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Valve Found Guilty Of Breaching Australian Consumer Law (kotaku.com)

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[–]Hack_Snyder -91ポイント-90ポイント  (35子コメント)

Fuck 'em.

If the cost of the trial and fines is high enough, stop doing business in Australia afterwards.

[–]ricodued 49ポイント50ポイント  (20子コメント)

Wait, fuck Australia?! They're the good guys here.

Steam didn't even have refunds before this very case started. Were it not for Australia and their consumer protection laws we might still not have refunds on Steam.

[–]Bobblefighterman 17ポイント18ポイント  (0子コメント)

Apparently some people love Gabe and hate themselves.

[–]Vordraper [スコア非表示]  (4子コメント)

Australian media laws are a clusterfuck of bullshit, a lot of censorship applies to video games that is absent from movies and such. Here and the UK are basically police states.

[–]Tieblaster [スコア非表示]  (3子コメント)

So Australia and UK are Police States because...they are censoring video games? I don't like the fact that HLM2 cannot be sold here, but I would not say that the Australian Government are infringing my freedom, they are just unfortunately out of touch.

[–]Vordraper [スコア非表示]  (2子コメント)

No bill of rights

No free weapon laws

No freedom of speech

Not a republic

It goes much deeper than just video games

[–]Awela [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

Most countries do not want free weapon laws...

[–]Tieblaster [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

No freedom of speech

https://www.humanrights.gov.au/freedom-information-opinion-and-expression

The Australian Constitution never explicitly states it yes, but the High Court strongly upholds it. Australia has had sporatic issues with Freedom of the Press (keeping the media out of the Nauru Detention Center is one), but don't act like America is some bastion of freedom that does no wrong. Having a World Press Freedom Index placement of #49 isn't exactly worth bragging about.

Not a Republic

What does this have to do with freedom, or lack thereof? The Queen is our head of state, but that does not mean she is ordering people around, or cracking down on dissent. There have been several pushes for Australia to be a Republic.

No free weapon laws

lol. Lets draw this one up to a cultural difference. Americans love guns, Australians can have guns, but not many will bother except those living in rural areas.

[–]Ace-O-Matic -4ポイント-3ポイント  (13子コメント)

Regardless, there's no benefit to the consumer in Valve paying the fine now, so the ruling doesn't benefit anyone but the AUS gov.

You're also placing a false correlation between Valve's refund system and this lawsuit in which Valve's defense was: "We're an online portal, not a business that operates in AUS. We're not going to have hundreds of business practices to comply with each country's specific requirements, that's fucking retarded. Stopping people from buying from us is not our job because our business doesn't comply with some random country's requirements is not our job."

I would argue that the correlation between the flood of broken games from greenlight and AAA publishers, including the clusterfuck of the recent Batman game are far more likely responsible for this policy's implementation.

[–]really_bad_engineer [スコア非表示]  (12子コメント)

Um, hate to break it to you, but all companies have to follow the laws of any country they operate in. Imagine if McDonalds decided that, because they're American, they don't have to follow any of Australia's food standards here. Yeah, that would go well for them /s.

[–]Ace-O-Matic [スコア非表示]  (11子コメント)

You're not breaking anything.

You're comparing apples and oranges. If McDonalds opens a store in Australia, yes that specific store has to follow Australian law. Much like the American one has to follow American law, and not Australian law. Since McDonalds is a) psychically present in Australia. b) Has chosen to opt-in to conduct business in Australia.

Valve did not open a store in Australia. They do not directly (yet) ship items to Australia. They have no office in Australia. There are no borders on the internet. You don't choose to sell to a country, you choose to sell to the internet. Either your site is online, it's not, or it's blocked by a firewall. Just because anyone from any country can access a platform, doesn't give any random country to impose it's laws on a company that never asked for their customer (even if they appreciate the business).

[–]really_bad_engineer [スコア非表示]  (8子コメント)

Valve does operate in Australia, they sell products here, they have regional pricing here, they own $1.1 million in server hardware here, they pay an Australian company $26000 a month for rack space (yep, that's doing business with Aussies). These content servers serve Australia, New Zealand and parts of Asia. They also have agreements with some of our ISPs to provide dedicated servers for their games. How is this not "doing business in Australia"?

[–]Ace-O-Matic [スコア非表示]  (7子コメント)

Oh, so by that logic. Since I run node clusters (temporary groups of servers) in Ireland, America, and China. My business has to comply with the economic policies of all 3 countries?

Why is "doing business in Australia" even in quotes. Did I write that and I'm blind and can't see it, or are you just reading what you want to read?

[–]really_bad_engineer [スコア非表示]  (6子コメント)

Straw Man's argument.

[–]Ace-O-Matic [スコア非表示]  (5子コメント)

It's not a fucking Straw Man's argument, your point is completely uneducated and wrong, and I'm pointing out the absurdity of your logic by taking it to the blatantly obvious extreme.

You're arguing that just because a company conducts some business in a country that it's required to follow all of that country's policies on operations that do not occur in that country.

Yes, they have to follow regulation for server space. Yes, they have to follow regulations for whatever ISP agreement they have. They do NOT have follow regulation over distribution from an international platform, no more than I would have to follow Chinese regulations on my sales to England just because I have I Chinese server.

[–]really_bad_engineer [スコア非表示]  (4子コメント)

You're arguing that just because a company conducts some business in a country that it's required to follow all of that country's policies on operations that do not occur in that country.

No, I was arguing that if a company conducts business in a country they should follow the laws of that country. All you've presented me is a Straw Man's argument. Come up with something better.

[–]Kered13 [スコア非表示]  (1子コメント)

It's more like if an Australian goes to a McDonald's in the US, that McDonald's doesn't have to suddenly start complying with Australian law.

Brick and mortar chains make an active decision about where to open their stores, and expanding to another country is a big deal because of all the compliance issues. But for a website the default state is that you serve the entire world. It requires an active decision and action to block people from other countries from using your service. This is why it doesn't really make sense to treat websites like brick and mortar stores.

But if we see legal cases like this become widespread, what we'll get is a proliferation of websites that work in only the US or only the EU or only Australia (even more than we do now). Because that will be the only way for all but the largest companies to comply with international laws.

[–]Ace-O-Matic [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

It's more like if an Australian goes to a McDonald's in the US, that McDonald's doesn't have to suddenly start complying with Australian law.

Could not have said better myself.

But if we see legal cases like this become widespread, what we'll get is a proliferation of websites that work in only the US or only the EU or only Australia (even more than we do now).

Yeah, it'd honestly be a pretty big blow to any non-powerhouse country. This goes over to more things than just products, but international economic relations. This would flat out kill international freelancing, because if you're a business that hires freelancers out of state, you would need a lawyer that specializes in labor law for every single country you have an employee, which defeats the purpose of hiring freelancers to begin with.

[–]throw777 30ポイント31ポイント  (1子コメント)

What a mature way to conduct business.

[–]redditors_are_racist 30ポイント31ポイント  (11子コメント)

Typical surly American with a chip on his shoulder who don't need no strong consumer protection laws.