Pirating games does nothing to further the so-called 'cause'. Nothing. Restrictive DRM is a response to the rampent Piracy in the PC Industry - which begs the question, what were the original Pirates 'protesting'? Piracy is hurting the PC format on many levels, as it's giving certain Publishers *cough*EA GAMES*cough* excuses to introduce harmful and downright draconian measures to control how their users actually use their software. So, in fact, pirates are not noble, not a rebel fighting for some worth while cause, or actually protesting anything - in comparison, this would be like a man on a hunger strike robbing a Super Market and eating their food for free. They're just attempting to justify their actions by whatever means necessary and being as this is the internet, all the other people just like them will come to their defense because they dabble in exactly the same practice. The situation with The Pirate Bay just shows how wide spread and deep seeded the arogance of pirates currently is, when in fact it's pirates that are slowly draining life away from the PC format, and not just through financial means as I've already mentioned.

I'm currently boycotting products created by EA Games myself, in an effort to vote through my wallet. The last EA Games product I purchased was SPORE: Galactic Adventures, which - as I posted about - is actually pretty good and because it was SPORE that was really the straw on the Camel's back for me, and I won't budge from my position till it has fullfilled the promise of the early builds that Will Wright showed off. Before that it was the original Need for Speed Underground, and the way EA Games destroyed that entire franchise year after year after year.
Amazing games like Mass Effect and Crysis have fallen by the way side for me, because of the logo on the box. I managed to play through Crysis on a friends computer, who had paid for it, and believe it's an incredible game. I still refuse to buy it or pirate it, because I refuse to contribute to the problem on either side.

Grasping at straws, aren't we? Google is the worlds best provider of pirated media? Hardly. The Pirate Bay actually houses the links for torrents expressly designed to pirate digital media. Google finds whatever words you type in the box. If there were no pirated media on the internet, Google wouldn't return anything related to it and the Pirate Bay wouldn't exist... at least not with the name "The Pirate Bay". I'm guessing you want the news shut down because it too provides information on the illegal activities of international criminals?

I'm guessing you don't work in the legal industry and in any related industry. Theft, and the idea of ownership, was born out of morality. Saying Morality has little to do with the law voids your entire argument. A moraless legal system would have no sense of victim impact; and considering victim impact statements directly influence sentencing during criminal trials, I think we can assume morality plays into the law just little bit.

I don't care about international laws, I really don't. I don't care whose law they are under. Swedish, American, Australian. Taking something that you have no right to take being wrong is one of the founding priciples of the civilised world, regardless of their geographical location of birth.

Ah, yes, the old "the industry is getting it's just deserts" uneducated bullshit. Tell me, why are all the good, hyped games being pirated so heavily, such as Demigod, and the unpopular games not being pirated to the same degree? If your argument were true wouldn't it, in fact, be the other way around?
What were the original people who founded the pirate scene - you know, the people who actually know how to remove copy protection from games rather than google the name of the game plus the word "crack" - attempting to do? Why were games like Doom, which shipped with no copy protection of any kind besides the discs themselves, were and are heavily pirated besides being industry changing landmark games that in no hindered the user from using it in any way they so chose?
Copy protection is a result of piracy, not the other way around. I'm guessing you weren't around when websites were text based and pirating games actually involved mailing discs to people you knew and trusted because internet speeds were too slow to realistically transfer games to one PC to another compared to the time required for the physical package to get to the same location.

Ah, sticking it to 'the Man' eh? Go found a software company with $10,000,000.00 of your own dollars, and go completely bankrupt because everyone downloaded your game rather than buy it, then using your obviously genius-level IQ to invent a time machine, please travel back to this point in history and explain why this statement reaks of bullshit.

I agree to some extend, that's why I posted in (I think) another thread that the admins of TPB should've joined and participated in the policital party. However I do feel that protesting on a solely political platform is useless against the massive lobby of 'the big fish'.

The current standing is we've got the companies waaaaay on the left and the consumers waaay on the right. The solution is somewhere in the middle, and both parties refuse to give in even a little. Maybe the consumers (pirates) are wrong, but so are the companies, and unless both parties change there won't be a solution in sight in the near future. And please don't give me the crap that "if consumers stop pirating we'll get games cheaper and without DRM" because we both know that is bullshit.

Actually it's not a straw. Technically speaking Google is just as wrong as any torrent site. The only difference is that 1) Google's sole purpose isn't to facilitate pirating, and 2) they remove links to illegal content when asked. Both are pretty paramount to not being considered illegal, and therefor Google will probably not get sued, though by law maybe still possible.

You can spin my words just any way you like to suit your need, but in the end even if something is morally wrong I can't get sued if by law it isn't, and v.v. even if something is morally right I can still get sued if by law it's wrong. Sure, morality is taken into account when laws are made, and they may have influence on punishment, but that was not what my quote was about.

Good, you shouldn't. You should care about the law in your own country, as should they.

You are right and wrong in the same sentence. You have no right to take something that you have no right to take (duh) but the fact that you don't have that right is dictated by the law (in your own country). Not because everyone in this world should obey that law regardless of geological location. If in hoochymoochyland it is legal - by law - to take your neighbours possessions then you can and have the right to, regardless of whatever some guy in the USA, EU, or whereever in this world thinks of it. How would you feel if some Indian guy says you can't eat beef anymore because where he lives that's illegal and he doesn't care where you were born. You'd say to him "fuck off, I live in a free country" so why would that be any different in this case?

To come back to your quote, you should care whose law they are under. That is one of the founding principles of the civilised world, not enforcing on others what is a law for you, but not for them.

Japan is actually a country but... the stupid law is actually something left over from WWII. I have no idea how it found it's way into the surrender agreement but it did. yea, I agree with you it messes up a lot of graphics.

geez, I wonder why and I wish it was that way here but it's not.

You're basically saying "I'm a vegetarian, I never buy meat. But I eat meat bought by my friends, because they already paid for it"

You're not boycotting EA, you're just not buying the games.

Boycott (as stated by the merriam-webster online dictionary=:

"to engage in a concerted refusal to have dealings with (as a person, store, or organization) usually to express disapproval or to force acceptance of certain conditions"

That would include not using the products, not just refusing to buy them.

 

it's part of 'saving face' - they do not wish to offend others

No, my argument is that overbudgeted, shiny-wrapping-but-no-substance games feel the impact of piracy a lot more than games which were produced on a modest budget and which equal the so-called AAA titles in quality simply because what they lack in graphics they make up in gameplay. This is because an AAA title has a lot of investment to pay off. Every copy which is illegally distributed is felt by sweaty-palmed managers and their Schwartz powers. While on the other hand, game developers which manage to pay off their budgets in the first week of release even when sales are going a bit slow do not worry so much about the fictional "income drain" piracy is blamed for, simply because once you pay off your budget, the rest is pure profit. In other words, AAA titles actually earn fewer bucks than less known titles per copy sold.

And the reason why all "good" (I tend to make a difference between a good game and a hyped game) games are so readily available for illegal obtainement, is because they're hyped - and pirate groups just love to cater to the crowds. The bigger the name, the better. Nevermind that nine times out of ten its a piece of crap of a game with no substance and multimillion dollar visuals and voiceovers. Crowds like cheap (as in unworthy, not actually cheap) entertainment.

 

That depends. Some were trying to see if they can do it. Other were doing it so they can show everyone they can do it better than the other guys. Some just wanted to be cool hackers. There were probably those who wanted to "stick it to the man". And some were just bored. There are probably a million more reasons.

Because they were popular and not everyone is willing to fork over cash for a game they can get for free. And here's the catch - those people won't buy your games if you magically cut off their local pirate's head. They simply won't play games. So even if you somehow managed to shut down content sharing over the internet, a task which is pretty much impossible, your profits would only marginally rise. Is that worth the other consequences, such as the disruption of the free flow of data, is another question.

No, its a result of a poorly thought out attempt to control the data flow in a society. It doesn't work, never will. People will literally share games physically, and unless you can rig every computer to arrest someone if it detects that someone other than the buyer is playing a game, you have no way of preventing that.

Data does not register to the human mind as "property". We usualy have no problems with the idea of copying a book, but most of us do have a problem with the idea of stealing that book from a shelf in a bookstore.

Instead it falls into the same domain as knowledge, information, and other such abstract, non-physical things. Most people who pirate games do not consider themselves thieves, no matter how much you scream at them. This is a part of the human psyche, and instead of trying to supress it, game developers and publishers need to learn how to work with that.

I was around when Internet was not the option at all and very few people had computers, which were not called PCs back then. And yeah, some of my first games were copies I got from a friend... not that there was a single game store in my country back then, so the only way to get games was "from a friend who got it from a friend..."

I suggest that instead of indignantly frothing at the mouth at what I consider perfectly normal human behaviour when it comes to abstract property, game developers and publishers need to adapt to the circumstances - instead of trying to force the circumstances to adapt to their needs.

1. Lower the budgets. We don't need shiny, vacant titles. Hollywood caters enough of that crap already.

2. Lower the prices. Yes, you can do that if you are not:

a) a greedy basturd

heavily laden with debt with impatient investors on the side

3. Have quality customer support. Customers which are treated right tend to generate more customers.

4. Have quality community relations. People for some reason find it harder to steal from the company they know and love, than from a faceless behemoth.

And last but not least... forget about pirates. They will always be there to sample your stuff. You can't stop them. They're not actually stealing from you - deny them their free booty and they will look for it elsewhere, not actually start buying your games. And you'll miss out on a lot of word-of-mouth advertising which often lands on honest ears as well as pirate ones.

Huh? Japs do not wish to offend others? By blurring genitals in porn?

What offense could porn commit by showing adults something they see on the toilet anyway?

Or do they want to keep their people in the dark? SexEd lessons: Put the blurry thing into this big pixelated area.

I think he meant they were trying to avoid offending *us*, because at the time the US had some decency laws that would have required that sort of thing. The Japanese didn't care, but included it to make us happy. Our laws changed, but theirs are stuck 60+ years in the past due to the surender and constitution we forced on them.

Sorry, but you're wrong. I could say, following that same logic, that US is intentionally harbouring pedophiles and neo-nacis, but the truth is simply that US is acting in accordance with its own law.

Same with Sweden. Their laws are different than yours, and I would dare say, far more advanced when it comes to civil justice and customer rights protection. Sweden is not "intending to undermine US copyright law", no more than US is "intending to create a naci-pedophile state" by following through with their respective laws.

Now, if you want to see an example of what it looks like when a country is trying to undermine something, google stuff around US non-extradiction deals and International Criminal Court.

I agree and pretty much said the same thing here at #21.  Thing is, it's not just games that are over-budgeted/over-priced.  Many software items are over-budgeted/over-priced... and not purely due to development/research costs, etc.  Executive greed and lavish lifestlyes comprise a very large component of what is paid by consumers at the checkout.  So yeah, the small software, gaming companies with a handful of employees are pirated less because they can sell quality games/sofware at more affordable prices because they don't have these massive overheads.

I've never been to Pirate Bay and have never downloaded pirated software... if I can't afford it legally I simply do without. However, I can understand why some do it.  While some do it to protest company policies/practices, etc... others do it because  exorbitant pricing to fund the lavish lifestyles of grossly overpaid execs is prohibitive... and why own a PC if you have nothing on it,

I refuse point blank to pay more than AUD $9.99 for a game, but I won't download a pirated version of *say* Demigod because it simply isn't that attractive to me, regardless of how much hype it receives.... and that's where much of the pirating begins, with the hype.  The more a company hypes up its products the greater chance they will be pirated... the "must have" drives up demand, and somebody's going to fill the void when exorbitant pricing makes "must have" unaffordable to the majority.

In essence, then, many high profile game/software companies have brought the pirating of their products upon themselves, though excessive profiteering to fund excesses... then they expect government to legislate to protect their profits.  To me it's all ass-backwards. Like whatever happened to the economic teaching that it's easier to get a dollar from a million people than it is the get a million dollars from one person.

It beats me why company execs think getting that Lamborghini in the driveway is going to be easier by selling a handful of games for $70 - $80 and upwards, when they could sell millions of units for $9.99 and have a Lamborghini AND a Porsche in the driveway.

Put bluntly, some effwits in business shouldn't be in business.  They are their own worst enemies (not the pirates) and worst enemies to the (would-be) consumer... enter the pirates to fill the void created by greed.

 

I completely agree on this point. I, personally, believe that we have a middle ground in Digital Distribution - which is why when companies use it to milk their customers I get pissed off. Companies are after a way to ensure their games can't be pirated, or at the very least cut down on it. Impulse and Steam offer non-intrusive ways to do this through their Account system that have already proven to be quite popular and actually work. Customers are tired of paying full retail price for games that don't often deliver - Digital Distribution again can help by removing the cost of packaging and shipping it to the stores to actually be sold.


I have to disagree. There is a clear distinction between an all purpose search engine, and one that caters exclusively to peer-to-peer file sharing that is, by it's own admission, built entirely for pirated media.


I understand your comment completely; regardless of moral outrage, if it isn't illegal the law can do nothing. I wasn't attempting to spin your words, I was merely stating that moral outrage creates laws, and thus has a part to play in the legal system. The problem in this situation is the moral outrage is being fueled by companies rather than the population, while the public is very much happy to continue getting things for free.


Sorry, I wasn't terribly specific - theft is a universal concept, and laws against theft exist even in Space, where the UN actually has jurisdiction. The problem here is the law behind what is taking place hasn't caught up with the criminals yet due in no small part to terminology and people worming their way through the system on technicalities. It's not about countries and borders to me - the only difference between any countries laws in regards to theft is the penalty for doing it because everyone agrees stealing is wrong, it's just that some countries don't view digital media as something that can be 'stolen'.


Again, we agree; I'm not saying one universal set of laws for everyone, I'm saying that pre-existing laws merely need to be amended because even Sweden has laws against theft. Piracy is theft, and although you can argue the definitions of the words involved in a court of law where inturpretation is everything, you're not proving that Piracy isn't theft your merely getting away with theft based on clever word play. It's still morally wrong, which is what created the original anti-theft laws to begin with and being as Sweden has anti-theft laws, I can only asume it's still morally wrong there, too. It's just a matter of time for the definitions of what theft is to change before we see a re-trial. And after sending T-shirts out, I suspect it'll be sooner rather than later.


No, I'm saying a friend bought the game and told me to play through it because it was awesome. If the game had of been good enough to prove EA Games's track history no longer applied, I'd had purchased it. It wasn't - thanks to it's DRM. How am I supposed to know if EA Games has changed it's ways if I never deal with them again? I'm not trying to kill them, burn their houses and murder their families by sending their stock prices crumbling and forcing them all into delusional fits of rage and depression ending in thousands of murder suicides, I'm trying to get them to make better games. This is why I bought SPORE: Galactic Adventures - it fullfilled part of the original promise of SPORE and deserved to be rewarded for doing so.


Did you even read this before you posted it?
I'm not buying their games because they spend money to make them, thus resulting in less income to make more games and thus requiring them to either lower their budgets for future games or make better games to make more money and continue to operate. This is the textbook definition of a boycott. When they make a game that adheres to my pre-stated standards, they receive my money as the reasons for boycotting them don't apply. SPORE: Galactic Adventures was a step in the right direction. Since Dragon Age: Origins is going to ship with similar DRM to Mass Effect, I consider this a step in the wrong direction; locking someone's game because they don't have internet access after they've purchased the game is not something I intend to reward.


By play through, I mean I saw the ending of the game on my friends computer after 60 minutes of playing through his auto-saves that were created through his play through; a highlights reel. He even showed me one entire level - the opening. The game ships with a limited number of installs thus, I will not purchase it. Why did he show me the game in such a manner? Because our internet connections were capped and so downloading the offical Demo wasn't an option at that time. He believed the game to be good enough to warrant purchase and tried to convince me.

Wrong.

The first requirement for that to be true is a formal declaration of war to be made.

If the 'conflict' is not declared then it is not a war....and thus 'war crime' does not apply.

September, 1939 ...England formally declared war against Germany [interestingly it was the same declared hour of the day for Australia...so we entered the war 10 hours before the English [in a calendar sense] and the Kiwis were two hours before us.

The fuck-up that was Pearl Harbour was all about the strike beating the formal notification....very non-cricket of the Japanese....

It's actually quite CIVILIZED, this war-mongering...

 

Typically, Piracy is all about a bunch of recently pubescent children who have never done a decent days work for a decent income...and resent anyone else who has...hence the phrase "sticking it to the man".

Why must the world have to endure the facile tantrums of children who resent their parents cos they get fuck-all pocket money and are yet to learn that what REALLY is theirs is actually valuable and deserves/warrants protection?

It's not a me generation...

It's not a gimme generation...

It's a me-take it generation and fuck youse all.

That turns out not to be the case. 30 seconds with google turns up several articles such as this, indicating that the British, being foolish enough to have ratified the ICC treaty, are having their soldiers charged and tried by the ICC for war crimes in Iraq. They didn't delcare war either.