[ryandrake]

So, CA should get rid of those loopholes, too!

We need to culturally accept things like "zero day law patches" for loopholes and unintended consequences. Legislators, don't just pass a law, see it incentivizing something unintended, and then throw up your hands crying "Well, we tried!" Patch the law as soon as the bad behavior starts!

[markstos]

And how you would craft a law to prevent a company from forming sub-companies for specific games to isolate risk? Or make it illegal for a company to go bankrupt?

Creating sub-companies is common business practice that even small businesses use. Like if a small company wants to buy a building, they may form an LLC to hold the property to isolate that risk from the rest of their business.

[Ukv]

Bankruptcy process already involves identifying and administering the company's assets, so releasing the server software (as-is) to owners of the game could be part of that.

[jandrewrogers]

Bankruptcy sells the assets on behalf of creditors that have specific priority in law. Just releasing code to users would be a pretty serious abrogation of creditor rights.

The most likely outcome is that some PE firm would buy the software rights out of bankruptcy and figure out how to bleed money out of people that want to continue using that software.

[kbenson]

> Just releasing code to users would be a pretty serious abrogation of creditor rights.

Would it, if legally required at the point of sale of the good the source code is based on and utilizes? I doubt creditors claiming ignorance of state law works well as a defense.

[markstos]

Besides bankruptcy there is also shutting a business down, in which case are no new owners. Lavabit and Silent Circle being examples of businesses that shutdown rather than comply with laws they didn't like.

[Ukv]

Shutting down operations as Lavabit/Silent Circle did doesn't negate existing contractual obligations. Voluntarily dissolving the company would also involve completing performance of outstanding contracts.

[jandrewrogers]

How would this solve anything?

Performance under existing contracts is still required to shutdown. The mechanisms for getting around contract performance without bankruptcy essentially require handing control of the company to the contractual counter-parties.

[eclipticplane]

Sub-companies are owned by companies. Don't cap liabilities to the limited assets of a sub-company that actively violates the law.

Or cap them to a reasonable standard: 100% of revenues derived from the game.

[ryandrake]

I don't know how you'd craft that law--I'm just saying they should. How to encode the spirit of the law into the letter of the law is the job for legislators.

Whenever the topic of regulating companies comes up, there's way too much fatalistic "Oh dear, we can't possibly incentivize good corporate behavior because companies are oh-so-clever and there's just no way to handle all the edge cases they will exploit!"

We'll never get anywhere at all if we simply give up the moment someone forms a shell LLC.

[pokstad]

Loopholes are possible from excessive regulations. Regulating everything will never stop. Vote with your money and support game studios that provide the best online support. Or buy games that are standalone purchases that don’t require online services.

[gwerbin]

Voting with your money on its own rarely accomplishes much unless it is an overwhelming majority vote. There are also a huge number of things that simply cannot be managed properly, to the overall benefit of society, by demand-side market forces. There is a time and place for regulation, carefully considered and designed, with a change/revision process in place.

A big problem with lawmaking systems in the USA at all levels of government is that the change/revision process is virtually nonexistent. Laws are not adjusted as requirements change and understanding shifts. Regulation is hard in that environment, but the optimal amount of it is certainly much greater than "none at all".

It's simply not possible to maintain a functioning society without regulations on at least some things at least some of the time. Anti-regulation dogma is just propaganda by rich people who would become richer if their preferred bad behavior wasn't prohibited by regulation.

[paulryanrogers]

Excessive regulations? Or insufficient regulations and regulatory capture?

[pokstad]

You can keep plugging holes, but each time you plug you are using a narrower specification of who is at fault or who is exempt. That creates loopholes. This is known as “Whack-a-mole regulation”.

[paulryanrogers]

If the only alternative to imperfect solutions you'll accept is no solution then I disagree. I think the treatment here is still better than the disease.

[FeepingCreature]

Or vote with your vote and support lawmakers that make good laws.

[Vaslo]

There are always ways around it. Especially laws around business.