I know you Americans love your "wars" on terror, drugs, etc, but until that TTIP crap is signed, you will have to respect that laws are different in different countries.
You do realize that whenever you click (I accept) or (I agree) on installing software or making an online subscription your are agreeing to the legal statement? It's a binding agreement like a signature. Also if you look at the TOS Dr. JBHL linked there is a specific item referencing that:
You agree to not use the Service to:
...
h.intentionally or unintentionally violate any applicable local, state, national or international law, including, but not limited to, regulations promulgated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, any rules of any national or other securities exchange, including, without limitation, the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ, and any regulations having the force of law;
...
So basically US law applies regardless where you are located and you agree to abide by its ruling when you purchase the product. There was in the past a great example where a Russian guy found a way to bypass a particular form of DVD copy protection. Many years later he came to a user conference in the US and the FBI arrested him on site. It is true the the Czech republic is among the countries that refuse to extradite their citizens and will instead treat you based on czech law however if you ever travel to a country with extradition treaties with the US, you could be in trouble like that Russian.
[quote who="charon2112"]
how are public libraries legal? Every person that borrows a book, or CD or DVD from a library is a lost sale for the owner of the copyright, so are those people thieves?
[/quote]
Actually there is a built-in exemption for libraries in US law:
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17 U.S. Code § 1201 - Circumvention of copyright protection systems
In order for a library or archives to qualify for the exemption under this subsection, the collections of that library or archives shall be—
A. open to the public; or
B. available not only to researchers affiliated with the library or archives or with the institution of which it is a part, but also to other persons doing research in a specialized field.
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Keep in mind that some libraries actually rent out computer game use by the hour within the premises. So as far as software is concerned the copyright owner will get their cut, and different rules apply than for books and audio cds.
Bottom line, by any moral standard, a pirate is taking a paid service for which money was expended to produce and provide. So it's one thing if someone says I know what I'm doing is wrong but I'm just an immoral person. In case you have a doubt you will find most of the groups who do the initial copyright circumvention have a line at the bottom of their nfo file saying (support the developers, if you like the release, buy it). The hypocrisy is hilarious of course but at least even the people who supply the pirates are acknowledging that you are doing something wrong.
But Steam takes a stance that it is offering a service and can cut you off whenever they want. So even though all my games are bought retail, as far as Steam TOS says, I have no rights to that software if they one day change their mind for some reason. I also have no option to opt out either.
[/quote]
I sympathize since I have a couple hundred steam bought games myself. However they will basically restrict your right to login to steam and participate in online games. They would only do this where it is commercially reasonable to do this (example if you are using cheat hacks in an online game, or harassing players continuously and in an abusive manner, using fraud to win steam store money for example the recent group which placed a bet on their opponents in counter strike and then intentionally lost the game). They would not jeopardize their good name to deprive you of your access without good cause. I have been with them for nearly 9 years without problems. Having said that I only worry that steam would one day go out of business. So your best protection against that is to keep all your purchased games installed, pull your network cable out, start steam in (offline mode) and backup your steam folder while in that state. All single player games will run very well. I have done this during internet outages without problems. There was a time when offline mode was wonky and I kept submitting feedback but they finally fixed it to be reliable. I have lost software I purchased last year after formatting my machine to a company simply stopping the service. It was an online radio/tv provider and they simply stopped the service which answers the product when you register it eventhough the product will run perfectly fine once registered, I can't use it now. I only lost a few dollars some people purchased physical hi fi systems that connected to the same service that are now expensive paperweights. I also lost a whole years subscription and backups of my music with Megaupload just before they went out of business. It's always a risk with online services unfortunately.
