Intellectual property is a public good, and one that the government tries to force into a private good. One cannot own an idea. If you think about it for a while, you might realize that. Property can be private or public. It does not have to have a specific owner. Everyone owns public property. Someone can be granted…

> ReactOS seems to be written to be “Windows-isque”. To provide all the base functionality of Windows, without actually being based on Microsofts exact code.

Then you have no argument. The private WoW servers do not use Blizzard’s code. They reverse engineered the server technology. http://vanilla-wow.wikia.com/wiki/Pri…

Before moving forward, let me ask you this. Can Microsoft sue ReactOS? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS

Numbers have been dropping steadily, and over 200,000 people have signed the petition to bring back Vanilla WoW already.

I prefer to discussion what is and is not constitutional. I know that’s a little beyond the usual tone of discussion in these kind of forums, but legislative acts, which are unconstitutional, are not valid in the first place.

I’m well aware that private servers have existed for years. That doesn’t mean they started with publicly available code that they downloaded. Where did they get the server software in the first place?

Oh. They can. Blizzard just pretends that it cannot. That’s one of their arguments for not starting a Vanilla server: they lost the source code. >.>

Ownership of intellectual property is absurd. Intellectual property is a public good. It cannot be taken away, only given. A person or group can be a steward of intellectual property, but not an owner. In addition, using law to restrict the exchange of information, including code, is a violation of the first amendment.

IP laws are required to restrict the flow of information. It is not a right. It is a privilege. And indeed, if the person involved agreed to the EULA, TOS, etc, in the first place, they could be fined, but that’s it.

> While Nostalrius may not have broken into Blizzard and rifled through their files for some mythical…

Which?

The first amendment protects the free exchange of ideas. This isn’t complete, but I figured I’d just press “post” because it’s easier to link to this than to explain the entire argument each time, especially since you are not even close to the only one who asked.

Whether they owe people or not doesn’t mean that they are so easily forgiven for being greedy and obnoxious pricks, who don’t give a damn about their customers and are so arrogant that they are willing to say that their customers only THINK that they want something.

And yes; they are complacent. One of the reasons why…

Stolen? No. Blizzard demands that they no longer have the original source code, for the older versions, and are incapable of re-implementing them. Nostalrius did not seal anything. The source code did not exist any more. Instead, Nostalrius reverse engineered the system, with their own technology.

Plenty of companies release earlier versions of their product, to use for free. So that’s bull. In addition, Blizzard has long rejected the idea of providing these services to their customers, going so far as demanding that their customers don’t know what they want.

I think it’s time for these greedy companies, who…

It’s great to see Kotaku picking this up. I was never really into WoW. I got pulled in by a friend, and started an account on this server. I really enjoyed it, and was about to get an account from Blizzard, to try the current version of the server.

When I saw what Blizzard did, simply out of greed, I immediately…

Before people continue to claim that his idea is incredibly stupid, that’s exactly what chemotherapy is: kill the cancer with poison, before the poison kills you.

“This has to be the most unusual Kit Kat flavor yet.”

I wouldn’t take the annuity. I don’t trust the state governments to handle it properly, nor do I trust the USD to be anywhere near as strong as it is now (average rate of inflation is around 4 - 5% per year). Likewise I do not trust that the tax rate won’t go through the roof.

Well, lowest cost isn’t always the way to go, even when catering to low income groups. There’s what you get for the price as well as other things. I’ll have to go back and see if I can find a full demographics analysis for McDonalds et. al.

Good point. A lot of fast food restaurants, in order to compete in other nations, re-marketed themselves early on, in order to cater to the teen crowd, etc. I remember thinking that their recent attempts to modernize in the US looked a heck of a lot like the fast food locals in Japan, etc.