[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.