I’ll never eat at KFC again though.

But basically, I agree with you 100%. I was somewhat on the fence about it before, but after thinking about it a lot lately I’ve come to something of a personal decision – from here on out, I refuse to support any digital distribution service that locks my data into proprietary systems of any kind. That goes for hardware systems (consoles) as well as software ones (Steam). I was somewhat open to Steam previously, but I realize now that it’s basically just the same problem in a different suit.

I’m not going to go out and start protesting or anything, but to me it’s just a personal choice. I have absolutely no faith in this idea that these companies are just making “mistakes” here and there, but basically are just trying to “get it right” and, I don’t know, be our best buds or whatever – the sheer mountain of evidence in the form of headlines such as this EA thing has convinced me that these guys are pretty much willfully and intentionally trying to use these systems as leveraging mechanisms to strongarm people into doing whatever the hell they want, regardless of whether it may happen to be invasive, or just plain wrong.

I don’t think they’re evil, and I’m sure they’re just doing what’s in their own best interests in terms of profitability. But just because something might be in their best interests doesn’t negate the possibility of it being completely against ours. I think that’s the case here, and that’s why I just refuse to go along with it any longer.

I have similar feelings about “the cloud” which I think will become a much more prominent issue down the line, but for now I think I’ll end it here. Suffice it to say that I’ve reached the point where sacrificing my freedom and privacy in exchange for a little convenience is no longer a deal I’m willing to make. Those things are just too damn valuable to me now.

When all you purchase is the right to use a file, I don’t want to say you deserve what you get, but let’s look at the track records of the people trying to sell us these files. They’re the same people who’ve been trying to sell us the same content over and over for the last 40 years, with varying degrees of success. They’re trying to get back to the days when vinyl records wore out, which allowed things like Dark Side of the Moon staying on the charts for 15 YEARS. They sold 45 million copies, but I guarantee it wasn’t to 45 million different people.

Unfortunately, Congress and the courts really don’t understand the issues here. They see all these numbers that content producers pull out of the air, but since by and large they don’t consume media themselves, they don’t see the other side of it. So they pass laws that treat ripping a DVD to your laptop or portable video device as equivalent to driving drunk and killing someone. They protect First Sale, because most of them probably remember buying textbooks and reselling them at the end of the semester. They can relate to that.

If the only way to retain some rights of ownership is to not buy digital media at all, well, I’m in. Rob, is there room on your porch for another crotchety old man in a rocking chair?

Nintendo’s No-Transfer Policy Could Burn Wii’s Biggest Fans
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/05/black-wii-upgrade

If you deal directly with Nintendo, there (sometimes, depending on who you ask) is hope. Some people online have reported that, if your Wii breaks or if you upgrade, you can send your Wii to Nintendo and have them move your old games over to your new system. From what I have read this process takes 2+ weeks. More recently, people are reporting that Nintendo has a way to reassign your VC games to a new Wii. According to one fellow, when he tried this he was asked for his “old console serial number, the new console serial number, info about my account and a copy of the receipt receipt of the new console.” Unfortunately for this particular fellow, he did not know the policy and had already thrown away his old, broken Wii without retaining the serial number.

It’s hard to know the full truth because I’m only going by random forum posts discovered in Google, but there are a lot more “it didn’t work” posts than there are “it worked great” posts.

Keep in mind that all of this depends on Nintendo providing this service. You, at your home, can do none of this. You can download VC games and you can back them up to an SD card, but you cannot transfer them to another Wii without Nintendo’s assistance. When Nintendo stops offering this service, it’s all over*.

(I mean, legally, of course. Pirates figured out how to copy VC games a long time ago.)