An In-Depth Look At Game Piracy 504
TweakGuides is running a detailed examination of PC game piracy. The author begins with a look at the legal, moral, and monetary issues behind copyright infringement, and goes on to measure the scale of game piracy and how it affects developers and publishers. He also discusses some of the intended solutions to piracy. He provides examples of copy protection and DRM schemes that have perhaps done more harm than good, as well as less intrusive measures which are enjoying more success. The author criticizes the "culture of piracy" that has developed, saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century, and piracy has apparently somehow become a political struggle, a fight against greedy corporations and evil copy protection, and in some cases, I've even seen some people refer to the rise of piracy as a 'revolution.' What an absolute farce. ... Piracy is the result of human nature: when faced with the option of getting something for free or paying for it, and in the absence of any significant risks, you don't need complex economic studies to show you that most people will opt for the free route."
saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm already there, you ignorant clod!
People will pirate when it's overpriced. When it's right-priced, most people will gladly pay for it.
Re:Piracy is the result of human nature (Score:5, Insightful)
Piracy is what happens near Somalia right now. Oh, you meant copyright infringement? Nevermind...
They still don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, there's always a third route: Not getting that something, meaning that having these three options:
- 1. Play for free
- 2. Play at a cost
- 3. Don't play at all
Many people will sort it 1,3,2.
Also, some people will happily do 2,1,3 as long the price is reasonable and so it what they get.
So... stop trying to get money from people who just don't value your product if it isn't free, because it can't be done. You can piss them off though, and that can hurt your business.
Re:File Sharing is not piracy! (Score:2, Insightful)
You're a couple decades late if you're trying to stop this new definition of piracy. It's too late, just accept it into your vocabulary.
BULLSHIT. (Score:5, Insightful)
If i buy the game. They treat me like a thief. Install things that may or may not fuckup my computer or game. Require the disk to be in the drive. Require activation and other bullshit. Limit the number of installs i can do. Tell me what programs i'm not allowed to use like daemon tools. And costs a shitload for a semi-beta game.
If i pirate the game. I don't have any of that. AND it's free.
Piracy. Better product, lower price.
You're kinda foolish not to pirate anymore...
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but that's subjective. For me, no game is worth more than $5. Not because I'm cheap, but because I hardly ever play, and if it do, it's only for a while. So if you want to get $50 from me you are going to let me play like 10 different games or so. Note that I would still play less time than most gamers.
It's possible though that the model that they'd need to make me a regular customer is just not viable. I don't really care as these days I can live without games. But when I played a lot I couldn't really afford all the games I wanted, and now that I can -within reason- I just don't feel like playing.
Re:They still don't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
If they're only going to use your product for free, how is it hurting business to piss them off? As you stated, they're not going to buy it anyway.
Re:File Sharing is not piracy! (Score:4, Insightful)
It has always been called piracy. File sharing is a new term that has come into use with p2p software. File sharing is arguably distinctly different, and you probably dont want to muddy the waters between legal filesharing, and illegal piracy.
Re:They still don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Because using your product for free is not the worst scenario. Just because they don't play it doesn't mean they don't know people who do, or spend time in forums bashing you.
Take slashdot (not literally please): Many people here won't waste a chance to criticize Spore's DRM, even if they don't really care about Spore and wouldn't buy it even if it didn't have any DRM at all. Still, we are _pissed_ at EA for the DRM, and let everyone know.
Re:BULLSHIT. (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember when just having the disc in the drive was a step up from having to look up codes on page x line y in some book that came with the game. I remember after that, when copy protection was added, and there was a chance it wouldn't work on your computer, even if you bought it fair and square. I remember when they started adding physical programs that would use memory and make things unstable..sometimes refusing to run if some other legitimate programs were open in the background.
I remember loading up Steam and playing games without any of those, but I lost the ability to sell off my games.
I look back at all that and kindly request a damn code sheet or book so I can get to looking up those codes again.
DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Better Support from the Scene (Score:3, Insightful)
More Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of the copy-protection schemes are also designed to try and kill the secondary ("used games") market off by locking out copies from being reactivated.
The mindset of some of these companies is that a game (or other software) has to generate revenue for them each time it changes hands. In other words, they refuse to accept the "first sale doctrine" at all.
Buying one copy and distributing multiple copies to others is piracy. Uninstalling the thing and giving the disk and key to someone else is not.
It all boils down to greed and control, really.
Re:They still don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
No, Most people sort it like this:
2 - if reasonably priced
1
2 - if unreasonably priced but not available free and still within budget
3
If 'most people' sorted things your way, almost nobody would ever buy a game.
Sociological Studies Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Piracy is the result of human nature: when faced with the option of getting something for free or paying for it, and in the absence of any significant risks, you don't need complex economic studies to show you that most people will opt for the free route."
The article summary includes the following quote, but it doesn't actually seem to be the case if you actually study the issue. In many studies it has been shown that "honor systems" result in fewer thefts than systems where there are technological or potential criminal penalties. In many, many cases building a system of trust and relying upon people's morals and ethics is the most effective solution.
I scanned this article and then gave up because it seemed unoriginal and completely one-sided. If you can't even understand the perspective of people on one side of an issue, how can you rant for so many pages about your perspective on it?
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what calculus is for. It's so that the people selling the software/music/media/stuff/whatever can graph the people willing to pay against the price. Then they plot their expected profits for each price against that in order to find the optimal price.
People like you and me and anyone else who thinks the products are overpriced are not going to buy them. Either the companies making the products will be forced to lower the price to a more optimal one, or they will be able to keep it at the same price.
The problem is that they are claiming loss of sales for piracy done by people who never would have bought the game in the first place since the price is not right.
Granted, I am not a gamer and don't even bother to download these things since I don't have the time to play them, so take my gaming specific claims with a grain of salt.
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:3, Insightful)
Not saying you're wrong - I actually agree with you in general. As I've found myself playing less games, I've really cut down on paying $50 or $60 for a game when I know I won't play it for more than a few hours. I'll still buy a game if I know I'll get a lot of value out of it.
But my main point is, I don't think they need to reprice games based on people like you and I who don't play much and therefore don't find full price to be worth paying. Going back to my car analogy, I wouldn't expect them to start selling cars for $2000 to satisfy the small contingent of people who rarely if ever drive and therefore wouldn't pay more than that for a car.
Re:They still don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
So... stop trying to get money from people who just don't value your product if it isn't free, because it can't be done. You can piss them off though, and that can hurt your business.
Heh yeah. Gotta love their logic: "We'll fight piracy by strengthening the 'copy protection' and increasing the value of pirated copies!"
Piracy is the future, the now (Score:2, Insightful)
Try before you buy. Why is it that we have to pay for a game before we play it? Why don't trials or evaluation periods exist for all games like they do for other applications? Don't say short-sighted demos or one-sided reviews do any justice. They don't. The gaming industry has coasted far too long on the "pay first, be disappointed after" system and is in need of an adjustment; this is why piracy is rampant. Why would anyone want to pay for a game not worth the money? Only good game developers that have fulfilled my gaming desires get my money: Blizzard and Valve.
I'm not blindly buying another Hellgate: London.
Keep pirating. Buy the games you like. Let the weak game developers wilt and die. This will only cause the market to shift to the games we truly desire or at least a system that doesn't rob you up front and leave you sore after.
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm already there, you ignorant clod!
People will pirate when it's overpriced. When it's right-priced, most people will gladly pay for it.
It's simple - you don't like the price, don't buy it. Wait for the price to drop. Simply because you don't like the price doesn't mean you can copy the item for free and somehow think it's not stealing.
Re:They still don't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:They still don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
> So... stop trying to get money from people who just don't value your product
> if it isn't free, because it can't be done.
Your premise is flawed. Pirates obviously do value the product even if it's not free, which they show by taking the time and effort to get it.
You seem to be quite confident that huge companies with highly-skilled marketing, accounting, and product research divisions "just don't get it", as if the ideas you present have never crossed their minds. But in fact the article spends a whole section or two discussing the issues that you refer to. For example:
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:1, Insightful)
He didn't imply that.
It's not stealing. It's copyright infringement. Yes, it's illegal, and (usually) should be. Yes, it's (usually) wrong. But it's still not stealing, and yes, the distinction does matter.
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:3, Insightful)
People will pirate when it's overpriced. When it's right-priced, most people will gladly pay for it.
Overpricing is an intrinsic function of monopoly pricing. Revenue is maximized when raising the price would result in so many fewer copies sold that the extra per-copy income no longer outweighs the loss of copies sold.
That means that prices will simply be raised until many consumers simply cannot afford it (arguments like the original articles claims about economies of scale simply indicate lack of economic understanding; less piracy would mean _higher_ price, monopoly pricing limits are completely driven by customer dropoff, economies of scale apply to competitively enforced pricing).
The consumers making up the difference between those who would have bought the product at the lowest-possible competitively priced point and those who would have bought at the monopoly priced point are consumers for whom a free market system would have provided the good, while still allowing it to be produced. The loss of the value they would have derived is known as dead-weight loss, and is one of the most damaging aspects of monopoly laws like copyright. Piracy mitigates that loss of wealth somewhat, and introduces a certain element of competition into the market, keeping prices down, but it's a bad workaround for a problem that could be solved in more productive ways.
So any kind of rightpricing is fundamentally impossible while the monopoly aspects of the IP system are intact. Articles like this one that buy the IP lobbies arguments hook, line and sinker (assuming ignorance) are hardly productive. The author should do a little less fast-forwarding and a little more actual studying of why the debate has moved beyond his views.
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:4, Insightful)
Except.... you can get a car for $2000.
If no car is worth more to someone then $2000 , that person may very well end up with a car.
Back in ye olden days, things were released to the public domain after a reasonable number of years--- effectively allowing the price to change over time.
Nowadays, with copyright extended effectively indefinitely (few things that are made within my lifetime will have copyright expire within my lifetime.... ) there is a massive problem in how our culture is disseminated. File sharing has arisen partially as an effort to fulfill that gap.
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:5, Insightful)
After seeing indie games on bittorrent that cost 5 bucks if purchased I don't think your reasoning holds through. Some people will not purchase at any price, and will pirate it. Price is completely subjective and rarely dictates the quality of the product,, but the perception of quality. The iPhone App Store is a great representation of this. There are a lot of programs that are free, so people start to get the impression that all apps should be free. There are useful apps for $1 that some reviewers consider overpriced. You can't find an app on the app store, no matter the price, that some people will say is overpriced, when these are the same people who will go and buy a $60 game for their XBox, play it for less time than the iPhone app's usefulness, and not think anything of it. If games drop in price to, say, $20. People will find any higher variation of that price "overpriced" as their perception of the price of games now will be worth $20 instead of the $60 they're paying now.
Re:Piracy is the result of human nature (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.filesavr.com/i/piracy.png [filesavr.com]
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:5, Insightful)
The Constitution gives Congress the power...
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"
But when people can "renew" these copyrights indefinitely, progress is not being promoted, but stifled.
Re:BULLSHIT. (Score:5, Insightful)
As a game developer that does not pull any of that shit, if you have the attitude that it means you should pirate ALL games from ALL developers, where is my incentive to try and meet pirates half way?
If pirates treat all developers as evil corporate scum, why are they then surprised that developers adopt the same attitude in reverse?
If people are foolish to not pirate, them I'm foolish to keep making games for the PC. So I'll go work as a plumber instead.
great solution...
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:5, Insightful)
That's where the second hand market comes in. Need a cheap car? Buy a used junker. Don't want to pay $50 or $60 for a new game that you'll only play for a couple hours? Buy it used. Oh wait, they want to use DRM and activations to shut down that market too.
Fuckers.
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:4, Insightful)
As for the people who claim that all pirated game are lost sales, they are wrong. Many of those "lost sales" would never have been made, just as Microsoft can't count me as a lost sale since I use a different OS. I'm simply not their customer, just as many of those "lost sales" would never have taken place if piracy prevention were 100% effective. This is similar to their problem with people selling used games. People sell their used games mostly so that they can buy new games, so it's not like the money doesn't get to them anyway, and the used games "grow the market", same as selling a used car.
I agree - most of the pirated software would not be bought; so saying we loss xx billions/year to piracy is simply wrong. All their seeing is there is a large demand at a free price point - demand that goes away as price rises.
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the biggest reasons is lack of logical coherence. The author cites lots of numbers, but then does not actually put them together in an objective way to actually support his conclusions. In fact, his conclusions appear to be foregone. He seems to have ignored a good body of evidence that would lead to different conclusions.
For one example, he cites an article about game piracy on Macs. The article mentions the "pirate's argument" that it is okay to pirate because that person would not have bought the product anyway, therefore there is no lost sale. However, the article only discusses this topic from the point of view of whether it makes a valid moral or ethical argument.
The cited article (and main article too) ignore that several university studies have in fact shown that somewhere in the neighborhood of 80% of piracy occurs when there would not have been a sale anyway. (In most cases because there was insufficient money to purchase the product, but there are several other reasons this occurs.) That may not be a sound ethical argument in favor of piracy, but that is irrelevant. More to the point: it is an economic reality. Economic realities are; they exist. Simply putting them down as unethical is to ignore the actual causes, and possible solutions, for the situation. Further, trying to prosecute -- and especially fine -- people for not buying a product they probably could not afford to buy anyway is completely counterproductive. It offers no societal solutions to the actual problem; it simply fosters fear and antagonism. And backlash, as the RIAA and MPAA are finding out, probably too late to do them much good. They were warned by the society of their customers, but they did not listen.
In another example of faulty logic, the author indulges in the classic logical Post Hoc fallacy argument to conclude that piracy causes DRM, not the other way around. (For those not familiar, this is the argument that because one thing happened after another, the earlier event must have caused the later event. This does not follow: in fact it is just as likely that some third event caused them both.) In particular, he states that a game that was released with no DRM resulted in lots of downloads, then claims that "The evidence is overwhelmingly clear: DRM does not cause piracy, piracy results in DRM." When in fact his "evidence" shows nothing of the sort.
As a systems manager and tech (and now Software Engineer) with many years experience, I can testify that there are a great many cases where, in fact, DRM causes piracy. One example is when I worked for an engineering company, which used quite a few proprietary programs for certain involved, specialized calculations. Many of those programs came with various forms of DRM. And I can tell you this in complete honesty: every one of the programs that used DRM failed on us. Almost always at an important point in the project. And I mean that literally: every single one of them failed, without exception. And in every case, the cause of the failure was the DRM. Further, our calls to support for the software were almost always unproductive: "You must not have installed it properly." or "You must have been tampering with the copy protection". Nonsense. We had paid a lot of good money for the software and were not about to treat it so casually.
In such cases, we were forced to either try to break the DRM ourselves, or to try to find a cracked version of the software, just to get the functionality we had already paid for! Which technically made us pirates. But it was DRM that forced us into piracy, not the other way around. Keep in mind that this was specialty software for which there was often no alternative product available. But just FYI, the invariable DRM failures did cause us to look for alternative products. Our official company policy became (this is true): "If there are alternative products available,
You can't have it both ways with human nature (Score:4, Insightful)
When we talk about piracy, we say the desire to get less for more is a moral failing that must be fought and punished. When we talk about the market, this same desire is used as a justification: there's no point fighting human nature. So we have piracy, a practice driven by greed, coming up against a system, the market, also driven by greed. How do we know which greed is good and which one is bad? If this fellow really thinks piracy is human nature, then he should stop trying to fight what can't be changed and instead find a system that works with it. But that rules out moral indignation, and it can be more satisfying to pronounce on good and evil than to seek workable solutions.
Now I don't think satisfying one's greed is admirable, and I'm skeptical of claims for some immutable human nature. Adam Smith argued not for outright greed, but for enlightened self-interest. Too often in this debate, all the enlightenment is expected to be on one side, while all the self-interest is on the other.
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:3, Insightful)
Also I'd like to debate that music and movies qualify as "useful arts" and therefore do not warrant protection under copyright.
Additionally, it says "to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right" not distributors. When did that right become transferable? This is the problem. Once the big media distributor were able to obtain these "monopolies" on products, it was only logical for them to seek to strengthen their power by extending the monopoly.
The system is flawed, and I don't think our laws reflect the true sentiment in the Constitution.
Re:Piracy is the result of human nature (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:3, Insightful)
That means that prices will simply be raised until many consumers simply cannot afford it (arguments like the original articles claims about economies of scale simply indicate lack of economic understanding; less piracy would mean _higher_ price, monopoly pricing limits are completely driven by customer dropoff, economies of scale apply to competitively enforced pricing).
Yup. The claims that piracy results in higher prices are generally false. It results in lower prices for any given piece of software. Its real negative consequence is the result of the lower prices -- some niche software becomes uneconomical to develop since it cannot be sold for a price that will recoup development costs. So we get cheaper mass-market games and a dearth of niche games because of pirates (it seems that no game is too obscure to be pirated). The funny thing is that those who complain about the homogenization of culture by the RIAA may actually be contributing to it by making it unprofitable to sell lesser-known artists (or pieces of software) at any price.
One last comment: There might be a price rise in some areas, where two pieces of software compete against one another. If both are pirated, the duopoly might collapse into a monopoly, with concomitant higher pricing. In theory, a new entrant might emerge -- but it may be that everyone knows duopoly pricing is unprofitable given the competition from pirates.
Re:BULLSHIT. (Score:2, Insightful)
To create a "major" game takes about $5 million. Most of that money goes to salaries. (Look at the credits screen of your average game and then multiply that by their salaries for about a year.)
Where do you propose the money to pay those people come from?
What business model do you propose that lets people play the games they want to play and gives the people who actually creates those games the cash they need to live?
Art (Score:2, Insightful)
May they crash and burn. I really do mean that. I'd rather have ad-hoc groups of 5 or so people who really love the labor they put their time into.
The entire games industry was born out of this love, this passion. It's disappeared from big companies. People who once sat in their rooms hacking assembly on ancient machines, out of passion, are now being exploited into grinding their lives away on a schedule, their creativity mostly ignored in favor of a few elite designers' "market-proven talent".
Bring back the love. Bring back the passion.
Exactly wrong. (Score:1, Insightful)
Moral values are the ones that _don't_ go out the window when you think you won't get caught.
You show your arrogance. (Score:0, Insightful)
Why do people always drag in these asinine "but, technically, it isn't stealing! Here's what stealing is, and I'll be quoting from Webster's 4th revision of the 1986 dictionary" arguments? Redefining the terms does not change what the activity is: obtaining something in a way that is against the wishes of the people creating it, and violating their contract of sale. Don't hide behind a veil of semantics to try to justify this. The item that you are pirating has some sort of price that has been set on the market. What you think it should be is entirely irrelevant: you are not paying that price because you want it for free. The creators of the work are not receiving the compensation that they asked for.
I have but one question for the pirates: how does this not make you an asshole? Can you see past your own self-entitlement complex and realize that your actions have an effect on other people? That the world isn't something you exploit to get ahead?
Also, as for your gaming industry comment, well, I'll quote a few people:
"It's crazy how the ratio between sales to piracy is probably 1 to 15 to 1 to 20 right now." - Cevat Yerli (source [shacknews.com])
"Piracy has pushed id as being multiplatform" stated Hollenshead [id's CEO] (source [shacknews.com])
Comments made by Epic's Capps carried a similar tone. "PC gaming is really falling apart," he revealed. "It killed us to make Unreal Tournament 3 cross-platform, but Epic had to do it," adding "the market that would buy a $600 video card knows how Bittorrent works." (source [shacknews.com])
Really, the most hilarious thing is that I know there is some subset of people out there who see their own piracy as acceptable, yet are infuriated by GPL violations.
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:3, Insightful)
What kind of pseudo-intellectual babble is that?
There is already a competitive market for creative works - if you don't want to play Spore you're welcome to play another game instead, and get your entertainment that way. Your whole argument is ludicrous, it suggests that a specific apple in the fruit store would have an infinitely high price because the fruit store has a monopoly on that specific, shiny, juicy apple ... unless you steal it, in which case the price becomes more reasonable.
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:2, Insightful)
When you steal a game from gamespot, you just cost gamespot money. Gamespot paid for the copy you stole.
When you download a copy of a game, and this is the distinction between copyright infringement and stealing, you did not cost gamespot money. Gamespot did not pay for the copy you downloaded. You did not cost the game's author money. The game's author did not pay to produce the copy you downloaded. Unless you would have paid for the game if you couldn't have downloaded it, nobody has lost a sale.
If you would have paid for it, you've cost the author AND gamespot both a sale. Unless, of course, you pay for it once you decide you like it.
If you would have paid for it, you download it, you like it, and you don't pay for it when you can, you're part of the problem. If you don't fit all four of those requirements, the problem isn't you; it's the price or the product.
Re:Piracy is the result of human nature (Score:4, Insightful)
On an aside, "hacking" to refer to the illegal use of computers only arose from the term used to describe people who were particularly competent with computers. Little to do with physical "hacking".
Re:They still don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
2. Even the ones that could afford the software on their computer would never ever buy the vast majority of the programs they have.
Dude, how old are you? Do you have a job? If so, did you happen to notice that every computer in your office has legal copies of very expensive software (times something like 500 at a small-medium sized company)? I suppose it you make $12 an hour you might consider $1200 to be a lot of money (Adobe Suite, for example), but I sure as hell don't, considering how absolutely necessary that software is to my livelihood.
Re:Piracy is the result of human nature (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sociological Studies Disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
You know, you are missing the point, that's the reason he said that "you don't need complex economic studies" to reach his conclussion, cause if you did actual studies his conclussion would go unmasked as the non-sense it was.
Re:Piracy is the result of human nature (Score:5, Insightful)
Why make language drab and limit copyright infringement to a single word? We don't do that for other activities, e.g., murder: off, end, terminate, hit, rub out, take out
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:2, Insightful)
Right. Steal something $100 and it's petty theft. "infringe" on some copyrighted software of the same value and it's a federal case.
Re:You show your ignorance. (Score:3, Insightful)
People who use gpl'd software are unethical? People who borrow a library book are unethical? Kids who believe in Santa Clause are unethical? All charities are unethical? Taxes are unethical? GMail, Yahoo Mail, MSN-Whatever-they-call-it-this-week are unethical? People who watch TV or listen to the radio are unethical? Visitors who use city parks or streets are unethical? Free public clinics for the poor are unethical?
Methinks you've got a very strange idea of "unethical."
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:3, Insightful)
Quote... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is copyright necessary? Why can't all information just be distributed without restriction? Copyright falls under the banner of a range of laws controversially referred to as Intellectual Property laws. The aim is to provide intellectual property a similar type of protection as that afforded to physical property. For example, whether you spend your life building houses or writing books, you should be equally entitled to reap the rewards of your labors and have the same sorts of legal protections against people seeking to unfairly benefit from your work without contributing appropriately towards it. It's argued that without protection against such theft, both the builders of houses and the authors of books would have much less incentive to invest their time and money into their respective outputs, particularly because they would stand little chance of earning appropriate income from their work.
"have the same sorts of legal protections" - This i don't have a problem with... The problem is profiteering, when people will produce something once and then produce infinite copies of it for virtually nothing. Someone who builds houses can sell each house they've built once, and then have to go to the same time and effort to build another one. If they stop building houses, they no longer have any houses to sell and stop making any money.
The two things are completely different, and thus should not be afforded the same level of legal protection at all. It sickens me to see greedy people continue deriving revenue from something they did many years ago, and for that matter deriving obscene levels of short term profit.
There should be a cap on the level of profit, after which copyright should lapse... What makes these people so special that they can work for a year or two and then have a life of luxury while the rest of us have to work for 50+ years.
lock&key... (Score:2, Insightful)
From TFA:
So really, all locks and keys do 99% of the time is present a constant inconvenience for legitimate users. If we lose them, we're locked out of our own houses or cars. Yet strangely enough, you won't find a groundswell of popular opinion stating firmly around the Internet that "door locks don't work!" and demanding that everyone remove them because of the inherent inconvenience that they impose. Why is that? Probably because everyone is the owner of physical property of some kind, and is willing to endure the constant inconvenience of various locks and keys in their daily lives in the hopes of protecting that property from potential theft, even if in reality it actually provides them with no real protection against most thieves.
If I have a lock on my door, it only inconveniences ME (the owner) and the thieves. Now if I want at least some protection from thieves with added inconvenience to ME, it is my right. The lock on MY door will not inconvenience YOU (if you are not a thief).
DRM inconveniences CUSTOMERS and not the OWNER (the company which made the game).
Now, you know that stores use video surveillance and those detectors near the doors that beep if you have something stolen. Those measures are relatively not intrusive, but do not eliminate shoplifting 100%. Suppose a store decides to really eliminate shoplifting - by having every person leaving the building stripsearched. How many customers would that store have?
Re:Let's consider this piece by piece without emot (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Should IP be protected at all? (I expect even many of the pro-piracy group would support some level of IP protection)
yes, but it shouldn't be treated like physical property... it is not physical property and pretending like it is, is just stupid... the protection should be extremely limited with an aim to ensure a producer gets a short term benefit relative to the effort they invested, just like if they were working a normal job.
2. How long should the protection be for (plenty of support here for shorter terms, but how many people are *honestly* saying they feel 0 years is appropriate?
It should definitely be much shorter, especially in the modern world where things become obsolete so quickly... as it stands, lots of software ends up being lost or completely unobtainable because its no longer profitable but also not legal for third parties to distribute... having a shorter term should also serve to stop profiteering, where someone earns a completely disproportionate amount of money relative to the amount of work they did, i dont think anyone should have the right to continue profiting from work they did years ago, you lazy arrogant assholes get off your ass and actually earn some money.
7. The games suck. How will I know if I like it before I buy it? Nobody forces you to buy it. Games are not a fundamental human right. Don't get me wrong, I think it's horrendous that companies release crap, buggy games. 100% not relevant to whether it is morally wrong to pirate the game.
If people knew a game sucked beforehand they would never buy it... but how are you meant to find out if a game is lousy without buying it? demos are often very different from the final game (like a demo will have a good level, the full game has 20 more crap levels) and you don't get bad reviews anymore because all the reviewers are bribed or coerced by the big publishers... magazines and websites doing game reviews get the games for free to review, and a good portion of their revenue comes from advertisements... if they publish a good review then the freebies continue, the publishers buy advertisements in publications who give them good reviews and they may get other kickbacks (read: bribes)... but if they print bad reviews, then the advertisements will dry up, the freebies will dry up meaning they have to buy everything they review further increasing their costs, and they stop getting bribes... an unfavorable review can easily kill a game review publication.
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:0, Insightful)
Yes but there is a difference inherent with that analogy.
A car does have a minimum price tag attached to it, parts if nothing else. It has a physical presence, and we can say with no bullshit that if we don't get at least X amount for it we lose money.
software HAS no physical presence theres no inherent value of the product, the price point is largely arbitrary. (I say largely because you still have to pay your coders) but if you sell a piece of software for even one dollar, you have MADE one dollar because after its creation there is no cost. A new car must be assembled, a new copy of (insert software title here) costs so little to produce that its not worth actually figuring the actual cost.
This becomes blindingly obvious when you look at software like photoshop. The latest version for the home user is 700 dollars and the latest version for the professional user is 1000. Even with that oh so pretty box full of inserts production costs couldnt have been more than a few bucks.
Photoshop could cost one tenth of what it currently does and adobe would still be looking at over 1000% percent profit per sale over production costs. And while it it useful software nobody thinks its worth 1000 dollars.
This is the disparity inherent in attempts to compare the software market to normal retail.
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, when people have the choice of free or at a reasonable price, easily obtained, they willingly pay the reasonable price. Sort of defeats the article's main proposition, that people will take the free route.
The article is junk.
Re:Piracy is the result of human nature (Score:1, Insightful)
The english language is certainly flexible and capable of nuance. Sometimes, that can be used to create a problem.
This is more about not letting the wrong people define the terms and the argument.
If they used the word theft then the fact that no one was actually deprived of their property would keep coming up, so they have demonized the act of file sharing using the word piracy.
File sharing/copyright violation does not equal theft OR piracy.
Copyright is not supposed to be a permanent entitlement program for anyone.
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" was the first stated purpose of U.S. copyright. The U.S. Constitution ratified in 1788 proposed to do that "by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." The first U.S. copyright law, passed in 1790, protected books, maps, and charts if they were created by residents or citizens of the United States. The term of their exclusive right was a mere 14 years, with the right of renewal for 14 more."
( from http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA158872.html )
The extension of copyright beyond that original 14 + 14 years is clearly theft from the public domain.
Sadly the people with the money are going to keep screwing us using our government and legal system for as long as we let them.
Do you really think that anything created today should still be paying it's creator for 28 years let alone the Life plus 70 years that the current perversion of copyright allows?
And exactly when does current copyright start
"Promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts"? After 140 years? At that point there is so little remaining relevance you may as well forget the public domain entirely.
How much 140 year old music do YOU listen to?
And don't forget, due to the application of copyright to performances it has to have been RECORDED 140 years ago.
How many 140 year old books have information relevant to ANY of your needs or existence?
Hell how many 140+ year old books do you own?
No, file sharing is not theft or piracy.
However, copyright beyond the original 28 years is theft, from all of us.
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:3, Insightful)
An Apple isnt infinatelty replicable within a short space of time. Every piece of software (Or the software categories) becomes a market within itself.
Stop using bad analogies. Spore isnt an apple, and the guy you are flaming is using sound business knowlege to make a valid point. You are using a bad analogy about apples and getting theft and copyright infringement mixed up.
Your post couldnt be more wrong if it claimed that the earth was flat.
Re:You show your ignorance. (Score:4, Insightful)
You completely miss the point. There is a vast difference between someone letting you use their work for free of their own free will and taking their work against their will.
Re:Piracy is the future, the now (Score:3, Insightful)
why do I have to buy my house before I live in it?
Houses have inspections, guarantees, and so on. Video games have a no-returns policy.
Why do I have to buy my laptop before I get to take it home and play games on it
Defective laptop? Take it back. Defective game? Pick another game on store credit.
Why did I have to pay for my holiday before I got on the plane?
Mainly because, unlike a PC game, the odds of the plane landing somewhere completely unexpected are actually pretty low.
WTF is wrong with people that they think they have a RIGHT to enjoy other peoples work for free, and then consider if they feel generous enough, they might flip them a few cents later.
You game developers shoveled a bunch of crap on people and now they're cautious about it. Too many paid-for reviews, misleading marketing, necessary patches, ridiculous control schemes, and Daikatanas have made people stop to think. You made the right move by advertising that you're not pulling their crap. Your lack of understanding over people's values and expectations with PC games is disheartening.
Is that how YOU get paid?
Yes, actually. I get paid to meet requirements. If I show up to work and do nothing, I don't get paid. If I show up to work, but I do my job, then I get paid for it. That's me fulfilling a requirement. You're selling entertainment. That's the requirement you have to fulfill. It's not really any different except that your situation is more complex. Entertaining the public is harder than my job. That didn't suddenly change, though. You want to get paid, that's fine, I have software on the market, too. I get that. Tossing aside people's concerns, though, that I don't get. I really have trouble believing you weren't a PC gamer before selling your own games.
Re:A Rose by any other name... (Score:3, Insightful)
You're missing the point here. Calling it piracy, and thus people who do the act, pirates, is just denigration. It's done to vilify the people more than what they probably deserve.
Trying to... (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's a few gems as I struggle through:
Just as the printing press brought about a whole new set of problems with regards to unauthorized duplication, the Internet has similarly required specific measures designed to address the new possibilities for piracy it opens up.
Not necessarily. Anyone remember the videocassette?
Every new invention, including the printing press, has been fought by exactly the industries which stand to gain the most from it, if only they are willing to change. And when that change inevitably comes, they find themselves even richer than before.
The important difference between digital piracy and the types of copyright infringement that came before it - such as taping songs off the radio - is that digital piracy allows perfect reproduction with no quality loss.
Burning CDs allow perfect reproduction with no quality loss. The music industry fought burning CDs. They ended up making money by selling media and burners -- at least, Sony did -- and they continued to make money selling CDs and concert tickets.
And so it is with the Internet. Their costs of reproduction are pretty much nil, even costs of a live broadcast are much smaller, and it's that much easier for the fans to connect, as well. It is their greatest opportunity yet. But they are fighting it, and that is why they're failing.
The aim is to provide intellectual property a similar type of protection as that afforded to physical property.
*head asplodes*
Physical property, when taken, must be replaced. It is real, and can be possessed. It operates under fundamentally different rules.
And when you factor in DRM, you find that they are not trying to protect intellectual property. They're trying to take away what you assumed to be your physical property -- your CDs, DVDs, etc -- and ensure that you are, in fact, only renting.
For example, whether you spend your life building houses or writing books, you should be equally entitled to reap the rewards of your labors
Indeed -- so find a system that actually parallels them.
If I build a house, I can't then replicate it into thousands of identical houses for a fraction of a cent each, and then sell them for a profit. And I'm sorry, but that model is ending for other media, as well.
The successful artists are getting paid like the housebuilders -- for actual work. That is, if you're a musician, sure, print a CD, but it is a promotional material -- let people pirate it. Your product is your tour.
Without copyright laws the GPL couldn't operate, because it's through the rights that are enforceable under copyright law that the Linux movement can place terms and conditions on their licensing arrangement in the first place. Without copyright, the default and only possible distribution method for anything everywhere would be via the public domain
I'm sure that many GPL advocates would be perfectly happy with that situation. After all, the primary evil of proprietary software is that it discourages sharing.
Disclaimer: I don't actually think it's evil, and I do develop proprietary software.
The argument is straightforward and both intuitively and logically sound: for every pirated copy of a product, there is some potential loss of income to the producer of that product.
The arguments put forth here universally center around the loss piracy causes.
What they completely ignore is the potential gain. Piracy demonstrates a much more effective method of distribution -- I'm at a loss as to why I can't legally obtain TV shows or movies via BitTorrent. It is also free advertising -- a pirate may eventually buy the game, and if the pirated version is at all good, they may in fact convince others that it's worth playing.
It also increases awareness of the game and the brand, something which might otherwise be done with expen
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:2, Insightful)
When I was in high school, I was broke, yet I still found it possible to buy records (and then in college, CDs).
Then you weren't broke where you.
Broke is when you have to decide whether to eat or pay rent.
(Yeah I know, you can be broker still and not have any money for either)
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:4, Insightful)
However if people pirate the game now, then they're never going to buy it later, even if the publisher reduces the price.
Additionally, if you're used to getting games for free, suddenly any cost seems "overpriced" in relation to what you've previously been paying.
Re:BULLSHIT. (Score:4, Insightful)
Errrr. there is no law saying I can't change careers. I used to be a carpenter for fucks sake. If people refuse to pay for games, I'll change career again.
What part of this isn't clear?
Re:saying. "Fast forward to the 21st century" (Score:4, Insightful)
It sounds more to me like you're just not a very strong business-person. That's not meant as a slight: the "best" automakers in the USA are busy begging for money 'cause they've screwed up. Lots of smart business people lost money with lousy businesses in the dot-boom. There's plenty of examples where plenty of people can't run a business.
Newsflash: Business is hard. Starting a business is really hard.
Plenty of small business (you are/were a small business) would kill for 400k+ customers. That you were unable to monetize this stream isn't the fault of piracy. In fact, piracy gave you almost 10x the customer base.
Lots of artists are waking up to the fact that the biggest threat to their economic viability as an artist isn't piracy: it's obscurity. Someone who has never heard of you is never going to give you any money. Someone who pirates your work might give you some money either directly (concerts, tee's etc) or indirectly, by marketing you to their friends (who then either give money directly or indirectly, rinse, repeat, profit!)
Plenty of small business don't make any money at all in the first few years. They need investments to pay the bills. That you were able to make an income that can pay the bills means you had a successful business growing. Sure, you're not going to drive a Porsche on $27k/yr, but you can live on it - I have lived on less. And if you could figure out how to get those 400k people to give you a few bucks every year then you'd have that Porsche by now.
Stop blaming other people for your problems.
Re:Piracy is the result of human nature (Score:3, Insightful)
But you are mincing words, though perhaps not to assuage guilt, and I will correct you. The difference is that you are not necessarily hurting anyone by buying and drinking a beer. Someone made that beer, and you paid him for it. Everybody's happy. If you steal it from him, you hurt him. If enough people steal it from him, he goes out of business. If everyone steals from every beer maker, soon there will be no beer makers, and no beer. Even during prohibition you had to pay for it. It's not like the mafia would have let you have it for free.
When you steal a video game, you are hurting the company and people that created it, and often putting them out of business. So in every way that actually matters, it is exactly the same as stealing a beer. The only real difference is that it is much easier to steal the video game and get away with it. As a part-time game developer, I can tell you that the salaries for being a game developer are poor and the hours are long (i.e. 60-80 hours/week). When a startup game company makes a game, it has an outside investor (usually a publisher) paying its salaries for the time it takes to make the game. Once that game is released, the investor/publisher stops paying everyone's salaries, and he has to regain his losses before the game company sees another dime. If the game is successful, it is likely to be heavily pirated, keeping the company that created it from ever seeing that dime. So bright developers and artists put in 80 hours a week to earn what comes close to McDonald's wages (when you count the number of hours) to get the game done before Christmas. If they get it done on time and the game is wildly successful on The Pirate Bay, instead of getting a bonus to make all that effort seem worth-while, they all lose their jobs right before Christmas. Merry Christmas guys. Great game, BTW. Too bad you won't be able to make a sequel to it. I would've been first in line to pirate it. ;-)
While I agree they should not try to make file sharing itself illegal, they should still try to catch people stealing products like video games. You can't say it's not stealing because in every way that matters, it is stealing. If stealing it in one way is not technically against the law, laws can and will be changed.
You can't call Prohibition an unenforceable law any more than you could call rape or murder an unenforceable law. If you took the percentage of people that were determined to have a beer during Prohibition, and you changed it to "this percentage of people are determined to break law X", then any law would be unenforceable. Laws like rape and murder are extremely difficult to enforce even now in the US. In a very large number of cases, no body or evidence is never found and the person is simply listed as missing. Statistics like "1 in 4 girls are molested/raped by the time they turn 18" are tossed about frequently. The more serious the laws are that are being broken in large numbers, the more our legal privacy protections will be removed. Laws will be easier to enforce, but some police will inevitably abuse their powers, and the pendulum will continue to swing back and forth.