id CEO Claims PC Hardware Manufacturers Love Piracy 676
arcticstoat sends a link to an interview with the CEO of id Software, Todd Hollenshead, in which he suggests that hardware manufacturers count on piracy to help drive profits, rather than doing something to prevent it. Quoting:
"...I think that there's been this dirty little secret among hardware manufacturers, which is that the perception of free content — even if you're supposed to pay for it on PCs — is some sort hidden benefit that you get when you buy a PC, like a right to download music for free or a right to download pirated movies and games. ...And I think that just based on their actions...what they say is one thing, but what they do is another. When it comes into debates about whether peer-to-peer file-sharing networks that by-and-large have the vast majority, I'm talking 99 per cent of the content is illicitly trading copyrighted property, they'll come out on the side of the 1 per cent of the user doing it for legitimate benefit."
years ago Piracy give windows and office a big.... (Score:5, Insightful)
years ago Piracy give windows and office a big boost to where they are now.
Simplest solution to stopping "piracy" (Score:3, Insightful)
Ditch perpetual copyrights. I say give corps 3-5 years to turn a profit and then it becomes public domain. For individuals a bit longer, but if you still can't make money, well, time to go back to plumber school I guess.
What's next? We keep paying doctors every few years for prior services rendered? Or how about the contractor that built your house you continue to live in?
ISPs too... (Score:3, Insightful)
ISPs are not much better with blatant advertising.
"Download movies at top speed!"
Missed opportunity for a follow-up question (Score:5, Insightful)
Q: It's the barrier-for-entry thing isn't it? It's really easy to pirate PC games whereas console games are much harder to pirate so the returns are better. What can PC hardware manufacturers do to make it harder for pirates?
Todd Hollenshead: There's lots of things that they could do but [...]
The next question should have been:
Such as what? What exactly are you proposing hardware manufacturers do about software piracy and peer-to-peer networking? You've said there's lots they can do but provided no examples. Give some.
"...rather than doing something to prevent it." (Score:5, Insightful)
pirated swag = more harddrives (Score:1, Insightful)
Well think about the more bootleg you have the more harddrive space you need. IE the 50 gb of pirated TV show plus the 20Gbs of music equals a harddrive, and what the easy way to back that up via usb or firewire harddrive?
comments are a long way from shareware (Score:5, Insightful)
old school id, 3d realms and apogee folk must be cringing at this kind of comment for it was the shareware "revolution" that created the major games industries we see today. if TH starts anti-piracy trolling, someone might have to remind him of his roots: episodic gaming is just the connect equivalent.
Re:Simplest solution to stopping "piracy" (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a huge difference between tangible property and intellectual property.
Don't mingle the two.
Re:Missed opportunity for a follow-up question (Score:4, Insightful)
Such as what? What exactly are you proposing hardware manufacturers do about software piracy and peer-to-peer networking? You've said there's lots they can do but provided no examples. Give some.
The easiest is a USB dongle, a lot of the more serious companies just do that.
That's a hardware solution, but it's provided by the software developer/publisher. There's nothing preventing Id or any other software producer using USB dongles right now (beyond it cutting into their bottom line of course). Todd Hollenshead seems to think there's something the hardware manufacturers themselves should be doing to make life easier for software developers.
You've gotta love the blame game (Score:5, Insightful)
It is complete and utter nonsense that hardware makers should be somehow held accountable for the dissatisfaction of software makers.
Software was free to begin with. The idea that software is a product is the notion that doesn't quite work. Hardware makers follow industry standard specs for the most part and add benefits here and there and ultimately strive to lower costs. It's a classical capitalistic market. Supply and demand rules fit neatly here.
Software, on the other hand, does not. The supply is LIMITLESS and the demand is limited. Software-as-a-product people are attempting to create a market where none naturally exists. But this is generally the case of all products that have a limitless capacity for production.
One fact is known by all players -- lower costs bring more buyers. Software people know this too. Unfortunately, they believe their "product" is worth more than is actually is. The "demand" side of the equation demonstrates that demand levels at the prices they set does not always yield the sale numbers that suppliers would like to see.
In some extreme cases, software people seem to believe that the use of software should determine its value. Ultimately, software people are intending to leverage their software to get a piece of your labor pie. Just look at the cost of CAD or other design and engineering software. The prices are utterly ridiculous! Their expectation is that people who use this software will probably make a lot of money and as such, they want a lot of the users' money. Could you imagine what would happen to the price of other tools simply because they might be used to create some very expensive product or end result? My god, those would be some expensive hammers and nails! It is unrealistic for software makers to demand such exorbitant prices.
Meanwhile, real product makers will go on doing what they do -- give the consumer what they want for the lowest price they can so that consumers will buy more of it.
Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
"Please give us a hardware-based lockdown solution for software authorization."
Re:Simplest solution to stopping "piracy" (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does every discussion of IP have to include someone pretending to not see the difference between a product with unlimited supply (data), and a product with a supply of one (the GP's house)? You know it's not the same thing, so why the silly act?
Instead, how about you explain how giving data artificial value through copyright is A Good Thing, and stop with this silly argument already?
Not their job (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not the hardware manufacturers' job to police for pirated software. Most of them--Apple being the notable exception--couldn't care less about the software running their hardware. The drivers and whatnot are a means to an end, a necessary bother in order to actually make their hardware usable.
In some cases, they don't even have to do anything to get their hardware working in certain operating systems--the users do it for them!
To say that hardware manufacturers love piracy is a misstatement. Hollenshead's point is moot. Hardware folks just want to sell hardware, just like ISPs just want to sell bandwidth: they don't care what you do with it once you purchase it because they don't need to.
Here's an idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
Create games that run perfectly on 3 year old computers and people won't spend money on new hardware, and instead (maybe) spend it on software.
Re:Simplest solution to stopping "piracy" (Score:5, Insightful)
Care to elaborate how this would stop piracy? Obviously after that date nobody can pirate those products anymore but the vast majority of piracy (at least the piracy that really bothers software developers and movie makers) occurs in the first 6 months of release.
Are you suggesting that people knowing that the copyright will expire sooner will cause them to wait 5 years until things are available legally for free? I honestly don't think that's true, so unless you've got something to back that up I think we can discount that as a valid argument - especially given that 90% of games are available for a fiver in the bargain bin within 18 months of release.
I'm no fan of DRM, Trusted Computing, or any other anti-piracy measure currently employed by major software publishers, but I don't see how copyright law has any tangible relationship to this subject.
Re:But does it run Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't even begin to make sense, I'm afraid.
One: Linux is basically unknown. Yes, we as Slashdotters know about it, and it runs on eight bajillion items, but the end user still remains basically ignorant.
Two: Linux doesn't require upgrades (in fact, it could really be argued that upgrading to the latest and greatest is a really bad thing for a Linux user, what with driver issues and all).
Three: Most of that pirated software won't run on Linux (or requires a bunch of screwing around to get working, hello WINE), so using Linux isn't a plus for people who want to avail themselves of that pirated content.
Open source software isn't the same as getting commercial software for free. As much as some of the gnulots around here would like you to believe, most of the time commercial software is still better--for an end user, although not always (or even often) from a technical perspective. (Just look at Windows versus any of the major Linux DEs. It's pretty obvious that Microsoft has UI experts and programmers who are paid to work with them, as opposed to "scratch your own itch" open source programmers. Nobody can, or should try to, force open source programmers to work on them, but there is a corresponding failure of usability inherent in such.)
This wording hurt me as a loyal customer (Score:3, Insightful)
ID CEO claims may carry some truths, but, for the least, it is as unbalanced as only enlightining the bright side of file sharing.
As a loyal ID Software customer, having baught every one of their games I play, all I can reply to them, is: Please dear brillant market aware ID CEO. Your wording hurt customers like me. Why do you spend time and money dealing with your non-customers, having such twisted juvenile words thrown as FUD in the wild?
It is sad I will have these awkward words in mind , the next time I plan on buying one of your upcomming games.
Re:Simplest solution to stopping "piracy" (Score:5, Insightful)
Creativity will NOT be rewarded in the future.
On the contrary. Creativity is precisely what will be rewarded in the future. It is distributors who will not be rewarded because the market for distribution of ideas was obsoleted by the internet. But creativity will always be in demand.
Re:Simplest solution to stopping "piracy" (Score:2, Insightful)
Using the same argument, only a few people can have christianity. You can't have any religion, because I've taken it all!
Re:"...rather than doing something to prevent it." (Score:1, Insightful)
I assume he was referring to something like HDMI or BluRay, where the content is encrypted and only licensed hardware can decode it.
Because we all know how effective such a thing is... ;)
Re:Here's an idea. (Score:2, Insightful)
Or maybe... (Score:4, Insightful)
HW manufacturers don't understand why they should cripple their products and lose a buck so Mr. Hollenshead can make a buck.
Re:But does it run Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
Manufacturers tell people all the time what to want. It's called advertising.
Re:Simplest solution to stopping "piracy" (Score:2, Insightful)
You know it's not the same thing, so why the silly act?
But it is, in a very real and very important way.
The workman's effort was expended to create that house. The workman's effort was expended to create that software. Why should the programmer not be rewarded for it? (Or are you one of those mouthbreathers who really thinks that a company like Epic is going to write its next Unreal engine based on donations?)
Re:Not their job (Score:3, Insightful)
Multi-purpose computers will still be available, at a price, but will we have to get a license for them since they can be used for "pirate stuff"?
Consoles are the solution (Score:3, Insightful)
If he really believes what he says then he should simply stop releasing PC games and go console only. Of course there's a another whole set of problems when you go that route. Sounds to me more like a big case of WOW envy.
DRM in the hands for the consumer will always be cracked. It is pointless to try and chase it.
Re:Simplest solution to stopping "piracy" (Score:3, Insightful)
Why does every discussion of IP have to include someone pretending to not see the difference between a product with unlimited supply (data), and a product with a supply of one (the GP's house)?
This is because people (probably starting from the content cabal) have obfuscated the definition of "intellectual property" so that it now colloquially refers to music, movies, games, stories, etc. - the intangible ideas or data which you noted are unlimited (or undefined) in quantity. Ideas aren't property, nor do they resemble property, primarily because they don't exhibit scarcity.
Intellectual property actually refers to the copyrights, patents, or trademark rights themselves. While these items are intangible, they are naturally scarce; in fact, for a particular work/invention/mark, the available quantity is exactly one. In addition, you can do more or less anything with intellectual property that you can with real property: you can sell it, you can rent it, and you can sue people for trespassing on it.
Yeah, right. (Score:1, Insightful)
Its not "helping pirates", its "not being a complete idiot and bankrupting your business"
If for example a motherboard manufacturer would implement a anti piracy/drm chip or such to one or all of their boards people would just buy another product or from another vendor.
Why would anyone in their right mind let a software manufacturer to cripple their computer physically when they deem that your copy is not legit when we know how how accurately and well drm has worked before.
"No internet connection to authenticate? Well we'll just shut down your computer then."
flipping burgers (Score:1, Insightful)
There appear to be a lot of slashdot people that either don't have a speck of creativity or value what creativity they have at about the level of flipping burgers at McDonald's. It seems they can't (gimme gimme gimme) wait to enjoy the fruits of (someone else's) creativity, but that the creative person should be treated like someone who flips burgers.
Creating something is not like flipping burgers.
People who can create should not be treated like someone who flips burgers. When a creative person makes something new, (or better) it provides jobs for CEO's and marketing and sales and manufacturing and shipping and so on. After providing the fuel and justification for all of this employment and commerce, why shouldn't the creative person be entitled to remuneration, for as long as all of these other people are benefiting monetarily off of the creative persons efforts and gift?
If you treat creative people like burger flippers (don't kill the goose) they may lose interest in creating anything new (laying golden eggs) for you. Of course, that might suite some people just fine, then they wouldn't have to be consumed with envy.
Re:Simplest solution to stopping "piracy" (Score:4, Insightful)
For the record, my publisher is based in the USA, and regards 3,000 sales as the minimum needed to make a profit. This works out to less than two sales per day over five years. Any book that can't do that well probably shouldn't be published anyway.
Re:Confused CEO (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But does it run Linux? (Score:4, Insightful)
Somewhat. I mean to imply that Linux doesn't benefit from the "look, software you don't have to pay for!" effect because the shiny new hardware generally works like shit on it, and there's no real economic reason for hardware manufacturers to go out of their way to support Linux because there are so few users. It's a catch-22, and a thorny one.
Re:Simplest solution to stopping "piracy" (Score:5, Insightful)
Define property.
This is where the problem starts. Once we can agree on this point, then we can move forward. The problem is that the sides of this debate define property differently. Many people define property as tangible stuff that they own. Other people define property as stuff that the courts will enforce your right to control.
The right to control is the most basic property right, so it makes sense that some folks will use that definition. But most people deal with the right in the context of their house, their clothes, or their car, but not in the context of ideas or expressions.
Until we agree on a meaning, the sides will be talking past each other.
--AC
Re:Simplest solution to stopping "piracy" (Score:3, Insightful)
I did read the Gowers Report; I disagree with some of the claims made in it (chiefly among them the failure to take into account the likelihood of people just not buying titles because they know that they'll be free not that far down the line), but more importantly I also wasn't clear enough in my post. Yes, a publisher is profitable off a small number of books. In your publisher's case, three thousand sales is the minimum for the publisher to make a profit. When I talk about books being unprofitable, I'm speaking of profitability for authors. Writing is often very much a full-time job--while there are a lot of authors who can't support themselves off their writing, this is an excellent way to cut out any real chance of it, because residuals from older titles often form a good chunk of any moderately successful writer's income. (And not many authors are becoming rich off their work as it is. Why screw them over further?)
With regards to "The ones that are still selling well after this period..." -- well, why the hell should they be prevented from continuing to profit? Obviously there's still a demand to purchase them--why should this demand be kneecapped? Like I said above, a five-year copyright will do a lot to kill purchases just because it'll be free pretty soon down the line.
Re:But does it run Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would a hardware maker of any sort want to back a platform that decreases the incentive to upgrade and buy more hardware?
The days before OpenOffice (Score:5, Insightful)
Back when PCs came preloaded, there wasn't Lotus Symphony, Paint.NET, GIMP, Thunderbird etc. There was Lotus 1-2-3, Photoship, WinFax and Eudora - all pay-to-use, and later on crippled versions for "free". If you couldn't pay, the only alternative was piracy.
Open Source gives the freedom NOT to use pirated material.
Open Platform (Score:3, Insightful)
Kind of stupid to bitch about the very traits of a platform that makes your content viable. Hardware vendors should not be the software police.
Re:Simplest solution to stopping "piracy" (Score:5, Insightful)
With regards to "The ones that are still selling well after this period..." -- well, why the hell should they be prevented from continuing to profit?
Why should they be allowed to? Copyright exists for one purpose - to encourage people to create. Once they have made enough profit that it was worth creating it in the first place, then copyright has already served its purpose. If shortening the copyright term encourages people to write more then that's even better, although most of the people still making a significant profit after five years already made enough that they never need to write again.
You claim to be speaking on behalf of writers, but most of us don't want you to. You'd be surprised how few authors support copyright terms longer than 5-10 years. They don't benefit us, they don't benefit society, and they make people less willing to respect copyright in general.
Re:You've gotta love the blame game (Score:1, Insightful)
People are confused. Software is not free. It does not magically come into existence through natural processes. It is created by trained individuals who spend large amounts of valuable time. In the end what you're really paying for is the services of those individuals.
Let's do some quick math. I'm 2 years out of school with my masters, located in silicon valley. I get paid $100K a year to write software. Add benefits, stock options, stock purchasing programs, etc and the cost to the company for my compensation is probably closer to $200K a year. Now let's say that I'm on a team of 5 programmers, working on a CAD program for modeling headlights on cars. We spend 1 year writing, perfecting, and productizing the software at a total cost to the company of $1 Million.
Now the market for the software isn't large. Let's say we sell to 10 manufacturers in the world. That means our software has to cost $100K in order to break even on the engineering costs alone. Lowering the cost of the software will probably not increase the demand for this piece of engineering software, because it's specialty software.
I don't know where you got the idea that demand for engineering software was so elastic.
Another "dirty" "little" "secret" aka well known (Score:3, Insightful)
Game companies create new games all the time that demand new hardware and the hardware industry then promotes them. Even if those games could run on older hardware and look almost if not just as nice. So Quake was never given away with new graphic hardware? And how about that "the way it's meant to be played"?
Re:Time to start... (Score:5, Insightful)
...pirating id's stuff.
That's how Id got big, remember? Doom was pirated a lot, and that made it a big hit.
Re:Translation (Score:1, Insightful)
Because it'd fuck over the valid users many times over?
Either it'd kill open source as we know it or would be bypassed in a week.
Re:What a secret! (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only that but IP industry is the horse and buggy industry of the 21st century, why exactly do these people deserve our protection? Should we have protected the horse and buggy industry from going obsolete?
Oh, please. This analogy gets brought up into every single fucking IP discussion on this site, and it is always way the hell off base. There is no brave new industry that is making something better than what the software makers are making now... people are just taking what they make for free. When someone is making a new type of thing which obsoletes software, get back to me, and then you can use the buggy whip analogy. Until then, stuff it, because it doesn't apply one bit.
In any other area if we were capable of replicating matter and energy for food so entire industries would collapse over night, they would be seen as horrible people from trying to stop such technology from being used by people.
Yes, and that is because the work in those areas is the reproduction of the product. The work in IP is actually creating the thing you wish to sell, reproduction is and always has been effortless. When someone comes up with a way to instantly and effortlessly create a new piece of software which you want, then your analogy will apply.
Good God, why is is that no one on /. who opposes IP even understands the issue at hand?
Re:You've gotta love the blame game (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps, but the big, big problem is that software has almost zero marginal cost, and huge capital cost. In the example of CAD and engineering software, the market is really quite niche, but good tools are extremely valuable to that market: if an engineer's time is worth $140k in salary and benefits, a tool that improves his productivity threefold is easily worth $5k a license.
The expectation is not only that people make a lot of money using the tools, but that there are not many of them. If Pro/E had an user base as large as Word, they could afford to charge the same price, even though their product is vastly more complicated and fault sensitive.
Re:What a secret! (Score:3, Insightful)
What really killed the Amiga was id Software releasing "Doom".
What really killed the Amiga was "mismanagement".
Re:Simplest solution to stopping "piracy" (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right it wouldn't END piracy, it would certainly reduce the scope of what is piracy.
I've lost or had discs become damaged to no fault of my own. I have gone out and downloaded new copies, but under current terms, I'd be a pirate, despite having paid for the game (in many cases full retail price as opposed to waiting for it to be in the fiver bin.).
You reduce the scope of piracy and then can focus better on the actual problem (people downloading something they haven't paid for.). Much of the time this crying about piracy is just a blanket term used to go after anyone downloading anything.
Of course... (Score:4, Insightful)
The hardware companies are greedy companies who are perfectly content to screw anyone or look the other way so long as it will improve profits...
Software companies are just the same...
The difference is that hardware companies have more competitors, and much smaller margins, while copyright infringement is much easier than duplicating hardware.
Do you really think that if it was possible to download hardware for free, the software companies wouldn't be doing exactly the same thing trying to get more sales?
Re:What a secret! (Score:3, Insightful)
Good God, why is is that no one on /. who opposes IP even understands the issue at hand?
Because they are mostly kids who have never created anything of value.
Re:Simplest solution to stopping "piracy" (Score:2, Insightful)
No, but you're welcome to make a copy of it.
Re:What a secret! (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing is...
Most people have limited budgets...
You can't get up to date hardware for free.
So you have a choice...
A slower computer and a small set of paid software
A faster computer and a large set of pirated or free software
There's really no comparison is there.
Re:What a secret! (Score:1, Insightful)
Don't blame the customers. Blame the software developers for not creating easier to use more attractive software. Its not like the skill doesn't exist at all, Apple seems to have figured it out.
20 years ago.
Re:Not their job (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple couldn't care less what software you run on their hardware either. They DO care what hardware you run their software on.
Re:What a secret! (Score:4, Insightful)
Is this a joke ? You're not seriously wondering why the radically different skill that writing good software requires results in applications working according to, let's say, different philosophies ?
The only thing right about apple's interface is the consistency. Can you point me to a way to use anything OTHER THAN ITUNES to get an mp3 playing on my iphone ? Apple is "nice" as long as you toe the line. The only thing apple does a little bit right is consistency across it's interface. Mac OS is impractical, paternalistic in the extreme, and pushy as hell ... and yes it's a bit nicer to look at than linux or windows.
This consistency is pushed onto software developers from apple headquarters with, to say the very least, an iron fist.
While this made users initially happy, for obvious reasons developers didn't like it. They hated apple, from the beginning, and the hate only grew stronger. So there weren't all that many developers, and therefore not too many apps for apple.
And then microsoft came along. And gave developers visual basic. Easy to use, fast to get results, but to say the least, not perfect. Obviously given that you "just want to develop something", you "want to give developing a try" you're (and this is still true) going to do it on windows. This was true long before windows became anywhere near dominant in the marketplace.
Therefore there's MANY more apps for windows. And before that all applications ran on DOS. Why ? Because that was cheap and easy. Getting an app to run on mac os/iphone is both expensive, difficult, and you have to pass apple's "commisar". DOS/Windows doesn't force stuff onto you. I'm going to get a lot of flak for this post, but just look at the exact same situation :
matlab vs mathematica. Mathematica is beautiful. Nicely built, nice to look at. And a veritable thumbscrew to develop in, just like mac os. Matlab gets results, and is beyond ugly in design. It's literally a deep dark pit in the ground and you can see a faint red light glowing at the bottom. Yet nearly everyone jumps in the matlab pit.
The exact same situation you have with iphone versus windows smartphones. Why do you only have skype on windows smartphones ? Why do you only have good calculators on windows smartphones ? Why do you only have on windows smartphones ... no developer keys, and no restrictions on what you can put on devices. It gets worse. The physical restrictions of windows mobile are MUCH, MUCH worse than those of the iphone. Apple has loosened up a tiny little bit. But that loosening is costing the iphone in consistency, and a lot. It's loosing it's beauty, but it works better.
In the end it's similar to communism/socialism versus capitalism : central planning/forced consistency looks good, and IF you like the guy that's currently at the wheel it may work for a little while. Everything may not work, but at least it looks like it actually fits. Capitalism is a thousand trumpets blowing completely out of sync. But when you have to live with it central planning/communism/socialism is a death knell, and capitalism gets things done (1000 ways will fail, 1 will work, that's the way of capitalism. The 1000 that fail are not a pretty picture, and the one that does gets "all the glory". Communism/socialism/central planning only tries one way, or maybe a few. If those few tries fail ... then it's over. No matter how many people know how to solve the problem, nobody else gets to try)
You see that with the olympics in China : the top layer looks beautiful. Lots of nice girls, beautiful city (for the moment). But ... it's being forced onto the people at gunpoint. And apple's "easy to use more attractive software" is also being forced at (the proverbial cryptographical-development-keys) gunpoint. It looks nice if the person holding the gun is trying to impress you. It does not look good AT ALL if you're on the other end of the gun.
And developers, the people you as a user depend on, are on the barrel end of apple's gun.
Who do you think is going to win after the "oooh" factor wears off ? Apple is currently a blip, a drop on a hot plate. It will shine ... for a short while. Then *poof*.
Re:What a secret! (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, please. This analogy gets brought up into every single fucking IP discussion on this site, and it is always way the hell off base.
Oh, so supply and demand is off base is it? You seem to be a little inconsistent in your economic principles there. If food were able to be replicated from matter in your own back yard, the entire food industry would go under, same goes for power. The thing is it happened to information first.
I'm reminded of an American friend of mine who said "Son, there are no capitalists. They are ALL socialists, if it's not socialism for the poor it's socialism for the rich, if it's not socialism for the rich, it's socialism for the middle class, they all want to find the golden egg and exploit the others".
He certainly was correct for the majority of them, people want to find the golden egg and sit on it forever. Who cares if you do work, the market (supply and demand) is supposed to determine it's value not the producers. i.e. free choice. Not some autocratic monopoly capitalist (or rather quasi capitalist-socialist) dictators.
There is no brave new industry that is making something better than what the software makers are making now...
You must have missed the digital revolution, we invented hardware that made supply of information practically limitless -- supply and demand again.
People are just taking what they make for free.
Maybe you need a history lesson, all states and all peoples took for free, land and resources that was not really there's to begin with. Property is a social construct to help us solve problems and dominate other peoples and groups for the dominant ideology of the age in history one lives.
You technically really never "own" anything, in the ultimate sense, we just pretend to do so because it's pragmatic. Whenever you "create" something, you're just re-arranging pre-existent matter and energy, so I don't think that entitles one to eternal ownership, ownership yes, eternally, no.
When someone is making a new type of thing which obsoletes software, get back to me, and then you can use the buggy whip analogy. Until then, stuff it, because it doesn't apply one bit.
I think you don't really grasp the full nature of the problem, in our world, the whip and buggy industry (information "engineering" industries, movies, music, whatever else, etc) just got replaced by a replicator, a REAL world replicator. The PC and the net.
In startrek it is a machine capable of creating (and recycling) objects. Replicators were originally seen used to synthesize meals on demand, but in later series, they are used for lots of other things.
But in our world they exist for information, sorry, humans have been innovating since the dawn of time. Just because a bunch of whiny kids (and yes many capitalists are childish) had their intellectual property party ruined by technology doesn't mean much.
You guys are fighting Prohibition and we all know how that worked out. It's not going to happen, the genie is not going back.
Yes, and that is because the work in those areas is the reproduction of the product. The work in IP is actually creating the thing you wish to sell, reproduction is and always has been effortless.
No reproduction has not always been effortless, songs and theater before the advent of camera's, recording media, radio and microphone, not to mention all it's spin off technologies. You had to travel to see people, or communicate using more primitive technologies (letters, etc).
I'm not sure how I got modded down, there just must be a lot of ideologues on today.
Bring back the code wheels, passwords. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure more than a few /.ers remember the old PC role playing games, with their code wheels and the occasional prompting for "word 4 of paragraph 3 of page 8 of the manual." and whatnot. They were the cheap equivalent of a hardware dongle and while slightly more difficult to duplicate than the 3.5 disks (or CDs) the games came on, in my opinion they gave a great "value added" feel to the experience. Hell, even Metal Gear Solid had something like this - one of the access codes you needed to proceed with the game was printed on the back of the game case. Bugger if you were playing a burned copy!
These methods are ultimately better than a CD check or similar, as they actually engage the player and give them a reason to keep the game packaging around. Unfortunately these days, game packaging is disgustingly minimal - the days of the latest Square RPG coming with giant fold-out maps and equally large fold-outs of bestiary stats and item lists (anyone remember the original Final Fantasy NES packaging? That bigass poster Dragon Warrior came with?) are long gone... ultimately leaving the gamer with "less hassle" as the only reason to buy the game or software instead of downloading it.
I'm not into multiplayer online gaming or mods, custom models, etceteras (probably due to my roots as a console gamer) - I don't want forty multiplayer modes as the "value added" bit for a few hours of single player - I want a keychain fob or a tchotchkey for my tower or something I can hang on my wall. In the box, not available from the company's online store for even more money, thank you.
As long as bits have to be read, piracy will always be an issue. I say stop whinging about it and put in a little extra effort to reward the people that want to give you their money!
Re:What a secret! (Score:5, Insightful)
You may not have noticed, but a computer does not "work" without software. That's why it's perfectly reasonable for consumers to expect software to come loaded on their new computer. When you buy a cellular phone, do you expect it to come with empty memory so you have to install the communications software on it before you can make a call?
Nobody is forcing Dell or HP or Sony to load tons of junk on their computers when they leave the factory.
Now, speaking to the issue at hand, the idea that computer hardware manufacturers are "in favor of" piracy just because some of them don't want to include DRM in the hardware or firmware is just a bunch of crap. You have a bunch of crybabies saying that "it's their fault" instead of looking at themselves in the mirror.
For example, many people have found that it's just simpler to pay for computer games when they are sold and delivered in a sensible, reasonably-priced manner, such as Steam, instead of downloading them from TPB. So a group of vendors actually thought of a solution instead of trying to turn users into terrorists, and now they're making money and consumers are happy.
A casual home user who needs a word processor shouldn't be expected to lay out $500 for some overblown suite. And thanks to openoffice.org, google docs, etc, we are learning we don't have to. There are even quite a few professionals who find that Open Office works just fine, thank you. There was a time when anyone who wanted to use a computer had to budget in a thousand bucks just to do some basic tasks.
The question isn't whether corporations should make money. It's whether they need a steady stream of ever-increasing record-breaking profits. Pigs do get slaughtered, you know.
Act of creation vs. act of propagation (Score:3, Insightful)
Because they are mostly kids who have never created anything of value.
The main problem comes from the fact that while, as you report, creating something of value is the most difficult part, currently what is charged by the economic model is the propagation of said creations, something that the average kid can do for free as easily as a finger snap.
And that's why the current model used by the media industry is as obsolete as the horse/buggy metaphor. It's not that they have been replaced by something better, it's just that they have become irrelevant.
The media market needs to come up with a new solution to compensate the artist, because the current one is attached to a step of the distribution chain that - although it made a lot of sense in the beginning (getting copies of music reach the consumer's home used to be as difficult as the production it self, but was a much more convenient point where to ask for money) - has become trivial now a day.
Producing music still costs money, but the point where the paying was done isn't a blocker that people can't get around anymore.
The current situation requires honor and honesty from people, so that they continue giving money even if technology would permit them to get it for free. (Pay to get a copy on CD so musician receive some fraction of it, even if getting a copy can be done effortlessly for free)
The current business model doesn't work anymore. But instead of trying to come up with a new one which works better in the modern world, industries are wasting resource on flawed system that try to prolong the current model - unsuccessfully (like DRM), introducing legal mean to make it mandatory (DMCA) and suing the hell out of average Janes and Joes.
And the problem is that finding a new working model is a complex task, difficult to achieve if not enough resources are thrown at it.
Time to update your worldview. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope. Apple won't poof. Microsoft's day in the sun was due to the cheapness of their products. Now that everyone has a computer they would like to get a GOOD one. Thats where Apple's Mac OS X comes in. Its been gaining in marketshare over both Windows AND Linux. Thats not an anomaly.
All that other stuff you listed is SO irrelevant to the non-engineer/geek customer. No one but such folks cares that Apple requires people to go through the "commisar" to develop for the iPhone. And no developing for the iPhone and OS X is not expensive in the least unless you're a seriously broke person who can't afford a used Intel Mac. Paternalistic and pushy? What are you a Montana mountain militia man? This is software we're talking about. Don't let the philosophies of free software and open source trick you into thinking that such things are actually important to non-geeks.
Your long screed about computing history's past also fails to note the current times. We all know there's more programs available for Windows. Whats really news is ever since Apple switched to Intel processors allowing virtualization of Windows and more importantly the video games that run on it Apple's Mac market share has been taking off like gangbusters.
As for developers being at the end of Apple's barrel... thats ridiculous. Drama queen/free software fanatic developers don't like Apple's iPhone SDK policies but other, more mature, developers are getting along just fine. So fine that they're already making money from the iPhone AppStore. There's a friggin stampede towards iPhone app development. When someone can make $2,000 a day people sit up and take notice. http://www.appleiphoneapps.com/2008/08/part-time-iphone-developer-makes-2000-a-day/ [appleiphoneapps.com]
LOTS of developers are making good money on the iPhone right now even though only a few million have the device. Can the same be said for Windows Mobile developers? Palm OS developers? Symbian, Blackberry or Linux mobile developers? Apple's gearing up to manufacture 45 million more iPhones in 2009. If developers are earning $2,000 a day now thats going to explode in the years to come. So the iPhone is doing just fine on the developer front, and seeing as how Apple gives out free programming tools for Mac OS X and you need an Intel Mac to develop for the iPhone and how the two programming environments are so similar its also raising Mac OS X development too.
You are suffering from what I like to call P.D.D. Perspective Deficit Disorder. You are looking at the technology industry from the viewpoint of a geek and are assuming everyone else on the planet does as well. Thats simply not true. If it were then GUIs would never had been developed. Regular people value good products that work well. They don't care about the GPL, they don't care about open standards, they don't care about copyleft or 'sharing with your neighbor'. As for Windows Mobile Apple couldn't be LESS worried about that platform. RIM's Blackberry in the US and Nokia's Symbian worldwide are the big titans. Windows Mobile has been on the market for over 7 years already and in ALL that time has failed to take the #1 or #2 spot. Its a non-event.
Rest easy though. For the small percentage of people on the planet who value 'independence' over practicality there will always be companies that cater to you. Looks like Google's Android will be picking up that mantle.
Have fun with it.
Re:But does it run Linux? (Score:4, Insightful)
I shouldn't feed such a blatant troll but what the hell.
'One: Linux is basically unknown. Yes, we as Slashdotters know about it, and it runs on eight bajillion items, but the end user still remains basically ignorant.'
That would depend on the crowd, most of the people I talk to now have heard of linux even if they don't know what it is. However, most of them don't know what windows is either.
'Two: Linux doesn't require upgrades (in fact, it could really be argued that upgrading to the latest and greatest is a really bad thing for a Linux user, what with driver issues and all).'
What driver issues? My last two new system builds loaded without the need for additional drivers. Firmware needed to be downloaded to run my wireless adapter properly but Ubuntu helpfully does that for me.
'Open source software isn't the same as getting commercial software for' free.
your right, for the most part I've found the popular open source software better than commercial offerings.
'(Just look at Windows versus any of the major Linux DEs. It's pretty obvious that Microsoft has UI experts and programmers who are paid to work with them'
Yes, the programmers obviously didn't care about what they were doing and the UI is horrible. It actually gets worse with age. The MacOS UI is better but still fails to measure up to Gnome or KDE.
I duno about that (Score:5, Insightful)
The Doom 3 engine, which is what everything since then has been based on, really fails to impress me. Several problems:
1) It doesn't look as good as it should for the hardware requirements. I remember when Doom 3 came out, my PC struggled with it despite being decent. Had to run it at 800x600. No big deal... Except that it really didn't back that up with beauty. For example if you got close to a surface, you started to see pixelization of textures, even with it set on ultra detail. The game just used pretty low rez textures, and had nothing like the detail textures that the Unreal Engine uses to deal with close up viewing.
2) It was too concerned about being "realistic" not enough about looking good. The lighting model is a great example. They wanted 100% dynamic lighting, meaning there was no magic global lights, all lights had a source. Great... Except their lights didn't reflect or refract. Light would hit a surface and bounce only once. If it went to the camera, ok you saw it. Anywhere else, it went away. This lead to the hard shadows and the extremely dark corners. You could have a corner with two bright lights right by it, but if neither shined directly back in there, the corner would be pitch black because there isn't any reflected light. While that may be more "correct" than models used by some games, I don't care, it doesn't look as good and that's what matters.
3) The games had little replay value. Doom 3 in particular was all about shock value. I've gotta say, it was a scary game to play the first time through. However, it lost all that after the first run. When you know the imp is standing behind the door to ambush you, it's not so scary anymore. With the scare factor gone, it was really a fairly mediocre shooter in my opinion.
4) Poor backward scaling. While the Doom 3 engine now runs on what is quite old hardware, when it came out it was very much a Crysis. It needed first flight hardware to run. It wasn't just that you had to have it to look good, you needed it to run at all. DX8 or better hardware was mandatory. All the peopel with DX7 hardware were SOL. Well, many other games scaled much better. They had to give up shiny features on older hardware, but they still ran.
Over all I think iD has really dropped the ball recently and I think it shows in engine sales. Unreal Engine has been vastly outselling the iD Tech engine. Their problems with sales don't come from piracy, but from lack of quality. Their games, as you said, are not great. I gave Quake 4 a pass, and same for Enemy Territory. Decided to get Unreal Tournament 3 instead. Their engine is also getting almost no licenses. People are buying the Unreal Engine instead. No surprise there either. UE 3 looks fantastic, and scales quite well. It may not be as technologically "correct" as Id's engine in terms of lighting and such, but who care? Ultimately it looks awesome and that is what you are paying for.
I get tired of companies that release poor quality products blaming poor sales on piracy. This is especially true for companies that release shit that requires the highest end, most badass computer. Crytek was whining about that with Crysis. "Oh we only sold a million copies, those evil pirates are killing us!" Hmmm, you think maybe instead the reason you only sold a million copies is because you need, as Yahtzee put it, a hypothetical future computer from space to play it well? I gave Crysis a miss because looking at benchmarks, it wouldn't have run well on my system. When I came out, I had an 8800 GTS, not the top of the line, but damn near it in terms of video cards. Reason I had it is I have a large LCD. I want games to run nice and fast on that large LCD. They do to. However the Crysis benchmarks showed it didn't. Maybe if I had 2 8800 GTXes it would have, but my lowly GTS (a $400 card I might add) wasn't enough. Ok, well I didn't need that, so I passed on it.
Well same shit with Doom 3. I did actually pick that one up but it really ran pathetic. I wasn't rocking top of the line graphics hardware, but
Re:But does it run Linux? (Score:4, Insightful)
I shouldn't feed such a blatant troll but what the hell.
Not a troll. I'm an open-source developer. I just don't drink the kool-aid and I'm willing to admit that we still have work to do.
That would depend on the crowd, most of the people I talk to now have heard of linux even if they don't know what it is. However, most of them don't know what windows is either.
Meaningless statement.
What driver issues? My last two new system builds loaded without the need for additional drivers. Firmware needed to be downloaded to run my wireless adapter properly but Ubuntu helpfully does that for me.
As said so frequently on Linux Hater's Blog [blogspot.com], WorksForMe(tm) is not an acceptable answer.
your right, for the most part I've found the popular open source software better than commercial offerings.
Perhaps for you it's easier. For most people, it seems like the popular open source software is vastly inferior. People would rather pay for MS Office than use OpenOffice. People would rather pay for Visio than use Dia. People would rather pay for Photoshop than use The GIMP. If they were inferior, why would this be so?
Yes, the programmers obviously didn't care about what they were doing and the UI is horrible. It actually gets worse with age. The MacOS UI is better but still fails to measure up to Gnome or KDE.
Telling the GNOME and KDE developers feel-good lies like this doesn't help. Echo chambers are bad.
Re:Translation (Score:4, Insightful)
Computers are tools and tools should do what their owners want. If I want to use a wrench as a hammer there is nothing stopping me. Would you want a wrench that if you tried to use it as a hammer it would shock you or better yet report back to some authority that you are misusing your tool?
The owner of the computer should have ultimate control over the hardware and software. Hardware that disobeys the owners wishes won't sell well. Look at Vista, it's sales have no doubt been hurt by it's inbuilt copy protection system. A system that prevents the computers owner from doing what they want to do in some cases.
Re:Simplest solution to stopping "piracy" (Score:3, Insightful)
Reduce the scope, leaving more resources to pursue that reduced scope.
OeLeWaPpErKe: are you paid by Micro$oft? (Score:1, Insightful)
Your post is total B.S. I hope you are not a software developer, because I would not touch anything you write with a 20 ft pole....
I happen to disagree with all the choices you made.
"Mac OS is impractical, paternalistic in the extreme, and pushy as hell"
Nonsense. Impractical, right. Paternalistic? What's more paternalistic than Windoze? Mac OS X is UNIX, tweakable in the extreme.
"And then microsoft came along. And gave developers visual basic.....Therefore there's MANY more apps for windows."
Correction: There are MANY more CRAPPY applications for windoze.
"matlab vs mathematica. ....Yet nearly everyone jumps in the matlab pit."
I don't. I chose Mathematica and never regretted it. Many others agree with me.
"The exact same situation you have with iphone versus windows smartphones. Why do you only have skype on windows smartphones ? Why do you only have good calculators on windows smartphones ? "
But try browsing the web in the iPhone vs. a Windoze smartphone...I don't want Skype, whose protocol is proprietary. Good calculators? Please, just wait and see.
Your analogies with capitalism/socialism are totally out of place. So Apple is socialism?!???
"Apple is currently a blip". A blip that has been around for 30 years during which M$ continuously copied them (badly)?
I bet you consider McDonald gourmet food.
Re:The days before OpenOffice (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet, by and large, people still aren't choosing that freedom.
For everyone who's running Open Office, I bet there's a dozen pirated copies of Office.
Re:Translation (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, right, because you just want to use his software for free.
Re:What a secret! (Score:3, Insightful)
Easy explanation. The Amiga was already considered a commercial dead-end by the time the Internet became popular in 1994-5, and Commodore folded soon afterwards.
Admittedly the platform lived on for years with third party hardware/software support, but practically nobody considered 'alive' in this time period.