At the end of the day, the people who "do stuff" will always have the advantage over the people who "don't do stuff". Pirates are slowly motivating ever increasing levels of DRM and in time, I hate to say it, DRM is going to win. That's because the people motivated to make the DRM work (the people who do stuff) greatly outnumber the motivation of the people who don't do stuff.
One can easily picture a future in 5 years in which the telecoms, the PC makers, the OS makers, and the software makers have teamed up (and you only need any two of them to do so) to eliminate unauthorized usage of a given piece of IP. If you don't think it can be done, then you probably don't have much experience in writing software. The DRM and copy protection of today is piddly 1-party solutions.
The DRM of tomorrow will involve DRM parternships where one piece of protect IP can key itself off another. Thus, if even one item on your system is pirated (whether it be cracked or not) it will get foiled as long as there is one item in the system that you use that isn't cracked (whether it be the OS or something in your hardware or whatever). It will, as a practical matter, make piracy virtually impossible.
Computer games and video will likely be the first two targets because piracy of them is so rampant. A pirated copy of something doesn't mean it's a lost sale. But piracy does cause lost sales. Moreover, it's just incredibly frustrating to see people using the fruits of your labor as if they were somehow entitled to it.
I have long been and continue to be a big proponent of alternative ways to increase sales. I don't like piracy being blamed for the failure of a game because it tends to obscure more relevant issues which prevent us, as an industry, from improving what we do. But at the same time, I don't like pirates trying to rationalize away their behavior because they do cost sales. I've seen people in our forums over the years boldly admit they're pirating our game but that they are willing to buy it if we add X or Y to it -- as if it's a negotiation.
I don't like DRM. But the pirates are ensuring that our future is going to be full of it because at the end of the day, the people who make stuff are going to protect themselves. It's only a question of when and how intensive the DRM will get. And that's something only the pirates can change -- if you're using a pirated piece of software, either stop using it or buy it.
Bodyless, trillions of creatures already shit in the woods, from bugs to people. It's natural. It takes civilization to make it a problem. Way to grasp the point without the subject.
Roxlimn, internet piracy doesn't make pirates rich. The guy that cracks Spore because he can isn't making a dime off the endeavor. He's just doing it because he can. Internet piracy isn't traditional piracy, the motive is different. They aren't serving a market, they're ignoring the market. You get that it's a losing cause, but you appear to have no idea just how bad the current trend is. They're literally making it more entertaining to crack their software. It's not a hindrance, but an invitation. The actual commercial pirates don't even need to do anything these days, they just wait for some bored asshole to break it for them.
A point, morality and legality are entirely irrelevant to each other. This is why we have civil and criminal code. Criminal covers the moral issues, civil just greases the wheels of society. It's irrelevant to the concept of morality To imply that copyright infringment is wrong because it's illegal is the same as implying that jaywalking is wrong. Jaywalking is only wrong when you put people at risk by running in front of traffic. When you walk across an empty street, you're doing no harm to anyone, to any degree. The harm from copyright infringment is negligible at current levels, if it exists at all.
Internet piracy is trivial, I agree. Actual commercial piracy is not. It's not the internet pirate that forced Philips, Sony, and other DVD player producers to avoid selling DVD players that only played region-specific DVDs in Asia. They probably still make and sell that in the US where it would actually sell, but in the South East Asian and Chinese markets, these DVD players are practically unsellable.
When you can force hardware to conform to piracy standards, no amount of DRM, hardware OR software is going to work.
Being pervasive in developing countries doesn't make commercial piracy an actual threat either. The pirates happen to be the ones meeting price requirements for there to be demand in such low income areas. It's more a problem of, despite regioned dvd's, producers charging far too much to actually get their product out. With the prices they charge here, I'm continually amazed at how often I buy a movie. 20 bucks for a piece of plastic I might only use three or four times in my entire life, that's already made someone a hundred million bucks by the time it went on sale. They could probably sell a lot more of them if they cut prices, but brains and creativity rarely go together.
What can I say, I like my monitor.
This thread is pretty interesting, but I was wondering what you guys think of pirating something that isnt sold anymore?
I'm of the opinion that anything out of print is free game. The current bastardization of copyright is disgusting, it was originally intended to allow market saturation. You had a whopping 14 years, and that was when it might take that long just to get in print on a more than local scale.
psychoak:
I would venture to speculate that I personally allowed for game companies to hike up the pricing of their games to ridiculous levels in the closing years of the 20th century because in those times, gaming was a niche industry. You can't do mass market economics in a niche industry because there aren't that many buyers. A game with a development cost of 1 million dollars and a market share of 5 000 is going to cost a lot. I was willing to pay to fund the nascent industry.
Having said that, I agree that there is nothing fair about the commercial pricing of media in most Western countries today. What can you do? The West is a capitalist beast and in capitalism, fairness isn't on the cards.
Very funny how you simply ignore all arguments you cannot fight.
And just because its natural it does not mean that it cannot do any damage.
Except that they get the games for free. So they are still making money.
Depends entirely on you philosophy. While you cannot enforce morale with laws, there are a lot people who view any break of laws as immoral, if you would actually read the post of others.
The existance of people how do not view piracy as immorale is irrelevant anyway. Copyright laws exist to benefit society as you said. So piracy reduces that benefit, which means it hurts it. No matter what personal agenda you got.
Bodyless:
That's not entirely true. Depending on what copyright laws are, how they're enforced or upheld, and what they're actually doing to your society, they may or may not be beneficial. Certainly, Renaissance Italy needed no copyright laws to develop some of the most enduring pieces of artistic endeavor known to man.
Good quote and I think that pretty much sums up the problem here. Why would people feel like they want to pay for a product to help a company that doesnt give a dam about them except that it gets there money when they can just get the product for free. Company policy can have an effect on that and I think Stardock are a good example as they seem to treat their customers well which means their customers feel like they want to give them the money for the product. But I really think piracy is simply a condition of the times that we live in as the main objective of a company is to make greedy shareholders happy and for the bosses to get massive bonus payouts, its quite easy to see how pirates can justify their actions.
BTW I dont pirate games I have bought all the games I play including sins of solar empire as I do like to think that I am helping the creator of the game.
Ok Bodyless, I know it's hard, but think about this, carefully.
Shit is plant and bug food.
What, if civilization weren't adverse to stepping in shit, would be the problem with feeding the cycle of life?
[quote]Depends entirely on you philosophy. While you cannot enforce morale with laws, there are a lot people who view any break of laws as immoral, if you would actually read the post of others.
The existance of people how do not view piracy as immorale is irrelevant anyway. Copyright laws exist to benefit society as you said. So piracy reduces that benefit, which means it hurts it. No matter what personal agenda you got.[/quote
First point valid, sort of. Yes, some people consider jaywalking across a deserted street immoral, some people are morons. There are also people that view raping five year olds as perfectly normal. The views of individuals are irrelevant to the facts of life, and even when norms go against the facts, they are norms because a majority share that view. The pedophile is a pedophile because society views it as wrong to have sex with children, and a rapist because five year olds can't consent to such an action by virtue of it being beyond their grasp. Both fact and norm factor into it.
The facts behind copyright infringment are laughable. The complaint boils down to people that wont buy our products aren't buying our products! I have yet to see any valid point made, every complaint has been verified as based purely on assumption. They complain that piracy is killing their sales because there are massive levels of piracy, while conveniently ignoring massive increases in sales to go with them. There is significant evidence that internet piracy adds up to free advertising, and that commercial piracy simply creates new markets for future goods by expanding forms of entertainment into cultures that can't otherwise afford them.
Which brings us to your second point. Current copyright law does not benefit society. Do explain the benefit in Elvis, a dead guy that hasn't been singing for decades, being owned by a corporation. Copyrights that extend beyond the life of the creator by 70 years are fucking insane by any rational definition. It's a product of legislative prostitution on the part of congress. Reasonable copyright law would be a benefit, but this load of horse shit we have now goes far beyond reasonable, turning an incentive into a retirement plan for grandchildren, or a stock for brokers to trade. It's fucking nuts.
The joys of a government enforced monopoly. If producer x lost the exclusive rights to sell product y two years after it came out, producer x would be in a hurry to make his money off it. When he can sit on it, leave the price high the entire time, and then charge you again for each new format change because he's preventing you from porting your own copy, you get royally shafted. Normal monopolies fail such a system because a competitor naturally arises to take advantage of the massive profit margins on a $20 dvd that costs a couple bucks to get to the store isle. Capitalism is checked by competition, and they have not competition.
Ok what about the anti pirates. Is it ok to dl a game that isnt for sale?
Sure, I'm fine with them enforcing everything but "unconscionable" requirements. After all, the only thing I do with games I purchase is play them, and anything that can be violated while playing an unmodified legitimate copy should damn well be considered "unconscionable". (All right, I sometimes may sell/lend my copy to a friend, but those transactions are not large enough for a game company to bother with)
My only problem with your argument against IP was that it seemed to me that you were placing programs under the category of "ideas". You don't need to defend its legitimacy or lack thereof.
No, you don't. You're still assuming loss where there is no proof of loss. The evidence points the other way.
Technically, so is the pirated copy. It's actually a rather accurate analogy. The original purchaser of the candy puts it out for distribution and people come and take one. The only difference is the original purchaser actually bought each copy of the candy he's giving away.
Cases of this have actually gone to trial. Guys have even won in cases where women took it out of a condom and impregnated themselves.
Your flaw is that you've bought the idea that piracy is harming the gaming industry. Piracy has created new markets that didn't previously exist. Developing nations that couldn't possibly afford cd's, dvd's and video games instead pirated them. They bought the hardware needed to use them, creating the foundation of a new market. With a taste of the good life, they had to have more. The Balkans are now a rapidly expanding tech market, all because they stole shit left and right until they realized "Hey, if we want to make money off our own stuff, we gotta actually pay these guys for theirs too!" If someone can't or wont purchase something, there is no loss when they pirate it.
It's always nutty till they take your guns, tax all your money, and give it to their constituencies that get them reelected while running you over with a bus. Dictatorship 101, first step, control the news. Second step, disarm the population. Third step, get a large chunk of them dependant on the state for their welfare. We're halfway there.
Yes but there can be too much food...didnt you ever heard of plants dying form too much water? The same can happen with...food.
And maybe i view EA doing that to you as not immoral?
Copyright is a way MORE than just that and existed long before it too.
Ok so there is an example where the benefit is doubtful. but that does not prove anyhting.
No its not, since unlike the ones who are giving away candys, pirates neither legally own the pirated copys nor loose anything from someone downloading it.
Torgamous:
You would be wrong there. I can say with considerable confidence that most pirates exist in developing countries because there's more people in developing countries, there's a absurd number of tech people in these countries with nothing better to do, and they get paid to pirate software and hardware by people they can sell these copies to.
Given that there's more pirates in the developing world because of these factors, I would venture to guess that most pirates in the world today are monetarily compensated for their efforts. Aside from that even pirates in the West who operate for kicks still get returns on their efforts - just not monetary ones.
Pirates exist (on the developing and the consuming end) because they have enough motivations to conduct piracy. DRM isn't going to work and we've shown that to be solidly grounded in history. PC game piracy driving DRM is a ridiculous premise since DRM has never been shown to stop piracy. If you want to stop piracy, you compete with them directly and drive them out of business the old-fashioned way. Clearly, the hurt DRM is putting on the industry isn't because of piracy - because most modern DRMs do nothing to stop pirates.
uhh.. how exactly would you compete with the pirates ? The only thing they can do is either ignore them and just accept that some people will pirate their games, or they can come up with some decent protection measures which actually work but then they are punishing genuine customers who buy there games and probably wasting more money on protection than what they would have lost to pirates.
Simple. The commercial pirates are making a product for a profit. You can't outprice a free download, but you can outprice a commercial pirate just fine.
What do you want to bet Ubisoft can manufacture boxed copies cheaper than the pirates can?
Publishers have this idiocy where they see an emerging market where people can pay a buck for a video game and maybe they'll do so, and they go oh shit, those bastards are stealing our software! What they should be doing is selling their games for a buck there. There isn't any loss, it's just more profit. Insignificant to the returns on a $50 copy in the US, but wish in one hand and shit in the other. Pump out the cheap cases, fill em up, and ship em out. When the pirates no longer have acceptable margins, they'll go get a real job.
Are you really this stupid? Ok, if we uproot all the trees and plant them in pots of shit, yeah, they'll die. When you drown your ficas because you don't have any drain holes and you fill the dirt up with water so it can't get any air, it has dick to do with getting too much water, and everything to do with not getting any air. Kinda like what would happen to you if I stuffed your ass in a wine vat and shut the lid, you wouldn't die of alcohol poisoning. If everyone on earth stopped using modern sewage and started crapping in the trees, the only thing we'd do is kill ourselves off with things like cholera. Just like the people that already shit in the woods in the less than modern countries already are.
Pink elephants have existed long before it too, what's your point? That copyright serves a useful purpose does not negate any negatives that come with it's current implementation. If we nuked China off the map, there would be a significant reduction in pollution, hunger rates would decline worldwide, food prices would plummet. We'd still be killing over a billion people and wiping out a massive amount of industry. Complex systems are not black or white with no cross overs. There are beneficial side effects from every genocide campaign in history, and negative side effects from every peace movement in history. The Christian movement gave us the crusades, witch hunting, etcetera etcetera, Ghandi got us a nuclear armed Pakistan filled with crazies that want to use them on their former countrymen. WW2 ended imperialism and unified Europe as peaceful nations for the first time since the fall of Rome, and they were never truly peaceful even then.
You cannot point to the whole system and say there are good things about it, then ignore everything else. Either look at the whole system honestly, or focus on the specific problems and attempt to solve them. Copyright can be good. Copyright can be bad.
An example? It's systemic. Walt Disney is dead. Walt Disney's property is still being taken out of the "Vault" to hose the grandchildren of his dead customers with $20 dvd's for a product they made 10-1 returns on before they were born. Even better, if Walt Disney did what he did then today, Walt Disney would be infringing on copyrights left and right. Walt Disney would be in jail. All that old material they modify and put out as cartoons would have been copyrighted still. Odds are they'd still be copyrighted, once they got all that money from the television boom, they took over congress fast. They'll get them to write new laws every time their still valuable copyrights get close to expiring.
Who loses something when the kids take the candy? The person giving it away is giving it away. The only people having their product given away are the original producers. The candymakers. Those kids are getting candy without paying for it. Such absurd logic only flies when the people making it have indoctrinated a population into believing that their product deserves such special protection. Whether it does or not is irrelevant to the fact that it is a special protection beyond that of other producers.
@psychoak - An excellent retort.
Are you really that ignorant? There are more than 6 billion people on earth while the woods are shrinking every day. There is enough shit to drown them in it.
I really wonder what you want to say. But simply because a system is not perfect, breaking the system is not immediatly less immorale.
So maybe you could stop painting the copyright laws black and see that violating them is still wrong.
Ok another example. Maybe copyrights need to expire faster. but i dont care since walt disney got his share for creating his products. So as long the creative minds get something for being creative, the society will benefit from their work.
Also, what is wrong about selling something created long ago when people want to buy it?
Ok your post does not make make sense at all.
Can you give away indefinite amount of candy while only buying a limited amount? No.
Does the candymaker cares about whether the buyer is the consumer? No since a piece of candy can be consumed only one time.
Your back yard is not the whole earth, there are over a thousand trees, just trees, for every person on the planet. There are TRILLIONS of trees on this planet. Ignorance you say? The idiot highschool biology teacher that told you we were running out of trees probably forgot to mention just how much of the earth is covered by them at densities far greater than the population density of NYC.
How is it immoral to start with? Copyright is a means to an end, the end is the proliferation of intellectual works. Violating copyright can only be wrong if it hurts someone. That the systems is broken makes it the only semi reasonable way for many things to be obtained. They flat don't exist.
You got me, I have absolutely no idea what's wrong with it. You do realize what you asked right? I'll rephrase it for you.
Why is it illegal to sell something created over a century ago?
Duh...
Naturally, you're predisposed to shoving spike shod heels up your ass in the name of fairness.
The only real difference between the candy maker and the game producer is that the candy maker hasn't got a shot in hell of trying that argument on you. Niether can prove that people giving their products away hurts them.
I'm tired of being walked on because an industry thinks just maybe they can squeeze out a few more sales if they could only eliminate the black market. I'm tired of being walked on because someone has decided they're entitled to exclusive rights in perpetuity. I'm through putting up with shit because a CEO needs a security blanket. I'm through listening to this idiocy about the rampant piracy rates killing an industry riddled with shitty products that still manages to make outstanding profits far in excess of the norm. Proof, show it or fuck off.
Someone needs to learn something about ecology here. Or maybe you just look at a map and search for forests...
How do you know that you dont hurt someone by breaking copyright? Maybe you wouldnt have bought the game anyway but you never know if someone who downloaded the cracked version from you would have paid if he didnt found your pirated version. Also its very easy to say that afterwards.
And even the disrespect towards copyrights hurts everyone protected by these laws.
Because its maybe not your property? It doesnt matter how old it is.
Lol? Giving away illegal copies software for free to people who could have buyed it otherwise does not hurt the game producer??
As if something forces you to buy their products...and if you cannot resist pirating it instead you should rather go to some therapy since you are obviously addicted.
Somebody hasn't been playing around with Google Earth much. Look around, find a place in, say, pretty much anywhere in Alabama will work . Minnesota has a lot of forests as well. So do the Virginias. Northeast California has a nice forest. North Idaho has forests in mountains. And that's just some of the forests I've found in the USA.
A quick spin around the globe and I was able to easily find forests on all continents except Antarctica.
Well, the original copyright was for a pretty short period of time, so I don't think it was originally intended to last indefinitely. It wasn't until later that they started extending it to something beyond the author's death.
Damn! This thread has be hijacked something fierce.
2) While this metaphor may be applicable to some DRM schemes, it has nothing to do with copyright in general unless you consider paying for a product to be a form of torture.
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