Either the patent system is broken, or Microsoft is abusing it. Both cannot be true.
To put that another way: the old arcade-game Street Fighter 2, much beloved for tournament play, has certain glitches that everyone takes advantage of in said tournaments. Exploiting those glitches is just what high-level play of the game looks like. The players aren’t “abusing” the game—the rules of a system are defined by what the system allows you to do.
When someone complains that it’s ridiculous that everyone needs to learn how to exploit the game to play in tournaments, you know what they’re told? “You could theoretically fix the game. In fact, the company that made the game fixed the game, and re-released the fixed version. Nobody plays it. People like this version. If you don’t like it, go play the other one—but don’t come over to us enjoying ourselves over here and try to get us to stop playing the game optimally, just because it makes you unhappy.”
Of course, unlike a game, the ethics of a legal system often favor forcing people to play a game they don’t like, if the game they do like harms people. But I think the professional gamer’s refrain holds: don’t blame them for playing a broken game optimally. Just fix the damn game if you want them to play it differently.
To put that another way: the old arcade-game Street Fighter 2, much beloved for tournament play, has certain glitches that everyone takes advantage of in said tournaments. Exploiting those glitches is just what high-level play of the game looks like. The players aren’t “abusing” the game—the rules of a system are defined by what the system allows you to do.
When someone complains that it’s ridiculous that everyone needs to learn how to exploit the game to play in tournaments, you know what they’re told? “You could theoretically fix the game. In fact, the company that made the game fixed the game, and re-released the fixed version. Nobody plays it. People like this version. If you don’t like it, go play the other one—but don’t come over to us enjoying ourselves over here and try to get us to stop playing the game optimally, just because it makes you unhappy.”
Of course, unlike a game, the ethics of a legal system often favor forcing people to play a game they don’t like, if the game they do like harms people. But I think the professional gamer’s refrain holds: don’t blame them for playing a broken game optimally. Just fix the damn game if you want them to play it differently.