Take-Two Interactive Has Declared Modding of Its Games Illegal

[Kriven]

"The supermarket's lying if they say that grabbing a bag of chips and opening it without paying for it first is illegal. Unless they put a sensor in every bag of chips that activate a siren, opening it is legal."

That's not how things work. I picked a somewhat innacurate and even exaggerated example to show you how it works, if you buy a game, it means you abide to how the game should be used - usually it's in the EULA before you install or in the manual that comes with the software. But alas, no one bothers to read that to the end, this is why people feel so entitled on editing games and thinking they own shit when the actual law and contract actively tells you not to do it

The Supreme Court has gone on record numerous times to let the American public know that, at least in this country, the EULA and the ToS are not legally-binding documents. The companies have the right to deny you further service for breaching them, sure, but that doesn't come close to "illegal." They can't even sue you for "breech of contract" in these instances.

Also: your example isn't exaggerated--it's entirely different. We have specific software laws which govern how these things go. One of those specific laws is that you are free to modify software that isn't DRM protected. Hell, you are free to make duplicates of software you purchased--including DRM-protected software as long as that DRM is not broken. That includes things which you merely own a "license" to, because you merely own a "license" when it comes to purchasing software on optical media. Yet, the record has shown, more than once, we are allowed to duplicate our optical discs for the purposes of backup. We are not allowed to crack its protection software. That is the law. That is how it works.

Your "example" only works for arguing against piracy, against torrents... hey, it probably even could be used to demonstrate the problems with a digital archive of various copyrighted art assets. But it doesn't even come close to touching modification. And hey, you're trying to demonstrate what's wrong with me claiming the EULAs are lying but... you don't actually do that. Because they are.

You know how most games and videos have a little warning on the back of the case? "Not for public viewing. Not for renting. Etc." That thing is also lying. Again, proven by a number of lawsuits in the 80s and 90s (see: the point in time when Nintendo attempted to take down the entire rental industry in North America... and lost). Despite the courts ruling in favor of commercial rentals, despite the First-Sale Doctrine excluding only content for "Home Computers" (legally defined as open platforms, as opposed to a console, which is a closed platform) and audio (music specifically, but all audio)--despite all of that, the movie industry and the video game industry still includes the "Renting is Illegal" jargon on the back. They are lying. The courts have told us that they are lying.

I spend all day deciphering this kind of nonsense, I have talked with numerous IP lawyers. Not only does my business depend on this knowledge in the sense that I own a rental store, but I also had to know what kind of legally binding ToS I could write. It's probably a little weird for you guys to admit, but maybe I know a little bit about what I'm talking about.