I, because if I want to get fat, have many health issues, and an early death, I should be able to for free! Not to mention the even bigger food shortages which we all want!

Who are you kidding (beside your self)!? No one in the food business is taking anything near 75% of the profit. Even all the shareholders of McDonald's combined don't make 1% of the total amount it costs to put that Big Mac in your gaping maw. The cut for a grocer is even smaller when it comes to the total cost of putting any given food item on the table. The price of food is what it is mainly due to the cost of production. No individual gets particularly rich off of being part of it.

The other side of it is that most modders mod as a hobby. This changes the whole landscape for us in a way which will make it virtually impossible for us to do as a hobby. It now becomes a situation where you are competing with professionals with better tool kits than you can possibly afford. Further, by uploading your mod here you turn over all rights to Valve, but retain all responsibilities. That means that Valve, as the owner is free from being sued by anyone for any reason, but you as author can be sued by anyone (including Valve) for any reason, legitimate or frivolous and must pay for your own defense and court costs as well as any liability found against you. Further, you are required to support the mod until your dying breath. Think about it. If you get tired of it, no longer have time for it, or for any reason are no longer able to support it, you open yourself up to getting your skin sued off. That doesn't sound like any other hobby I know of, and frankly I can't think of any other business that works that way works that way.

At least for now. If this succeeds and becomes president setting, then Katie bar the door! Nothing will be safe, including your Big Mac, which will cost hundreds of Pounds, Euros, dollars or whatever unit of trade you use where you live. Oh, and unless you're in the upper 1% of income earners don't even think about having a hobby or pastime. You won't be able to afford one.

you know what. you are absolutely right. I used to make conoes for a hobby, then one day Bass Pro came up and offered to sell them for me and give me a profit. Now that I have an option to keep giving them away for free or selling them "This changes the whole landscape for us in a way which will make it virtually impossible for us to do as a hobby." I guess I should find a new hobby right?

I like how you made a minor attempt at spoofing my original discussion, no, i seriously do.
I could do with something humerous when valve's trying to pull this kind of crap on steam.

When i was 5 i used to mash up bread and break it into little bits and try and convince my mother to eat it, are you saying i shouldn't be payed for doing that?(seriously, i did) It took EFFORT and TIME to squish that bread, there's no such thing as a hobby! I should be payed to stuff mashed loaves of bread into people's mouthes!

I'll bet Bass Pro doesn't doesn't take anywhere near to 75% of the final retail price for themselves either. If they do, then you're an idiot for not selling direct to public. Further, there are well established laws protecting all parties in that sort of agreement. The laws aren't there in this situation, so the law is basically what they say it is. You hold all the liability, they take the lion's share of the profit even though they aren't lifting a finger.

Let me clarify one thing before going any further. I am not against your or my right to make a profit from our mods. I do, however, find the division of profit to be nothing short of obscene, and the legal pitch on which we would be required to play to be grossly unfair. I am positively giddy over the fact that it was overturned, and hope that we will be given a seat at the negotiating table next time the issue comes up (as surely it will). The capitalist system is one which requires a certain degree of ethics and restraint on the part of all parties in order to work effectively. We humans are by nature greedy, and many among us have difficulty or find it impossible to control the desire for increasingly more. It isn't anything evil. It's simply something hard-wired in from the time our early ancestors running around on the African savannas had to struggle for every morsel of food, or perish. Because of that, we have to have laws and agreements hopefully to guard against the excesses of self-desire or run-away systems. The on-line gaming and game distribution industry is so new a concept that few laws and conventions exist yet. Therefore there are bound to be conflicts until a system is in place which protects everyone from market excesses. The time will come, but until it does, we need to be able to put on the brakes and say, "Hold on, this hasn't been adequately thought out." If my sense of the the situation is correct, Valve and have to their credit recognized this and have gone back to the drawing board to work out a more equitable system. At least I hope so. It is always possible that they're looking for ways to more effectively lock us out, and we must remain vigilant against that possibility.

you are lucky to make a dime from modifying someone elses product anyway, if bethesda wanted, they could decide to take all the mods they see and put them on their own site for 100% profit to themselves and have the mods taken down from all other websites.
Thats capitalism for you.

Well I think food and mods are different stories. So no.

That's unrestrained unethical capitalism for you. The reason they won't do that and why they had modders retain all liability for their mods was so that they (Valve & Bathesda) would be free from the firestorm of legal actions which certainly would have followed. One of the primary reasons (if not THE primary reason) was that they were notified in a discovery request that simply putting liability on modders for their own mods did not protect Valve from all liability. In fact it opened them up for even more. The cost of fighting that sort of legal battle has been the demise of many a better funded company than Valve in the past, and just the fact that someone is filing discovery against you is enough to give just about any organization pause. The costs of fighting a legal battle of that magnitude is endangering enough for a company of Valve's size, but should they be found guilty, it is as if the magistrate put the black on his head; death without reprise.