Take This DRM. It's Dangerous to Distribute Games Alone.

(I am back after a couple of weeks of intense thesis immersion.  So let's talk about The Legend of Zelda.)

Let's be honest: If you never wanted to erase Navi, link's fairy companion in The Ocarina of Time, then you never played The Ocarina of Time.  If I had to make a list of the top modifications I wanted to otherwise great games, deleting Navi would top the list, and it wouldn't even be close.  If I had the time, energy, and technical skill, I would go back and erase Navi from the game myself, just to be able to go back and play the game without her.

Entrepreneur, gamer, and candidate for Dad of the Year Mike Hoye recently modded his own copy of The Wind Waker, Link's first adventure on the GameCube in the Legend of Zelda series.  He didn't remove the fairy companion; to the best of my knowledge (I don't own a GameCube), there is no fairy companion in The Wind Waker.  Instead, he painstakingly changed the dialogue to change protagonist Link's gender from male to female.

Hoye enjoys playing video games with his daughter, but was frustrated by the lack of positive female role models in games.  So he did the sensible thing, and built one.  He didn't change the plot or the function of the game, just a few words here and there to make the game more accessible to his daughter.  He also made his modifications available to the public for other concerned parents.

But this isn't a post about gender in video games.  Everyone knows that video games have done a terrible job of handling gender in any sensible way, with very few and limited exceptions.  No, I want to talk about copyright.  Mike Hoye's labor of love is demonstrative of why our copyright system isn't just broken; it's insanely broken.

Why?  Hoye's brilliant Zelda hack is probably illegal.

Dinosaur Poaching: A Crime Against Scientists and Children

(See edit below for one archaeologist's reaction to this post.)

Dinosaur piracy.

There, I said it. Today I am writing about dinosaur piracy.

A man was arrested today in Florida on suspicion of smuggling illegal goods and the sale of illegal goods. The "goods" in question are the skeleton of a Tarbosaurus bataar, a dinosaur related to the ever-popular Tyrannosaurus rex. (Most news sources are identifying the skeleton as "Tyrannosaurus bataar". This designation is currently disfavored. There is some disagreement about whether Tyrannosaurus and Tarbosaurus should be considered the same genus or separate. They are currently viewed as two separate genera. Now you know more than you ever thought you would about Tarbosaurus.) The Tarbosaur has been impounded by the U.S. government.

So what exactly is dinosaur piracy? I am glad I rhetorically asked that question on your behalf.