According to the SC2 hit guide that came with the 3DO version, the planet is likely to be Beta Scorpii 5.

When you think about it, this puts the Melnorme on a Druuge-like level -- I mean, the probes are actually killing people, the Melnorme know how to stop them, but don't because it wouldn't be profitable.

Having a bad day isn't an excuse for that degree of assholeary.

Aside from the technical issues, like the GBA's different resolution and visibility (I think melee would be near impossible to play on the GBA -- those projectiles are damn small), how would you get the money together to buy a license from Nintendo?

I think if TFB thought they could make money from this they would have made a GBA version themselves instead of releasing the open source version.

[So, is it kind of a bizarre sensation to see yourself in a game?]

I was just reading an interview with Kevin Weisman (some guy who's on Alias) in Game Informer (it's not mine!  my brother has a subscription):

So, is it kind of a bizarre sensation to see yourself in a game?

It's a little weird. That, and we have action figures coming out.  It's become such of [sic] a phenomenon in terms of the peripheral elements. It's cool. All my friends that are gamers...a good friend of mine, Jack Black, is an actor, and we play games together a lot. We used to play Star Control, back in the day. We used to have Star Control battles late into the night. He was really excited when I told him that there was going to be a video game that I was in. It's every little kid's dream. So, it's interesting that my acting career has taken me to have a video game that I'm in.

yep, you can change your name and the name of your ship, it's in the menus somewhere.

You've can battle with your flagship or one of your escort ships -- at the start of the game you've got an earthling cruiser; you can build more and different types of ships as the game progresses.  Practice in super melee to get the hang of fighting.

The first thing you've gotta do is go to the starbase orbitting earth and talk to the captain.  Hyperspace'll eat you alive.

Go to the starbase orbitting earth and talk to the captain there.  The start of SC2 is kind of confusing, but part of the fun is finding out exactly what you're supposed to be doing yourself.  The game's trying to put you into that scenerio.

I'm sure we're all already huge fans of Paul Reiche III

that's why I said "little or no value".  Chances are if a movie's out of print not many people are interested in buying it -- not enough to make it cost effective.  Thus the movie's out of print and no one can see.  The copyright holder will hold on to it because it still has value, even if it's only very very little value.

There has to be a balance between the copyright holder's right to benefit from sales of his work and the public's right to not have it fall into oblivion.  Copyright is an artificial right intended to give people an incentive to share their work with the public.  It defeats the purpose to allow copyright holders (which often aren't the people who created the work itself) to let the work fall into oblivion on the outside chance that their copyright might be useful for something important, somewhere in the galaxy, at some point in the future.

Yeah, all about perspective

Dunno, in the first analogy, you're dealing with people physically stealing your property that still has value, even though you're not presently using it

in the second one, I think the reason that seems unsavory is because you're dealing with someone else's intellectual property which also still obviously has value to others.

I think the second analogy is a good one but it'd fit this situation better if

1) the movies were out of print, there was little or no chance they would ever be in print again, and they had otherwise had little value to the owner of the copyright
2) the people were copying my movies without hassling you at all (coming into my house, hooking up their VCRs, etc.)

with those two caveats I wouldn't have a problem with people copying my movies.

Yes I can see your point and I agree with you, illegally copying software robs artists of their royalities (but I don't think it's the moral equivilent of stealing).  But in this particular case, Accolade no longer sells the game, and I can't imagine a future in which Accolade will ever sell the game again.  In this situation, no royalities are lost if the software is illegally copied.

The public benefits substantially if copyrighted works that fall into this state are released into the public domain, Accolade loses hardly anything.  Copyright was originally intended to be for a limited amount of time but thanks to a cartoon rodent that's no longer the case and will never be the case again.

I know I'm never going to convince any of you but at least I hope you can at least see my side of this.

Also, if there hadn't been a porting effort, and the copyrighted DOS version had remained in Accolade's hands, Star Control 2 would have been lost forever..

At the very least illegal software copying is a different form of stealing because in traditional stealing when you take someone else's property they no longer have it. .stealing is wrong not because you benefitted but because you harmed someone else in order to benefit.  But anyway thanks for the patronizing response.

I don't think any disagrees with you that downloading an illegitimate copy of SC2 is illegal.  In my opinion, the issue here isn't legality, it's whether it's morally wrong to violate Accolade's copyright by illegally copying SC2.  I don't think you really addressed that in your post

Who gets harmed?  Accolade is never going to make any more money off of SC2 -- even if they were planning to, obviously they couldn't now that it's available for free here.  Yes they've got the legal right to take it off the market and sit on the copyright.  But is it morally wrong to violate Accolade's copyright, which they probably don't even really care about anymore?  All I see in your post is that "if it's illegal, it's wrong"

Okay, time for a little rant.  Sorry everyone

I tend to think of copyright as a necessary evil -- I can buy the argument that intellectual property is necessary for people to make money off of their work.  But the general public is better off if the work is eventually not covered under copyright.  Copyright is intended to encourge people share their work with the public -- but it's intended for a limited time (IIRC, originally it was seven years with an optional seven year extension).  Now it's forever through Congress's generous extension plan...

So anyway, back to the original point .... should Accolade have the right to a copyright after it's no longer useful to them?  I'm not talking about the trademark Star Control, that's obviously could potentionally be still useful and is a different issue -- but the original, IBM-PC DOS game.  Do you think that old games really need eternal copyright protection?  I'm interested in what you think, I've heard "illegal = wrong" lots of times, I just want to know why you think it's wrong.

ErekLich- your argument seems to be based on the assertion that if something is illegal then it is automatically wrong.  But is that always or has that always been the case?   I can think of plenty of things that were legal in the past that were obviously wrong, and things that were illegal in the past (or the present) that are obviously perfectly okay.  I don't think you should rely on the law to make ethical choices -- the law is just an indication of the will of the majority.  The will of the majority isn't always right (in fact, is often wrong).

Not that I agree or disagree with you on illegal software copying, I just think your argument is flawed