Pirates Finding It Harder To Crack New PC Games (engadget.com) 364
schnell writes: Engadget reports that a few recent top-tier video game releases using updated DRM technology have gone uncracked for more than a month and left DRM hackers stymied thus far. The games FIFA 16 and Just Cause 3, using an updated DRM system called Denuvo, have thus far frustrated experienced Chinese crackers' best efforts far longer than the usual 1-2 weeks it takes for most games to be cracked. Although the article is light on technical details about what makes the new DRM system harder to defeat, it does note that "Based on the current pace of encryption tech, 'in two years time I'm afraid there will be no free games to play in the world,' said one forlorn pirate."
If it can be played, it can be copied (Score:4, Insightful)
They are only gaining some critical time at launch
Re:If it can be played, it can be copied (Score:4, Informative)
the article isn't talking about videos or music
Re:If it can be played, it can be copied (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, the article is having a dig at Chinese people. The inclusion of "Chinese crackers" was wholly gratuitous, as crackers are an international team, and the best game crackers are still from the US.
Fuck you, racist submitter.
Re: If it can be played, it can be copied (Score:3, Informative)
Actually the team mentioned is from china and considered one of the best, particularly against the drm company used for dragon age and just cause.
Re:If it can be played, it can be copied (Score:5, Funny)
Re:If it can be played, it can be copied (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: If it can be played, it can be copied (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not so sure. A dev I know has been using a certain copy pro package for a few years now and since starting it, has yet to have a crack show up in the wild. And yes, it's a well known app that is a classic target for cracking, and no, the copy pro isn't remotely obnoxious or privacy-shattering since the dev is a privacy aficionado. I think the tech is getting there. Add to this that many games offer real benefits to network connectivity and you might see AAA cracks go away. Then there's the awesome Witcher devs, who simply flip the bird to copy pro altogether, I still see cracks(aka copies, in this case) show up for witcher 3 but the game has done fabulously, simply because it's awesome, everyone loves them and wants to see them be successful for making something so wonderful and for steadfastly refusing to be dicks about DLC. That's the best copy pro of all.
Re: If it can be played, it can be copied (Score:5, Insightful)
^^^ THIS! ^^^
I have troubles understanding why most game/software devs can't get this through their thick skulls. These days a lot of piracy is do to the crap DRM that publishers put on titles. I've known several people that download and run pirate version of software even though they have a legal copy because they actually fucking work! I've even done it myself with multiple version of MS Office, even though I had legal copies as it didn't start giving me activation errors every 26 or so days. (Enterprise licences.) The other pirates that don't have a legal copy aren't going to miraculously go to the store a pay retail price for something because the DRM is tough. They'll either wait for the crack, sneak through a licensing hole or go without. They aren't going to buy your fucking product, period.
Software devs, get this through your thick skulls!
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I haven't had this problem in over 10 years with DRM on games or enterprise software.
Did you just step out of a time machine or something?
Re: If it can be played, it can be copied (Score:4, Insightful)
One. I have one game, and its more than 10 years old. JFK Reloaded.
I paid for it new, and even tried my hand at the competition. Within a few years, it dissapeared from the internet and now, the cracked version is the only way to play it; since they used an online token based DRM to handle full versions vs demo.
I paid for the full, I want to play the damned full.
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If you purchase the latest console, a few accessories, titles, the TV you are going to connect it to, add to that a broadband Internet connection you could easily spend over two grand. Games are not the only entertainment product that is considered an everyday thing but is priced like a luxury item. I know people who always have the latest games, cell phones, see all the new movies, and go to concerts but they generally live on credit. Eventually that runs out and they are broke and in debt with no where to
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I actually thought that MMOs were the industry's evolved response to the perceived "threat" of piracy: a game which FUNDAMENTALLY had to interact with a centrally located, company owned server. How much more locked-down could you get?
Well, it shows how much I know; the resourcefulness and frankly brilliance of the emulator programmers that black-box reverse-engineer server systems so people can run private servers of WoW, etc leave me pretty impressed. Some are a little wobbly, sure, but by and large ther
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They are only gaining some critical time at launch
And that's the point. They probably don't give so much of a damn if a game is cracked 3--6 months down the line because the vast majority of their sales are during the launch period. The more time it takes to crack a game the less sales they're going to lose as a result.
Personally I'm surprised that piracy is even a problem any more. It should be pretty straightforward to pad a game out with anti-piracy measures which take a frustrating amount of time to find and disable.
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They are only gaining some critical time at launch
Copied, yes, but potentially not played, if they hold it hostage to connectivity requirements back to the mother ship.
Work-alike (Score:2)
You can program your own work-alike of the game playable on PC. In some cases, that's still copying [slashdot.org].
Re:If it can be played, it can be copied (Score:5, Informative)
It's not currently possible to play pirated PS4 games.
The PS4's security does appear to have been at least partially compromised, however. A recent video appears to show Linux running on a PS4, along with a version of Pokemon. [gamespot.com] Note that we don't yet have independent verification of this, so there's a chance (albeit probably a slim one given the track record of the group in question) that this is a hoax.
It's still a long way from being able to play pirated games, although it is certainly a first step on that road. More to the point, however, it is even further from being able to make full use of pirated games, given the extent to which the full functionality of many PS4 games is tied to online features. History (e.g. the situation with the Xbox 360) suggests that console manufacturers are pretty good, over time, at detecting consoles running pirated software when they connect to online services and locking them out of said services. A PS4 which can't access the PSN is not much of a PS4.
As for pirated games on the PS3, it was possible. Sort of. There was a specific firmware version which, if you didn't update past it, could be tricked into running pirated games (via a USB dongle, if I recall). However, you should note that firmware updates on the PS3 were mandatory both to use online services and to play games released after that firmware version was issued. So in other words, if you had an old PS3 you kept at the right firmware version and never tried to use it online, you could play pirated games which did not require a more recent firmware version. So it was of limited use for most people and was only ever really a proof of concept.
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Re:If it can be played, it can be copied (Score:4, Informative)
The PS4's security does appear to have been at least partially compromised, however. A recent video appears to show Linux running on a PS4, along with a version of Pokemon. Note that we don't yet have independent verification of this, so there's a chance (albeit probably a slim one given the track record of the group in question) that this is a hoax.
Yes, they got in through a FreeBSD security vulnerability. The Pokemon game is running in a Gameboy Advance emulator. No, it's not a hoax. Team Fail0verflow has a GitHub repository [github.com] with all the patches needed for Linux and its GPU drivers. You can follow their Twitter account [twitter.com] for updates.
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Really? So you can pirate PS4 games now? How? Was it even possible to pirate PS3 games?
Yes, the PS3 has a pirate scene. The exploit is based on some old ~3.5 firmware; which is why you'll see people asking where to obtain it. They are basically looking to run pirated games.
There isn't anything for the PS4 yet. The current exploit was patched 16 months ago, and only works on the old 1.76 OS. At the moment they're still trying to run privileged code. So at best, you're talking basic home-brew on what is very much an underpowered PC. There's a further weakening of the performance recently discov
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Re:If it can be played, it can be copied (Score:4, Informative)
No, it remains true that "if it can be played, it can be cracked", as unencrypted bits are needed at the moment of playing, and are right there in the CPU.
Back in the day, you could buy hardware CPU emulators (ICEs) that would emit a transcript as you ran a program. If you had debugging symbols, they'd give you working source code for everything you executed. Far beyond the price the typical hacker team could pay, but we used them professionally. These days you can virtualize far cheaper. "Trusted computing" is the possible countermeasure, but encrypting a video stream isn't the same as encrypting the executing object code.
It's possible the "trusted" computing architecture could be extended in years to come, especially for consoles, but until art assets and graphics/CUDA code move encrypted from disk to video card memory, it won't help (and even then, it has to be decrypted somewhere on the video card).
Since I can't see PC games restricted to FIPS 140-2 Level 3 [wikipedia.org] vid cards, it will remain true that "if it can be played, it can be copied". At what price though?
It will never last... (Score:5, Interesting)
... because then the studios won't have a boogie man to blame when their crappy game doesn't sell.
Studio Exec: Oh noes, our awesome game isn't selling because people are pirating it instead.
Random Underling: Sir, no one has cracked our DRM yet....
Studio Exec: Oh shit, hurry up and leak a crack before the shareholders notice our 80 million dollar game sucks
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If it's a good game, then it will sell well. If Just Cause is selling, then I'm assuming it's a good game.
I was referring more to the games that should never have gotten past initial design, or ones that are so completely unplayable due to buggy software.
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Honestly, if the game companies would hire some of the crackers and modders to help make products that aren't broken at launch and highly overpriced, piracy likely wouldn't be as big of an issue here in NA.
Funny as it is, GOG.com routinely uses scene cracks to get the old games they sell to run on modern systems.
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Crikey, where do you get your games news? There's never been more choice in gaming.
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How do shorts work?
They keep your private parts in place and warm under your shirt [pineight.com].
Now to others interested in your original question: You can short a stock by borrowing shares from someone else and selling them. To set up a short position, you'll likely need to upgrade your brokerage account to a tier allowing short selling, and you'll need to keep a lot of margin in that account that can be liquidated in case the stock pays dividends or its price rises. The process is described Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] and Personal Finance Stack Exchange [stackexchange.com].
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I wouldnt want to be owning any EA shares right now... How do shorts work?
Shorts are easy, you sell something you don't actually own and promise to repay (cover your position) later by buying what you previously sold. If the price goes up before you cover a short position, you loose money, but if it goes down you make a profit. I used to have stock options though my company and I often would sell short above the option price to lock in the gains, then cover the short by exercising the option and sending the stock to my broker. I used this to take the risk out of the process beca
Not mentioned in summary (Score:5, Informative)
Metal Gear Solid V.
Took forever to get a crack out, and when a crack did come out by 3DM it took a few more days for a version 2 to be playable. Only when you set your timezone to a chinese one were you able to play. Sometimes on a specific set of hardware you needed a new crack made. You had to skip certain chapters of the game because they crashed.
And after 5 days or so? Music started playing. Shifty crack, even in the pirate world, never fully working scene release even to this day.
As a pirate, I can only salute the guys who made Denuvo.
Tons of free games out there. (Score:2, Informative)
'in two years time I'm afraid there will be no free games to play in the world,'
There are tons of free games.
Many games studios open up there engines to be used by indy game makers and you can find make great games to play tho not cutting edge on the graphics.
Tremulous - tremulous.net
Renegade X - renegade-x.com
Stream has a ton of free to play games just check out there website (Team Fortress 2, Dota 2, Warframe)
Play real free games if you don't want to buy not cracked games.
Re:Tons of free games out there. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only that, but there are so many -cheap- games out there as well. And regular Steam sales--I spent about $20 and got 9 games during the winter sale. Stuff that was highly acclaimed when it came out, too.
You just have to be willing to pass on new releases and get them when they go on sale. By that point you can generally get the GOTY edition with all DLC as well.
I look forward to playing Fallout 4 for $15.
Cracked games were a thing back then (Score:3)
Cracked games were a thing back at the schoolyard, when we could barely afford the blank floppies to copy the 12 discs of "Another world" or so, Fiddling with cracks and P2P to download stuff isn't simply worth the time anymore when after a few weeks, you can get the game at a decent discount at Steam.
Fifa x (Score:2)
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jc3 seems to be out though.
engadget seems shitty again.
more publishers will just waste more money on this shitty drm.
da inquisition was shit btw.
Advertising much? (Score:2)
why bother (Score:2, Insightful)
Just wait for the sales and you can get that $60 game for $14 (or less). Unless you play on a console, in which case you don't care because your parents are paying for the games anyway.
Steam, GOG and others have made gaming reasonable enough for anyone.
Console games (Score:3)
The local Microsoft store generously donated an XBox 360 to our school's charity raffle, probably 6 months after the XBox One was released.
We didn't own any gaming system at all, and my son immediately griped that there would be "no games because its old". The day after we got the console, we went to a local pawn shop and bought 5 games for $30, all of which played just fine. I think we might be up to about 15 games now, and I'd doubt that even with the 2 games my son has bought new, we're out more than $
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Sorry but thats clueless.
After also buying the season pass, Fallout 4 cost over $100 and it isn't coming down anytime soon.
Sure I could wait a year or more and save maybe save $20 but I'm not that much of a tightwad.
Its going to be probably 5 years if ever, before Fallout4 hits your $14 number. Skyrim is still 19.99 on steam. and it was released in 2011.
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Just wait for the sales and you can get that $60 game for $14 (or less).
Not to mention the hardware requirements: while they tend to remain the same (additional horsepower demands from software patches notwithstanding), the costs for said hardware (epecially vidcards) should drop significantly over the [18 to 24 months?] that it takes for a high-profile title to drop over 75% in price...
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A lot of power-hungry titles tend to get great boosts in performance after a few weeks to a few months after release as the GPU-drivers get optimized for the game.
Just look at the release notes of the latest nVidia or AMD drivers and you'll see a bunch of "Game X sees ##% increased performance in single GPU configurations" etc.
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You should be ashamed of still having your parents pay for your games at that age. :-)
crappy games (Score:2)
It could also be that these aren't exactly A-list games (regardless of how much they might want to hype up "Just Case 3"), so there are less people working on a crack.
The real statistics... (Score:2)
How much more money they made VS other games that have been cracked right away?
How much worse is this DRM for my computer when compared to other DRM methods?
Game abundance & indies make pirating obsolete (Score:5, Informative)
Piracy getting harder? That's not a problem.
Videogame abundance and the mass-move towards indie-development makes pirating obsolete anyway.
I get all my Games for 10 Euros or less out of the bargain bin. The occasional totally DRM-free 15 Euro download for Shadowrun Hong Kong (Kickstarter Project / Indie Game) adds to that. I'm OK giving 15 Euros for a very neat DRM-free game to an indie studio. It's still dirt-cheap.
Currently I'm playing Deus Ex:Human Revolution for XBox 360. Cost me 9.99 for an original mint copy of the directory cut special edition. Awesome game, pricepoint is a steal.
No one needs piracy or the triple-a publishers in a time where Gamedevs are going indie left, right and center (Hideo Kojima anyone?) and games drop hard off the 60 dollar benchmark as soon as they're published on non-current gen platforms or mobile or the novelty effect has worn off.
Wrong (Score:2)
Not sure about FIFA, I can imagine that at this point no one cares about the same game with the name changed from 15 to 16, however I can assure you that JC3 has been cracked even if its not yet public.
If you think it hasn't been cracked, you just haven't looked.
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I admit I haven't tried downloading a supposedly cracked game for years, but even back in the day it was at best maybe a 1-in-10 success between downloading something that claimed to be a "l33t full 100%haxored game" to actually getting what it claimed to be. Most of the time you'd get something that obviously wouldnt even run and/or was just basically a bundle of virusses and trojans that would take a dump all over your PC. Even though I haven't personally tried, I can't imagine these days that success ra
Windows (Score:2)
Denuvo punishes paying customers (Score:5, Interesting)
Ever since game devs started using Denuvo, I've refused to buy anything that uses it on the grounds that it unfairly punishes the paying end-user. The devteam behind Lords of the Fallen, which was one of the first games to use Denuvo, admitted that they were sacrificing large amounts of performance (as much as 10 to 15 percent framerate) in order to use it. There were also a lot of concerns from SSD users, because Denuvo uses up a ton of read/write operations due to constantly encrypting and decrypting files, putting far more stress on an SSD than a non-Denuvo game does.
If game developers are going to sacrifice performance and the potential for mod support to use the most draconian DRM they can find, I'm not going to be buying it.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Think constantly morphing executable in memory with thousands of triggers built into the game to crash or cause issues when a certain check fails.
Even if they delay the piracy of a title for a month, they've won. They gain additional revenue from sales if nothing else.
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The problem with that sort of thing is that it can get your game a reputation for being a buggy peice of shit either because the pirates don't disclose that they are running a pirate version or because your triggers accidently get set off by some legitimate users.
Re: "encryption tech" (Score:2)
Besides that it's also about will and market share. Who really wants to spend time on cracking the yearly iteration of a sportsball game or shooter? You can get almost any EA game with the same game experience at the same quality on a PS3 with its 2010-2014 iterations. The PS4 and its games are way less popular than its predecessors and thus it will take longer to crack them because there are less interested parties.
Re:Good! (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't know why parent was modded down so much. He/she should be modded up.
I don't agree with DRM, but the proper response to DRM'd games (if you don't believe in DRM) is simply not to buy them. It's not to steal them.
Re:Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably because he sounds like a "tough on crime" advocate. Putting marijuana users in jail was bad enough. If you put every pirate in jail, then half of the US would be in jail right now. I'm not sure how you'd fund that.
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Nah, if you wanted to be the ultimate tyrant, you'd make The People fund their own oppression.
Re:Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably because he sounds like a "tough on crime" advocate. Putting marijuana users in jail was bad enough. If you put every pirate in jail, then half of the US would be in jail right now. I'm not sure how you'd fund that.
The problem is how you define "pirate".
Personally, I believe that everyone should pay for the content that is consumed be it a game, video, music, digital book, etc. Where I disagree over DRM is a combination of fair use and public rights. The DRM laws, as they stand today, are in direct conflict with the fair use doctrine and they prevent creations from becoming part of the public domain when abandoned. Under the current law, anyone bypassing DRM for these otherwise legal uses would still be branded a "pirate".
So, while I agree with the stance that crime should not pay, I can't, in good conscience, agree with the "tough on crime" stance given the current bad laws.
When works are forced on me (Score:3)
I believe that everyone should pay for the content that is consumed be it a game, video, music, digital book, etc.
Then who should pay when works are forced on me, such as a roommate blaring the TV or a store playing popular music? And who should pay when William Shakespeare's plays are performed?
and they prevent creations from becoming part of the public domain when abandoned
Copyright term extension does a fine job of that by itself, thank you very much.
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I believe that everyone should pay for the content that is consumed be it a game, video, music, digital book, etc.
Then who should pay when works are forced on me, such as a roommate blaring the TV or a store playing popular music? And who should pay when William Shakespeare's plays are performed?
I find it hard to believe that you realistically think that I was talking about paying for content within your listening range or even paying for public domain content, especially given my comments about fair use. My comment, for those that need it spelled out, was concerning paying for the copy of commercial copyright content (per the article on computer games) that you have on your player, computer, etc. that you use, play, etc.
Pus, I also firmly believe that if you pay for content you should have the ri
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I certainly don't think all people who violate copyright should be jailed; that would be crazy. The penalty should be proportional to the loss they cause. So an end-user who casually pirates a $50 game should probably be fined around $100. The fine needs to be a bit higher than the price of the game to act as a deterrent, but not orders of magnitude higher.
But large-scale copyright violators who can be shown to have caused massive losses, in the $250K and up range? Yeah, they should be subject to crim
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or maybe people like you should get real jobs instead of expecting the state to back your artificial scarcity.
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Why? What does he add to the discussion? What could what a person deserves or doesn't deserve possibly matter? The world isn't fair and the world doesn't owe you anything, including people getting what you think they deserve.
Re:Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that most pirates are nothing like Jessie James. In fact, most evidence i have seen, both from studies and from my own experience is that the same teen and 20something pirating games 20 years ago is paying top dollar today now that he has a job and less time to play games.
In fact, the only people I have seen continueing to pirate much past that point have been both poor and physicaly disabled. Leaving them no extra money but plenty of time to consume volumes and volumes of media.
So basically.... as far as I can tell very little money is lost to piracy because anyone who can afford the game and wants to play it buys it. The only people who pirate it are the ones who wouldn't have otherwise bought it, generally because they couldn't afford to anyway.
So I can't imagine this issue actually matters at all, since the net result of it being different is almost 0.
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lol I think 2005 was about when I started getting most of my games through steam. However, I still go to stores and see box software and games, so I assume someone buys it and....I dunno, do they still do that?
I thought the rage now was to sell the DVD with only partial content so an internet connection is required anyway. The DVD is essentially little more than a partial installer cache to speed up the install.
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Nowadays, the publishers give them incentive. Treat paying customers like crap with abusive drm schemes and they'll go elsewhere.
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Re:Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright infringement is NOT theft. Read the legal definition of theft:
"n. the generic term for all crimes in which a person intentionally and fraudulently takes personal property of another without permission or consent and with the intent to convert it to the taker's use (including potential sale)."
To be the legal definition of theft, you must remove the item from the person's possession. That is why legally, it is called copyright infringement instead of "petty theft" or "grand theft" which would be the charges if it met that legal definition. So, for the hard of understanding, if I come and take your physical copy of your software without your permission, depriving you of its use, then it is theft; if I make a copy of your software, with or without your permission, but, do not deprive you of its use, then it is copyright infringement. Many companies have tried to make a case that copyright infringement is theft to the courts and they have failed to convince even one court that it is theft. Which is why they cannot use the term theft when talking about pirates because that is libel or slander (depending on the medium) as they would be accusing them of a crime they did not commit.
As far as the lost sales, the RIAA and MPAA's own studies showed that piracy does not typically hurt profits. Often the most pirated titles are also the highest grossing titles and the most prolific pirates are also their highest paying customers. There are exceptions such as bad movies, music and software. Once people realize how horrible something is, they're not going to pay money for it. Thanks to the internet, it is much harder to pedal garbage and make a profit. Between the internet and Germany changing their tax laws, it broke Ewe Bowl's business model. He couldn't make a profit on crap movies anymore so he went into the lawsuit business (extortion) instead.
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Adding my bias in where I tried to remove it in my original post. I completely agree with your stance... unfortunately we can yell this up and down the tree until we're blue in the face and people like the the GP I was talking about before STILL won't understand this fundamental flaw in their argument; whether it be through ignorance or shilling is in material to the fact that they will continually spout it off.
In the case above, I decided to forego the use of my mod-points and instead use my nubs to ratio
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Personal property includes IP, and why the courts use the terms "theft of IP" all the time. They don't turn around and look at the lawyers and say "nuh uh, you can't steal IP."
That said, the equating of copyright infringement to piracy is the poster child example for hyperbole.
I also think that DRM is anti-consumer, your RIAA and MPAA examples are the best examples. They spend millions of dollars on DRM - licenses to use DRM, DVD and BluRay players have to license and build the technology to decrypt, and
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Which is why they cannot use the term theft when talking about pirates because that is libel or slander (depending on the medium) as they would be accusing them of a crime they did not commit.
"Piracy" is the act of robbery or criminal violence at sea. Therefore, calling copyright infringers "pirates" is just as slanderous as calling them thieves.
Re:Good! (Score:4, Informative)
Consider for a moment that those of use who are doing the cracking have already bought the game. It's not about piracy or theft for some of us, it's a puzzle. Since becoming a Dad I haven't had anywhere near enough time to be familiar with this scene, but from what I remember it can be extremely engrossing. Piracy is a byproduct of cracking, not the otherway around.
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I think both are appropriate responses. Not buying the software only sends the message that the product is undesirable in some way. Breaking the drm repeatedly demonstrates why.
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While I agree with some of what you say, believing that playing a game is important enough to violate copyright law shows a worse lack of moral compass than someone who thinks game publishers ought to be compensated for their product. How much a company or person makes is irrelevant... if someone creates a popular product, they deserve the reward.
That said, I'm no fan of DRM, and I don't see how advances in DRM are a good thing. People can still play games they legally purchased for old game systems that
Definition of stealing (Score:5, Informative)
Pirating is copyright infringement. Why does the government even protect copyright?
Many people would rather live in a world without copyright.
In that sense I think anarchy would be great. Those who want copyright can live in a city where those monopolies are protected.
Solve the free rider problem (Score:2)
Pirating is copyright infringement. Why does the government even protect copyright?
The reason we have copyright (and patents) is because of the free rider problem [wikipedia.org]. If you have a way to deal with that problem more effectively then maybe we can do away with copyright. But so far nobody has come up with a better solution. The free rider problem has huge and measurable economic costs. It results in Pareto Inefficiency which I recommend you study.
Many people would rather live in a world without copyright.
Many people want all kinds of crazy things. Doesn't make it a good idea.
In that sense I think anarchy would be great.
So go live someplace like Somalia where anarchy is basically the de-fact
Street Performer Protocol (Score:2)
Doesn't the Street Performer Protocol [wikipedia.org], as implemented by services such as Kickstarter, solve free rider? No pledges, no game.
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Say a video game developer wants to "join the open-source movement" as you suggested. Traditional means of funding development of free software [wikipedia.org] don't apply quite as well to video games. Distributing the software as free software and selling related services works only for an MMO, and not all games are MMO. Making software available for others to improve in hopes that they'll offer further improvements upstream works for libraries [slashdot.org] but not as much for software intended for non-technical home users.
open-source games. Some of these are clones of older commercial games, but way better. Once a game gets cloned, it keeps getting improved beyond the original.
Unless the
don't count abandonware / peopel who don't rebuy (Score:3)
don't count abandonware / people who don't re buy software (in our eye you are a Thieve for not re buying the game that comes with dosbox) when you use your old cdrom and dosbox.
But can everything actually be bought? (Score:2)
Go fuck yourself and actually buy the stuff you use.
Tell me a site where U.S. residents can buy lawfully made DVD copies of the film Song of the South, the film Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night, and the TV series Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea, and I'll do my best to stop pirating.
I said "U.S." and "lawfully made" (Score:2)
lawfully made DVD copies
http://classicmoviereel.com/so... [classicmoviereel.com]
[...]
http://8store.8thman.com/belle... [8thman.com]
There are lots of bootlegs floating around. What evidence do you have that that DVD is lawfully made?
site where U.S. residents can buy
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pinocc... [amazon.co.uk]
"Sorry, this Seller doesn’t deliver to the United States"
"Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)"
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Pinocchio: Sorry, this Seller doesn’t deliver to the United States Learn more
The other two, are you sure they are legal sources?
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No one has been sued for millions of dollars for downloading a copy. Now, making the cracks/copies available to millions of people, sure that could get you a huge fine.
Re:OMG The Horror (Score:5, Insightful)
"OMG, The Horror of expecting to be able to run a game I've paid for, but the DRM mess up so I can't and have to rely on third party cracks to get it to run"
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I used to crack my legally purchased games to avoid DRM, and I won't argue there aren't other fringe cases for cracking DRM, but let's not be dishonest to suggest that that's why these people are cracking DRM. The vast majority of it is for people to play games without paying for them, and that' s just not cool.
Nowadays the DRM I've encountered is much less annoying. Having to look up some code on a code wheel in order to play a game was bad enough - I had one game that would just stop in the middle of ga
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That's the exact attitude that Slashdotters took during the Napster era in trying to protect the products that musicians created.
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OMG, The Horror of expecting to be paid for putting blood, sweat, and tears into creating a product the market wants.
And it's not a figure of speech if you're talking about EA games....
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If they created a product the market wants there would be no more DRM.
Spoken as someone who routinely cracked games I purchased which:
a) constantly asked for something at start-up.
b) needed an internet connection for no reason.
c) needed a CD for no reason.
d) was tied to one PC because some studio thinks their EULA trumps ownership rights.
e) after a coffee I'm sure I can come up with more.
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... greedy, selfish, irresponsible and abusive corporate suits are just thieves producing a lot of over-priced and under-supported crap. These corporations couldn't compete in a free market, so they have to corrupt and control their way to domination.
Perfect partners for FIFA, then.
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Without digital restrictions management, what's to keep people from casually infringing copyright in a video game? Should video game publishers instead follow the RIAA tactic of speculatively invoicing alleged infringers?
Or do you mean many people abstain from the video game market altogether over DRM?
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It's possible to acquire a large number of games that are not encumbered with DRM - between free games, re-releases on sites like gog.com, small developers that can't afford DRM technologies, sensible developers that understand economics and realise DRM doesn't help their overall revenue and ethical developers that choose not to fuck over their customers, there is a tremendous amount of choice available.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
The only reason that DRM is so rampant is because society has proven that they can't be trusted. The law can do nothing to stop stuff from being privately copied, and therefore the publishers of the software have to take their own measure to stop pirates. Similarly to anti-theft tags on clothing, DRM is there because there actually are a lot of people who will just pirate software given the chance.
I agree that certain types of DRM that have been employed in the past (like the Sony Rootkit) go way beyond ju
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"Leftist BS"? Hey waitafugginminute, I though open source software was "leftist BS"!
Re:"No free games in the world"? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, stealing stuff is leftist, unless you're stealing land out West to graze your cattle for free. Then it's divinely inspired patriotism.
Re:So, creative people don't deserve to get paid? (Score:5, Interesting)
I raise you a blog post by the head of an actual game development company: http://www.lar.net/2012/01/02/... [lar.net]
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http://theoatmeal.com/comics/g... [theoatmeal.com]
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If companies want to glorify pirates, then let's all pirate Sid Meier's Pirates, Pirates of the Caribbean, Jake and the Never Land Pirates, and One Piece.
Traitor tracing (Score:2)
I wonder why video game developers haven't resorted to traitor tracing [wikipedia.org] by distributed copies of the program with the subroutines and variables in different orders for each copy. In early 2010, I did a little experiment on a homebrew NES game I made called Concentration Room [pineight.com]. I added a preprocessor that would randomize the order of variable declarations between lines and subroutine definitions within a file. Even with an executable on the order of 16 KiB, I was able to theoretically generate more unique, ide