October 3, 2003

Stealing Anyone’s IP is Low

Here. Earlier this week, some low-life stole the source code for the soon to be released Half-Life 2 and then posted it. Now, I'm a huge Half-Life fan (I've played all the installments of Half-Life twice) and so I've been anxiously looking forward to HF2. But even if I hated HF, I'd still feel the same. If folks steal and redistribute IP of any kind, whether it's words, code, art, music, videos, etc, nobody will be able to afford to produce it anymore! And it's not like music or video, where the RIAA and theaters have done their level best to shear us at ever opportunity; s/w is affordable and convenient to consume! I'm all for "try before you buy," but "steal and redistribute" just means that we won't get new media to consume in the future. There's no excuse for this kind of behavior. DISCLAIMER: I'm an employee of Microsoft, Corp. but the opinions expressed on this web site are my own and in no way reflect the opinions of my employer.