Did Ubisoft just deactivate all german copies of SH5?

[tater]

Originally Posted by pythos

Personal freedoms are far more than even the States.

This I doubt. Heck, I know it's wrong. The USA is the only country that has separation of church and state, for example as I recall.

Personal freedoms "given to you" by the state are not freedoms at all. Freedom is having the state FORBIDDEN from taking them away from you, ever, since anything granted you my the goodness of the state can equally be taken away. A very, very different thing, indeed.

[Gunney]

Even the Vatican....jk..

[Nordmann]

Originally Posted by tater

Personal freedoms "given to you" by the state are not freedoms at all. Freedom is having the state FORBIDDEN from taking them away from you, ever, since anything granted you my the goodness of the state can equally be taken away. A very, very different thing, indeed.

This. Something which Europe would do well to remember.

[Exakt]

Originally Posted by tater

This I doubt. Heck, I know it's wrong. The USA is the only country that has separation of church and state, for example as I recall.

Personal freedoms "given to you" by the state are not freedoms at all. Freedom is having the state FORBIDDEN from taking them away from you, ever, since anything granted you my the goodness of the state can equally be taken away. A very, very different thing, indeed.

Rights, Freedoms, Liberties are God-given, not given by State or anybody else. They are unalienable under the constitution. But, ever since the Patriot Act, most of those rights are actually infringed, removed or totally disregarded. And this is happening all throughout the world (Canada, UK, France, etc). Now governments believe that we should give up our rights for security. When this happens, try getting your rights back... not an easy job.

So, if the German collector's edition is now being disabled if you haven't returned your manual, now Ubisoft is going against the constitution (mostly their whole DRM is).

Let me explain:

(1) The home is inviolable.

Having a program that monitores my game is a violation of that.

(2) Searches may be authorized only by a judge or, when time is of the essence, by other authorities designated by the laws, and may be carried out only in the manner therein prescribed.

Said DRM is searching for files on my computer without a proper warrant.

(3) If particular facts justify the suspicion that any person has committed an especially serious crime specifically defined by a law, technical means of acoustical surveillance of any home in which the suspect is supposedly staying may be employed pursuant to judicial order for the purpose of prosecuting the offense, provided that alternative methods of investigating the matter would be disproportionately difficult or unproductive. The authorization shall be for a limited time. The order shall be issued by a panel composed of three judges. When time is of the essence, it may also be issued by a single judge.

Basically, the DRM is a form of Wire-tapping, henceforth illegal without a proper authorization.

Article 10 [Privacy of correspondence, posts and telecommunications]

(1) The privacy of correspondence, posts and telecommunications shall be inviolable.

The internet is a telecommunications means and shall be inviolable under this article.

(2) Restrictions may be ordered only pursuant to a law. If the restriction serves to protect the free democratic basic order or the existence or security of the Federation or of a Land, the law may provide that the person affected shall not be informed of the restriction and that recourse to the courts shall be replaced by a review of the case by agencies and auxiliary agencies appointed by the legislature.

Where do it says that a video game is a threat to the Free Democratic basic order, or security of the Federation or of a Land???


BTW, these Articles were taken from Basic Law of The Federal Republic of Germany. In the version promulgated on 23 May 1949 (first issue of the Federal Law Gazette, dated 23 May 1949), as amended up to and including 20 December 1993.



So, i have just showed you how Ubi's DRM is unconstitutional under the German one, now imagine how it is also illegal in other countries.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by tater

This I doubt. Heck, I know it's wrong. The USA is the only country that has separation of church and state, for example as I recall.

Then you need to know it better. Most nations in the West are secular and have the separation of church and state, and germqany does have that, too. And different to the United States we do not have a strong Christian fundamentalist civil lobby trying to bring that secularism down. First amendement to the US constitution should prevent that in the US, too, but it is already violated in many states.

Personal freedoms "given to you" by the state are not freedoms at all. Freedom is having the state FORBIDDEN from taking them away from you, ever, since anything granted you my the goodness of the state can equally be taken away. A very, very different thing, indeed.

http://www.iuscomp.org/gla/statutes/GG.htm

[daft]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Then you need to know it better. Most nations in the West are secular and have the separation of church and state, and germqany does have that, too. And different to the United States we do not have a strong Christian fundamentalist lobby trying to bring that down.

Nor do you have a state leader that asks God to bless your country during official addresses.

[Skybird]

This text is ten years old, but shows some of the complexity of the matter:

http://www.icnl.org/knowledge/ijnl/vol3iss2/art_1.htm

I agree that the ideals of a constitution and the actual practice often are not completely the same. That'S why there are law codes additionally to the constitution. A constitution is menat as a road map for guiding porinciples, it shows the direction at which the voyage should go, the spirit in which things should be done. The detailed implementation of the ideals to that reality is (and must) be done in specified law regulations. This process of forming such laws can become object of corruption. And/or the result of the process leaves to be desired. It'S a non-perfect world we live in. It can be tried to make it better, though.

What decides on the status of a given nation/culture/society is the mean outcome. when you have dozens and hundreds of millions of people in such a saocial group formation, you cannot seriously expect that no errors ever will happen, and that the laws will cover all and every nuance of a situation somebody suddenly finds himself in. what is deciding it is the general outcome, the mean score of justice and freedom being acchieved. And to push that value, that quality score as high as possible,l you maybe even must accept the violation of basic freedoms under special circumstances, for example in order to protect the system that allows these freedoms and rights being expressed and practised. Becasue even in this situation - it is about the mean, the avergae score of justice and freedom that in the end gets acchieved.

And this - there cannot be unlimited freedom. A freedom that has no boundaries, necessarily sooner or later touches upon the freedoms of somebody else. And then both freedoms start to crankle at each other, and the stronger one usually wins - and then defines what freedom is - it's his freedom. A society that tries to implement an idea of unlimited freedom, destroys itself. You can see that very much in the inflationary abuse of the term "tolerance" in europe, where nowaday even that is tolerated that seeks to destroy this tolerant society. A culture is defined not only by what it is and describes itself as, but also by what it is not and does not want to be.

Which means that freedom without the strength (and the will) to defend it, does not mean much and will not last long. The unwillingness to defend oneself in order to save a society where a huge ammount of freedom and tolerance can be found (even if it is not perfect), is decadence. and this european obsession with tolerance: keep in mind that tolerance is something that cannot be practiced by the weak, for the weak are lacking options and strength and thus suffer what they must, and submit to whom is stronger - and being that submissive has othing to do with tolerance. Tolerance means that the strong one passes on his option to use his strength to crush the weaker. That way, freedom can be created - again, by the strong ones, not by the weak ones.