It is the gaming industry itself that plagiarizes and pirates others continuously since Pacman. But of course, they don’t want others to do it.
Games they “need”?
They are doing a very important study.
It’s for science you see.
I really struggle with the justification present in the article. “I need to emulate to do my job as an academic” is pretty hollow. “I want to emulate because I want to learn” is the real reason and, as an academic myself, I don’t feel like there’s a higher ground that gives me access to literally anything I want just because I want to learn.
If the argument was “the copyright system is fucked and knowledge needs to be more open” I would be 100% behind that. I feel that way. I just don’t think someone should get to say “show me your secrets because I’ve arbitrarily decided to make my next publication about your secrets.”
But if it was illegal to research 99% of your current field even if the information existed you may feel differently
Just wanted to say I share your complicated thoughts on this. It’s not as simple as “Rah! Rah! Piracy!” No one is entitled to another person’s work. But things get nuanced and messy fast once you move beyond that narrow contextualization.
