this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
1367 points (95.7% liked)
memes
10327 readers
1804 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to [email protected]
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.
Sister communities
- [email protected] : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- [email protected] : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- [email protected] : Linux themed memes
- [email protected] : for those who love comic stories.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I was locked out of my EA account for half a week due to a bug on their end. I downloaded a game I own(lease?) so I could play over the weekend.
Is this pirating?
The digital area is something I haven't looked much into so I can't really comment on that but I know regarding physical media the relevant US laws only really make exceptions for things you've done yourself. Just because you own a physical copy of Pokemon Yellow doesn't mean you're allowed to download a copy of it from off the Internet. You're allowed to make and use a backup from a physical cart you own. This is why emulators can't (legally) include ROMs, ISOs, BIOS files, encryption keys, etc. as those are the copyrighted materials that you'll need to make a copy of yourself to legally use emulators.
To my knowledge (not a lawyer and this is not legal advice) what you did is indeed piracy because you downloaded it. If you had cracked it yourself you probably would have broken some licenses and whatnot that you had agreed to with EA, but I don't believe that would have been piracy.
Either way EA is very much unlikely to do much anything about it as for the most part the industry only cares about the sources of pirated materials. They generally only ever go after people distributing pirated materials so they'll (legally) attack torrent sites, ROM sites, and other such distributers. The most you're likely to ever get personally is a strongly worded letter (possibly a C&D) to your ISP from some AAA video game company if they notice you seeding a torrent for their game as then you're being a distributer of pirated materials.
Outside of that I've never heard of them coming after anyone for having the entire collection of GBA titles on their thumb drive or emulating Halo having never owned an Xbox or playing the latest Sim City without always online functionality. I'm not saying it can't or won't happen, but you'd make headlines if it did.
Yeah. I'm sure it's not entirely legal. I don't think anyone would want to bring a lawsuit because it could set a precedent.
I think you would technically be since what you agreed to by accepting the EULA is that you would have the game on your EA account and would rely on their services to play it, you don't legally have the right to play the game if it's fine into your possession another way.
And they fit sure have provisions about downtime and access issues in the EULA.