Slashdot Mirror
Pirates Vs. Publishers
1up is running a piece looking at the fight between pirates and publishers in the games industry. They use StarForce, and their frustrating copy protection scheme, as a basis for their discussion of both sides of the issue. From the article: "The goal isn't to encourage people to be honest, or to drive innovation in the hacker community, or to be an irritant because you've lost your CD and want to play. The goal of a publisher in picking a copy protection service is to make more money by selling more copies. The logic is that if it's impossible to pirate the game, then people have to buy it if they want it. Why doesn't that work? If your copy protection is StarForce, then it doesn't work because people are boycotting your copy protection. StarForce, which installs a hard-to-remove driver onto your computer, has an unproven but generally accepted track record of causing computers to slow down -- at best. Some reports have complained of permanently damaged physical drives or hard drives."
Perhaps if they want people to stop stealing their software, they should stop calling software-stealers such a cool nickname. Arrrr!
First off, I pay for my games. However I don't install the games I buy. I chuck the disks in the trash, download the ripped copy, and then install a no-cd crack on it. I've got a rather impressive collection of games and I do it with every single one. Quite frankly, I completely see why people pirate games. The pirate copy is much more user friendly, installation goes quicker when it's from a HDD, and there's usually no DRM infection to potentially damage my machine. I truly think publishers are also going overboard and irking honest people, if I purchase DOOM III it tells me that I cannot have a legitimately purchased copy of clone cd running, when your video game tells me what software I can and cannot own it's trying to step WAY above it's station. While I still continue to support the industry, their tactics are not thwarting pirates, and they are pissing me off in a royal way. I'm not sure how much longer I'll keep buying their cd's to make landfill fodder and parting with my hard earned money.
In the last year I can only think of one, maybe two, good titles worth purchasing. I download games to try them, if I enjoy them I buy them. I know not everyone will act in such an honest fashion, but on my own accord I feel that I am justified in doing this.
If the game publishers would start putting out good games rather than absolute crap (listen up EA!) then maybe we'd all start buying things again. Same goes for the music industry.
I have bought a vast amount more software thanks to trying it out via pirate-distrobution first. Simple as that. Goes the same for music, movies, etc.
If they want to bitch about lost sales to me, I'll call them on their lying marketting and slanted, paid-off reviews. It's all about publishers wanting control when it comes down to it, and pointing fingers when a shitty game doesn't sell.
If they could spin it they'd have people buying the most terrible crap out there for $60 a pop (haha), as every magazine review and media outlet hails it as a hallmark of interactivity. No thanks. I'll continue to bittorrent and decide for myself who gets my money.
On the other side of the coin, the only people who suffer (inconvenience of finding and loading the disc, damage to disc causing repurchase) are people who legitimately bought the software. The pirates (whom we need more of to lower global tempertures btw..) are all running cracked copies - that don't have any of the annoying dimensions - on the first or second day of the software's release (0-day warez anyone?). CD-Keys at least aren't as intrusive as most of the titles with them don't require the media in the drive. I like what Stardock has done with GalCiv2, a cd-key that is activated over the internet or email once per patch and doesn't require the CD in the drive (keeping pirates from playing multiplayer too btw). That's the balance that I'm willing to accept, how about you?
Shh.
Here's me, wanting to buy a game, Dark crusade.
I already have a pre-order in, its ship date is the 9th, today.
Its in most US shops from the 10th onward.
In the EU we'll be lucky to see it after the 24th/27th.
I could wait the 2 weeks to get it, or I could just snatch it off of a torrent site or emule or the like and have it very shortly after the pirates upload it.
This in my mind puts the pirates WAY ahead of the publishers, and more to the point makes the common games buying public, IE me feel more supportive of them.
And as another user commented, not having to find disks, not having PC destroying crap installed on my machine is a big plus to me.
Whoa! Since when did ninjas become publishers? What if you drop a spoon? Will they go totally Ninja-Burger all over your ass? The pirates have no chance against the ancestral tasty goodness of Ninjas.
I think this comes down to the same self defeating strategy we see all over the business world; it is not enough to make lots of dollars instead you must strive to make EVERY dollar.
In the effort to make every possible dollar the business world ends up destroying the reasons their clients were willing to pay them in the first place.
I thought it was Pirates vs. Ninjas?
StarForce? I thought StarForce was dead or about to die from being annoying to the user/potentially harmful to the hardware, posting torrents of games which didn't use StarForce on their forums (GalCiv2) and being cracked anyways? I thought Steam was the latest fashionable hard-to-crack protection.
You just got troll'd!
Copy Protection systems just aren't effective at all in stopping piracy. As soon as just ONE person finds a way to circumvent the protection (which usually happens about 24 hours after the game is released, and often BEFORE the game is released), then everyone who wants a free copy of the game can get it. Sure, it still prevents 12-year-old Johnny from installing the game on his friend's computer and essentially giving him a free copy, but I tend to think two young kids weren't about to buy two copies of the same game anyway.
For those of us who do purchase our software, it's an inconvenience. I don't want to have to insert the disc every time I feel like playing a game. So, I crack my stuff. I take measures to get around the copy protection system of every game I own. It's tedious, sure, but far less so than having to locate a CD from a within a pile of hundreds just because I feel like playing something that I haven't used in a couple of months.
Games don't need elaborate copy protection systems to ensure sales. If the game is good, people will buy it. I don't believe piracy has a significant impact on sales.
Yarrr!
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The typical Slashdot response to one of these articles is that they pirated the game, found they liked it, and then shelled out money for the game. They justify this by being screwed over by some terrible game in the past, having limited gaming funds, or preferring the copy protection free software. That's fine if it gives you a warm, happy feeling, but you are still breaking the law and there are plenty of ways to avoid this. Find a game reviewer that you trust, and select your games based on their opinions. Or if a developer puts out quality games, stick with that developer. But let's be realistic, people are always going to pirate, and they are always going to come up with some dumb justification for it.
The thing is, if no one pirated games, then the overly restrictive copy protection would not exist. Now they add copy protection. Copy protection would not be so horrible if they just did what they were intended to do: make it difficult for others to copy and distribute their games to others. Unfortunately, we have copy protection that infects our system causing it to slow down the game, the system, and sometimes even make parts of it fail to function. All that copy protection does is cause more people to go down the pirate route.
Ok, so this next part is important for the game companies: THERE IS NO COPY PROTECTION, NOR WILL THERE EVER BE, THAT CAN STOP PIRACY. They will always be able to crack it or find a way to get the source. They will then distribute it. I am going to say something that won't be popular to Slashdotters now: copy protection is necessary. Because people will always justify their piracy, they need to make it hard enough so a casual user is unable to take their discs and stick it online. They do not need to license some expensive, over-bearing copy protection that install drivers or root kits. Just something cheap that prevent a casual user from doing it. Why do I suggest this? 1) If you put no protection on it, you are guaranteed to sell less units 2) It's going to be pirated anyways, so spending money on licensing expensive copy protection is pointless 3) A simple scheme will make it hard enough so that Joe User will have to go buy it, but unobtrusive so that it will not turn people off from the game.
But really, not much will change as long as we don't prosecute the pirates. The Internet is still very much the Wild West...anything goes. Until authorities actually go after people pirating software (and I am betting in 10 years, cyber crimes will account for the majority of fines and penalties), people are going to do it. Using what I stated above is the best "in the middle" approach that I can think of.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
I can see why some publisher who wants just to shove a game out of the door and forget about it might think anti-pirate CDs are a good idea, but any multi-player game, or indeed any game were content is expandable, unlockable or downloadable should not need anti-pirate measures. You need to access the web anyway, so why not check the CD serial key. Then you can reward your genuine customers with additional content, maps, objects etc. and shut out the freeloaders by barring them from the servers and so on. So they get to play a bugged 1.0 for a while. So what? Meanwhile your customers are on 1.5 happily playing the cool new levels you just released.
Games that force me to insert a CD really piss me off. I end up going to gamecopyworld or similar to acquire the crack. And that's the thing. Pirates can rip the copy protection in seconds and then dump the whole game up for download or provide a crack. So why bother with it anyway? Copy protection licence fees are still money down the drain when the pirates simply rip it out. That money would be better invested in keeping customers happy and "training" them through a positive experience as to why they should buy your game.
While steam is a very convenient system for those of us who buy our games, it's by no means hard-to-crack. Half-Life 2 has been available since around release day and Counter-Strike: Source as well. The later has also been possible to use to play on any server out there, including legitimate ones, through all patches since release. So as it stands right now, Steam is far less "secure" then StarForce, but much much nicer to the consumers that buy the products.
It is clear piracy is strictly beneficial and helps publishers sell more games and make money. A publisher can outpirate a pirate if they wanted to because all a pirate do is remove whatever anti-piracy stuff a publisher put in, which the publisher can do by just not putting it in in the first place. So if a publisher is to pirate their own games, they'll reap all the benefits of piracy, get a great name from the gaming community, and earn a ton of money.
The reason why this has never been done is because it doesn't work like that. If piracy is always helpful, people would've figured this out by now and pirate their own games. Piracy is almost always strictly harmful to the publisher. The only question is that does your piracy countermeasure costs you even more money than the amount lost to piracy? Clearly if your piracy countermeasure is horrible, it'd turn off legitmate buyers from your game and you'd lose more than you gain. But this case is also hardly universal.
When did you last hear about International Talk Like a Publisher Day?
The only clear thing is if you steal, you say it's A GOOD THING. It's people like you that make the penal system so expensive. Don't steal and there wouldn't be a need for DRM. That's the only clear thing. You steal it because you can, and you'd steal anything if you thought you could get away with it. Face it. THAT IS THE TRUTH.
They supposedly make YOU more money at the consumer's convenience; the trick is, they have begun to realize that you need to make the consumer WANT to use it, rather than force-feed it to them. Steam is one such example, and while it caught flak in the beginning, it has become a very nice addition and tool for cataloguing mods and distributing third-party games. It even allows crazy indy games like defcon! People are skipping adverts with tivos and other P/DVRs, so it is beneficial to make more interesting commercials. Times change, economic models change, etc. it's just a sign of progress.
Here, let me translate your sentiments from the first paragraph into an example that might illustrate just how frightening your viewpoint really is:
Lots of children with new crayons like to color all over the pages of their books, not bothering to stay within the rigid boundaries of the outlines. Even lots of grown-up artists follow these impulses. But everyone knows the "right" way to do it is to color only inside the lines and only draw things that really exist in the really real world. Yet these incorrigibles always explain their inability to conform to a nice, inside-the-lines, style of art to "abstract impressions" or their individual "artistic expression" or some other "dumb justification." For shame.
Heaven knows, there are lots of ways they could express themselves without straying from the rigidly defined rules of solid lines, right?
And anytime you find yourself a bit confused as to how you're supposed to think or act, don't bother to use your own brain! Why bother, when it's so easy to let someone else do the thinking for you and spoon-feed you nice conformist beliefs and opinions!
I'm sure I've made my points. Most intelligent people don't care to have others think for them, especially not game publishers whose primary focus involves separating them from their money...and just because an idea is codified into law by our ignorant, Luddite, bought-and-paid-for legislators doesn't make it right. And when you KNOW this to be the case, civil disobedience of these laws is your moral obligation as a responsible citizen.
That said, as much as I detest copy protection, I trust w4r3z k1dd13s even less. Despite being colossal jackasses about it, Blizzard at least has an ethical, commercial, and legal obligation not to fsck up my computer or data. If Blizzard does fsck up my machine, I have legal and social recourse. They have a reputation to protect, and so it is in their interest to deal fairly.
Not so with hackers who remove copy protection and other product defects (or, perhaps more to the point, claim to remove such defects). The guy I'm downloading the modded copy from may be a trustworthy, noble-minded hacker seeking only to improve the game's flexibility and reliability. Or, he could be an a--hole trying to steal my identity, build his botnet and spray spam all over the place, concealing his malware inside the game. Or, he could simply be incompetent and end up crashing my machine very unpleasantly. Either way, I have no way of knowing. There is no "reputation marketplace" (that I'm aware of) where I can feel comfortable or safe obtaining such material.
So unless and until the DMCA is demolished, I'm kinda stuck here. The game publishers will not stop incorporating defects into their products, and no one can build a trustworthy reputation for removing such defects.
Schwab
P.S: It's probably worth prominently acknowledging that Epic Games have been very accommodating with their Unreal Tournament game series. They start out with disc-in-the-drive protection, but it's soon removed in subsequent official patches. One of the friendliest policies out there.
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
... someone uploads the unlocked additional content to the YoHoHoFTP server. And then you're back at square one again. Software as a service, on the other hand, works pretty well at preventing piracy: how many pirated disks of WoW do you think have ever been made? (Incidentally, folks who are pretty much OK with unrestricted piracy but hate monthly fees need to look at China. China's present is our future, folks: if piracy is inevitable and largely tolerated then you will not be able to own a PC game for love or money because no one will sell them to you. At best you'll be able to lease the right to play with your virtual items for a month or an item at a time.)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
I am totally for supporting the PC Gaming industry, that means I purchase games made by publishers that I want to support. I pirate games all the time, they are generally games that I want to use as a time kill but that are not impressive enough for me to shell out fifty bucks for.
:)
I have bought the following games in the last year or so...
Half-Life 2, Oblivion, Rome Total War, Age of Empires 3, Doom 3...
Those are games that I want the developers and publishers to continue making money on. I also make a point in trying to pirate anything that EA releases, because I am a Madden fan (I just like football games, sue me) and I am sick of their fucking bullshit when it comes to releasing unfinished "next-gen" shit. I sure would like a good football game to play on my xBox360, unfortunately, EA has fucked everyone who loves the sport and the sport gaming genre.
So my point was... Support good games... and fuck EA
You take it, I don't want it...
Why not go back to the days of looking up phrases in the manual or code wheels. Yep they are a pain in the neck but not nearly as much as having to have the cd in the drive when you would rather listen to music or having contact phone home and starforce type protections bogging down your system. I would have to think that the old school methods were at least as effective as the new ones and a heck of alot cheaper. Print a manual in a low contrast color scheme to make it hard to copy and integrate the protection into the games storyline. Spending millions on methods that actually result in easier pirating makes no sense. At least with the manual lookup you would have to find a way to copy and print out the entire book, today with the current methods all you have to do is download a crack.
Have you ever read World of Warcraft's EULA? THEY have full legal and social recourse AGAINST YOU if you violate ANY of their rules.
no one can build a trustworthy reputation for removing such defects.
Deviance, Fairlight, Hoodlum and Reloaded are all VERY famous/well known inside and outside of PC gaming pirate circles. Razor 1911 is probably the most famous group of them all if only because they were (for a time) completely and utterly shut down after a Department of Justice raid.
That pirates use to convince themselves what they are doing isn't immoral and that they are not greedy for wanting to play lots of games at the game companies expense("LOL I wouldn't have paid for it anyways because I got and played it ALL FOR FREE!").
So where do I find a list of StarForce games so I can avoid them?
TC will pretty much eliminate piracy. Packaged games will no longer come with binaries but rather have to obtained from the publisher's website. The binary is signed and because of TC and similar technologies your computer will only run signed binaries. If you try to crack the binary it becomes invalid and will no longer work. Your computer may even report you if you try to do such a thing.
The only people who will be able to sidestep these measures are those who do not have TC modeled hardware. However such hardware will probably become rare or very expensive.
Oblivion, one of the best selling games of the year, shipped with no protection at all. To listen to the copy protection companies you would think that they would have only been able to sell a handful of copies since anyone could rip and copy it in minutes. Instead, within a month over 1.7 million copies were sold (counting the 360 version as well).
There is not a major game that isn't cracked within days of release, if not hours. Protections may stop the casual copier, but they are not even slowing down anyone else. All the protection is doing is inconveniencing the consumer who is unable to easily back up their purchase.
There are always going to be those that won't pay for a product no matter what, but I believe that the majority of people will pay for something that's worth paying for. With the hours I spent playing Oblivion, it was well worth the purchase price, and by not putting invasive DRM on it I am much more inclined to purchase Bethesda software in the future.
Trusted Computing does not require all binaries to be signed. It only verifies that the boot sequence has not been modified. Which "similar technologies" are you talking about that sit on top of Trusted Computing, and how would they pass antitrust muster if one company administers the code signing system in a manner that shuts out hobbyist developers?
The list's editors forgot this game ;-)
It's good ol' market forces at work.
Demand: Game
Supply, legal trader: Game with Starforce for 60 bucks, and it's legal.
Supply, pirate: Game without Starforce for 0 bucks, and it's illegal.
Demand: No starforce 'cause it already ruined one of my DVD drives. Price doesn't really matter, a good game is worth its money. Legality would be nice, but it's behind in priority to "no starforce".
Decision: Pirated software.
Reason: Starforce.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sure, YOU might like not being able to save anywhere, but most games that DO let you save anywhere STILL have checkpoints and autosave points throughout their levels. How is it diminishing YOUR gaming experience by eliminating a MAJOR source of annoyment and frustration from a majority of the gaming population.
h ing-that-jack-thompson-should-really-fight-about/
My rant on the topic (caused entirely by Ghost Recon:Advanced Warfighter for PC). Great game, but the save system destroys ANY fun that I might have been having with the game. I PAID MY MONEY, let me play the fucking game already.
http://www.gekidoslair.com/2006/10/10/heres-somet
Gekido's Lair
Aside from what has been mentioned, something that would make me buy a game would be if I got a nice manual. I never read manuals, but I like looking at pictures.
So I'd like an actual manual in one language only, preferably english. Translations are never good and just take up precious space. Instead I'd like to see gloss paper and a good color print. I'd like to see large clear screenshots and (concept) art tastefully arranged in a spacious layout, absolutely no strange typefaces or tiled backgrounds/borders. A bit like an artbook-lite.
So what do I get at the moment? Usually a sheet, or a thin little folder in 32 languages telling me how to insert the CD. If there is an actual manual included, it's often black and white, printed on toilet paper and with newspaper resolution. Any explainatiory screenshots are about an inch big, probably has some nasty moiré or bleeding making it a black gritty square. The layout was made by the kind of person who also likes making flash sites and DVD menus. Bleh.
The Chair Corp. comic(*00-12)
Just another reason why I don't usually play PC-based games anymore. I'm tired of all the headaches. This is one of the main ones, obviously, but there are others too.
1. The keyboard and mouse control scheme. I've never found it intuitive, just overly complicated. Keep in mind that I'm biased, though, since I'm lefthanded, and I've never been able to get used to remapping controls - when is using A and D for left and right ever convenient? Of course, there's the added issue that, many times, you have to take your finger off of the trigger to perform a complicated movement, like a running jump...I've NEVER been comforatble with that, especially in an FPS. I resorted to using a XBOX360 controller to play FEAR, I wasn't getting anywhere without it (and I didn't buy that one, I borrowed it from a friend).
2. hardware compatability. Computers are constantly upgraded, and it's impossible to stay on the cutting edge of the changes (unless, of course, you work in the industry, have no life, AND have TONS of disposable cash). It seems like every time there's a game out that I want to play, it requires that I get a new video card or processor. I don't have the time or the money to keep up with that. When I buy a console, it's good to go for 3 or 4 years, at least. You're lucky if you get a year out of a computer.
3. console porting. 9 times out of 10, any really popular game ends up on consoles anyways (and no, I don't include WoW, I'm not into that sort of thing - if I want to have friends, I'll go out and make real ones, thank you). And then, you don't have to worry about all this stuff. Take Half-Life 2, for example. It's been ported, was very successful, and didn't have that annoying Steam crap loaded (that's right, despite the article, I HATE being prompted to register for an online service EVERY TIME I boot up a game - and while it doesn't apply to me, thanks for assuming everyone has a high-speed connection on their gaming setup!). Add that to the fact that few console games are ever legally ported to PC.
Now, I do make exceptions for strategy games like AoE...although 3 won't run on my PC with any regularity yet...
"... part of their arguments that software piracy isn't theft."
Of course the two are different crimes. All you have to do is consider what words mean, and silly "debaters" who confuse one crime with another will vanish. I have yet to hear of any kind of pirate who has ever been involved with stealing software, though I guess it might have happened in the China Seas in recent years.
Where were you when the voynix came?
(okay...I'm in a Jimmy Bufffet mood). I don't play many games anymore...my reactions are just not what they used to be. I have a collection of games I've burnt from the net. Probably played 4 of them. Mostly I'll play a bit, decide it sucks and am glad I didn't buy it. A couple I have really liked so I bought them - aka vote with the wallet. I guess in theory, I just hurt the game industry because I played two titles without buying them. But at the same time I bought two titles. Lawyers I guess would look at that as a potential los of 2 sales. Then again, I have remained a happy consumer and will be more likely to buy additional titles I like instead of becoming jaded because 50% of what I bought was crap.
:) I've always liked Unreal and the UT2004 online playable demo got me hooked on that as well. While the demos may not show how repetitive a game can get, or be like a trailer where you see all the funniest bits up front, it is a much better indicator than press releases, hype, box art, etc...
Personally I find demo's a lot more useful for deciding what games I buy. Ultima Underworld and Diablo both had playable demos of the first levels. Both of those convinced me to buy the game. (Several times in several forms for UW). Diablo convinced me to buy it just running around killing things on the first level. Baldur's Gate convinced me w/ just the demo of the demon walking back and forth spitting fire
After being burned several times by great reviews of games that turned out to be bug-filled pieces of crap with about 2h worth of playable content, i started using the download, try, buy method:
...
- I download a pirate copy of the game
- I install it and play it for a while.
- If i like it i'll just buy a copy, if not, i unistall the game
Of course, games that require me to unplug my DVD-burner to go around the protection don't get downloaded or tryed. They also will never get bought.
As i see it, game publishers (and many game review sites *chough* ign *chough*) are not trustworthy, so i'm not willing to spend 50 euros on on a game i can't evaluate myself. However, i do have ethics and believe that good work must be rewarded - so if i like a game i'll buy it, even if i never do take the installation CD/DVD out of the box.
Of course, according to the law i'm still a pirate. On the other hand, the game publisher(s) that scammed me and countless others by buying great reviews to convince us to buy the half-finished piece of crap they called a game are just "doing business as usual" - so works the system nowadays
The article misses the real problems here.
The first problem is that *legitimate* users - the ones who actually BUY the games - are being inconvienced by these stupid copy protection/DRM schemes. This is tantamount to the publisher calling their customers THIEVES - until they prove otherwise.
The second problem here is that all of this garbage only solves the smallest segment of the pirate problem - that of people making copies of games for their friends. It does nothing to attack the problem of online cracks/ISOs, nor does it do anything to attack the big profitable pirate presses overseas. You know the ones - they run those little stalls all over places like China and Malaysia where you can get software, DVD movies, games, etc. for about US$5-7/disc.
In the meantime, the honest user is stuck with an inferior product that may even damage his hardware! That's a heck of a way to say "thank you" to a paying customer. Throw in the fact that most stores won't take back opened PC software, and the of rape of the consumer is complete.
I'm all for supporting the artists/programmers, but it's getting harder and harder to justify when doing the "right" thing causes so many problems. If things don't lighten up soon, it seems to me that the best suggestion is going to be "don't pirate, but don't buy anything either."
When I buy a console, it's good to go for 3 or 4 years, at least. You're lucky if you get a year out of a computer.
While I agree that PC gaming is not as cost-effective as console gaming, you're a bit off with your figures. For the last several years now, I've simply been assembling PCs as a whole unit, taking few, if any, components from the previous generation's PC. I buy brand-name, quality parts, and take extra care assembling everything. All told, I spend about $2,000 every two years on PC hardware. That's a little more expensive than basic cable TV with a few add-ons.
I can't help with the control scheme, but the keyboard/mouse combination is the most precise and accurate combination of controls bar none, sorry. Add to the fact the extra 80-ish keys on the beyboard, and the utility of a KB overwhelms that of a controller.
Lastly, it's also plain to see that a nice, powerful PC with lots of storage space is orders of magnitude more useful than a mere gaming console. No, I don't need an ATi X1900XTXTXXTXT card to surf the web, but it won't stop me from doing so, or downloading OSs, encoding video, ripping CDs, editing images, or any other of a huge number of useful tasks. We've not even started on the sheer variety of entertainment titles for the PC, but they are legion: role-playing, FPS/TPS shooters, puzzle/strategy games, real-time strategy, air/land/sea/space simulations, MMOGs (of all the previous flavors, usually)... and more.
Therefore, consoles are more cost efficient than PCs when used strictly for gaming, yes. In the long run, though, I think most folks might find PC gaming to be more affordable than they might think. (Disclaimer: you'd usually have to assemble the parts yourself to avoid paying $tupid prices at, e.g., Alienware.)
Several publishers "pirate" as in give-away-for-free their older games. Rockstar gave away GTA 1 and 2. Tribes 2 was given away free to promote Tribes 3. RtCW: Enemy Territory is free (there was no boxed release at all, the whole thing was a freebie from id software), so is the multiplayer client for F.E.A.R. - this is a cutting-edge FPS being given away.
already ...
I hate when people do that.
Laws are not abided because they are just laws. They HAVE to be civil, developed and applicable enough for the contemporary times they are being used in. Else, they would have no meaning.
Let me brief this idea with an example ; in 1789, law was that there were the highborne, the nobles, and they were above the "common" people and held powers over them to the degree of life and death decisions. This was the "law" by then, and law stated that it was god given right of the nobles to be in that position, and not only so, but a tradition and foundation of the "society".
If people were idiots to abide by this law then at that time, NONE of what we see around now would came to being, and we would maybe still be "subjects" to a local lord.
So please, noone never do come up and say "its law" - its not the law, it is BIG MONEY's law that they have PAID the congressmen, senators and administration to get instituted to better and further their own profit over and despite the whole society, those copyright/IP laws and practices.
Read radical news here
I believe that software publishers, being commercially driven and all, do have the right to implement anti-piracy mechanisms on their producst. However these mechanisms shouldn't have any impact on the product or the system on which it is installed (I'm looking in your direction Starforce). Well thats my $0.02AUD ($0.014868USD).
Let me put it simply. After seeing some videos of Trackmania I was all set to go out and buy it. Then I discovered it had Starforce, and now I won't even risk the free version.
Second, I own Heroes of Might and Magic I-IV and I play them regularly. I'll admit that I did copy the Heroes V disks so that I could try it before I bought it, but the DRM let me get all the way through the install before informing me it would not play without the original disk in the drive. I uninstalled it, and don't expect me to rush out and buy a copy any time soon.
These are two real examples where DRM actually decreased sales. Publishers take note.
Long live the Speaker Bracelet
Rolo D. Monkey