You laugh because you're not thinking historically. Go back to before copyright existed and you have no acknowledged rights as a producer of media. The concept of stealing an idea is a relatively new one, yet to be accepted world wide on the scale of countries, let alone individuals.
That depends on how you define "historically" - while I doubt cavemen cared wether someone copied their cave painting, the idea of copyright appeared almost immediately after the advent of the printing press - 1662 to be exact.
Further, if you rights are manufactured by government, they only exist so long as the government says so, which means you really don't actually have them at all. Since the current implementation can in no way be construed as representative of a natural right as it has arbitrary, and constantly changing limits, you're shit out of luck on that point. They're more of a priviledge, on both sides of the equation.
Prety much the same applies to any other rights you have. The concept of rights is more a consensus opinion than natural law.
What copyright laws should they be held onto, in practical terms, business wise for everyone & anyone purchasing their products?
Answer the above right now, or i'll simply ignore whatever comes next.
Allow me to answer for him, since he obviously lacks the balls to state his opinions plainly. His desire is to see an unending stream of media made freely available to everyone, with "greedy developers" constantly cranking out new material despite not being allowed to make any money from doing so. Basically communism of intellectual property. There is no business model, as no one could conceivable make money from this.
DRM (Goo) has zero, null, nada zap benefits for the paying customer he couldn't enjoy without DRM (Goo) . Therefore DRM (Goo) is all about pirates. This is a direct contradiction to these following statements
made by Brad Wardell
So in your opinion, any copyright protection must not only provide free material to everyone, but somehow provide additional benefits? How the fuck do you expect that to work?
Since you are clearly incapable of figuring this out on your own, let me spell it out for you. Stardock games ship with zero copy protection - you can buy one copy and let all your friends pirate off it all you want. The only restrictions ever imposed is if you want access to the updates and improvements Stardock routinely puts out for its games. The ONLY purpose current DRM on their games serve is to limit these free updates to those who can prove they purchased the game.
More importantly, you fail to understand a difference between "people who never buy a game" and "people who will buy a game if there's a good reason to buy it instead of pirating". There's a huge difference, and DRM affects one of them. Take a wild guess at which one is bigger, and more relevant
Frankly, you fail at 3,4,6,8, and 12. 3 simply because you fail to understand how much of the general public depends on copyright for their livelyhood. Communising a good chunk of the economy is not a good idea.
4 because you think some sort of honor system can work in the real world. If you think people are basically honest, I'll refer you to another area where there is a lot of honor-system mentality; the current tax system. Most people are never audited, so they can pretty much get away with a lot. Of the cases that ARE audited, the vast majority are caught underpaying. Yeah, 90+% of people will cheat if you give them the perceived opportunity. If you can't wrap your brain around that, you don't belong in adult society.
6 because you feel Stardock should give up trade secrets they've spend time and money creating simply to refute one asshat on the internet. Although I give you points for consistency - you expect them to give away everything else they make as well.
8 because you think you really addressed those issues when you didn't. You still have not explained the ethical difference between antishoplifting devices and DRM.
12 because you don't or can't see the damage your position would cause if implemented. Destroyed from one end or the other is still destroyed.
I won't say you fail at 14, because we happen to agree, just not on how that should be applied. I see supporting the rights of the people actually making stuff as something worth defending, and you do not.
I am not convinced. I understand that DRM, or whatever else the industry wants to call it, can be used to help discourage casual piracy but it will never actually stop piracy. As someone who isn't convinced, but is willing to see what happens and see how well a new idea works, it is pretty surprising to see someone in the industry say they would rather just not have non-believers as customers rather than deal with their skeptism. That skeptism has been earned by the industry. And while Stardock distinquishes itself within the industry, you're still in the industry.
It's a straight business decision. The sales that might be gained by appeasing such idiots are not worth the costs of doing so. Of course, EA is hopefully learing they are on the wrong end of this calculation - they are losing more sales from DRM backlash than the DRM is protecting. As in everything, a moderate route is usually the best course of action.
Plus the satisfaction of being able to say the customer is NOT always right, then telling that customer exactly where they can cram it. I wish I had the chance to do that more often.