Newly incompetent MS Chernobyls itself; will be begging for cloud antidote

[Alex]

Ever since the ad minded Ozzie was selected its like people have been coming on board MS or getting promoted who just don't get it.

It seems that MS just screwed 1 million of its customers (or is stupid enough to allow the numbers to be inflated by the MPAA/RIAA or the competition) by taking at face value up to $50 of the customer's property (and effectively destroying it,) and diminishing or destroying an additional amount of the average targeted customer's property worth many times that amount and all of it MS associated. This is the same sort of: we suspect you so we should be able to damage you, judge jury and executioner behavior that the idiot RIAA engaged in. Its guilty until proven innocent mentality, and its a shoot first and ask questions later kind of behavior.

Can anyone see them being able to hide behind their TOS that no one reads?
Its them taking head shots at their own customers and lining up behind a bunch of fools who think the market exists to take advantage of people. Its them going after poor kids who wouldn't get access because the hardware and software had been priced out of reach by the self serving hypocritical companies that set up things like the console toll road (ala Sony.)

I am hoping some court injuncts Xbox Live completely. I think I am done with my own subscription as well. I am sorry but I don't see how MS gets to confiscate a million people's property many of them US citizens just because they feel like it or just because they feel threatened. I could also care less if they were facing suit by other companies, screw over your customers and you need to go out of business. Always side with your customers against all other comers. Its as if MS hired a bunch of idiots from AOL.

With perfect timing the increasingly stupid new MS said: we're not afraid of Onlive or the cloud its too far off to be concerned with. What sort of rhetoric is that? Gates needs to come back out of retirement. I guess they should have been terrified of OnLive and the cloud because now they are going to have a huge back lash that only one technology can solve. Did they publicly shoot themselves in the foot and make an example of themselves so they could go whole hog on the cloud behind the scenes? There must be something redeeming here? Wouldn't some court be tempted to tell them that they had a limited time to find a non DRM based service solution for all of Live or be shut with refunds all around? Aren't those million people related to brothers and sisters and parents and aunts and uncles. Don't they talk to their friends and influence purchase decisions and won't they do so for years to come and with a passion. Are any of them going to want to have anything to do with DRM crap that can be shut out? At least with a pure cloud service there is no such excuses and there's no owning of crap that can be denied you for such reasons.

Allowing companies to financially punish people is just unacceptable, its kind of like allowing credit card companies to find self serving excuses to up rates or banks to find reasons to repossess people's houses or double their mortgages. I suspect MS will find people aren't in the mood to play. Worst of all people may ignorantly be wondering why those who created the problem in the first place, (elitist, DRM paranoia mongering, toll road architecting, price inflating, dumping, own horn blowing) Sony and Nintendo don't ban hammer or rrod people. As late as a couple of months ago some Sony execs was caught bragging about PS3 being a perfect long distance "toll booth" scam in the living room-something proper regulation would never allow. Whatever points MS got for trying to be good with repairing the fishy rrod situation it will lose instantly over this. Have the MS execs become a bunch of ice heads? I wonder if people will leave MS in shame over this.

[KidRobot]

Microsoft banned those consoles because what those people were doing was against the law. That's like saying you shouldn't arrest someone for stealing gas for their car. People make those games, then people who dont want to pay for them download them for free. How would you feel if you spent 2-3 years making something, your job depending on its success and then some kids download it for free.

Also all Microsoft did was ban the Xbox not the Xbox Live account. So your subscription is still intact, you keep your gamerscore and everything else. Your console is banned and therefore you need to buy a non-modded xbox to continue to play online.

[Alex]

Yes you make a good point but it wasn't immediatly clear what they had done and for many the whole utility of having the console comes from the live aspect. So yes it makes sense to block the insturment of offense but here is a firm doing something punitive against its own customers because of another firms gripe. Its like the comdex stupidity of throwing people out of suits they had paid for. That's what we have courts for. It was too much like the sily token and broadcast flag stuff as well where silly disk players could just for every refuse to play some item at proper resolution or be degraded if it pleased the manufacturer.

I don't believe in all the market will bear pass the cost on, that's collusion and the sign of a sick market. I don't believe manufacturers own the market, they don't even share the market its owned by the public. If you developed a piece of code you are probably being ripped off by a parasite publisher that also rips of the public well before you are being ripped off by some kid who can't afford something because the market's sick due to collusion but will some day afford it if he is allowed to develop the interest. This problem impacted a million people. That's way too many for MS to be able to pull stupid stunts in the media with and have disrespectful attitude toward the public and its own customers- better it screw its stockholders first. That corporate charter is granted for the benefit of the public well before the benefit of the stockholders and investors. That they get the corporate charter is enough risk shielding for them.

Finally people are honest and most if they will cheat at all only do so with a guilty conscience and in reaction to a sense of being wronged. Look at the book Freakonomics they show a %3 theft rate when something is offered without strings and at the best price. 97% is about all we get out of systems in the real world unless we want to gold plate them to get the %3. There are places where people leave their front doors unlocked all the time. It because in those areas people own their own stuff outright land and all and they aren't perverted by the creation of artifical scarcity.

These firms (Sony and the DRM paranoia mongers are chief among them) that try to limit access and limit the flow of information are the first to scream theft when you try to resist their efforts to turn your life into scarcity for illgotten gain. MS needs to be told: you're not going to pass this cost on, you will replace artifical scarcity with a cloud model by such and such a date or get shut.