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Piracy Forced id's Hand To Multiplatform Gaming
CVG is reporting on comments from a GDC talk last week by id CEO Todd Hollenshead on the necessity of multiplatform development. Essentially, said Hollenshead, id was forced to start developing for consoles because of the rampant piracy of PC games. "Enemy Territory: Quake Wars was given as an example of id's multiplatform direction. Originally in development for PC at the hands of Splash Damage and id Software, the multiplayer-focussed action game is now additionally heading to Xbox 360 and PS3."
Thank god nobody pirates console games! . . . oh, wait . . .
Speaking of which, I wish they would stop lumping some guy at home who burns a game from his buddy to play on his machine in with some guy in china who produces and sells tens of thousands of copies of a game.
Anyway, I can't remember the last time I played a truly great id game, so I would say the real reason they had to start developing for consoles was to pick from a larger and less discerning player base.
... but I can still pirate your game on the 360 and I'm sure it's only a matter of time before I can do the same with the PS3.
I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
While the console market has a modchip for the Wii already, and the 360 has been modded long ago [I have no idea about PS3] it is a bit more difficult to pirate games. While it would be nice if we could just make everyone be honest and but what they play there are a few problems with that. One being that the majority of released games are fun for about 5 minutes. Congradulations you wasted fifty bucks. The games that aren't pirated? Online games, if you require authentication then there is a reason to purchase the game. While this massively excludes a large variety of games, if every game picks up an online feature, then maybe that would help the industry? I realize this is a bit of a hard to swallow request for something like a platformer, but could it work?
Exactly. They keep pumping out crap games (industry wide) then blame pirating for low sales. And while both acts are just as illegal there is a big difference between the 'home' pirate and the one who tries to sell a bunch of pirated games. Even the industries themselves have admitted that piracy did not affect their sales as much as they would like us to believe. This industry has not been able to adapt itself to the new internet economy so instead they blame everyone but themselves for their sale losses.
Here I was waiting for piracy to force id's hands to their crotches.
Just buy them used.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Anyway, I can't remember the last time I played a truly great id game, so I would say the real reason they had to start developing for consoles was to pick from a larger and less discerning player base.
I'm not much of a gamer and I can remember great ID games. Surely with a 4-digit Slashdot id you must have tried Doom or Quake, so you never play at all or you have a memory problem.
As for console players, are you sure they're less discerning? I would think that, with the price they pay for the console and for the games, and the expectation they (rightfully) have of not having to deal with hardware, driver or Windows issues like with a PC game, they tend to be much more critical of any game they purchase.
Then again, I'm still happy playing Bubble Bobble and Pac Man, so perhaps I'm not too informed on the subject...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
they made an obscure piece of shareware once.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
More and more of today's games, on all platforms, are being designed with online components. Microsofts's Live, Sony's Home, Blizzard's World of Warcraft, Linden Lab's Second Life, and even Wizard's of the Coast Magic: The Gathering Online all seem to be pointing towards the future of PC and Console entertainment.
What happens when almost every game that comes out includes core design functionality that requires online play, and therefor, online registration?
Does this put an end to piracy or are there some new and clever forms that will emerge?
Would an electronic entertainment world that requires online registration ultimately be a bad thing for gamers in some way?
It isn't that nobody pirates games, it's just that there's less people pirating games. When pirating requires that I solder some chip into my system, there's a good bet that I won't be doing it, especially with the more expensive systems. Playing pirated games was easiest with the PS1/Dreamcast where you could pirate games without modifying the hardware (PS1 required external dongle). Most systems now require that you physically alter the machine, which most people aren't willing to do. Also, players of PC games tend to be much more savvy, and therefore know where to go to get the pirated games. There's a lot of people on consoles who wouldn't know the first thing about where to get pirated games.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Sounds like a bogus misquote of some sort.
The game in question is, reportedly, multi-player. Which almost certainly means that it will be linked to servers under the publisher's control. Done correctly, no amount of crackz, warez, numberz, etc can defeat an online, real-time verification system.
I think it is a lot more likely that they chose to develop for the consoles because, surprise there is a market there!
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
WTF is wrong with marketers for producing this crappy advertising and WTF is wrong with web admins allowing this crap on their sites? 2 full motion adds? One right smack dab in the middle of the text, on repeat with a flashing animation.
I'd love to have a meaningful debate about what ever the message was, but I gave up trying to read it after I couldn't successfully block out the advertising with my hand while trying to read the text.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I bought Doom3 for Linux and it's the only game I own. Does multiplatform mean OpenGL hence Linux/OSX releases or does it mean ID software finally hopped on the console bandwagon?
They have been porting games to consoles since wolfenstien 3d.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Others have pointed to Doom III's sales number, something like 1.5 million units, as proof of how pirates ruined the bottom line. Only 1.5 million units for one of the most anticipated games of '04!?! Balderdash!
Doom III was massively pirated, to be sure, but every pirate =/= a lost purchase. My theory is this: people pirated Doom III, realized it was complete and utter shit, and simply didn't buy it. That's what a certain person I know did...
In any event, online games are a sure-fire way to combat piracy, and a reasonable one at that. ET: Quake Wars looks amazing and I'll buy it the day it comes out.
But I can also pirate console games. It just takes a little more work.
I probably should have said in recent years. I mean, obviously there are gerat id games in my memory, going back to Commander Keen. However, it's been quite a few years since a truly remarkable id game has been out. Doom III was fun. Quake IV was okay. But really, I didn't find either worth spending $50 or $60 on. And that's for the PC. I can't imagine how badly the gameplay would have sucked on a console.
I don't know that console players are necessarily less discerning, but they certainly seem less hardcore about their gaming and less serious about it. Or maybe that's just my perception of them. It's hard for me to see someone who plays an unoriginal FPS - that uses auto-aiming assistance at that! - as a serious gamer.
Note that I'm not a serious gamer myself. In fact, I buy thousands of dollars in games every year and almost never play a game all the way through. I am one of the worst gamers on earth. I love gaming, but even my college aged little sister can kick my ass in most videogames.
If id wants to rake in the cash and not worry about piracy, they need to develop something revolutionary and (as others have mentioned) tie it in to online play. Problem solved. But simply jumping to the console won't solve it. If anything, the only way that helps is that now you have far more people playing your game since it's for PC and consoles both. But with that comes more piracy, too.
Right, when loaning the game wouldn't have worked?
Let's call them:
Big Evil Chinese Pirates - Pirates tons of games at $5 a shot, that the second class of pirate won't even spring for.
Little Cheap Skate Piddle Pirates - Extends the logic that, if I can make a back up copy as fair use, then I should be allowed to make back up copies and give them to my friends, cause it doesn't hurt that big company cause my friend would have never bought the game in the first place, and maybe even put the image up on a P2P and let untold thousands of my unknown friends use it, cause lord knows, they are all to cheap to even by a $5 pirated Chinese copy.
Yeah, I see your logic.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
So a company that was made through sharing their software and generating internet "buzz" around their product FOR FREE, is now complaining that people still want their product FOR FREE.
They won't be around for long anyway if they keep making crappy games like Quake 4.
"I wish they would stop lumping some guy at home who burns a game from his buddy to play on his machine in with some guy in china who produces and sells tens of thousands of copies of a game."
So, by this token, its alright to shoplift something out of a store for personal consumption, but dammit! don't lump me in with the guy that hijacks a truck full of cigarettes to sell back in Joisey.
Ignoring the idiots that are going to naturally tell me that even though I've lost a sale to someone that now has no need except for 'good will' to actually purchase my product, that piracy and theft are not the same. I'll never be able to explain to them how it is, and they will never have a rational explanation for why it isn't (yet some teen will try to explain).
Beyond that, Id is perfectly correct in stating that there is a huge difference in the levels of piracy between consoles and PCs. With a PC, you get all sorts of casual piracy. Download a torrent and its ready to play with no interaction on your part...the idiots can claim that it just jumped onto their hard drives and well, they didn't know it was a dupe because it just worked. With the console, rarely can you simply put in a duped disc. It either requires extensive hacks, such as bootloaders to memory cards, swap and switches (I remember a friend installing a door on his PS2 that could be opened without stopping the first disc from spinning and switching while the motor was still trying to do its job) or buying a $50 mod chip that has little to do with legitimate applications (i.e., I believe the new Wii ModChip can't do imports...something I believe one should ALWAYS be able to play...I'm not a fan of regionlocks...especially if its something I paid for and thats the only reason I know anything about this -- without the regionlock override, there really is no legitimacy other than I WANT TO PLAY 'BACKUPS')
So yes, big difference between a mass pirater and one that makes one or two copies. Its the difference between grand larceny and shoplifting. Glad you made this point. Not sure why...but glad you did either way.
Does anyone remember way back when, while Quake was coming out, and the over-board success of Dooom2.
If memory servers, John Carmack, Mr id., himself, once said 'that they are happy that there game is being pirated, because that means that so many people will want to play it. Eventually people will be happy to throw money our way'.
That came true in so many ways.
The whole foundation of their company is based on piracy.
Crazy, crazy days.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
Yeah, ever since DOOM (the last of the classic-era id games), they sold out and became the very thing they hated...
We need back the innovative company that brought you Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D because they pushed the state of the art at the time, not Quake fifty-million because they can make a quick buck.
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
No, my logic is that piracy is not making a copy of a buddy's game for personal use. Piracy is manufacturing and distributing someone else's material for personal profit. Regardless of whether someone feels the activities are justifiable or not, the word piracy does not apply to some kid making a copy for personal use. It applies to the guy in new york making copies of movies and selling them on the streets or the guys blasting out a million fake copies of Vista and selling them.
So let's call them:
Someone playing a game they haven't paid for.
Someone duplicating a product and profiting from it by selling it in the marketplace.
You know, kind of like recording the superbowl on your VCR and watching it at home later is not the same thing as turning the television on and changing it to the Superbowl in your bar or restaurant for all the patrons to watch (this is not legal).
Is this really true? does anyone have good statistical data about how many games where sold in which year? Because i honestly cant believe, that the pc games industry is so broken. I guess they still sell many game. Maybe the competition is harder now.
Dont you think they rather just target the console market, because more people can play (and buy) their games than?
Maybe id has economic problems because they didnt have a real hit title recently? I mean some of their older games where groundbreaking but you can not say that about doom3 or quake4.
Is this all just some anti-piracy scare?
I personally think that only the time of singleplayer games on the PC will be over soon. Consoles are just easier to use and cheaper. The PC will stay important for Multiplayer games (That sector has been growing fast recently see Battlefield and WoW), especially for shooters and RTS games (due to the mouse as the default input device) and everything that benefits from a community (MODS!).
Yes, you're completely right. After all stealing an item that can't be replicated is exactly the same as making a copy of an item. By your logic, the kid who makes a mix tape for his girlfriend is a criminal, just as the guy who burns out a thousand copies of a CD and sells it on ebay is. You know, because damn that whole fair use thing!
Mind you, I spend thousands of dollars on videogames every year and probably only bit torrent two or three of them (which I often go out and buy afterward if they're really great games). but really, stop lumping some kid who downloads a game for himself with massive distribution networks making millions of dollars stealing and profiting from some guy's intellectual property.
Then again, I'm sure you're just the kind of honest guy who claims found-change on his tax forms so congrats.
Talking about 'Commander Keen', how cool would it be, if iD could finally release CK4 sources, so we could port it to linux and enjoy one of the best (imho) games ever made.
\,,/ Rock and Roll ain't noise pollution, Rock and roll ain't gonna die! \,,/
I thought they just made engines and then put out marketing demos.
How about if the kid makes a torrent file and shares it with umpteen thousand people? Does that put him on the same level as the chinese duplicators?
Well you are missing one major use of a mod chip, at least the sole reason I put one in my Xbox. Media center capabilities. This is a legitimate use of a mod chip that was well worth the $50 to me.
"One being that the majority of released games are fun for about 5 minutes. Congradulations you wasted fifty bucks."
Oh man. Someone should invent a free sample of what the real game is like.. That would be so cool!
Would an electronic entertainment world that requires online registration ultimately be a bad thing for gamers in some way?
This is probably the way things are going to go, but this AC thinks it's a bad situation overall; probably moreso for the average consumer than priates. Ultimately it's a form of DRM, where you're shackled to a company's service rather than a tangible product.
What happens when your favorite game company tanks, gets sold, or just simply doesn't feel like running the registration servers for your game*? For that matter: what's left after your favorite MMOG shuts down? At least standalone games have some kind of "keepsake" potential; provided they're not unintentionally crippled by online registration that's years defunct. In almost all cases, the clock is ticking until you're stuck with a useless lump of software that won't run.
Another way to look at it is this: you can play all your old NES games on your original console just fine, and those old PC games are great provided you still have the manuals (for anti-copy passwords, of course). But will your kids be able to do that in their 20's and 30's, with all of their favorite games, without resorting to (illegal) hacks or platform emulators?
I can see a day when companies open things up after a product's usable commerical life is over; ID has done amazingly well in this regard and should serve as a model for others. Sadly, I don't see a whole lot of that going on, especially for the MMOG segment.
(*Why would they do this indefinitely? In the long run, it will only cost them money.)
Sorry, you need to extend that era through Quake 1, as it was nothing short of revolutionary. It introduced TCP/IP pick-up-and-play multiplayer and publisher-condoned modding, and singlehandedly created the market for hardware-accelerated 3D on the desktop.
I really don't believe that piracy has made id go multiplatform. Their main money making is not from selling games, but from selling game engines. A multiplatform game engine is going to sell better than a single platform game engine, so its in their best interest to have the best multiplatform engines on the market. While all their previous engines have supported consoles, if they also make games for the consoles its likely to help them improve their engine because they'll have more experience with seeing what problems you get when using their APIs on specific platforms.
I hope that makes sense...
Seriously - are sales down due to "rampant piracy" or the simple fact that id simply releases interesting tech demos with some sort of paper-thin plot thrown on as an excuse to seperate you from $50?
id Software makes a great engine on which to make a game. It's a crying shame that the "games" they make haven't progressed past 1995 - kill stuff, find key, repeat. Over and over and over....
I don't see Blizzard or Steam complaining about lack of sales due to piracy. The 3.5 million who bought the WoW: BC expansion seemed more than happy to fork over $40 on top of the $15/month fee to play something they enjoy. And the HL series from steam are still my favorite FPS games on my shelf. I actually spent another $200 for a new video card to throw saw blades and headcrab zombies.
Perhaps people aren't buying id software because they've been siting on their thumbs.
...started to eye console platforms as a method to battle the financial loss piracy incurs. 1) Expanding into consoles does nothing to stem piracy. If piracy was the cause, then they would stop making the PC version.2) Selling for console platforms is a method to make more money. Expanding your market is a good move regardless of the existance of piracy.
You talk as though the rules are sacrosanct. What you ignore is that they exist as a result of a social contract, the entire point of which is to grow the public domain. The idea is that we, society, benefit from the production and public release of works. Thus, to encourage this process, society agrees to certain provisions (copyright). However, the media industry has violated the spirit of the contract by manipulating the system. They are successfully preventing the growth of the public domain. We are thus no longer beholden to abide by the contract either.
I think its more a case of Dev costs spiraling out of control, and game costs being static. As for QuakeWars, surely without an online key the game is worthless, you'll always get cracks etc of course, but in that realm, those people are more demo'ing the game rather than wanting to spend serious time with it. If your spending 5-10hrs plus with a multi-player, net based game you'd have bought it.
Only if he charges people to download the torrent.
The number of people who have potential access to it isn't the issue. Copyright infringement is illegally copying something you don't have permission to. Piracy is the sale of illegally copied or reproduced goods. Its meaning has been slaughtered thanks to the media conflating piracy with copyright infringement, but one is far worse. Why? Because what does the kid gain by posting it to a torrent? Nothing. What do the chinese duplicators gain? A nice $4.90 profit for each disc sold.
I can totally understand id's anti-pirating system. See, Quake Wars is almost a carbon copy of Battlefield 2142. So by making a game exactly the same as an existing game people will get confused and accidentally pirate the wrong game. It's foolproof!
I don't own a snook, and if I did I wouldn't leave it cocked.
"If id wants to rake in the cash and not worry about piracy, they need to develop something revolutionary and (as others have mentioned) tie it in to online play."
It's called ET: Quake Wars: http://www.enemyterritory.com/
Friedmud
I think you're splitting hairs, the effect on ID in this case would be the same either way. In fact, you could argue that the real piracy is less of an issue since it occurs in parts of the world where games are too expensive for most people to buy anyway.
The people downloading the game via bittorrent (using their $40/month broadband I assume) should be able to afford the game.
Fuck you, I won't buy anything more from you.
Hugs and Kisses,
Gamerz
We need back the innovative company that brought you Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D
As an older (30+) gamer who played games heavily throughout the 90s, I have never understood the esteem that Commander Keen is held in. The graphics were pretty mediocre even for the time, the platform gameplay was tedious, and the responsiveness was lousy (though that was a very common problem in PC arcade-style games of the time).
Wolfenstein 3D was awesome, though.
"However, the media industry has violated the spirit of the contract by manipulating the system."
I have *NEVER* seen the industry go after a person that is making copies of 50 year old media. It is always the latest, greatest that someone wants to rip.
Personally, I believe the creators of media should have the right to keep or bury their creations for as long as they want (and pass along this right to anyone that they so choose). Why? Because they created it. I don't see this moral right given up just because they have distributed their creation to someone else.
Of course, simply because I believe that this right should exist, doesn't mean I agree with artists or other creators who decide to do so. I'd be happy writing into my contract that 14 years after the release, my works fall into the public domain (that is the stuff I didn't just plain put into the public domain to begin with).
But all in all, I can't understand why intellectual properties are not protected entirely the same as physical ones. We don't give up land after 70 years. If I buy a chair, it is still mine without anyone trying to claim it as communal properties simply because it can be reproduced (i.e., if they take it away, I can simply have another one made...shitty analogy, but all analogies are shitty). But how does someone come about owning property? Through social contract. It is generally considered good to allow ownership of this somewhat artificial idea. Before the modern times, property was considered to be communal or owned by the king. Never a single ownership. And this was considered bad. These days, we may own property, but in order to do so, we pay a portion of its price to the government in the form of property taxes.
So, if copyright were a matter of paying a fee every year based around the properties worth (or a minimal fee, whichever is higher) -- it would be right back into the same spot as the rest of properties in terms of the social contract.
Anyhoo...
My understanding of this comment boils down to: "I don't like their license agreement/material/pricepoint/some mixture of these factors."
That's understandable. The contract is not agreeable to the consumer so they don't accept it or its condition.
But the result of not accepting the contract is that the consumer does not receive the product and the seller does not receive payment.
So the seller gets no money, and that's their incentive to give fair offers. The consumer already has this as a mechanism of coercing the seller. Theft has not been justified.
I spend thousands of dollars a year on groceries. Am I entitled to steal the odd packet of biscuits? If the biscuits really *rock*, then I might buy some of them next time.
It's ok right?
Taking stuff you haven't paid for is morally wrong. you can call it what you like, it doesn't change the fact that its a dirty low-down thing to do.
Most games have demos, there are reviews, previews and screenshots, movies of gameplay etc etc.
And its not like its buying a house, its a thirty-fourty dollar PC game.
People who pirate games do so for one reason -> they think they can get away with it. All other excuses are just that...excuses.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Ignoring the idiots that are going to naturally tell me that even though I've lost a sale to someone that now has no need except for 'good will' to actually purchase my product, that piracy and theft are not the same. I'll never be able to explain to them how it is, and they will never have a rational explanation for why it isn't (yet some teen will try to explain).
Allow me to be the one that feeds the trolls.
Copyright violation...
is the unauthorized use of material protected by intellectual property rights law, specifically copyright law, in a manner that violates one of the original copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works that build upon it.
Theft...
is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's freely-given consent. As a term, it is used as shorthand for all major crimes against property, encompassing offences such as burglary, embezzlement, larceny, looting, robbery, trespassing, shoplifting, intrusion, fraud (theft by deception) and sometimes criminal conversion. In some jurisdictions, theft is considered to be synonymous with larceny; in others, theft has replaced larceny.
o yes, big difference between a mass pirater and one that makes one or two copies. Its the difference between grand larceny and shoplifting
No, they become two related things when the mass pirater starts profiting from the illegal distribution of the copyrighted work. While the former is a legal case of fair use.
Your 13 year old swearing disproves your point... no need to read the rest of the comment
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I don't know Mr. Hollenshead personally, so all I have to go on are his public remarks. And it seems every time I see his name in the press, he's bleating about how much money he's "losing" to unsanctioned copies all over the net.
Let me clue in the business types at id Software on why they "lost" a sale to yours truly.
Doom III was widely anticipated, yes. And it looked like it was going to be a visually amazing piece of work. However, it was also widely reported that, unless you had the absolutely latest and greatest PC hardware at the time, it was going to run very poorly. Well, at the time, I didn't have the latest and greatest PC hardware. All I had was a paltry dual-CPU Pentium-III running at 1GHz (and 100MHz memory bus) with 256MiB of RAM and a GeForce FX5900. It was apparent from the press that Doom III would run like crap on this rig. So I didn't buy it. I didn't buy Quake 4 for the same reason.
It wasn't until last year that I finally bought a completely new machine (AMD Athlon X2 4400+, 2GiB RAM, GeForce 7900GT) which would run Doom III well. But after downloading the free demo and playing it, I decided against it. I just didn't find stumbling around in the dark to be terribly fun, and I'm not really into horror for its own sake.
Quake 4, on the other hand, seemed like it might be fun. However, every time I visited the shelf at Fry's, it either A) wasn't there, or B) was priced at $40.00. So I waited. And waited. Eventually, Fry's started selling them for $20.00 a copy, and that's when I bought it.
So there you have it: id Software "lost" money to me, but somehow it had nothing whatsoever to do with unsanctioned copying (imagine that!). The Executive Summary you should take away from this is, to make good sales, you should release games that are:
The importance of point #1 cannot be overstated. If you hit #1, you can kind of fudge on #2. I've grabbed all the Serious Sam games, despite their uneven game play, because they're reasonably priced. OTOH, there's absolutely no way I'm going to buy a copy of "Sonic and the Secret Rings" for the XBox 360 until it drops from the preposterously stratospheric $60.00 they're charging for it.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Doom 3 was downloaded 100,000 times on bittorrent even before release. If I were Id I'd stop developing for the Wintel joke entirely. PC users are cheap retards.
Glass
Objectivity.
Why was it bad?
While pirating games on the PC is much more attainable than on the console (no modding required,) there is more to it than simple piracy.
Probably the largest factor is that, today, console games are where the sales are at. A "hit" game on the PC might sell 250k copies, where on the console it would be at least a million. Of course, there are examples like WOW, that have become massive enterprises unto themselves, but for the run-of-the-mill AAA PC title those kinds of numbers are only a dream. The PC simply does not touch the consoles in terms of sales potential. Sure there are more PCs in the world, but how many of those are used primarily for gaming, or even gaming at all (excluding casual games, which we're not talking about.)
As budgets for triple-A titles grow larger, you can only respond in so many ways without raising prices on the game itself: Opt to keep the budget small (lower development costs), increase your potential consumer base (more platforms), or charge for "extras" (expansions, subscriptions, micro-transactions.)
In the end it's all business and a simple investment-benefit calculation: They believe that targeting consoles will bring in more money than what the additional work will cost them. As game budgets continue to grow, while simultaneously tipping more and more towards the cost of developing the artistic assets and the code behind the game makes up less and less, it only makes sense to hit as many targets as possible if the art assets can be shared with minimal or no tweaking, even to the point that it will make sense even if little of the code is shared between platforms -- which we'll see more and more of with the architectural differences between the 360, PS3, Wii and PC.
Piracy is a Cacodemon, and multiplatform software is a gattling gun.e s), multiplatform releases are like being a red shirt in Star Trek and crappy video games sequels/remakes are like an open wound without medical attention?
no that doesn't seem right...
Piracy is the double barreled shotgun, and PC-only titles are marine zombies.
no..
Piracy is a bunch of berserkers and multiplatform releases are like quad dammage, and the games are like machine guns.
hm..
Piracy is like fake Hitler (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfenstein_3D#Boss
Godwin's law invoked?
The default state is that information is freely shareable.
By *not* accepting the contract, the default conditions apply. Otherwise you end up arguing that by not accepting a contract, a contract still applies.
I call that an eager consumer base. I still bought the damn game when it came out. Do they count that as 1 sale and 1 loss due to piracy? That doesn't really add up. I'm sorry, but I really wasn't going to buy it twice.
Are you suggesting that 100,000 is a big dent in sales? Must have been a shit product.
Good luck. I am virtually guaranteed to succeed at life with enough "honorable" scumbags like yourself meandering through life. I'm going to steal your shit, piss on your rug, and then turn around and offer my convincing empathy in the face of your miserable luck. Then we can live our merry lives and appear to be moral upstanding citizens. Except I get sweet new video games and a chuckle every time I remember the stain I left on your rug. haha tool. Also copying is not the same as stealing. You have successfully failed analogies 101, back to the sunday school where preacher can indoctrinate you with moral goodness at the expense of any reasonable logic skills.
I think you'll find that if you took these two cases before a judge and jury, the outcomes would be very different, and they might even be prosecuted under different statutes. The OP never said personal-use piracy was OK, just that it was different from running a massive pirate empire for profit. And he's absolutely right.
Piracy and theft are different in two major ways. First, as many others have stated, when you steal something, you're depriving its rightful owner of physical goods. If you steal something, you have it and he no longer does. That's not the case with piracy.
Second, it's relatively straightforward to measure the (monetary) amount of damage a thief does, but it's extremely difficult to do so in software piracy cases. If someone steals a CD from Best Buy, that's $14 in damages. If that person instead downloads a rip of that album from a BitTorrent tracker, how do you measure that? Not everyone who pirates something would have purchased it at full price. If, say, 10% of pirates would have bought the album if they couldn't get it otherwise, does that mean the company is out $1.40? And who, exactly, was deprived of that money? Are all of the retail stores in which a person might have bought it entitled to a cut? It's not at all a clear-cut issue.
As I'm sure is obvious by now, IANAL. YMMV. LOLOMGWTFBBQ.
>I think you're splitting hairs, the effect on ID in this case would be the same either way.
The effect this has (that software salesmen are loathe to admit) is that it shows conclusive proof that they could have had sales if they lowered their price. Salesmen hate to see that, because it means they can't get away with raping people's wallets, since their manager gets pissed when their numbers are lower than the competitors.
If the managers would bother to look at those stats, that is.
Unfortunately, copyright has led sales managers to do something no other industry's sales managers can get away with: Ignore the competition.
Imagine, though, if your local Esso decided to charge $5/l for gas. Not only would his sales go way down (although his profit might actually not be hurt that much) but his district manager would be F-U-M-I-N-G since now his sales look like crap compared to the Shell district manager, who is having a good laugh at the situation. Result? District manager says if you want to stay an Esso station, you'll charge what the competition charges. Result: Price comes back down to $1.01/l (if he's local to me, that is, YM*W*V).
Unfortunately, this doesn't happen with software.
And then you have the people giving the software away for free. Fortunately, for most people, getting "pirate" copies this way is such a pain in the ass, it *should* be worrying software salesmen at the same level solar power has worried the electric company all these years. ie: Forget about it until someone invents click-n-run for pirated software.
thanks for your post, your a great example of the kind of person who believes its ok to copy games.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
well, you just buy modded console...
Both are still wrong. It doesn't matter how you get full copies in the hands of people without the developer making a cent, the effect is still the same, and id software have shown us the end result -> the death of PC gaming.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
You're putting words into the grandparent poster's mouth.
The grandparent poster didn't say it is was all right, they said that there is a difference. Which there is. A gas station would rather you shoplifted a single pack of cigarettes instead of hijacking their next shipment of cigarettes. Both are still wrong, but they warrant entirely different responses.
Of course, it's a sillier comparison because you're comparing traditional theft (which deprives the legal owner of a scarce commodity) with copyright infringement (which reduces the artificial scarcity copyright creates). They're different problems with different economics to consider. Indeed...
I haven't been a teen for a bit over a decade now, but I'll try to explain anyway.
Theft of property and copyright infringement are different crimes. They have different victims and different economic effects. If a thief breaks in Best Buy and steals a $50 (retail price) Sony TV, Best Buy suffers because they no longer has a TV. Best Buy has lost $40 (or whatever wholesale is). Sony has lost nothing. If the thief breaks into my house and steals my TV, neither Best Buy nor Sony have lost anything, but I've lost $50.
Conversely, (for the sake of argument) if an infringer breaks into Best Buy and makes an infringing copy of a $50 (retail price) game, Best Buy still has the original. The value of that original is slightly reduced because the artificial scarcity has dropped. This is potentially a "lost sale." This lost revenue from potential sale impacts both Sony and Best Buy. How much? Definitely not $50. The reality is that some portion of copyright infringers, if infringement was not an option, would not purchase the game. It's hard guess what the percentage is, but let's guess only 10%. Now on average over multiple illegal copies, Sony has lost $36 (90% of the $40 they'd expect) and Best Buy $9. Total loss to "the world": $45.
By any stretch of the imagination, clearly individual copyright infringement cases are slightly less harmful than individual cases of theft. The total economic loss for the above hypothetical example is $45 to $50. Both are bad, but given the choice I'd prefer losing $45 to $50. The situation because even more clear if you believe the "can't or won't pay for it" percentage is higher, or if the thefts involve damage to other property (breaking a window to get in).
The situation gets even weirder when I buy the game. So when I bought my $50 Sony TV, I also bought this $50 game. Our hypothetical and slightly insane thief breaks in, steals my TV and makes a copy of the game. I'm out $50 for the TV, but for the game I've lost... nothing. Perhaps a very small amount of value from potential resale value on the game, but nothing significant. Despite the thief having broken into my house the real economic damage is done to Best Buy and Sony. That's a heck of a trick, to have a thief break into my house, "steal" my copy of the game, but have third parties suffer financially.
This is not to suggest that copyright infringement is "okay." Indeed, copyright infringement has a definite detrimental impact on society. But it's a different impact from theft. The steps to defend against these crimes are different.
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> "You cannot pirate an MMO. Period", said Johsnon.
I'd like to point out that in a general sense this is correct in that in an MMO you can pirate or copy the software but cannot pirate the content that is in the server world. While that may be true, however, it is often possible to pirate whole MMOs in the sense of private servers running leaked server code and people connecting to these servers on cracked/modified clients. While these players cannot communicate with people playing the "legitimate game," it doesn't mean that they can't enjoy a "good enough" experience and not pay for it.
- WrexSoul
\/.
vvv
How's that revolutionary?
It's Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory with a portion of Tribes. Plus there are a crapload of other games that are vehicle based online FPSs.
I can't understand why intellectual properties are not protected entirely the same as physical ones. We don't give up land after 70 years.
Sounds good to me. Real property has the concept of 'squatters rights' - so if you want to treat movies and music the same as real property, then all the pirates will just become squatters. If they can grab a copy of it and sit on it for long enough, it becomes their property.
I spend thousands of dollars a year on groceries. Am I entitled to steal the odd packet of biscuits? If the biscuits really *rock*, then I might buy some of them next time.
It's ok right?
Taking stuff you haven't paid for is morally wrong. you can call it what you like, it doesn't change the fact that its a dirty low-down thing to do.
The difference being that when you steal a packet of biscuits, the store is now missing a packet of biscuits that could have been sold to someone else. When you copy electronic media, no one loses anything concrete. The best you can do is to argue that copying electronic media deprives the producer of revenue, but to say that everyone who copies a game would have bought the game if they hadn't copied it simply isn't true.
Is it copyright infringement? sure. Is it illegal? sure. Is it morally wrong? good question.
thanks for your post, you're a great example of the kind of person who uses the ignorant copying-is-stealing argument
I gotta say, that $50 television cost Best Buy $20, and it cost the manufacturer $10.
So if I steal a television, I should argue that I really didn't take $50 worth of material, I was just reducing the artifical scarcity of the product, and in the scheme of things, it really doesn't cost anyone anyways because this is actually calculated into the price. Best Buy didn't lose anything, the customers all lost maybe a dime each for that television.
Where as if someone steals my work, its not just a reduction in artificial scarcity, it is a real loss of productivity. I could have easily been creating something physical that while not all that interesting, or useful to the world, its not going to dismissed as artificial just because it can be copied.
To someone like me, it is EXACTLY the same as theft. You took my time. It is a non-artificial scarcity. With my health, it is becoming more and more valuable. There is no difference...they aren't taking my product, they are taking a little piece of me. Ok, this is less theft and more rape. Argue as much as you like, an illegal act is the same as another illegal act and it doesn't matter if its copyright infringement, or the illegal impoundments of ships on the high seas. There is no muddying of the subject except for folks that want to pretend they are better. The only muddying is coming from folks that want to distinguish two separate items into a group of tangible vs. intangible because the general public is still trapped into blue collar lifestyles and thus incapable of understanding the second.
In fact, the more I hear of those muddying these waters, the more I'm glad I have the RIAA working on my side (even if the last royalty check was enough to pick up taco bell). I know I would have never been able to put a downpayment on my home with the money I make in education. I just wish I had someone carrying about my well being enough in my current profession like I did my last. I would GLADLY pay a manager 20% of my salary what it is truly worth to educate your or your children...instead, I got politician demanding more and more each day and promising tax payers they will be able to pay me less.
On the flip side however, some people who pirated a game would've bought it if the free option wasn't available. To say there's no concrete loss just cause it's not a 1 to 1 loss is way too simplistic imo.
Is it ok if I give a few of the biscuits to my neighbor?
You're just willfully misinterpreting me now.
All of my rambling was to a few simple points. I'm going to try once more to make them clear:
1. Copyright infringement is wrong. It hurts individuals specifically and society as a whole. (Despite your claims, I have not argued otherwise. You're seeing attackers where they don't exist.)
2. Copyright infringement is different from theft (or rape, since you made the comparison). It has different victims, different levels of damage, and different prevention measures.
3. Since these three crimes are different, they should be considered separately. They should and do have different laws, enforcement, and punishment.
4. Given #3, confusing copyright infringement, theft, and rape is bad for the public debate.
I would like to respond to one specific point:
Are you seriously suggesting that your average person is too stupid to have an informed debate on the matter, and that as a result you're forced to engage in equivocation to fool them into agreeing with your conclusions? If so, that's exactly the sort of dishonesty and arrogance I abhor. Tricking people into supporting your cause has no place in a functioning democracy. Be honest with your fellow citizens. Trust them to be smart enough to understand the issue and dedicate yourself to educating them so they will agree with you for the correct reasons.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Where as if someone steals my work, its not just a reduction in artificial scarcity, it is a real loss of productivity. No. At most it is a "potential loss of income". Your productivity is how much finished work can be output in some unit of time. Particularly in the era of digital distribution, you only have to make something once, and can distribute it a countless number of times without having to make another original. On its own, this makes your work (and mine, for that matter) distinctly different than the TV in the example above.
I could have easily been creating something physical that while not all that interesting, or useful to the world, its not going to dismissed as artificial just because it can be copied.
And from that idea comes the silliness of shrinkwrap/clickwrap licenses on media -- An attempt to cram non-physical things, which can be copied without actually having to construct new physical objects, into the mold of traditional manufacturing.
To someone like me, it is EXACTLY the same as theft. You took my time. No, your time was used to make the original. The copy took nothing.
It is a non-artificial scarcity. With my health, it is becoming more and more valuable. There is no difference...they aren't taking my product, they are taking a little piece of me. Ok, this is less theft and more rape. They took nothing. You still have exactly what you started with.
Argue as much as you like, an illegal act is the same as another illegal act and it doesn't matter if its copyright infringement, or the illegal impoundments of ships on the high seas. I shouldn't even bother replying to this, but the amount of glee I get in pointing out that you've just equated petty floppy-copying to genocide makes it worth the typing.
There is no muddying of the subject except for folks that want to pretend they are better. The only muddying is coming from folks that want to distinguish two separate items into a group of tangible vs. intangible because the general public is still trapped into blue collar lifestyles and thus incapable of understanding the second. Or, rather, they are two distinctly different things. Which they are. By your standards, TV patents should last forever, and the idea that someone other than the original patenter of some TV technology is able to later come by and make the same thing for less constitutes theft. Furthermore, "intangible" in this conversation actually means something in copyright law. To quote a copyrighted work, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
In fact, the more I hear of those muddying these waters, the more I'm glad I have the RIAA working on my side (even if the last royalty check was enough to pick up taco bell). The RIAA doesn't work for you. If they did, your royalty payments wouldn't be pennies on the dollar. There are plenty of musicians who don't work for major labels, but who have profitable careers without the benefit of the RIAA. Obviously these people aren't super rich, nor are they household names. If that's important to your career, you should definitely try to be on a major label. However, that doesn't mean you can't make a living without the media giants.
When you copy electronic media, no one loses anything concrete.
Absolutely correct. Now please explain why only concrete things have concrete value. If I steal your identity, you haven't lost anything concrete either.
--
Dum de dum.
Freedom is not the license to do what we like, it is the power to do what we ought.
No, it isn't.
concrete, n.: 2. (Logic)
(a) Standing for an object as it exists in nature,
invested with all its qualities, as distinguished from
standing for an attribute of an object; -- opposed to
abstract.
Nothing physical is lost. You can argue about abstract losses that may or may not exist (e.g. money that would have been made if the game wasn't copied) all you want, but you cannot say that the company has lost anything physical. That's why the law doesn't consider it stealing.
Exactly where did he say that only concrete things have value?
It is difficult, if not impossible, to assign a concrete value to an abstract quantity, but that isn't to say that abstract things have no value at all.
What exactly is the concrete value of your identity? Can you give me an exact number?
Ditto. Never saw the appeal of Commander Keen. Ditto of Wolf3d, too. Esp the mod where the nazis were replaced by Pac-Man.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I never really thought they made much money at all from selling their games regardless of pirates.
Ok, I could be completely wrong. How would I know anyway, right? I don't have a copy of the companies financial reports or anything like that. What I do know is id consistently produces high quality gaming engines which are licensed out to third party companies for their own titles. According to id's website the licensed Quake3 out for $250,000 per title. And from what I remember, there were quite a few titles using that engine.
On a side note id has been producing ports to consoles for ages. There was QuakeII for the N64 and Playstation.
I have *NEVER* seen the industry go after a person that is making copies of 50 year old media.
It happens. Hell, Mickey Mouse lies at the heart of copyright policy now, for some bizarre reason, and the key to Mickey Mouse is 'Steamboat Willy' which is nearly 80 years old.
Personally, I believe the creators of media should have the right to keep or bury their creations for as long as they want
I agree. If someone creates a work then while I would appreciate it if they would publish it, it certainly isn't appropriate for anyone to insist that it be published or even preserved.
I don't see this moral right given up just because they have distributed their creation to someone else.
First, there's no such thing as moral rights for the purposes of this discussion; copyright is utilitarian in nature.
Second, it is vitally important that you bear in mind that copyright is wholly artificial in nature. A copyright is nothing other than the right to force other people to not fully exercise their natural right of free speech and free press. It is impossible to reconcile the idea that people have a natural right of free speech and a natural right to copyright; they're diametrically opposed. Copyright comes from individuals other than the author of the work at hand agreeing, for their own benefit, rather than as an act of charity toward the author, to forgo part of their right of free speech in order to bribe the author into freely choosing to do what everyone else wants him to do (i.e. create and publish his work). But copyright is voluntary on the part of these individuals. Where they have worked together to form a government that represents their interests (as any government must do to be legitimate), then they may delegate the power of choosing whether to have copyright, and if so, how much copyright, to that government. But copyright ultimately remains an artificial right that is bestowed upon authors only when, and only to the extent to which, it serves the public interest to do so.
So following your example, the reason why the distribution right is limited by the first sale doctrine is essentially because it is in the public interest to do that, and copyright holders have not been granted the power to do otherwise. Lacking that power inherently, they are stuck. They'll have to live with it. This limitation on copyright might reduce the degree to which copyright is an enticement to authors, but history has shown that very many authors can live with it. On the whole, it is probably best to preserve this limitation on what we give to authors, as doing away with it would likely yield less of a public benefit than the public harm that result.
I'd be happy writing into my contract that 14 years after the release, my works fall into the public domain (that is the stuff I didn't just plain put into the public domain to begin with).
That's nice of you. Of course, it's just as easy for the public to decide to only give you 13 years worth of copyright before it automatically terminates and we stop voluntarily respecting your wishes. The question isn't whether you'd want us to do that or not, the question is whether, taking into account our desires and your behavior, whether it serves our interests to do so or not.
But all in all, I can't understand why intellectual properties are not protected entirely the same as physical ones.
Well, your confusion may initially arise from not understanding the subject. A creative work, such as a story, or a song, is not property. A copy in which that work has been fixed, such as a paperback, or a CD, is personal property, no different from a table or a jacket, and fall under the regular laws pertaining to personal property. And a copyright is an artificial right which pertains to the creative work and to copies in which that work has been fixed, and while it arguably isn't property, it is pretty property-like, and again is generally protected in the way that we'd protect personal property. Not
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
To someone like me, it is EXACTLY the same as theft. ... Ok, this is less theft and more rape.
I'd say it's less rape, less theft, and more like trespass to land. When someone steps onto your property, they aren't depriving you of the property, but they're using it without permission, which is sufficient for that offense. With copyright infringement, they're not depriving you of your copyright or of the creative work, but they are using the creative work without permission.
Still, given that you backed down from saying that it was "EXACTLY the same as theft" in nearly the same breath, I don't know if you're really the right person to judge the situation objectively.
Argue as much as you like, an illegal act is the same as another illegal act
So you're saying that you think that we ought to execute people for jaywalking because jaywalking is the same as premeditated murder? I'm going to have to disagree with you there, and I think that pretty much everyone else in the world will too. One offense is not the same as another. Even Hammurabi knew this.
The only muddying is coming from folks that want to distinguish two separate items into a group of tangible vs. intangible because the general public is still trapped into blue collar lifestyles and thus incapable of understanding the second.
Actually, I want to distinguish between them because they are not the same, and it is unwise (as we've seen) to treat them identically. I want very much for people to understand the latter, and many of my posts here, including this one, are aimed at just this. It doesn't bother me if you think that copyright infringement should be illegal. Even I think it should be illegal (though we may differ on precisely what should constitute it). It does bother me if the reason you think that is because you don't understand the issues. I'd rather have people making informed decisions.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
"Tons of games where the first level is the coolest thing, followed by boring, repeating hallways or nonsense puzzles that just pad out the game"
Oh man, it would be so cool if someone would review games for us.
It pains me to see that so many people have a difficult time answering this with "yes." It's really easy to figure out, though:
1. Did the people who produced said game intend for you to acquire it by purchasing it, or someone else purchasing it and then either giving or selling it to you (not a copy, the original game, that they have not kept a "backup" of), or by the producers giving it away for a promotion or contest, for example?
2. Did you acquire said game by one of these intended means?
If the answer to #2 is no, then your actions with regard to acquiring the game are immoral: you have taken something you didn't have the right or permission to take. Whether or not that something was "concrete" or the rightful owner will "miss it" are immaterial to the morality question.
Let's put it another way. Say you know of a way to sneak in the exit at the local cinemaplex in the middle of the day. You watch a bunch of films for free that way. Since you're a poor college student (or some other reason), you wouldn't have paid to see the film anyway, but "most of the stuff they put out today is shit anyway - if only they'd make films I was willing to pay for!" And hey, maybe if you liked a particular film enough, you'll buy the DVD later. Plus, since it's in the middle of the day and the theaters have few patrons in them, you're not depriving anyone of a seat, and the cinemaplex is running the film regardless.
Now, is someone who does that doing something morally wrong? The answer for me is easy.
Doom 3 disappointed, that's why it didn't sell. I was looking forward to playing it for a while, and when I did, yes, it was visually attractive, and had a lot of technical polish to it, but it wasn't worthy of the Doom name, not after Doom and Doom II, and all of the Doom II variants. The game was too short, the last level sucked, and it wasn't engaging like the previous Dooms. It was better than the movie, but, well, that isn't saying much.
When you have a product 'brand' that people have gameplay expectations for, and you make it suck, what do you expect to happen?
People pirated Doom and Doom II A LOT, especially college students, then they went out and spent the few dollars they hand on it, and many on the later releases. Make a good product.
"Ignoring the idiots that are going to naturally tell me that even though I've lost a sale to someone that now has no need except for 'good will' to actually purchase my product, that piracy and theft are not the same. I'll never be able to explain to them how it is, and they will never have a rational explanation for why it isn't (yet some teen will try to explain)."
Or a lawyer, but we don't listen to those either.
"So yes, big difference between a mass pirater and one that makes one or two copies."
Yeah, big difference. They're both ways of saying "I respect you" and "you can trust me".
"Are you suggesting there is _less_ content being produced now than there has been in the past ?"
Less quality content.
One thing I would like to point out is that regardless of how legal or moral such "piracy" is, it's very thoroughly American.
Anyone who knows their American history will recall that the main catalyst for the founding of America was precisely this kind of rebellion against ridiculous overpricing on luxury goods. The only difference is, back then the people who took your perspective were called Tories and quite often got tarred and feathered.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Because intellectual "property" is not property. Its an idea. You are a part of a society bub. Don't like it? Don't produce ideas for consumption by said society. Once you have placed an idea into a society, you cannot forever claim "ownership" of the idea. The world is more than you, and thankfully we have at least a modicum of laws that restrict people from hording the "ownership" of their ideas.
For the greater good of mankind I hope you never see your dream of a totalitarian society with permanent restrictions on ideas and the passing of those ideas. You are a warped capitalist who cannot conceptualize that an idea is NOT a thing. Copyright law is restricted to keep you from lording over your ideas. Get over it and perhaps enjoy the fact that you may be bettering society by creating intellectual "property."
"Value" does not necessarily refer to money. I'm sure you know what identity theft can cause, so you must also know what kind of "value" your identity has.
It's been said before, and probably a bazillion times in this thread alone, but it bears repeating:
PIRACY != THEFT. (It's not even "PIRACY"... it's COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. BIIIG difference.) I can't believe we're still having to go over this...
It's a TORT. You copy something, you're not depriving the owner of their copy...
If you take a game out of the store without paying for it... THAT is a different story.
So stop toeing the party line and giving the *AA's (etc.) more voices to spread FUD.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
How about simple common courtesy?
Someone (a game developer or film maker) spent many hours and many resources to develop a game or movie. They offer the use of the product to the public under certain terms (e.g. payment). You, deciding to help yourself to the product without abiding by those terms is basically giving them the middle finger, showing zero respect for them and the effort that they invested in creating the product.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Or, in the case of the Xbox 360, it only requires a simple CD drive firmware flash.
That's not what the OED says:
oh grow up,.
You can call it copyright infringement if you like. you can call it zaphod beeblebroz if it makes you happy. its still
1)illegal
and
2)morally wrong.
And the kind of people who do it are certainly not people I'd associate with, or let in my house.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Same thing can be said about workers complaining about outsourcing. At the end of the day, people or businesses see a threat to the status quo and they react against it, often missing the possible opportunities.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Personally, I have a mod chip on order to play import games, I don't have any intention of playing copied games...
I wouldn't even have ordered it if the wii wasn't region encoded... I'm an American living in Japan... quit taunting me with all these games and let me play them without paying another 25000Yen for a japanese system when I already have a US system... and let me set my local area to japan for the forecast channel too >_
Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
Taking stuff you haven't paid for is morally wrong.
Every time I take a breath of air, I am doing something immoral?
sigs are hazardous to your health
Perhaps in USA the situation is as you describe. Here, nobody buys original console games.
Maybe it's because with the lack of "good games" people still need ways to numb their minds.
If they are "crap games" why do people still copy them?
Because the price matches the value.
You would pay $100 for something that is worth $100 to you. But you aren't willing to pay $100 for something that is worth only $10.
Likewise, people are willing to pay $0 for a crap game that is worth $0.
(And forget the "but they wouldn't steal a Ferrari", that's a different argument. I'm only answering the part about copying a crap game).
he reality is that some portion of copyright infringers, if infringement was not an option, would not purchase the game. It's hard guess what the percentage is, but let's guess only 10%.
Your number is way off. You are probably thinking "Sure there may be a few who would rather go outside than pay for the games, but most people would still play games even if they had no other option than paying". This is correct, as for the number of people, but the number of people is not the correct thing to count.
A school kid who currently pirates 10 games every week would still need his games. However, instead of pirating 10 games a week, he would need to save up to be able to buy his games. Suddenly we are talking two games per month instead of 10 per week. This is what people are talking about when they say "but I wouldn't buy them anyway". That they would never buy games for thousands of dollars every month, because they don't have that kind of money.
(And even if they did, a big part of that money would probably go to buying gas for their Ferrari. However, you don't see that many school kids driving Ferraris - which they would if they had that kind of money).
Sure there are some people that don't copy a lot of games, and have enough money that they could affort to buy them (and for some reason, some of this group actually DO pay for their games), but they are nowhere near the other 90%.
because there would be fewer people, and you could have people with similar desires playing on a custom server to match those desires.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The fact that you're apparently too stupid to understand the rational explanation does not make it any less rational.
Also, if you won't believe a "teen," maybe you'll at least believe the Supreme Court -- if not, then you're truly an idiot!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
THANK YOU... When was the last time these big publisher owned (ATVI) studios did something really innovative. EA and the like churn out games on a yearly basis when the reality is they need at least 2 years to do something really interesting and worth paying $50 for. I mean let's be serious Quake IV?!? 50 bucks at launch!?! It felt like a Doom III expansion pack. They're moving to consoles because children have consoles. Children are stupid. Children's parents will buy them whatever they want. That's why Pokemon is financially the most successful franchise in gaming history. Go for the easy buck at the expense of the real fans. Welcome to America.
And the kind of people who do it are certainly not people I'd associate with, or let in my house.
Have you ever whistled / sung / hummed a song you heard on the radio? Did anyone hear you do it?
That's
1) not illegal (just like the case of copying a single disc, this is a civil tort).
and
2) morally wrong (only by your moral standards).
That song is protected by copyright, regardless of who performs it, and has a performance fee associated with it. No, these rights do NOT come with the price of the CD purchase - that's just a license to listen.
You'd better lock yourself out of your own house, and throw away the key, because you're just as guilty as every one of us.
The point is, it is natural for humans to reproduce the sounds, rythyms and words they hear - before written and recorded word, it was a way to record history and pass-on knowledge. Now that we have mastered writing and recording, performance of "copyright" works is discouraged by strong copyright restrictions. The fact that people still sing / whistle / hum songs they've heard is a testament to the fact that you can't legislate human nature.
The reason why people don't want to call it "music theft" is because restricting access to music goes against our very nature. Music is meant to be shared. People (including bars and performers) have been dodging the performance fees for songs since their creation, because they're incredibly stupid (and up until recently, unenforceable).
In a time when electronic music copying / distrubution costs are almost nothing, copying music is as easy as singing it. If you don't feel bad about singing your favorite song, why should you feel bad about copying it?
As a contrast, do you know what the RIAA wants to use technology for? Imagine a world where you cannot even whistle your favorite tune without paying a performance fee. Would you REALLY want to live in such a locked-down world? If you want to know why people are collectively giving the RIAA the finger, just think about the incredible amount of control infarstructure they will put in-place just to pull that off...it's scary.
Artists have the right to be successful. They do not have any inherent right to be superstars. The superstar is an alien concept born of copyright, and protected by lobbyists. Is it any wonder that their locked-down system begins to crumble once you can bypass these protections with a simple mouse click?
And let's talk about "entitlement" for a moment, since you've used the word so casually to demean other posters:
Are YOU entitled to sing that song you just heard on the radio? Are YOU entitled to breathe the air around you? Not a bit! But, you do it anyway, because it's easy and it's natural. If somebody took all your air away, or prevented you from singing songs, would you fight back for that? You only think you're entitled to breathe and sing songs, because you've never had to FIGHT for those rights. So don't you EVER bring entitlement into this.
People who copy songs are not entitled to do so, they just do it. In a similar manner, you're not entitled to project your morals or interpretations of the law onto others, but you do so anyway. Myself, I am not entitled to expect you to read this post, but you will anyway. That's the way the world works.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
CRIMINAL copyright infringement is ILLEGAL.
COPYRIGHT infringement is a TORT... it's a CIVIL matter. Look it up. Google's your friend....
You grow up and stop parroting the party line and read some more about it before you spout nonsense.
Morals have nothing to do with it. It's been less about morals since the government keeps extending "for a limited time" out to infinity with the court's consent. Checks and balances don't work when everyone's in on it.
Peddle your morals elsewhere, troll.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Speaking of which, I wish they would stop lumping some guy at home who burns a game from his buddy to play on his machine in with some guy in china who produces and sells tens of thousands of copies of a game.
I wish they would stop lumping tens of thousands of guys at home who burn games for their buddies with some guy in China who produces and sells tens of thousands of copies of a game.
And forget the "but they wouldn't steal a Ferrari", that's a different argument.
If it was as easy to do and get away with as warezing you'd probably see loads of people stealing Ferraris.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Sir, I thank you for a most eloquent and precise exposition. Although the Grandparent seems to hold some truly horrifying ideas (perpetual copyright(!) does he even have any idea what that would mean? The impoverished state of the world that would imply?). This kind of creeping libertarianism is absolutely horrifying to me.
"Stealing somebody's identity" is an ambigous and misleading phrase. If you're "stealing my identity" by making purchases with my money, you're stealing my money, depriving me of the ability to use it(alternatively, depriving an insurance company of the ability to use it). If you're "stealing my identity" by doing things that don't involve taking anything from me(say, by making public statements in my name), then no, that isn't theft in the conventional sense of the word either, though it might very well be criminal.
(I see now that your actual argument, which I haven't addressed, is a strawman argument: as the sibling explains, the GP was not arguing that only concrete things have concrete value, he was arguing that "theft" was meant taking something concrete.)
Was he, now?
The GGP states:
GP answers:
GP concludes:
GP assumes that the loss of a non-concrete possession is harmless, at least in some ways in some contexts. Therefore, I call on him to defend his assumption, not his conclusion.
Wrangling about with a person's claims is typically unproductive until we have settled disagreements in the premises, wouldn't you agree? My question is a strawman only if you believe that the point I am addressing is weaker than the GP's point. If you believe my point is simply unrelated, that'd be a red herring. But this is not, in fact, the case.
Besides, GP isn't defining theft anyway. GP is stating that certain kinds of acts are morally justified. I could have asked the GP to defend the additional assumption of consequentialism, but that would range a little far afield, and in any case GP's argument doesn't seem to hold water even within a consequentialist framework: thus, the discussion about value.
"Stealing somebody's identity" is an ambigous and misleading phrase. If you're "stealing my identity" by making purchases with my money, you're stealing my money, depriving me of the ability to use it(alternatively, depriving an insurance company of the ability to use it). If you're "stealing my identity" by doing things that don't involve taking anything from me(say, by making public statements in my name), then no, that isn't theft in the conventional sense of the word either, though it might very well be criminal.
Interesting. So my mere possession of your identifying credentials, prior to my employing them in some nefarious manner, is not identity theft? If I found that my credentials had been stolen, i.e. copied, I would most certainly take steps to cancel those credentials to prevent the thief from using them.
A criminal does not "steal my identity" by stealing my money. He steals my identity in order to steal my money. He steals my identity in order to make statements in my name.
The possession of those credentials enables concrete consequences. Therefore, such information is concretely valuable and furthermore, this value is damaged by its dissemination.
Now we can have a productive and fruitful discussion about whether or not this applies to the sale of creative works.
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Dum de dum.
Freedom is not the license to do what we like, it is the power to do what we ought.
Yes, it does.
3926. Theft of services.
(a) Acquisition of services.--
(1) A person is guilty of theft if he intentionally obtains services for himself or for another which he knows are available only for compensation, by deception or threat, by altering or tampering with the public utility meter or measuring device by which such services are delivered or by causing or permitting such altering or tampering, by making or maintaining any unauthorized connection, whether physically, electrically or inductively, to a distribution or transmission line, by attaching or maintaining the attachment of any unauthorized device to any cable, wire or other component of an electric, telephone or cable television system or to a television receiving set connected to a cable television system, by making or maintaining any unauthorized modification or alteration to any device installed by a cable television system, or by false token or other trick or artifice to avoid payment for the service.
(1.1) A person is guilty of theft if he intentionally obtains or attempts to obtain telecommunication service by the use of an unlawful telecommunication device or without the consent of the telecommunication service provider.
(3) A person is not guilty of theft of cable television service under this section who subscribes to and receives service through an authorized connection of a television receiving set at his dwelling and, within his dwelling, makes an unauthorized connection of an additional television receiving set or sets or audio system which receives only basic cable television service obtained through such authorized connection.
(4) Where compensation for service is ordinarily paid immediately upon the rendering of such service, as in the case of hotels and restaurants, refusal to pay or absconding without payment or offer to pay gives rise to a presumption that the service was obtained by deception as to intention to pay.
(From the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes)
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Dum de dum.
Freedom is not the license to do what we like, it is the power to do what we ought.
wow the pirate-loving thieves really have got their knickers in a twist havent they.
IANAL, but I'm fairly certain that copyrighted material isn't considered a "service"
Yes, under the law, copyrighted material per se isn't considered a service (IANAL either). I was responding to this claim:
[Y]ou cannot say that the company has lost anything physical. That's why the law doesn't consider it stealing.
Many nonphysical things can be considered stolen, because it is possible to steal value without removing something physical from the owner. We can quibble about details, such as the difficulty of assigning an objective value to a nonphysical asset (i.e., the tired old "not every copy is a lost sale!" argument). That's a strawman. We all agree that not every copy is a lost sale. But we also agree that some copies are lost sales. So, despite being unable to precisely quantify the loss, it is unchallenged that the loss is nonzero. If so, it constitutes theft of services.
Therefore, I do claim that the distributing material without the author's permission is morally equivalent to theft of services. It does not substantively differ from jumping a turnstile to ride on the subway, or freeloading a cable TV signal. In both cases, nothing physical has been lost. In both cases, it is theft because I am benefiting from a service, against the will of the service provider, by withholding payment.
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Dum de dum.
Freedom is not the license to do what we like, it is the power to do what we ought.
No, No, No, you don't understand at all. It's the content OWNER'S who have rejected the contract. They have rejected the provisions of the contract stipulating that their works will eventually fall into the public domain, and thus in lieu of the Social Contract providing for copyright, the default state, in which information is freely transmissible and redistributable applies. There is a Natural right to free speech. There is no natural right to Copyright, Copyright comes only via a social contract providing for it. Reject the social contract, and copyright is no longer valid. Note that this is a moral argument, not a legal one.