[wtetzner]

IP is different that physical property. If someone takes something physical from anther person, the original owner loses that object. But if someone "takes" (copies) source code from someone, the original owner still has it. Now two people have it instead of one.

By the way, I'm not making any arguments about morality. I'm just pointing out that IP is different from physical property in important ways.

[braveo]

It's an unimportant distinction for the purposes of this discussion.

Under the law, damages have occurred, especially if someone then takes that source code and makes it public.

So whether you have 2 copies or 1 copy or umpteen copies, if you've economically affected someone, you will lose that fight in court.

But this is not relevant to this discussion and I think we should keep on topic.

The point is this:

Dylan16807 is just trying to rationalize something that he wants, which is for the source code to be public.

It doesn't matter how IP differs from owning a house. It doesn't matter if it can be copied (and thank you for having the arrogance to explain that on board full of developers, btw...).

None of this matters. What matters is that Blizzard paid for the creation of the code, and they're afforded protections under the law.

[Dylan16807]

> So the splitting of the hairs you're attempting is to point out that IP typically expires at some point, and therefore we should all consider anything "old" as effectively having expired IP, regardless of whether that's true or not.

It's very simple. I'm saying we should look at the upsides and downsides of each type of IP. This (20+ year old source code) is a type of IP that has no upside. Therefore while it's against the law, there's no purpose in it being against the law, and it's not immoral. Easy peasy.

> What matters is that Blizzard paid for the creation of the code, and they're afforded protections under the law.

You don't think it's possible for the IP rights given by law to have a mismatch with the IP rights that are most moral? Because this conversation thread was about what is good or bad, aka what the law should be, not what the law currently is. Of course it's against the law as it is right now. That's not the only thing to discuss.

[wtetzner]

> So whether you have 2 copies or 1 copy or umpteen copies, if you've economically affected someone, you will lose that fight in court.

First, I never argued that it was or wasn't against the law.

Second, it's not clear that releasing the source would economically affect Blizzard. It's not like someone could start releasing competing StarCraft games. They still don't own the brand etc.

> (and thank you for having the arrogance to explain that on board full of developers, btw...).

I mentioned it because of your argument about a house being 20+ years old.

[braveo]

> Second, it's not clear that releasing the source would economically affect Blizzard

Even if you ignore the fact that Blizzard owns the rights to the code. Which you shouldn't, but some people here seem to think that's alright.

EVEN IF you ignore that, SC is still televised in South Korea. Releasing that code could affect the integrity of the competitive scene for SC.

But you won't accept that because this isn't really about what's fair, it's about what you want.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_StarCraft_competi...

> Over US$4,000,000 in prize money has been awarded in total, the vast majority of which comes from tournaments in South Korea.[3] For several years after the release of StarCraft II, competitive StarCraft: Brood War was no longer televised. However, in early 2015, the game returned to Ongamenet's televised lineup.

[tripzilch]

> Releasing that code could affect the integrity of the competitive scene for SC.

well THAT is actually an interesting argument, unlike rehashing the old argument of whether it makes sense to ignore the enormous fundamental differences between IP and physical property, and getting all worked up when people don't want to play along and pretend to weaken the definition of theft.

how will it affect the integrity of the competitive scene? and will it do so in a bad way, or maybe just change things up a bit?

I actually think that's a way more compelling moral argument than worrying about Blizzard's IP rights.

[wtetzner]

> But you won't accept that because this isn't really about what's fair, it's about what you want.

Actually, no, it's not. I'm not even arguing that the source code shouldn't have been returned to Blizzard. I'm only pointing out that most of the arguments (that I've seen here, anyway) against it haven't been good ones.

> EVEN IF you ignore that, SC is still televised in South Korea. Releasing that code could affect the integrity of the competitive scene for SC.

This actually strikes me as one of the more defensible arguments I've seen here.