they retain the right to prohibit your further use of their services because you insist on breaking the EULA.

By: TOBEFAIR

TOBEFAIR — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 22:41:39 +0000

Holly, I thought your article was completely fair.

I was refering to the IGNs, Gamespots, and PC World folks. It is amazing there lack of knowledge despite having high-end tech journalism gigs.

By: Holly Green

Holly Green — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:36:45 +0000

With all due respect, maybe the word in quotations should be “journalist”. I don’t think a single person here has delusions that they’re some sort of journalist. Writers, yes, journalism, no. If you feel I’ve merely copied some press release word for word with a cheap anti modding comment then I’m forced to wonder if you actually read what was written.

By: Brian

Brian — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 19:42:29 +0000

“Fair use” is exceptionally vague from a legal standpoint. I agree with you that playing your own legit backups should be ok. But I’m sure the software license terms on the ‘box still prohibit it. I don’t specifically know how Xbox games are designed, but I’m sure there’s a level of encryption there that means they can go all DMCA on you, regardless of whether you’re doing anything truly nefarious or not. Granted, it’s hard to enforce a license that you “must” accept without ever reading (by simply buying the product w/o access to the license). With all the vagueness surrounding it, I think it’s definitely ‘fair’ in the sense of consumer advocacy, &c., but if you’re speaking from a legal sense, ‘completely within the sphere of fair use’ might be a stretch. There’s a lot of nasty in the current state of copyright, and not always a lot of common sense.

By: TOBEFAIR

TOBEFAIR — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 19:11:58 +0000

To Be Fair,

It should be noted that this “ban wave” effects less than 1-2 percent of all modded drives. In fact Microsoft cannot even detect the existence of the modded firmware or the abgx sheathed games.

The folks being banned here on noob modders that play bad rips (non-sheathed games) or pre-release/review copies before the official release. At that point, the console records a log of the unusual behavior and sends the information back to Microsoft.

Additionally, the complete copy-cat nature of the gaming journalism is starting to bug me. The vast majority of proclaimed “gaming” journalists simply copy the Microsoft press release word-for-word and provide a cheap anti-modder comment. The truth is that many folks mod their xboxs to play back-ups, in which is complete within the sphere of fair use. After all, the xbox hardware has been known to scratch discs badly.

By: Brian

Brian — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:23:23 +0000

You own your console. Hardware, all that junk – it’s yours. But the software that powers it is merely licensed to you. Tricky game they play. Really, really tricky.

This attitude concerns me greatly, though. I don’t know all the details, but it’s going to be hard for them to specifically target pirates. What if you hacked your Xbox, tried a few things, and figured out that it wasn’t for you? I’m sure many in that situation would leave it all on, out of sheer laziness. I have my Wii hacked, but I’ve never used it to play pirated software, never even touched the WAD managers, etc. that would enable me to do so. But my unit is still hacked, the software has still been ripped apart… It’s all very dicy, just constant games of back-and-forth…

Edit – just realized my first ¶ sounds rather argumentative – not my intent, just needed a starting point…