Valve fails to get out of paying its EU geo-blocking fine::Valve has failed to convince a court that it didn’t infringe EU law by geo-blocking activation keys, according to a new ruling.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Good. Fuck all DRM
I mean, they just paid a 1.6 million € fine.
Entertain me this hypothetical:
You’re a pizza delivery person, and you know there are some routes you can take to save you more than 20 min for some deliveries, but you’re going the wrong way in one way roads.
One day you get caught, and you get fined 20 cents. You make an extra 5 bucks per delivery. Will you stop going the wrong way to save you 20 min each time you have to do those deliveries?
Well, this is the fundamental problem with fines. They are stupidly, gargantually disproportionate to what they’re trying to achieve.
Which means that companies make more money paying the fine whenever they get caught, than just not doing whatever illegal thing they’re doing.
Yeah, fines need to be calculated on an exponential scale based on the income and value of the target. The richer they are, the more painful the penalty. One wrong move and the billionaire is reduced to a meth addicted hobo living under a bridge.
Progress isn’t linear and it sure as hell doesn’t come when we say the problem isn’t worth even addressing because our current tools aren’t big enough for its scale.