The End of Copyright

Gamasutra has an article from the ever-interesting Ernest Adams on the future of copyright as regards creative works. From the article: "If we're going to go on making video games, the publishers have to find a way to make them pay for themselves. One approach is an advertising model, although I'm reluctant to say it because I hate the idea of ads in games. Another is to treat games as a service rather than a product. With broadband distribution, I think this is increasingly likely: you won't ever have a durable copy of a game, you'll download it every time you play it. Each instantiation will be unique, personalized for a particular machine and Internet address; encrypted to discourage hacking; and expires after a few hours. After that you'll have to download a new copy."

Comments

Re:Copyleft

[nmaster64]

Never heard of copyleft, but I have heard of copywrong...

Copy protection works ...

[AHumbleOpinion]

Good hackers will have decrypted code available in no time with any copy protection completely stripped off and available on Usenet. What's sad is that the game companies still persist on thinking that copy protection works.

Copy protection works, that's why publishers keep using it. What a small number of the more sophisticated users do is largely inconsequential. Copy protection is largely effective with the mass market. The masses will copy something if it is trivial to do so. If you put up the least little barrier many will buy the product, a readily available crack program on the net doesn't really change this. I witnessed one example of this regarding an unprotected chemistry program bundled with a freshman chemistry textbook. The book had a coupon that let the student by the program for $15. The program was required for homework but only 10% of the students bought it. The next semester the program had weak copy protection, cracks were available (hell, I think there were already generic cracks that removed the protection from any product using it), the users were college students taking chemistry (you would expect this group to be a little more capable than the average gamer), yet the bookstore saw sales dramitically increase, about 90% of textbook sales. Similar things happen with games. I don't know how many times I've read something like: "A friend burned me a copy but it didn't work so I bought my own".

Copy protection isn't 100% but it seems good enough to warrant it's use. Sad but true.

That's not a really valid argument.

[WidescreenFreak]

Your two examples aren't necesarily fair comparisons. You're talking about $15 for a program. That's not a real-world scenario in this case when we're talking about games that come out at $50-60 street price. $15 is well within the budget of most people, so if given a choice between shelling out $15 for a program or having to deal with some level of copy protection, I'm sure that most people would rather just pay the $15.

You're also talking about a program that's required. The students had no choice but to use that software in order to complete assignments. We're talking about games here. There is absolutely no requirements to play games, unless you work for PC Gamer or something like that. :)

When you combine the two - a required program and a purchase price that is less expensive than a night out at the movies - the decision to buy it due to copy protection is a no brainer. When you're talking about a voluntary purchase of a game at a cost upwards of $50, that's a completely different scenario that will be looked at differently unless you're one of the fortunate who have lots of disposable income.

Now, in fairness, I've done exactly what you've said - purchased an additional copy for my secondary PC because it couldn't be copied, my ethics at the time prevented me from simply using a No-CD crack and pirated key, and I had the funds to purchase a second copy. But I'll bet that for every post that said that someone bought a second copy there are many more that either decided to go without or know how to get around it because the cost was prohibitive. The topic of current pricing for games is a whole other topic that is best left for another thread.

However, your primary example cannot be applied to what we're talking about unless every game out there happens to be available for $15. Good luck finding any new game of any value for close to that price if it comes from a major publisher. Independent gaming companies, possibly. EA and Ubi? Not a flippin' chance.