If you bring in a completely different point, which does not generalize to other situations (except if you think that companies should generally have total control over individuals, since they are always more honnest than them), and my argument does not address it, then it is not a problem with my argument.

I guess you would also agree to ban price increase for plane reservations at the last minute?

Companies do not disagree with selling the maximum each buyer will bear (instead of the minimum that N persons will bear, if you want to fill a N seat concert hall, which is the current case assuming identical seats). They just disagree with others making that money. This is all a matter of control, as is everything about DRM (that is to say, contracts). We had a market where a huge quantity of goods were sold with standardised contracts: buying an apple, a car or a concert ticket meant roughly the same (implicit, law defined) contract for the buyer. Standardisation meant it was easy to negotiate good deal on that single contract. Now this is being eroded more and more.

You still don't have the right to do it. Meaning, you can't start a buisness centered around it, you can't advertise it on their forums, admins could ban you for mentioning this in-game, etc, etc.

Basically, what you're saying is that it's not a bad thing to loose a right if you can cheat your way around it. I disagree.

Well, a completely wrong post which is actually well written does deserve an answer. Here goes:

>>What happens if Steam goes offline?
>You get to play your games. Seriously, the servers were offline yesterday, and I was quite busily shooting people in the face.

Then my guess is steam was not offline. If you can't ping steam servers, you certainly can't log in, and thus play. And offline mode you say? You have to go online to activate it. I'm not kidding. Basically, if you can plan that you will be offline, that's okay; but if your connection dies for a day (or you end up stuck on the train), you can't play.

>>How is asking permission to play with your legally purchased toys good DRM?
>Fuck, I don't even know what this means. Start Steam-->Start Steam game != 'asking permission'.

It is the same thing as asking permission because they can refuse. For example (as already stated) if the internet is down, or if your country or account suddenly ends up on their naughty list for whatever reason in 5 year.

>How is we can take your games back at any time for no reason good DRM?
One's man 'no good reason' is another man's good reason. Provide some cases so we can judge on the merits, not your wild rantings.

Ok, he should have said "at any time for any reason". "Any reason" includes a lot of bad ones. Wether they already did or not is an other story (I'm pretty sure they did), but you would have to trust them a lot about the future.

>What happens if there's simply a screw up and you loose access?
Like, what, forgetting your logon details? That would just make YOU stupid.
Screw ups happen. It's a risk you should prepare for, by not accepting useless locks (so you can't loose the keys).

>You have no legal recourse due to the contract you signed.
Spouted like someone who's never had to sit through contract law classes. Leave the hard work up to the adults, mmkay?

Only the actual points need a rebuttal.

>You have no first sale rights without Steams approval.
Whoa! Something approaching a useful point. Yes, that's technically correct, but I could theoretically 'give' or 'sell' my Steam account to someone else, without any hassle from Steam, so I'm not sure how histrionic we need to be.

Good luck with that once you have 20+ games on the same account, which also has friends, counter strike clan, etc. Also the contract may forbid you to have more than one account (if it doesn't, it certainly might in the future).

>Steam is the worst possible DRM.
Spoken like somebody who does fuck all gaming these days. Ever hear of Securom? You know, the DRM that keeps getting front page articles here on Slashdot? Yeah, I think that'd win a poll of 'Worst DRM' by a landslide.

I agree on this one: steam is not the worst. It might be the one with the worst effect though, because of its widespread adoption (and the direct binding of the DRM with the game store).

The story looks fake (terrible website linked), but its not. Dailymotion, a french company, recently (oct 2009) received a largish investment from the french Strategic Investment Fund (FSI). Here is the original announcement: http://www.dailymotion.com/press/CP_Dailymotion_FSI_22-10-2009.pdf .
  Dailymotion is accused by many of underhanded political censorship, but I couldn't find any really reputable website to support that; the best I found is
  http://www.lepost.fr/article/2008/02/17/1100263_mais-pourquoi-dailymotion-a-encore-censure-une-video-politiquement-embarrassante.html
which, by the way, is dated from 2008.
Finally, I don't think there is any recent event to make a real "news" (not that it stopped slashdot before, and I dont think it's a bad thing); except maybe the appointing of Martin Rogard (close to the government, or so the linked website claims); would need to be checked.

I'll keep an eye out for this; thanks to the submitter for pointing it. French sites to check out for this kind of things are pcinpact and numerama.

Tu peux me répondre en français, au fait.

Sorry, but you're completly missing the point.

The supermarket is a semi-private place: you show your face knowing that only a fraction of people (those that live in the same town) are present there; and if do something embarassing, an employer 10 years from now won't be able to know.

Facebook is a worldwide public place. You have to be cautious because everything you say there is on the record, for everyone to see.

So the decision to be anonymous on facebook has an entirely different meaning than the supermarket. It is far from paranoia, even more so when you think of all the new ways this information could be used ,in the future.
And of course, the thing that really matters here is politic: by setting up an anonymous account on facebook, you can lead a political life, convincing people to go to protests, or to vote or donate for a cause. It is a pretty new thing to be able to do so anonymously, and there is nothing cowardly about it when you see how scientology (for example) illegally harasses opponents.

Except any idiot with a camera can then put a photo of you on *his* facebook profile. So you can either live alone, or try to forbid all your friends from using ther cameras when you're around. Good luck and screw you, respectively.

Now of course this has nothing to do with this news piece, in which facebook claimed copyright on your photos, even after canceling your account.
We all know that what has been on the web can never be taken back; and people's reaction seem to be mostly an awekening to that. But still, people who signed on facebook had an expectation that facebook would be nice on that point, and they rightfully reacted to this breach of trust.

The really interesting thing here is that enough users had a reaction on a privacy issue (which is rare), and that the company acted on that reaction (rarer); which is a nice precedent. Of course in a perfect world, all such eulas should have as a standard clause that the website will not attack your privacy if it can avoid it.