Rapidshare Trying To Convert Pirates Into Customers

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from TorrentFreak: "The file-hosting service Rapidshare is seeking major entertainment industry partners for an online store [to which links containing infringing material will redirect]. The plan is an attempt to bridge the gap between copyright holders and users of the site who distribute infringing material. Similar to many other companies that operate in the file-sharing business, Rapidshare often finds itself caught between two fires. On the one hand it wants to optimize the user experience, but by doing so they have to respect the rights holders to avoid being continuously dragged to court. To ease the minds of some major executives in the entertainment industry, Rapidshare's General Manager Bobby Chang has revealed an ambitious plan through which copyright holders could benefit from the file-hosting service. At the same time, Chang says that his company will target uploaders of copyrighted material — whom he refers to as criminals — more aggressively."

Comments

Can't have it all.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sell your cake and eat it too.

This will fail

[damburger]

Because pirates already *are* customers. Classifying the world into 'criminal' pirates and paying customers is idiotic, and with such a faulty premise, then no matter how well thought out this plan is, it is doomed.

Re:This will fail

[WrongSizeGlass]

Because pirates already *are* customers. Classifying the world into 'criminal' pirates and paying customers is idiotic

Exactly. They should be classifying them into paying customers and non-paying customers. Then they could gear their new store toward the paying customers in order to sales goals.

Re:This will fail

[damburger]

That classification is also flawed. What if people sometimes pay, sometimes pirate? You can classify the activity, but not the person.

Re:This will fail

[sopssa]

They're not customers for the particular album/movie/game/whatever they're pirating. And lets be honest here, its a little minority of pirates who will buy the product after they've pirated it.

I'm actually happy to see Ubisoft and Blizzard have figured out how to stop the PC Game pirates. Assassins Creed II still remains uncracked and people have went and bought the game because they don't want to wait for a crack any longer. I hope they introduce it to more titles - by winning piracy we will start to get more quality games, as 90% of gamers aren't freeloaders anymore. Yeah not everyone will buy what they would have pirated, but majority of those who want to play some game will.

Re:This will fail

[lattyware]

And they'll loose as many customers as they gain, as the game is so unplayable due to the DRM (which will be cracked eventually) that people are avoiding it.

Re:This will fail

[russotto]

I hope they introduce it to more titles - by winning piracy we will start to get more quality games, as 90% of gamers aren't freeloaders anymore.

Mod +6, hilarious.

Having them successfully tighten their grip won't get you more quality games. It'll get you higher prices (supply and demand; the lack of a free substitute product) and more intrusive DRM.

Re:This will fail

[jim_v2000]

Explain how pirates are customers?

Re:This will fail

[sopssa]

Apart from the Slashdot crowd (and most people here comment against DRM just for the sake DRM with no intentions to actually buying the game) I don't really know anyone who would avoid their upcoming favorite game they've waited for so long just because it has that online DRM. If a game I want comes along with it, I will buy it because I want to play it, and thats from someone who actually understands the issues - most gamers don't.

The more online parts they integrate the harder it gets to crack. Parts of game, AI, quests, geometry.. It's a lost battle for pirates.

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

If a game/movie/song isn't worth pirating, it sure as hell isn't worth buying.

Hence, the harder you make something to pirate, the less worth it has to buyers - usually because painful copy-protection breaks the product.

Want to watch that Blu-Ray you bought on your Linux based HTPC? Tough luck (unless you get a copy decoding with one of the compromised keys).
Want to play Command and Conquer 4 at a LAN party with no Internet access? Better have a key-server-emulator around.
Etc, etc, etc.
It's getting ridiculous, and I'm not going to buy into it. The more they attempt to force-feed me their shit, the further I stay away from their "products". If I buy something I want to be able to "use it as I see fit". And not bow to corporate megalomania and paranoia.
The only exception, where I appreciate corporate oversight is on-line play. But that shows all too often, that even the minimally motivated can work around most limitations...

Oh, and that rapidshare guy should be careful calling his most active clients "criminals".... it's those criminals that put the ad dollar-powered dinner on his table..

Re:This will fail

[jim_v2000]

I'll have to remember that term next time I'm caught shoplifting. "No sir, I'm not a thief. I'm an non-paying customer!"

Re:This will fail

[PopeRatzo]

You can classify the activity, but not the person.

Really insightful. You deserve to be modded up for this important distinction.

Re:This will fail

[sopssa]

No, it wont get higher prices because you can't increase price of a product infinitely just because it's one of a kind product. But it will get higher quality products as publishers and developers will get back a lot more revenue with the same budget. Hell, it can even get us back some more obscure and non-mainstream FPS games because then publishers can take more risks too.

Re:This will fail

[PopeRatzo]

Having them successfully tighten their grip won't get you more quality games.

Don't be so sure. Some of the most financially successful games have also been the most widely pirated.

Re:This will fail

[WrongSizeGlass]

That classification is also flawed. What if people sometimes pay, sometimes pirate? You can classify the activity, but not the person.

OK, paying customers, non-paying customers and occasionally-paying customers.

Trying to separate the activity from the person who performs the activity is disingenuous, IMHO. The activity will not occur on its own - it requires the person to perform it.

Re:This will fail

[russotto]

No, it wont get higher prices because you can't increase price of a product infinitely just because it's one of a kind product.

What sort of silly straw man is this? Who said anything about "infinitely"? If eliminating piracy means that increasing prices will result in a higher profit-maximizing price (and unless you assume that paying customers never convert to pirates at any price, nor vice-versa, it will), then the companies will increase prices.

If you make the parenthesized assumption above, then piracy doesn't matter at all, so why are you bothering with the DRM?

Re:This will fail

[Zerth]

Assassins Creed II still remains uncracked and people have went and bought the game because they don't want to wait for a crack any longer.

On the other hand, some people will buy it, get sufficiently annoyed at getting kicked out whenever the internet sneezes, reshrinkwrap the game at work so they can return it, then wait for the crack and buy it used to salve their conscience.

Re:This will fail

[maxume]

Given that people that engage int he activity of paying for things do not bring potential legal headaches and people who engage in the activity of copyright infringement do bring potential legal headaches (I guess the distinction might be more 'few' vs 'lots' than 'none' vs 'some', but I don't care to quibble), someone dealing with copyrights can probably make good use of the classification, flawed or not.

Re:This will fail

[sopssa]

If there wasn't a way for pirates to pirate their game (like now with the Ubisoft always-online-DRM), that higher profit price point might also mean lower prices for everyone when more people would buy it, especially since the pc piracy rate is around 80-90%. If half of those bought the game, it would mean publishers could lower their price by 4 times ($50 -> $12.5) and they would still get the same profit.

Re:This will fail

[WrongSizeGlass]

Explain how pirates are customers?

You see, it's like this:
* You ride in a cab and then jump out without paying once you get to your destination
* While you were in the cab you were a customer "Hey, don't take 22nd St, it's always a mess this time of day" (ie, the customer is always right)
* Once you jump out of the cab without paying you're a pirate "Argh, matey, try to catch me now, you scurvy dawg" (works with or without the eyepatch)

So you see, even if you are a pirate you can also be considered a customer.

Sorry the analogy sucks (cabs are one of the few times you pay after the service is performed) but I thought this thread desperately needed a car analogy.

Re:This will fail

[sopssa]

I know Civilization V will be released next fall. I'm not checking every day if it still is so, but I'm nevertheless waiting for the game.

Re:This will fail

[WrongSizeGlass]

People actually WAIT for games to come out? People who have real lives actually check every day or two, to see if the new version of their favorite game has come out yet? I mean, REAL people, who do things outside of their mama's basement walls? People who actually know members of the opposite sex, participate in some kind of sport now and then, people who pay their way through the world?

I find all of this hard to believe.

Gamers are people, too. At least that's what I read on the internet. Live and learn I guess.

Re:This will fail

[Alphathon]

I think when talking about Assassin's Creed II that's slightly wrong. I own many games with online based DRM (many of them EA games from when they still did that), and those don't bother me too much. The limited activations are annoying, but a tool has been released by EA to restore activations, so unless your computer dies or you forget to de-authorize a game, you essentially have infinite installs. However, Assassin's Creed II I had on pre-order, but canceled when I heard about the DRM. I am anti-DRM, but that is not why I canceled. I canceled because just looking at the system they are using, I could see that there would be problems. My internet sucks - it is slow and unreliable, and there is nothing I can do about it. As a result, I am fairly certain I would have more than average problems playing this game. That, and I could see the server outages coming. Did I pirate the game? No. I want to play it, and may pick it up at some point if it's cheap, but even then I'm reluctant. Since the save games are all in the cloud, when (and I do mean when) they shut down the servers, the game is dead, and I'm not sure I want to play it enough to support that.

Re:This will fail

[Runaway1956]

"Oh, and that rapidshare guy should be careful calling his most active clients "criminals".... it's those criminals that put the ad dollar-powered dinner on his table.."

He's not the first guy to forget who feeds his chidren. We've already forgotten thousands of others!

Re:This will fail

[Idiomatick]

It is legally completely different as well...

Re:This will fail

[Man On Pink Corner]

Does this help?

Re:This will fail

[Idiomatick]

I know gamer types not /. types, ones that didn't know what DRM stands for that were not going to buy assassins creed 2 because of the server stupidity.

Re:This will fail

[Therilith]

publishers could lower their price by 4 times ($50 -> $12.5)

Yeah, that'll happen.

Re:This will fail

[Skillet5151]

Yeah that's the ticket to corporate success: "Let's be fair to our customers instead of trying to maximize short term profits."
Don't let the door hit you on the way out. It's mahogany.

Re:This will fail

[Sir_Lewk]

Way to completely not make a point at all, but sincerely feel like you have.

Re:This will fail

[Sir_Lewk]

Correction: "The more online parts they integrate the worse the user experience gets. It's a lost battle for publishers."

Re:This will fail

[sopssa]

I never said they would try to be fair. I said they would try to maximize the profits. By lowering your products price more people can/might buy it, especially now than there aren't pirates anymore. Some of those pirates don't have the money to buy the $50 game, but they might have for $15. If it's enough more people, then you're increasing your profits. Business ABC, really.

Re:This will fail

[lattyware]

Because if your internet connection is unstable (like so many people's are), or you want to play without one, you literally cannot play the game, so why would you buy it. I'm not talking moral issues here, I am talking about the fact the game becomes literally unplayable because of the DRM, even for legitimate customers.

Re:This will fail

[WrongSizeGlass]

There are an infinite number of pirated copies that can be downloaded, and one person downloading it does not deprive another person the ability to buy it at the store.

The fact that they didn't deprive someone of something isn't the real point (though, in fact, they are depriving the artist/publisher/company that produced the product of their rightful revenue for the copy that has been pirated).

The pirate has taken something that wasn't theirs, that they didn't pay for and that has some measurable value to them or they wouldn't have taken it in the first place. Just because they don't think they've deprived anyone of anything doesn't mean that it's OK to just take it.

Re:This will fail

[mysidia]

And what if they already purchased the exact item in another form, but they are too lazy to want to rip it themselves, and like the convenience of someone else having already converted the medium to their favorite file format?

Then they are neither paying nor pirating, really.. they could rip and make the exact same file themselves, if they weren't lazy, or if they had the knowhow.... downloading from someone else then is just outsourcing :)

Another possibility may be that the file they have is encrypted, and they don't know how to decrypt it, so downloading an unencrypted version from someone else is their only way at getting to the actual bits in order to exercise their fair use rights (such as using a clip from the file for permitted purposes being things like classroom use, criticism, parody, quotations of small portions, etc).

It's a bit hard to classify the activity, also.

Re:This will fail

[dontmakemethink]

Classification has nothing to do with it. You do the crime, you do the time, regardless of how much time you've spent not committing crimes.

It's a moot issue anyway. Rapidshare has been copied so many times over that they have absolutely no pull to make this happen. If they interfere with the dissemination of illegal content their user base will drop like a lead balloon. Just by attempting to address the issue they've acknowledged that piracy constitutes a significant segment of their business. The whole idea is self-defeating.

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Business ABC, really.

Wishful thinking, really.

Re:This will fail

[mysidia]

Ok.. so what happens if you buy an MP3 from Walmart or Napster's store, and you now own the song

But you find you need an unencrypted MP3 file to be able to play it on your new MP3 player, and the DRM-laden file is useless.

Are you a non-paying customer if you go to rapidshare and download that file?

I say you are neither pirate, nor non-paying customer. You already bought a copy of that data, you paid for those bits, and the publisher already got their cut.

Now your only option to exercise your fair use right of playing the media is to actually go find someone who has altered the datafile to make it unencrypted.

That's because, it's illegal to exchange or sell 'copy protection circumvention' technologies that decrypt music. The only way you can legally remove DRM for a file is to download a file with the encryption removed from someone else who also legally owns a copy.

The bits are still the same, and the content is still the same (unmodified), you have just acquired an unencrypted version of a file you already own, through the assistance of a third party providing you the decrypted version of the bits.

Re:This will fail

[Dhalka226]

I'm not sure if this is what he was going for, frankly but I believe he's right.

Rapidshare is not in the business of selling copyrighted materials (or at least they weren't up until today). They are in the business of hosting file uploads which, admittedly, are used a lot (primarily?) to share copyrighted materials without license.

Rapidshare's customers are the people who view their ad impressions, or who literally pay Rapidshare to avoid the queuing system. Many of these customers are also pirates based on what they're downloading. So the way I see it, one of two things are happening:

1) Rapidshare is serious about this and is going to make it a serious push, blocking as much content as they possible can. They'll make a few dollars from people this way, probably mostly from people who go "CRAP, I GOT CAUGHT TRYING TO PIRATE SOMETHING! Maybe if I buy it..." They'll also likely piss off the majority of their current customer base, losing a lot of their subscribers and even more of their visitors and ad impressions.

2) They're paying lip-service to the idea to keep people off their backs. They'll still make a few extra dollars from the scheme, but less than in plan #1. But since they'll be doing so little as to be doing nothing, they'll get to retain most of their current customers and visitors.

I don't think #1 is viable. I just don't believe they're going to convert enough would-be pirates into paying customers to justify the inevitable evisceration of their current income stream. So I think it's more likely either that it's #2 or that they're already a dying company trying anything to stay afloat.

Anyway, a long explanation to say: Pirates are RAPIDSHARE'S customers already.

Re:This will fail

[Nathrael]

Oh? I'm pretty sure Baldur's Gate II was developed with a much smaller budget than, say, Mass Effect 2, and while I absolutely love both games, I find BG2 to be way superior in both story and gameplay.

The quality issue isn't about cash, it's about casual vs gamer and publisher vs devs.

Re:This will fail

[Nathrael]

Not only are they customers, I'm quite sure they also make up the *majority* of Rapidshare's customers. Why would you want to pay for a RS subscription if you weren't using it to DL a large amount of rar archives?

Re:This will fail

[nurb432]

Its worked so well for the *AA to demonize ( and sue ) their customers.

Re:This will fail

[Skillet5151]

Ok I'll play. Since piracy rates for console games are vastly lower than PC ones, how does your theory account for the fact that most console games are released at an even higher price point than PC games?

Re:This will fail

[Nikker]

I do agree this plans execution is flawed but the concept of offering licensed software is not that bad of an idea. Mr Chan has shot himself in the foot by pursuing up loaders because they are the ones driving the traffic to his servers. Once he has "eliminated" all of these apparent "criminals" then where, Mr Chan will people see all these wonderful adverts for legitimate software?

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

WOW, are you seriously saying every software title is pirated by 80-90% of its user base? Now this I have to see some citation cause that smells like it came fresh from your ass.

Re:This will fail

[sopssa]

Because console makers all get their share from game sales, hence publishers have to compensate that. With PC that part is cut out.

Re:This will fail

[tehSpork]

I passed over both Assassin's Creed II and C&C 4 due to the DRM (both of which resulted in canceled preorders). After hearing the horror stories about the more recent DRM "innovations" the vast majority of my gamer friends have followed suit.

Personally I won't purchase Assassin's Creed II until a crack or patch is released that resolved the DRM problem. If that means waiting until the game is a $5 steam special I'm fine with that, I don't have to play a game the instant it comes out.

What is so annoying about this entire affair is that I am not a thief, pirate, rampant violator of intellectual property, etc. I just want to be able to use the software I purchase without my crappy Comcast connection compromising my single-player gaming experience. Is this too much to ask?

Re:This will fail

[Nikker]

I'm sorry I think you really need another coffee. Right now these vendors are screaming bloody murder because not enough people are paying the $50 to begin with. You seriously think they will be willing to drop the price by over 50% because no one is able to pirate it any more? That has to be the stupidest thing I have ever heard on the internets ever.

Re:This will fail

[sopssa]

Baldur's Gate II was released during time when internet piracy wasn't so widespread. Another point is that publishers like to go the sure route instead of taking big changes with games like Baldur's Gate II. If piracy wasn't there, then publishers would most likely be able to take more risks too. Same goes for indie developers too, and they usually do that. Even World of Goo had piracy rate of around 90%.

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not the first guy to forget who feeds his chidren.

He hasn't forgotten. MAFIAA's shutting him down. He's got no real choice here:

He can either (a) comply with MAFIAA's demands (and lose all his ad revenue as his users desert his company for other filesharing sites), or (b) fight MAFIAA (and lose the lawsuit because MAFIAA can afford more lawyers).

MAFIAA didn't kill P2P, but it sure killed Napster. Either way, ded kitty.

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone mark this fucking jerk a TROLL! Piracy is a fact of life so get used to it.

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok.. so what happens if you buy an MP3 from Walmart or Napster's store, and you now own the song

But you find you need an unencrypted MP3 file to be able to play it on your new MP3 player, and the DRM-laden file is useless.

You deserve to be penalized for being a stupid consumer. Make sure your media and your player "get along" before you spend your money. Your post sure is a lot of typing trying to justify stealing something. You should put that much effort into making sure you don't buy MP3's that you can't play.

Re:This will fail

[Ihmhi]

If you buy a song on iTunes, delete it/lose it, and then want to redownload it from iTunes, are you able to? No.

I download a game from Steam (technically, I "subscribe" to that game - wording to get around the right of resale), and I reformat/delete it/lose it etc., I can always grab it again at no charge pretty much as many times as I need to.

iTunes treats purchases like physical items and Steam treats purchases as licenses.

The subscription/license on a per-item basis of digital purchases is probably the best for the consumer IMO. If you buy a song, $0.99 is ridiculous for the data itself. If it were $0.99 for a license to own a copy of that song, it would seem wholly less ridiculous.

I can redownload games on Steam if I have to, so I use Steam. (The DRM is also unobtrusive.) I can't redownload songs on iTunes without paying for them, so I don't use iTunes. Simple as that.

Doing it the "license" way would also render P2P and the like null and void. If I purchased a hard copy of the White Album (for the fifth time) and downloaded some lossless digital files, I'm considered a pirate. Hell, if I rip the files from the CD and put it on my cell phone I'm considered a pirate. You just can't win the way things are nowadays. No wonder people pirate. I get my ass taken to court for downloading the White Album? Whoops, I already purchased it and are therefore entitled to download it.

Sadly, I imagine it will be some time before the market and/or the law gets more in line with sanity.

The day that the *AAs either get their heads out of their collective asses or collapse under their own weight is the day that the music industry will be better for (almost) everyone: artists, producers, composers, songwriters, and most importantly customers. Sure, corporate lawyers and *AA management will get the shaft, but they deserve at least that for their nigh-criminal business tactics of that last 100 years.

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me help you with that.

RapidShare is a file hosting company. Their customers are the people who pay them a subscription fee to upload data to RS. Their other customers are the people who pay them a subscription fee to cover downloads above the minimum permitted for unregistered users.

The "content industry" are not customers of RS.

So RS has to delicately balance the interests of their actual customers (the people who pay for the storage and transmission of data, either uploaders or downloaders) and the interests of the non revenue generating "content" industry who keep suing them.

Too far one way, they get harassed by **AA lawsuits. Too far the other and they lose their customers (hint again, the people who pay to use their service).

Re:This will fail

[Carrot007]

> Even World of Goo had piracy rate of around 90%

HELLO! Please stop it with your statistics already.

ANyone wiuth an IQ over 12 knows stats prove nothing.

You cannot measure the piracy rate.

Even your linked article says as much.

The other main factor around piracy is just the hording factor. Even back in the amiga days I knew people who just got pirated stuff to say they had it. They never used it, just had it. How is that harming anyone? (hey you could have put pics of a mokey's arese on a disk and told them it was x great new games and they would never know the difference),

Wait a moment, I though I had a point but I forget it now....

Re:This will fail

[future assassin]

Audio out on/phone jack on the Audio Plauer to audio in on your sound card then just record. Seems perfectly legal since I'm just capturing the sound just like my ears coming out of the Audio Player?

Re:This will fail

[mysidia]

If you buy a song on iTunes, delete it/lose it, and then want to redownload it from iTunes, are you able to? No.

That depends. In some circumstances, you can get apple to reset it and let you re-download the file without paying anything more.

There's a reason for this. It costs something to pay for the bandwidth to download a file. And $0.99 per song gives them only a slim profit margin -- most of the money goes to music company, so if you downloaded several times, there would be no profit for Apple (due to the pro-rata bandwidth cost of your repeat transfers).

Also, Apple would [probably] rather you re-buy and spend more money = more profit.

It also costs something to keep records of what files you are allowed to re-download. They probably do this anyways, because there is other value in keeping those records, but not necessarily in a form suitable to allow re-downloads.

If they allowed free re-download, people would abuse it -- by installing iTunes on multiple of their computers, and using iTunes to download to additional computers at Apple's expense instead of syncing themselves.

Re:This will fail

[gnasher719]

I can redownload games on Steam if I have to, so I use Steam. (The DRM is also unobtrusive.) I can't redownload songs on iTunes without paying for them, so I don't use iTunes. Simple as that.

Rated as total fail for not knowing how to backup valuable data.

Re:This will fail

[Mr. DOS]

Hi.

While I didn't get to play the original Assassin's Creed until last year, it was definitely on my list of top 10 most enjoyed games of 2009, and quite possibly top 3. I'd been anticipating AC2 for months, and I actually went into my neighbourhood EB Games (GameStop for all you Americans) to preorder it, not doing so only because I couldn't preorder the limited edition for PC. I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this: weeks after its release, I still haven't bought it because of the DRM, and now I'm a patron saint of anti-DRM movements worldwide, etc.

My point is, you're wrong: some of us, especially those of us who have flaky, unreliable Internet, will avoid a (potentially) favourite game because it's inappropriately “protected”.

They came first with puzzles and card keys, and I didn't speak up because it was a reasonable anti-piracy method. Then they came with CD keys, and I didn't speak up because while it was annoying, I could still install on my multiple computers and it wasn't that inconvenient. Then they came with online activation, and I didn't speak up because I moved to Steam which at least still guaranteed the game working on multiple machines. Then they came with “always-on” DRM and now I'm not buying any DRM'd games at all.

Re:This will fail

[mysidia]

Which results in a loss of audio quality you may find unacceptable or unusuable for listening to the music. The label on the thing you bought said it was high quality 128kbit MP3 or what have you.

You have a fair use right to play the thing you purchased at its full fidelity, not just some analog effectively downsampled conversion of it.

Re:This will fail

[bughunter]

It's more like: fanboys (or locked in victims) who will (or must) pay for everything, cheapskates who won't/can't pay for anything, and discriminating customers who only pay for quality.

The first category you don't have to worry about. These are the ones who will buy your DRMed crap as long as it;s released for their platform, and it has enough "buzz." (Or in the case of the locked-in victims, these are the ones you've already captured.) And really, the same goes for the second category - you don't have to worry about them either, because no matter what you do you're not going to make a sale to them.

It's the third category that really is where you can make a return on investment. Either you can rely on DRM to force these people to pay to try your game/music/app, but if you sell them crap once, then forget about making any future sales to them. But if you make a quality product, then they'll come back and buy your products again, even without a demo/freebie.

But since making a quality product takes talent, many publishers see the first case as a more reachable goal. Quality and talent aren't part of their equation. But they still expect to make money...

Re:This will fail

[Attila Dimedici]

The problem with your whole comment is that repeated studies have shown that people who pirate music spend a lot more money on music bought from the rights holder than people in general. I am not sure if similar studies have been done for games or movies, but I would bet that it is true for them as well. I suspect that if companies were to succeed in making a major dent in pirated content they would see an even larger reduction in sales. I am very confident that that would be true of music, not as confident it would be true of games or movies. I know that many times people pirate music of a group they have heard of but not actually heard, if they like it, they then go and buy more of that group's music.

Re:This will fail

[nog_lorp]

What are you talking about, faulty premise? That is not a 'premise' of this plan.
In fact, the distinction is not meaningful at all to this situation; you are quibbling over how people on Slashdot refer to varieties of Rapidshare users.

Rapidshare is going to start making taken-down warez link to an online store where people can buy it from the owner.
This does not rely on some distinction between "people who are pirates" and "people who are customers", it only distinguishes the act of someone trying to download infringing shit, and then suggests that someone
(who just did attempt to pirate something) pay up.

P.S. Rapidshare is amazing for warez. Bandwidth out the ass if you pay for premium.

Re:This will fail

[Attila Dimedici]

You are right that most people aren't paying attention to DRM. However, when a game you wanted comes out with DRM that makes it a pain in the ass to play the way you intended (if it is possible at all), you will be less likely to buy the next game from that vendor. The average person won't think, "Oh, DRM sucks." They will think, "The last game I bought from Ubisoft sucked, everytime I lost Internet connection the game crashed."

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

> Classification has nothing to do with it. You do the crime, you do the time, regardless of how much time you've spent not committing crimes.

It matters a lot if you want to make more money, but are trying to do so by breaking the world inaccurately into "pirate" and "not pirate".

To put it simply: consider the case of someone who does both. If the value of their yearly purchases exceeds the value of the yearly losses due to them copying stuff plus the cost of prosecuting them, jail time is a *net loss*. You may argue about how to figure out the piracy losses, but the number exists, and you definitely don't want to get it wrong, because it directly hurts your bottom line.

Re:This will fail

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I say you are neither pirate, nor non-paying customer.

Sorry, but no. It's still piracy. You paid for a DRM-laden file, and a DRM-laden file is all you're entitled to. That's not to say that I would find the practice particularly objectionable, but just know, it's not supported by law.

The copyright-holder has the right to close off any distribution avenue they like for their work (to within fair use). You can reason this in terms of finance. Basically it undercuts their ability to sell a cheaper, inferior, DRMed version, and a more expensive DRM-free version.

Re:This will fail

[genner]

I say you are neither pirate, nor non-paying customer.

Sorry, but no. It's still piracy. You paid for a DRM-laden file, and a DRM-laden file is all you're entitled to. That's not to say that I would find the practice particularly objectionable, but just know, it's not supported by law.

The copyright-holder has the right to close off any distribution avenue they like for their work (to within fair use). You can reason this in terms of finance. Basically it undercuts their ability to sell a cheaper, inferior, DRMed version, and a more expensive DRM-free version.

Nope, that's wrong. The DMCA has no fair use provision. Breaking DRM for any reason is illegal now. God bless America.

Re:This will fail

[ZerdZerd]

So people who download a movie, likes it, and goes and buy both the DVD and Blu-ray are not customers?

What about people who buy Ubisoft/EA games, comes home, finds out it doesn't work, and have to download a crack to get it to work? Not customers? Why not?

Both are happening with increasing frequency for me and my friends.

Re:This will fail

[russotto]

If there wasn't a way for pirates to pirate their game (like now with the Ubisoft always-online-DRM), that higher profit price point might also mean lower prices for everyone when more people would buy it, especially since the pc piracy rate is around 80-90%. If half of those bought the game, it would mean publishers could lower their price by 4 times ($50 -> $12.5) and they would still get the same profit.

Your argument basically amounts to "reduced supply of substitute product results in increased demand for original product which leads to lower prices". Which doesn't pass ECON 101. Reduced supply of substitutes and increased demand for original both lead to higher prices, not lower.

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Rapidshare's customers are the people who view their ad impressions

People who view ads are never the customers. They're the product. The advertisers are the customers. If you're unsure who your customers are, find out who's giving you money.

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Public Transport would make a good analogy.
You can't ride the bus, unless you pay the fare - nevermind that it would still drive its route, even though empty.
But without paying customers, this service cannot be maintained.

Of course, public transport is still more tangible than production costs. Considering the ridiculous salaries of some of those involved in the media business (ranging from execs to some artists and even professional athletes), I could imagine that the production of some of these works could be streamlined to a degree where costs aren't routinely in the millions of dollars or euros.

Frankly, I assume that a good recording of an album costs about 50k-100k, renting a studio, and one or two audio engineers for two weeks. Add to that the cost of instruments and the costs to recoup on album sales don't have to exceed 250k. At current prices that's only about 10.000 copies sold. But the current distribution scheme eats deep into that calculation. With a digital distribution via p2p, no further costs arise - but that reduction in costs is a reduction in income for the corporate waterhead that the music business has become.
If the business side of music wins, everyone loses....

Re:This will fail

[Jane Q. Public]

Not only will it fail, if it happens it will fail with Rapidshare and partners in court defending themselves against criminal charges.

Re:This will fail

[future assassin]

I've lived through reel to reel, vinyl, tapes, cd's and crappy p2p mp3's I'm sure I could handle a bit more in quality loss if its means consumer freedom and do as I wish with my own belongings.

Re:This will fail

[sixsixtysix]

i wonder. what about reselling the mp3s, if you delete the originals? can i mark up the price if i want?
amazon.com had a deal awhile back where they gave away 11 mojo nixon albums for free. can i sell those if i delete them afterwords?

Re:This will fail

[sixsixtysix]

how much of that $0.99 do you think goes towards bandwidth? you realize that you are also paying for the bandwidth (your connection). damn, double-dippers.

Re:This will fail

[sixsixtysix]

because plenty of people that pirate stuff also buy stuff? i'd say the this middle section is bigger than the freeloaders and the pay-for-alls combined.

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

P.S. Rapidshare is amazing for warez. Bandwidth out the ass if you pay for premium.

A little though experiment:

As the world's biggest file-sharing host and given that all payment methods are traceable to the payer and given that rapidshare may be run by assholes, but not fools, who have been knowingly complicit in the distribution of the aforementioned warez and other copyrighted materials for years and profited by said complicity in the millions, and given that a giant hammer will drop on them one day, will they be (are they, cough, buttallica, 16-year old prosecuted in Germany) a massive one-stop-shop that will happily supply all the details necessary for world-wide copyright infringement prosecutions in the great ACTA copyright trials of 2014 in order to save their own skins?

Hmmm...

Don't worry though. I'm sure they would tell you that they would never turn your details over under any circumstances.

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that if you paid for a song, you ought to be entitled to it in any format.

This, however, is not what "fair use" means. Fair use is a legal term, and it is about the right to free speech overriding the rights of the content owner, in some limited "fair" situations, such as for commentary or significant value-adds.

Re:This will fail

[aekafan]

Its not even the draconian DRM that bothers me. Its the $60 price tag that you pay for these games. I wouldn't pay that much for a game i like, and certainly not crap like AC. The stronger the drm, the higher the price as well. A fool and his money are soon parted. like the commenter above me said, i will till i can get it for 5 bucks from steam or gog drm free. Screw companies like this that are trying to kill PC gaming anyways

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't own the song. You own the right to play the song in the format you paid for.

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, no. AC2 full versions crack's been out for a while now. It took like two days.

Re:This will fail

[Kral_Blbec]

I'm not debating about depriving the company their rightful revenue. I'm with you on that. I really agree with pretty much everything you said. My post was just pointing out that a pirate is not another type of customer just because they receive the goods/services provided by the company, as your analogy indicated. Equating a taxi to downloads just doesn't work.

In regards to your sig, I think we have another example here. I have no idea why my first post was marked troll. I thought it conveyed a rather important distinction.

Re:This will fail

[shutdown -p now]

Apart from the Slashdot crowd (and most people here comment against DRM just for the sake DRM with no intentions to actually buying the game) I don't really know anyone who would avoid their upcoming favorite game they've waited for so long just because it has that online DRM.

I'm one such guy. The game in case was NWN "premium modules" - a relatively early case of a paid DLC. It required Internet activation every time you start a new game, and also every time you load a game (single player in both cases). In my case, I first skipped on it because I was living in uni campus at the moment, and was behind a transparent HTTP proxy - and those idiots used UDP for activation, which, of course didn't work.

Fine, a year from then I look at it again, but then I realize that I'm playing NWN on my laptop often enough, and some of it is on the go - and figured I'd pass again.

Eventually, they've released a bunch of that stuff pre-bundled on a new "diamond edition", with no activation, so I've got that.

Re:This will fail

[shutdown -p now]

Before Internet became the main vehicle for software piracy, counterfeit CD shops provided the same service, and it wasn't really all that harder to get.

Re:This will fail

[Kalriath]

If they allowed free re-download, people would abuse it -- by installing iTunes on multiple of their computers, and using iTunes to download to additional computers at Apple's expense instead of syncing themselves.

Um, try open iTunes on multiple computers, sign them all into the iTunes store, then buy a track or video. Note that all of the computers start downloading it. I used to get pissed off at this behaviour when my laptop and desktop would both start downloading 1.7GB of TV program when I don't want it on the laptop.

Re:This will fail

[Master Moose]

Around 30 years ago, I would buy my music on big black discs called "records". This music had the limitation of only being able to be played on compatible hardware called "record players" - the evil content providers were obvious in their attempts to screw me over with this.

I knew that if I wanted to play my music, I would need to run my one copy through my "record player". This was common sense and obvious, I would accept this limitation and purchase the media anyway.

If my records were became badly scratched or worn out, the equivalent of an mp3 being deleted - I would not say that I was entitled to new copies of the now unlistenable tracks because I had already paid for them. I knew that they would need replacing.

If my record needle or turntable broke. I knew that I would need to replace these also. I did not hound the record company for a cassette version of the album so that I could listen to the music on my alternative hardware.

At the time, none of this was called unfair. We were aware of the limitations of our purchases and accepted it.

Times have changed - the delivery method has changed. The problem I see is that what was once obvious (records go on record players) no longer is to Joe Public and Joe public now wants more - rightly or wrongly so.

I do not know the answer, but I do think that the argument of "I already paid for it" is never going to be seen as a justifiable excuse for "piracy". If we pay for content aware of its limitations physical or otherwise - We should not cry fowl when we do not agree with them. We should however not let our dollars support what our ideals do not.

Re:This will fail

[LordLucless]

If you buy a song on iTunes, delete it/lose it, and then want to redownload it from iTunes, are you able to? No.

Um, yes, yes you can. I lost my purchased audio to a dead harddrive, sent an email to iTunes, they flicked a bit that determined whether my purchases had been downloaded yet, and next time I connected to iTunes, they all came flooding down. I had to put up with a bit of backup tut-tutting in the email response from them, and they don't advertise it as a feature, but they'll let you do it without any dramas (as long, I assume, as you don't abuse it).

Re:This will fail

[Voyager529]

The fact that making backup copies of vinyl has always been impractical doesn't change the principle. Music has always been priced according to a formula that bears resemblance to (cost of physical pressing + distribution/shipping + studio time + artist cut + marketing + profit). If you already paid for the last five pieces, there's no reason why the sixth couldn't be considered separately. You paid for the record to be recorded, marketed, and for the artists and suits to support their coke habits. Just because the physical media was damaged doesn't negate that, so it's always stood to reason that one should be able to pay a significantly lower cost for a replacement physical media. However, up until the 80's it was highly impractical for people to do so, because a machine for pressing vinyl at home never really caught on in any meaningful capacity.

In the 80's, we had dual-deck cassette recorders, and that allowed us to make backups much more readily, but even that was hampered due to the requirement of real-time duplication. It was here, though, that the mixtape was born.

In the 90's, we had CD burners, and duping a CD took about 20 minutes at first...then 10...then 5...then 2.

People have always wanted the same thing - to buy music once and play it whenever they want. When personal duplication was impractical, it was never considered a desirable trait. Later, that ability was given to us, and now it's being taken away again.

Personally, I have never bought a song from iTunes whose first stop wasn't a CD-R for re-ripping. First, I simply appreciated the irony of iTunes wrapping the AAC file in DRM, then burning the song to disc in iTunes, then having iTunes volunteer to re-rip it for me. But second, it gave me both a physical backup of the song, as well as an MP3 that plays everywhere. No one is expecting Apple/EMI/Whoever to buy them new iPods or computers because it breaks. It's more like if a record refused to play without a specific needle, but could be altered to play with any needle, then the record self-destructing without being replaced.No one would have stood for that back then, but again, it simply wasn't practical.

Re:This will fail

[Voyager529]

Is this too much to ask?

That depends on who you ask.

Re:This will fail

[mysidia]

Sorry, but no. It's still piracy. You paid for a DRM-laden file, and a DRM-laden file is all you're entitled to.

Uhuh.... that sounds like exactly the legal theory the **AA would want to be true, since it would provide them the most opportunities to resell you more copies of something you already purchased.

That doesn't mean it's true though.

1st of all in terms of the question is it piracy? Clearly not, they have purchased the copy of the very same content, and the downloader is not the person distributing the file illicitly.

Wrapping a work in DRM or removing DRM from it does not make the item a different work. Enciphering a work does not cause it to be something different, it is the user perceivable data that matters.

Is it legal? Maybe... maybe not... that's a separate question from 'is it piracy?'

It might be copyright infringement, but only if certain legal theories are true. But more likely, it is just a fair use situation, and protected.

Downloading the file might violate other laws even if it's not copyright infringement.

But that doesn't make it piracy.

Piracy is not synonymous with the legal definition of copyright infringement.

Music piracy refers to obtaining someone else's content through illicit channels.

If you already owned the content, then you didn't actually get it that way, the additional instance is in effect, just a 2nd or backup copy.

Re:This will fail

[mysidia]

Oh wow... well that blows that theory out of the water.

Maybe they are concerned about some users that had purchased 10000 songs losing their hard drive, and they hadn't bothered to back anything up.

And logging onto iTunes to quickly re-download their entire collection (bringing iTunes servers to a near standstill)

Think about that... turn an opportunity for server degradation to a chance for profit, by making them re-buy all 10000 songs at $1.25 each.

Re:This will fail

[kobaz]

especially since the pc piracy rate is around 80-90%

[Citation needed]

There's three types of lies:... Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.

Re:This will fail

[Kalriath]

Trust me, it wouldn't bring the iTunes servers to a standstill - iTunes songs are served by the same machines that serve Windows Update - the Akamai CDN. More bandwidth than Slashdot, SourceForge, and Youtube combined.

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Here you go: Experienced Points: Piracy Numbers
How rampant is piracy?

In 2008, Reflexive looked at the people who submitted high scores for Ricochet Infinity and found that 92% of all players were using pirated copies of the game. Also that year 2DBoy reported 90% piracy on World of Goo. Last year developer Beautiful Game Studios' claimed that Championship Manager was the victim of a 90% piracy rate. During the week the Demigod was released, publisher Stardock found that 85% of all players looking for a game were pirates. All of these are PC titles.

It's very interesting how close all of these numbers are, despite the diversity of the games themselves. Casual and hardcore. Esoteric and mainstream. Indie and big-budget. DRM and DRM-free. Newly-launched titles and and games which have been been out for a year. All of them are from different companies. Yet the piracy numbers are within a few percentage points of each other. I think that, unless we're going to imagine that all of these disparate parties are somehow forming this conspiracy to over-hype the effects of piracy, we can be very confident that the 90% figure is a pretty reliable number.

I don't know why you bother to contest this, anyway. It's almost as common knowledge as saying, "the average PC user is a drooling idiot." Based on the people I have met, I am actually surprised it's only 90 percent; I expected it to be more like 95 percent. No doubt, 9% of those legitimate customers were too stupid to pirate it, and the remaining 1% were the ones with morals.

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

In a rich market, or one hopelessly addicted.

. ...OK, you're right, gamers/smokers really are that helpless.

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

This doesn't happen with games. If it does, it's a rare occasion. Hell, I really doubt it does with movies either -- and when it does, it's for convenience only, not repayment.

Piracy and the App Store

We at Neptune Interactive Inc and Smells Like Donkey, Inc. just released our latest game, called Tap-Fu, to the App store on Oct 16 2009 for a reasonable price of $3.99 USD (EDIT: it’s now $1.99) ...
If you look at the total numbers, the percentage of of pirated copies of the game submitting high scores is 71.2%.

Now most pirates will tell you that they just like to try before they buy. If it’s a good game, then they’ll buy it: ...
Well, from this data we can conclude that 0% of pirates think the game is worth buying (which, by the way, is contrary to most of the forum posts we read from legit buyers).

I think it's about time for the posters who use this argument to back it up with some non-anecdotal proof.

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

not going to happen. actually, there are some pirates who would buy but prefer to get it for free, and some pirates (remember when you were a kid, before you had a job?) who will never pay for it. Assuming you get all the pirates who might otherwise buy on board, the game companies get more money. What do they do with it? Do they lower prices (why would they do that?), make higher-quality games (why?), or churn out slightly more shit, maybe sign on ever more expensive voice actors or license some hollywood actress's body shape, and give themselves the rest as salary?

Whatever happens, eliminating piracy won't make the videogames you're addicted to any cheaper.

CAPTCHA word is sticking... like a sticky price.

Re:This will fail

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Uhuh.... that sounds like exactly the legal theory the **AA would want to be true ... That doesn't mean it's true though.

Nor does it make it false.

What makes it true is that copyright law dictates that a copyright holder shall have control over the distribution of their works (this is true, no matter what the **AA says). It doesn't even make a provision for fair use (fair use is provided by the courts, not the law). If you wish to buy the work from a copyright holder, you have exactly two choices:

1) Work out mutually a price/delivery method/version of the product that you can both agree upon (usually meaning just paying what they ask for), or
2) Not buying and not receiving any version, via any delivery method.

Piracy, these days, is defined to be copyright infringement. Obtaining a copy via a different delivery method, without reaching an agreement with the copyright holder, is in breach of copyright law, and is thus considered piracy. Even if the copy is bit-for-bit identical to the one you own, it's still within a copyright holder's rights to prevent you from downloading via the alternative source.

Is it morally wrong? Within certain bounds, I would say no. You might also get a way with a fair use argument, if the two versions were interchangeable (e.g. you couldn't download a DRM-free version if you had a DRMed version).

... since it would provide them the most opportunities to resell you more copies of something you already purchased.

We're working under the assumption here that if you buy a DRMed work, you know what you're in for. You have paid for something reliant on the company, which significantly decreases the value, depending on who's buying it. Presumably, if you thought you might want a DRM-free version in the future, you would refrain from buying it until such a DRM-free version was made available.

Basically, nobody is forcing you to pay multiple times for the same thing. You get what you paid for, and it's up to you if you wish to pay more for more.

Re:This will fail

[delinear]

You're confusing the issue by trying to suggest that real world technical limitations with physical media are in any way comparable to completely artificial limitations on a digital format. DRM on a digital file isn't the same as only being able to play a record on a record player, it's more like you buy the record from them, but whenever you want to listen to it you have to call them up or pop around to their office and they'll play it for you, even though you have your own device capable of playing the record. Oh, and at any time they can refuse to play the record for you.

If this had been the case back in the days of record players, would be have complained about the artificial restrictions? You bet they would. Just as the people who understand the issue or who have run into the artificial restrictions these days are complaining, the only difference is that the delivery method for the restrictions is not so visible to the average user, otherwise I'm sure a lot more people would be complaining already.

Your last sentence is also badly flawed. Tell me the last time you bought a DRM encumbered piece of media and the retailer talked through with you exactly what the limitations were in terms of transferring between devices, format shifting, backing up, getting replacement copies, etc. And I don't just mean burying this as part of some auto-click-through EULA type agreement, but actually explaining in clear, concise terms that Joe Public can understand? I've never seen this happen, and until it does I think it's hardly fair to say that we're paying for content "aware of its limitations" - sure, the people who use /. are maybe aware of the limitations, but we're hardly the norm, and even here it's clear some people are confused about the issues, legal and otherwise (are we buying a product, renting a servive, buying a license to listen, does the DRM just limit the devices we play the music on or does it have other limitations, number of replayes, format shifting, expiry dates, can the retailer pull it at any time they choose, for content that requires communication with DRM servers, what happens when the servers are down, when they die for good, etc, etc).

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Because pirates already *are* customers.

That's irrelevant for Rapidshare because they are not THEIR customers.

Saying this will fail is like saying the new super market that just opened will fail because super markets already exist.

Rapidshare just wants to capitalise on visitors that end up on broken links by sending them to THEIR store. It's a way for them to get their share of the online distribution cake.

Got nothing to do with philosophy, just another store opening.

Re:This will fail

[delinear]

I hadn't even realised they don't offer this by default - every online retailer I've used (particularly Play where I get most of my music) allows me to download my files as many times as I like to as many different devices as I want once I've bought them. Maybe there's some limit on the number of times I can do this, but if there is I've never hit it. The bandwidth costs are pretty negligible. Support the cost with a few ads if it means you can enable this service by default to everyone, I honestly can't understand the logic behind not doing so. Bandwidth costs, to someone like Apple, is not a valid argument. If Warez sites could offer this service for free and suck up the bandwidth costs back in the day then I'm pretty sure Apple could find a way to deal with it (and if they don't want to charge extra or show ads, just do what everyone else does and offload the cost onto customers via some kind of encrypted torrent stream, maybe). The cynical side of me suspects that they're just happy with the majority of consumers having to buy their content again if they lose it, but that they'll offer this service to those who complain too verbally as they don't want anyone looking too closely at their practices.

Re:This will fail

[delinear]

Absolute rubbish - you own the right to play the song in any format. This was already tried and tested in court long before the internet became more than an academic plaything and digital music formats were created - the record labels already tried this argument when people starting recording vinyl onto tape. Format shifting within the bounds of fair use (I want to listen to my favourite records in the car, etc) was declared perfectly valid. Nothing about this new media invalidates those findings, much to the dismay of the record labels.

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

P.S. Rapidshare is amazing for warez. Bandwidth out the ass if you pay for premium.

'cause there's no thrill like handing over your real ID (for payment) to a site you download illegal stuff from :D

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

That's odd. Any other random Slashdot article on piracy would have everyone jumping on the "Pirates AREN'T customers!" bandwagon.

Isn't it funny how pirates are so willing to change their whole viewpoint on any given day just the suit the current situation.

Well, funny and sad.

Re:This will fail

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

No copyright law has fair use provision. It's a defence based on precedence in the courts. As far as the books are concerned, fair use doesn't, and never has, existed.

This doesn't stop the courts from applying it though...

Re:This will fail

[blackest_k]

Rapid share isn't that the site which tells you , you have to wait, your already downloading something (or your isp's proxy is) and wouldn't you rather pay us for the free software that you want, or the non free software that you want too.

Now as well as selling access to data files they have no right to, they want to now get a cut from the producers of those files too.

Actually from rapidshares point of view it makes perfect sense why put up with the variable quality of pirated material when you can get the original quality copies from the producers themselves.

These criminals he talks about put stuff on rapidshares servers for free and then rapidshare gets people to pay to download them, who's getting rich of pirated material ?

Far from providing rapidshare with legitimate content, more effort should be put into shutting down rapidshare.

  Rapidshare are the kind of pirates that the RIAA and MPIA and such like should be targeting.

 

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Take my own situation - I use a media player for movies at home (PCH NMT), because I don't like having to find storage for several hundred DVD cases in my living room, hate the inconvenience of searching through them all for a specific movie, having to switch out discs, the chance that I'll scratch them in doing so, etc. so I have ripped all of my DVDs to a hard drive (with the added benefit that I can now store the originals remotely so that in the event of a fire or something I don't lose all of my media in one place). It would now be very inconvenient, should one of those files get corrupted, to re-encode it because all of my originals are boxed up in storage. While I own the original it would be far simpler for me to download a copy than it would to go trawl through several boxes of physical discs, but does that seriously make me a "pirate", or am I just utilising technology to save me a little time and effort?

Re:This will fail

[Xest]

You've really just stumbled on the fundamental problem in the whole pirates vs. content industry problem.

The issue is this, the content industry aren't really simply trying to fight piracy to protect their business, if they were I think they'd have a lot more respect. The content industry are trying to control the distribution channels like they always have, to be able to continue to price gouge, but importantly, are even taking this further. They're pushing DRM because they think it means they can sell you the same product twice, something they'd be hard pressed to do when music was on standardised cassettes for years, and standardised TVs for years. Now we have a quagmire of DRM and file formats, they think to themselves, "Hey, wouldn't it be great if we could get people to buy this content at least once for every file format they require?".

I'd have a lot more respect for the industry if it was merely protecting itself, but it's not, it's trying to control an open network, it's trying to disrupt standardisation, it's trying to artificial prevent a file playing between media players you own with DRM and so forth.

Until the content industry learns to accept a customer only wishes to buy their product once, until they learn that their campaign isn't more important than fundamental human rights they're trying to get overruled for protection of their content, until the content industry learns that people want content on demand that they can keep indefinitely, use as they want and when they want without restriction, content that just works, and is fairly price then they can quite frankly, go fuck themselves. All these things can easily be achieved with modern technology and there's still billions in profit sat there for them, yet they wont, because they figure if they can just keep screwing the consumer, then there's even more profit for them.

Re:This will fail

[delinear]

It would be useful to know how they arrived at those figures (never automatically trust the figures from people with ulterior motives - we all know the ridiculous figures music labels bandy around for instance), but notwithstanding that, if piracy is the reason for high prices then platforms which don't suffer piracy (PS3, Ubisoft's new DRM) should have considerably lower (on the order of those figures, at least 85% lower) prices. The fact that this isn't true would seem to suggest an admission on the part of the publishers that piracy does very little to the bottom line (and in fact, the more locked down console platforms have higher prices than the more craked PC platform, suggesting the prospect of piracy is encouraging lower prices rather than higher), it's just a convenient excuse for high prices. If they ever totally crack the piracy situation, they'll find another convenient excuse.

Re:This will fail

[delinear]

Well if the game's up for him then the game's up, he should accept that and go gracefully, instead he's still wailing on the people who put money in his pocket in order to try and appeal to the content providers, who won't care because they've seen enough of his type to know there's no money there for them. To be honest, I'm more than happy for the **AA to go after the people who are profiteering on their products, less so when it's individuals who are just fans of the products and aren't selling those products on.

Re:This will fail

[delinear]

I love movies, music and games - these days I don't have enough time for any of them but I still push a lot of disposable capital their way. If I had bags of time and less money (i.e. was still a student) then I'd probably be the one pirating this stuff, it would be in their interests to keep someone like that on side because that's the kind of person who, when they do get a job, will be their main source of income.

Re:This will fail

[Ihmhi]

The day that the likes of Miley Cyrus and Fifty Cent songs are considered "valuable data" is the day I'm up a clock tower with a high-powered rifle.

"There's Cary Sherman!" *blam*

"There's Cary Sherman!" *blam*

Re:This will fail

[delinear]

Well it's not games, but here's some "non-anecdotal proof" on the music front for you, courtesy of the BBC.

Now let me ask you something, what percentage of that 71.2% of people would have bought the game even if it wasn't possible to pirate? The reason I ask is that the iPhone is massively copied in Asia (I saw a site listing something like 100 different iPhone clones, I can't find it now but there's plenty of evidence of the practice if you Google it). Considering piracy is so rampant there, and the vast majority of pirates wouldn't buy the game at any price, it's possible that they are very heavily skewing the piracy percentage for the game but it's a meaningless statistic because it's not lost revenue in any way.

The problem is the people publishing the statistics don't want you to know that, because they have an ulterior motive in suggesting things are worse than they are. I would love to see the figures broken down by region, because my suspicion is that piracy in the West is much lower (even though it's just as easy to do over here), and really this is the market where games companies make all their money.

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

We went to a shopping mall
And laughed at all the shoppers
And security guards trailed us to a record shop
We asked for Mojo Nixon
They said he don't work here
We said if you don't got Mojo Nixon then your store could use some fixin'

Re:This will fail

[harl]

I can redownload games on Steam if I have to, so I use Steam. (The DRM is also unobtrusive.) I can't redownload songs on iTunes without paying for them, so I don't use iTunes. Simple as that.

With Steam: You also have to ask permission to install/use/transfer/do anything your subscription. You cannot backup your subscription. In fact you have no control over your subscription. Figuratively or literally. Your subscription can be revoked at any time! I've still yet to hear how this is an acceptable term?

None of these things are true with itunes. None. You have complete control. Can make infinitive copies and backups. It's impossible for them to revoke your purchase.

Itunes blows the doors off steam.

Re:This will fail

[harl]

Really? Then what does Title 17 Chapter 1 Section 107 of the US Code cover?

According to the text of the law it's "Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use"

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

If you RTFA it says how. The fact that you don't believe them (Stardock/indie game developers/WoG) is only hinting at your bias, in favor of pirated games.

first, and most importantly, how we came up with this number: the game allows players to have their high scores reported to our server (it’s an optional checkbox). we record each score and the IP from which it came. we divided the total number of sales we had from all sources by the total number of unique IPs in our database, and came up with about 0.1. that’s how we came up with 90%. ...

The game has some online scoreboards where people have to manually submit scores. When they do submit scores, we also track a few pieces of information (nothing personal though):

various score information (score, kills, style points, etc.)
game information (map, mode, difficulty)
App version
OS Version
Device ID
Pirated Flag
The key ones that we’ll be looking at here are the Device ID and Pirated Flag.

I cannot believe you got modded insightful when you couldn't even muster the strength to read more than two sentences.

As for price, I don't personally care how expensive games are. Why do you? Product price is no excuse for piracy.

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it's not games, but here's some "non-anecdotal proof" on the music front for you, courtesy of the BBC.

That argument was tried in court (Gonzalez IIRC) and found lacking. I'm sure you will say the law is to be ignored however, and the judges were paid off by the RIAA.

Regardless, there is no citation on this for games. Have you met anyone, besides slashdotters, who buy games after buying them? Play some online games sometime, or talk to some people that do... 9/10 or more openly admit they are using pirated versions.

People buy music after pirating it because:
1) Clips of music do not hint at the quality of the song, unlike game demos.
2) It only costs a few dollars, not $40-60.
3) People feel a personal connection with the artist, unlike with game developers.
4) It is more convenient to purchase music legitimately on some devices.

Make this argument for DVD sales (which is more similar to a game than music is) and I might find it more compelling. Aside from the convenience factor.

Now let me ask you something, what percentage of that 71.2% of people would have bought the game even if it wasn't possible to pirate?

This is possibly impossible to measure, unlike piracy numbers. I don't see why it should be considered, regardless. Saying that piracy does not exist in huge (majority) numbers in the US is being willfully ignorant.

Re:This will fail

[genner]

Really? Then what does Title 17 Chapter 1 Section 107 of the US Code cover?

According to the text of the law it's "Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use"

Fair use exists it just no lonmger applies to anything that's "encrypted"....even broken encryption like DVD's.

Re:This will fail

[harl]

You may bypass encryption for fair use.

Title 17 Chapter 12 Section 1201

Re:This will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't even bring a single server in a single node of our CDN to a near standstill... Get a clue :D

--Akamai sysadmin

Re:This will fail

[nog_lorp]

Heh. That is obviously a risk.

However, they are not going to successfully prosecute hundreds of thousands of users.

Re:This will fail

[Ihmhi]

Steam doesn't trivially revoke one's subscription, and while their customer service hasn't been stellar I've found that it's been up to par.

I've practically been exclusively using Steam for my purchases and gameplay for over 4 years and I haven't had any problems. Why? I used a credit card with my name on it to associate my name to the account with a paper trail, I have a strong password, and I don't use any hacks or the like that probably have keyloggers and other nefarious software within.

Re:This will fail

[genner]

You may bypass encryption for fair use.

Title 17 Chapter 12 Section 1201

Which sounds good until you realize it makes no provision for the creation and ownership of tools needed to break encryption even if the end result falls under fair use. This has been ruled on already. http://www.appscout.com/2009/08/realnetworks_and_the_fair_use.php

Re:This will fail

[harl]

"It will never happen to me" fallacy.

It looks like...

[Yaa 101]

It looks like they will have a lot excessive bandwidth soon due to people walking away.

Re:It looks like...

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Yeah, the whole "we're full up, come back tomorrow" thing will disappear.

This will start a death spiral for Rapidshare. On to megaupload, depositfiles, mediafire, etc...

Re:It looks like...

[ImYourVirus]

Yeah exactly, is he trying to kill his company? Uploaders are what make his business so profitable, if there is nothing to download no one is going to pay for an account.

"At the same time, Chang says that his company will target uploaders of copyrighted material — whom he refers to as criminals — more aggressively."

Re:It looks like...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to say I saw this coming (because I didn't, really), but here's a story:

A while back I decided P2P just wasn't doing it for me (eztv.it being down for awhile was one of the last straws) -- as much as I like the logical notion of paying for my download bandwidth not in cash but in kind by seeding to 10, the pragmatism won out. At least for my DVRish needs, I'm now getting stuff from the big filesharing sites as a primary source, not a backup. Obviously, if you don't like waiting a minute or so and then re-interacting (often with a captcha) to start your download, suffering downloads at less than real-time, or having to remember which sites I've already hit in the past couple hours, you need a pay membership on one of the sites. A quick look around told me that rapidshare and megaupload were the most common, at least where I hang out, and rapidshare led by a bit. But rapidshare had enough legal troubles and was in a sufficiently pirate-hostile regime, it seemed they were just that little bit more likely to die in court, sell out, or squeal on users at some point.

Now I'm real glad I went with megaupload.

Re:It looks like...

[Winckle]

You should have gone with usenet.

Re:It looks like...

[Anonymous Coward]

I forked over the $40 for an RS membership which expires soon. I find reason to worry now that you are worried... the implications that businesses may soon get in bed with RS means that they'll have easy access (think Facebook) to account owner details. Oh, who exactly owns the credit card used to subscribe? Who downloaded files named the same as our hottest music or program? How many of them are not even clicking on this " new legit store" link? Those will be the first to be squealed, once this is viable.

I may resubscribe in the end, because nothing will really happen in just one year, but I'll RTFA now. The credit card money trail is one thing that TPB doesn't have that RS does.

Re:It looks like...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I know some usenet guys. They pay twice as much as I do, get way over twice the download rates, seems like the way to go for the big stuff, probably better than bittorrent if you're into it deep enough.

But I'm not sure how quick the new TV releases propagate -- I've heard stories about waiting a day or two for the last few parts of an archive (admittedly, multiGB archives here) to get resent to your server, and I like the fact that I can usually start downloading a single-file AVI an hour after the show ends, and watch it while it streams -- I'm a bit skeptical that usenet can get you the show that fast, especially since you're dealing with scene rars, and have to download the whole thing to start watching.

Re:It looks like...

[Winckle]

Sounds like they need to sort themselves out. I get TV about 3 hours after it has finished broadcasting. By using an RSS feed the shows download automatically. Check out the pricing at http://blocknews.net/ if you are interested in paying per GB (it goes as low as $0.09 per GB) if you want pay per month unlimited then http://supernews.com/ is cheapest at $9.99 per month. Both have around 400+ days retention.

Title is misleading

[junglebeast]

I think this would have been more aptly named:

"Rapidshare Trying To GET RID OF their Customers who are Pirates"

instead of

"Rapidshare Trying To Convert Pirates Into Customers" ..which is just...the opposite.

Re:Title is misleading

[spydabyte]

The term customers is simply ambiguous. In this case, it means customers of the "entertainment industry". It may also mean rapidshare customers, as rapidshare might get a cut for their redirect, depending on their business model. But yes, if a single person clicks on that redirect and purchases the software/music/movie legally, then the website has converted a would-be pirate into a legitimate customer.

Re:Title is misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

"Rapidshare trying to convert their customers, 99% of whom are pirates, and their revenue (99% of which stems from pirates) into legal entities."

Would be more accurate in my opinion, but then again I don't quite understand what you mean.

Re:Title is misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

Which can be translated to "Rapidshare trying to get rid of ALL customers." Does anyone really use it for anything else? This is lose-lose for them.

Um, No?

[WrongSizeGlass]

The file-hosting service Rapidshare is seeking major entertainment industry partners for an online store

If they are in fact pirates then trying to setup a store for them is probably a waste of time. Though I must commend them for nicely putting everything in one location and inviting pirates to come for a visit. Rocket surgery, indeed.

Say no to rapidshare

[Keruo]

Just say no to rapidshare and alike "please pay us or wait imaginary seconds for a download slot" sites.

You can use google docs to share large files.

Re:Say no to rapidshare

[The MAZZTer]

Windows Live SkyDrive works too, and has 25gb space instead of Docs' 1gb. On the down side SkyDrive has a 50mb per-file limit. Dropbox also has free public downloads, 2gb total space.

Re:Say no to rapidshare

[David Gerard]

Ya know, there's nothing quite like the complaints of people getting something for free. It's what makes Monday feel like Monday.

Re:Say no to rapidshare

[Anonymous Coward]

Can i have a shot of your time machine?

Re:Say no to rapidshare

[Animaether]

Really?

A friend of mine needed to download some files from my server and no matter what route we tried (https, http, ftp), he just couldn't get to the files without some manner of corruption of the files. So eventually I pointed to my free Dropbox Account so he could download from there. These were two files of 122.4MB and 137.3MB. He e-mailed a while later that he couldn't download the 30MB file; I already got the reason why in an e-mail from dropbox a bit earlier:

This email is an automated notification from Dropbox that your Public links have been temporarily suspended on account of generating excessive traffic. Your Dropbox will continue to function completely normally with the exception of Public links.

Oh, yes.. Dropbox is a -great- way to share files publicly. Uh-huh. At least until you hit some virtual limit and then they just shut the access down.

Not that I would suggest using either Dropbox or Google Docs or etc. for distributing items for which you have no license to do so in the first place - but just as a general method of sharing files, it's not all that. (Or at least wasn't late January)

Re:Say no to rapidshare

[Anonymous Coward]

On the down side SkyDrive has a 50mb per-file limit.

So perfectly sized to hold files split up into 50MB rars, much like many large pirated files are split into?

Re:Say no to rapidshare

[93 Escort Wagon]

Ya know, there's nothing quite like the complaints of people getting something for free. It's what makes Monday feel like Monday.

Dude, I hate to break this to you but - your boss has been lying about the calendar to avoid paying you overtime.

Re:Say no to rapidshare

[dandart]

Or big file sites, or ftp accounts, or bibud (when it's ready).

Re:Say no to rapidshare

[David Gerard]

Every dayyyy is liiiike Monday.

Re:Say no to rapidshare

[CrashandDie]

http://dl.free.fr/

Not the fastest in the world, unless you're on Free (the ISP)'s network, but by far one of the best. Files are limited to 1GB if you use the HTTP upload feature, or 10GB if you use the FTP upload feature. Files are retained for 30 days from last download, no download limit.

FTP requires valid email address (username), and temporary password (user defined) which creates a 48h "session", used for resuming the upload in case it fails initially. Once the upload is complete they send an email containing the link to the file (and no, no spam -- they're a massively successful ISP, not some dodgy company).

The company saw revenue rise by 25% year-on-year to EUR 1.95 billion in the year, while net profit jumped 75.2% year-on-year to EUR 175.9 million in 2009

Re:Say no to rapidshare

[Anonymous Coward]

You can use jdownloader to download from Rapidshare and alike.

Re:Say no to rapidshare

[tokul]

Just say no to rapidshare and alike "please pay us or wait imaginary seconds for a download slot" sites.
You can use google docs to share large files.

Free file sharing services use those seconds and slots to display ads and to promote own paid services. Google displays ads too. If you don't work for google, then you only suggest switching one ad supported service provider with another and your suggestion is some ad/user tracking monster. If you do work for google, go and pay for ad placement in slashdot sales department.

According to wikipedia Google docs have 1 GB limit for one account.

rapidshare is one of moderate file sharing service providers. They don't try to push own toolbars into user's machines like others (including google) do.

Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

As a former "pirate" I do not think this will work. Most "pirates" just want free stuff.. they do not have any problems with movie/software/music industry! They just have gotten used to getting everything for free and see no reason to pay if it is available for free.

Now I do not download stuff anymore but I also do not buy it either. Most of that stuff just isn't worth the price being asked for IMHO.

Everyone still riding the freeloading bandwagon - try 'quitting' - you'll realize most of that stuff you never need or can live by without just fine.

Re:Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

But I'll die if I cant see *insert next big hollywood release here* as soon as possible! I have just got to download that leaked version two days before it is in theaters!

Re:Hmm...

[oldhack]

You don't need to "try". It just happens when you get old.

Re:Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we supposed to believe that you also deleted all the stuff you downloaded?

Or did you just stop downloading when you could no longer be bothered by buy more TBs of disk space?

Re:Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

It worked with music and itunes. I doubt Rapidshare will be able to do for movies as Apple did for music, but I have no doubt that some other, more capable company will eventually.

Re:Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much all deleted. For the rest I'm in the process of replacing it with free version or bought copies (my copy of XP only became 'legit' recently, MS Office / Adobe suite now provided by employee). Before that I used OpenOffice exclusively - for compat. reasons I have to use MS Office, hence provided by employee.
Oh and when I stopped downloading everything - my biggest and only hdd was 250GB - so yeah I did not hoard TB of data :p

Re:Hmm...

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Out of interest, what made you quit?

Re:Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

My mommy grounded me and took away my puter.

Re:Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

haha your mom sucks. my mom leaves me a lone and I can pirate all the mp3s, dvds, and video games all day long. she doesn't go into my room much.

sorry to be you dude

Re:Hmm...

[minorproblem]

Good experience i have had with pricing; I was living in Queensland recently and I was able to see $6AU movies with my student card any day of the week. Anyways at six bucks the movies where so cheap i actually found myself going to the movies 2-3 times a week. Now i am back in NSW and the movies here are about $14 except on Tuesdays. Funnily enough i don't even go to the movies anymore as i am not willing to pay $14 unless its looks like a really good movie.

Its funny how a small price difference can change peoples spending habits.

Re:Hmm...

[LordLucless]

As a former "pirate" I do not think this will work. Most "pirates" just want free stuff.

I disagree. As a former "pirate" myself, I think there are two types of pirates. There are those who'll try and collect every byte they can, and brag about their music collections, and there's those who actually want the content. I stopped when iTunes became just as, if not more, convenient to use than trawling IRC channels for FTP details (and when I found a reliable way to strip iTunes DRM as soon as I'd purchased a track).

Re:Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

A rather personal event - nothing to do with downloading stuff. So in a day or two after it I decided that it was not right and even though I 'missed out' on a lot of games and movies and began to realize that I did not really miss them much.
Oh and to the poster commenting about the age - I was 27 when I stopped downloading - would you consider that as 'old'?

Intent

[MrCrassic]

Were Rapidshare, Mediafire, et al ever intended to be used for sharing illegal content? I would think they weren't, since Rapidshare removes copyrighted material when it finds it, along with some of the other file sharing hosts (SendSpace, Mediafire, etc)...

Re:Intent

[Hatta]

Youtube has always removed copyrighted material when informed too. Yet we found out recently that they intentionally allowed the hosting of copyrighted material in order to boost their market (and mind) share. I'd be surprised if Rapidshare, et. al, hasn't pursued the same strategy. Personally, I've never used Rapdishare for anything that wasn't pirated.

Re:Intent

[Anonymous Coward]

And I have never used rapidshare for anything that was pirated (and I have used rapidshare quite a lot).

Arent anecdotes great?

Re:Intent

[DJoffe]

I'd be surprised if Rapidshare, et. al, hasn't pursued the same strategy.

It's possible, I don't know. I must say though, I own a small ISV and one day I discovered pirated copies of our own software on RapidShare. I fired off a letter to their abuse address, and within 24 hours they had removed (and, they said, permanently blacklisted) the content and sent an apologetic response. It was certainly a more positive response than I had expected. This was about 3 years ago, and I haven't yet seen any of our software appear again on RapidShare.

Re:Intent

[DJoffe]

I haven't yet seen any of our software appear again on RapidShare.

That I know of, anyway.

Lip service

[OpenSourced]

I'd say that is just lip service for the benefit of the content providers. A way of saying "see? we are doing things, and you can work with us (and pay us in the process)".

Basically, rapidshare doesn't know which content is copyrighted or not, as a good percentage of it is encrypted, and that percentage is sure to grow if any kind of countermeasure is tried. You have to manually search the blogs for the password to be able to know if the content is copyrighted or not. The economics of it is non-existent.

So the basic system of the storage-download sites have to change for it to reduce copyrighted works copying, and that's also unlikely except via legislation. I think this is just an attempt to move the legislation threat a bit further away in time.

Megaupload

[grendel03]

Megaupload is better for that sort of thing anyway.

Re:Megaupload

[delta534]

I prefer mediafire for file hosting in general. Multiple downloads at once and no wait FTW.

Re:Megaupload

[mister_playboy]

Those two sites are the best for free downloaders, but all the cool kids who want to make $$$ are using Hotfile (or SharingMatrix, where HF is banned).

Be a good uploader and use MU or MF, please.

Re:Megaupload

[tokul]

Megaupload is better for that sort of thing anyway.

Bullshit. Remember that on other servers you can download files without mega f###ing toolbar.

Re:Megaupload

[Anonymous Coward]

Even on free mode, MU routinely will max out my bandwidth, making me only wait 60 seconds after every file (large upper limit on free file size).

This is more than sufficient for streaming lower order HD content: unrar p -inul filename.part1.rar | mplayer - -cache 300

Pirates will still win.

[dionarapthevicious]

"Pirates always win, on a long enough timeline. Honestly, the timeline doesn't even need to be that long." -Tycho Brahe

Re:Pirates will still win.

[Bugamn]

Would they win if the pc gaming industry died?

Re:Pirates will still win.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then EVERYONE would win.

Re:Pirates will still win.

[laughingcoyote]

Would they win if the pc gaming industry died?

Realistically, yes. If that's an outdated, unworkable model given current technology, let it die and something else replace it.

You can't lock down content, with everyone having high powered data copying machines in their living room, and many people having the skill to crack through even the most devious of lockdown schemes. And it only takes breaking it (or running it through the analog hole, or what have you), once.

They've tried with software. They've tried with music. They've tried with movies, consoles, games, what have you, from VHS tapes all the way up to Blu-Rays, from floppies to downloads. And they've tried in a lot of ways, from "Type in the fifth word in the first paragraph of the ninth page..." to the current encryption schemes. And they all fail. And they all will fail. You can't simultaneously give people content and prevent them from viewing it, and you can't prevent someone who's able to view it or hear it from copying it, even if they need a quiet room and a good quality recorder to do so.

This is good. Yes, it's going to cause some headaches for some people. Yes, it's going to require some ingenuity from us as to how we replace the old methods of generating content creation. Yes, it might even make a baby cry somewhere. But disruptive technology is, well, disruptive, and the gains we get from the wide availability and usability of computers is far greater than any drawback.

It's time to sit down and figure out what the future model is. It probably doesn't involve large prices. Most of it probably doesn't involve any prices (perhaps advertising, perhaps people working in their spare time and not needing pay). People have already figured out that they don't have to pay, and whether you like it or not, when you've got a worse (DRM restricted) product, at a higher (not free) price, you're not going to win that one. The only thing you can do is to make your product better and more convenient, at minimal cost.

The end result is probably going to include a lot of collaborative development, in the vein of open source. We've already seen several smash hits this way-anyone familiar with Firefox, or Wikipedia?-and will certainly see more as this model is refined.

In other cases, all-you-can-eat has proved to be a good approach. Netflix is killing video stores with all-you-can-eat, and, well, a large torrent site is a great example of the success of the all-you-can-eat approach, like it or not. Make a convenient, centralized location with a low subscription fee, and allow your customers to (totally legally) download whatever they may like, without having to wait around for a seeder, add some areas where they can discuss the stuff, and you've got a compelling reason for them to pay. Now you're offering more for the money (convenience, easy access, legality), not less (restrictions and DRM the downloaded copies don't have).

And realistically, there probably won't be near as much need for commercial production in this type of thing going forward. You don't need a factory to produce and distribute CDs, you don't need a box to get software. That's already irreversibly changed, and altogether, that change is for the better. Now we've just got to work out this bump. And we do-it does raise a legitimate issue. But in order to do that, we need to get the "content producers" to quit dragging their feet and pretending it's 1985 (and trying to get everyone else to pretend it's 1985), and sit down to figure out how to move forward, not back.

Ooops, better stop using Rapidshare for warez

[Latinhypercube]

Ooops, better stop using Rapidshare for warez.... CEO sounds like an asshole. They have probably have been saving everyones IP's. As far as I can tell, Rapidshare is entirely used for Warez.

And rapists are lovers

[Anonymous Coward]

pirates already *are* customers

Yup. And rapists are lovers, car thieves are giving you a complement, shop lifters are telling you that your checkout lines are too long...

Dream on.

Re:And rapists are lovers

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have any clue who rapidshare is, or what business they're in?

Didn't think so.

99% of your customers are pirates

[postmortem]

Mr. GM, why do you think people use your service? Nobody else needs gigabytes of data to share with their buddies online - they simply borrow them a DVD, CD or game. No business would date to store some sensitive data here. Simply because business that allows (or is unable to stop it) infringement material to be stored is not a serious business in eyes of many.

Strategies.

[headkase]

Rapidshare is changing, perhaps the catalyst was this decision: TorrentFreak and also the fact that they share uploader information with rights-holders: TorrentFreak. All in all I think this represents a change of strategy by rights-holders: they know they can't win any public sympathy by suing the life-blood out of a single-mother with a family of five so instead they are going after the faceless "platforms." So, geeks, write some decentralized platforms now! Something that ideally lets you put in a seed and that is your first connection and then web-of-trust from there!

Re:Strategies.

[Reziac]

Web of trust has its own problems, best illustrated by the old Soviet jape:

When four men sit down to talk revolution, three are government agents and the fourth is a fool.

Re:Strategies.

[headkase]

Vouching to get in and never seeing anyone above you like in World War II allied prison camps worked decently but is it scalable? If you could establish a backbone then go back a few decades and its people going over to their friends house (who happens to have access to the backbone or knows someone who does) to get data. Of course it won't be the latest stuff as this introduces lag into distribution. Then there is the sheer amount of data which is what p2p solves right now, someone having that exact mp3 your looking for would be rare in such a system. Of course the greatest weakness of such a system is if rights-holders actually offered access, decent prices, and sane formats for their information.. I know the Ubuntu One Music Store in Canada doesn't get any major record label music - perhaps this is what 301 status actually translates into ;) They won't let me be a customer!

Re:Strategies.

[Reziac]

The cell system of security, yes -- you can vouch for yourself and the 2 or 3 people you know, but you can't vouch for any of the 2 or 3 people each of your 2 or 3 contacts knows. The advantage is that if it's compromised and those members are removed, it immediately breaks at that point so most of the system remains safe. The disadvantage is that any single person can't know how much of the system is compromised *without* members being removed, nor how close he is to being betrayed.

So.. infiltrations don't go far, but if you have enough of them you can significantly compromise the cell network's security.

Anyway, that's my problem with a subjective 'web of trust' -- I not only have to trust MY friends, I have to trust all THEIR friends, and all THEIR friends... many of whom might be people that I myself would not trust.

As you say, it also limits what data is available, since each node of trust filters out any data that node is not interested in (unless there's some requirement that every node carry all data).

Personally I'd like to see a web of micropayments, where you get paid a few cents for every copy you seed that gets converted into a sale, and where the price is nominal enough that a lot of people will pay the little amount for a known-good file rather than have to scrounge it from the back alleys of the net. Cash-strapped teens everywhere would cheerfully seed everything in the whole catalog. This could easily be done by watermarking files and running the system thru a custom bittorrent tracker. Yeah, there'd be lots of freeloaders, but there'd also be lots of people who'd pay a little bit just for the convenience. The object here is to make it folks' FIRST place to get files, increasing the chance that some will be sales (instead of driving them away and eventually zeroing out your sales).

It's exactly like how when DVDs get cheap enough, I buy them to save myself the nuisance of a long and iffy download, and the store (effectively the "seeder") makes a small commission for the end sale.

Re:Strategies.

[mysidia]

Use an algorithm something like Advogoto's certification system, and also provide a mechanism for people to say "I don't trust them, or I know this person is bad".

Pure WoT alone has some difficulties... you need ultimately need some seeds that people know are trusted.

And the sheer number of certifications alone should not establish trust...

I would imagine you have 50 or so seeds, and you need to be certified at some level or higher by people trusted ultimately from some percentage of those seeds to achieve that certification level.

Also, a ~N negative certification by certified at N+1 if repeated by ppl certified by enough seeds, should result in ineligibility to certify at level N or higher, or something like that.

The design should be more complex than that, but there are some ways WoTs should be able to be made resilient against certain attacks on trust

Re:Strategies.

[headkase]

I don't want to pirate, I want to buy with reasonable terms. Government right now is on a crusade to preserve old business models and damn everything else. I want to see more varied things tried because they represent competition. None of that benefits the incumbents right now so they are fighting tooth and nail against it with every dirty trick. I see piracy as a force to drag obsolete business models into the 21st century, they sure as hell won't come on their own. When it comes down to my decision: I want to buy my music from Ubuntu One, the record labels refuse to sell it to me there: there is something broken. Yet they insist on painting it in simplistic terms which makes them look like the victim when in fact it is the content industry which is the "Boston Strangler." Content industries are focused on short-term maximization of profits - they are missing the boat, unfortunately without them cooperating in a graceful changeover the alternative is to kill them off and let a new generation of more nimble players replace them. Yes, I'm still sore that while on paper we "have" a public domain in practice it has been stolen and all the potential works it could have spawned with it.

Re:Strategies.

[Anonymous Coward]

You should take a look at Friend2Friend systems like http://oneswarm.cs.washington.edu/

Re:Strategies.

[grumbel]

Something that ideally lets you put in a seed and that is your first connection and then web-of-trust from there!

A WoT sounds nice in theory, but has it ever worked out in practice? The problem is that you need lots of friends to make it work, but hardly anybody has enough friends for that, even less so trusted ones that also use the same software. And when you then fall back to friends you found on the Internet you are opening yourself up to untrusted people.

Re:Strategies.

[Reziac]

Unfortunately that's how the current generation of management think -- they've got Ivy-League business degrees but have never actually BUILT a business from the ground up, so they only think of maximizing short-term profits. If that costs them a much larger long-term profit, or even kills the business, well, we got ours today, if the business dies tomorrow because we were so short-sighted, too bad! we'll move on to another business and gut it the same way.

It's not just the music industry that's afflicted with this. :(

And of course if they did go with a seeds-and-microsales business model, they'd be giving up that monopoly control over their content, and we can't have THAT either... they'd rather have 100% of a finite and shrinking pie, than a small percent of a vastly larger and growing pie that could ultimately make them a LOT more money, if properly managed to take advantage of the economics of scale that filesharing would allow.

Re:Strategies.

[Reziac]

An AC recommends, "You should take a look at Friend2Friend systems like http://oneswarm.cs.washington.edu/"

Thanks, this looks like an interesting option.

Re:Strategies.

[headkase]

Its unfortunate that short-sighted fools are dragging everyone down. I think part of a way out is trumpeting a fair public domain. Get it down to 20 years and get people used to being able to download the original Alien and put it on all their devices for free. Instead of lip-service today, if it doesn't happen in my lifetime: there is no public domain.

Re:Strategies.

[Reziac]

Well, yes, I agree -- cutting copyright back to its originally intended period would largely uncouple it from corporate greed, since it wouldn't be worth protecting after a certain point anyway -- so they'd be more inclined to focus on new content instead of on old tired content. Which of course was the whole idea behind a LIMITED copyright period in the first place, to encourage new stuff and to enlarge the public domain.

As to stuff that's out of copyright, there's a good business printing classics and such, so it's not like there's no money to be made with public domain works. Indeed, I'd guess that many old novels have sold far more copies after they became public domain. And there's always a market for music and film classics, same deal.

Customer...

[Acecoolco]

I buy games... But when there is so much DRM that it adversely affects my gaming experience.. I will download it, from rapidshare! I love that these people are pulling the crapware out of games I pay for, and it makes for a more pleasurable gaming experience. Lesson: Stop putting crapware in your games, and you will have more people that will want to spend money as long as the game is worth it. I have never had an issue with a downloaded game due to the removal of all the garbage. But, almost every game I buy first I have had at least one issue with.

Re:Customer...

[aflag]

Sincerely, I don't even care, I'll pirate one way or the other. I don't care at all for the health of game, music or movie industry. If they drop out of existance I'll just use the tons of games, music and movies that were already produced and I haven't tried yet.

This just in...

[koan]

Rapidshare has shuttered it's "windows" and gone out of business.

Re:This just in...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true. I am downloading as I write this.

Old model?

[earlymon]

From TFS:

At the same time, Chang says that his company will target uploaders of copyrighted material -- whom he refers to as criminals -- more aggressively."

I admit to not knowing a lot about this - but isn't the model of busting users, then deciding to bust the pushers because without pushers, there won't be users?

I've got neighborhoods in my town that suggest that attacking symptoms instead of root causes for problems will never work.

But as I said, I'm not terribly knowledgeable on this and I could applying the wrong simile.

You've got a nice IP library here Colonel.

[RevWaldo]

We wouldn't want anything to 'appen to it.

Re:You've got a nice IP library here Colonel.

[sixsixtysix]

+2 Python Reference.

Re:You've got a nice IP library here Colonel.

[Nesman64]

Would that be reference.py ? ;)

People actually use RS for warez?

[mikael_j]

I don't get it, why would anyone use Rapidshare/Megaupload/whatever for warez when there are plenty of good solutions for sharing data that don't involve handing your files over to a third party (and thus requiring the use of proxy servers if you wish to keep a semblance of security and anonymity)?

I mean, sure, there were a bunch of warez websites back in the 90's that used various web storage/hosting sites to host rips of games and movies but I thought that had died out by 2000 or so...

Re:People actually use RS for warez?

[glwtta]

Speed.

Re:People actually use RS for warez?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have yet to see rapidshare max out a 100Mbps connection but bittorrent does this easily with any popular torrent.

Re:People actually use RS for warez?

[Anonymous Coward]

when there are plenty of good solutions for sharing data that don't involve handing your files over to a third party (and thus requiring the use of proxy servers if you wish to keep a semblance of security and anonymity)?

Which would that be? With P2P you hand out your IP to the whole world opening yourself up to litigation, with rapidshare and friends you are handing out your IP to them, not the rest of the world, so unless rapidshare turns evil and hands out your IP you are relatively safe. Also downloading from it doesn't require to upload stuff like in P2P, another aspect that provides some protection against litigation.

Re:People actually use RS for warez?

[eulernet]

Explanation: it's because when you use P2P, there is a good 50% chance that you are tracked when you download a recent movie.
With Rapidshare/Megaupload, there is no such apparent tracking.

About uploading files, there are several multi-upload sites that allow to do that securely.

And, in my case, these hosting sites are much faster than BitTorrent, since I have a very slow connection.
Note also that there is a cool program to download queued files from most of the hosting sites, that bypasses the captchas and automatically downloads the files.

Re:People actually use RS for warez?

[mikael_j]

Private BT trackers with only people you trust, private FTP servers. Both of these are infinitely safer than "let's upload our files to some random website and hope the owners wouldn't rather save their own asses than turn over our info to the *AA".

Re:People actually use RS for warez?

[mikael_j]

Explanation: it's because when you use P2P, there is a good 50% chance that you are tracked when you download a recent movie. With Rapidshare/Megaupload, there is no such apparent tracking.

With Rapidshare there's a 100% chance your IP address is now in an access log somewhere on their servers and this access log will also show that you downloaded the entire file in question, with Bittorrent there's the issue that someone is able to see you connected to a torrent swarm but they can't tell if you've downloaded the whole file unless they're the only seeder or they've done a man in the middle attack on your connection (and regardless of how they've done something like that you're likely to be in deep shit).

Re:People actually use RS for warez?

[eulernet]

I think you are wrong.

First, getting access to Rapidshare's logs should not be so easy.

Secondly, the tool I'm using for downloading changes the IP address after every download, so that you get a new IP everytime (and this removes the waiting between each file).

Thirdly, it's really easy to track torrents, without man in the middle or anything.
The trackers just need to check if the same IP downloaded (or worst: uploaded) SEVERAL recent movies.
A single infrigement will be unnoticed, but several will likely trigger their detection.
Given your explanation, I guess that you think that only the original seeder is at risk, since he sends the file to everybody.

Anyway, there are still binary newsgroups, and a given site provides you daily free access to those.

Re:People actually use RS for warez?

[mikael_j]

I think you are wrong.

I'm not.

First, getting access to Rapidshare's logs should not be so easy.

They're a company, if the cops show up with a warrant it's almost certain they'd hand over the logs.

Secondly, the tool I'm using for downloading changes the IP address after every download, so that you get a new IP everytime (and this removes the waiting between each file).

As someone who's worked for several ISPs I can tell you that even though you renew your DHCP lease there's a pretty big chance your ISP saves what MAC addresses your various connected computers have had and which IP addresses have been assigned to which MAC. In fact, they probably save this information for a lot longer than you think (read: months).

Thirdly, it's really easy to track torrents, without man in the middle or anything.

Track how? Unless all the seeders you're downloading from are controlled by the those trying to track you all they can see is that you're connected to the swarm and perhaps downloading parts of the files. And here in Sweden the rights-holders associations have admitted that this is a major legal loophole since they can't really get you unless they can prove you downloaded the entire file.

The trackers just need to check if the same IP downloaded (or worst: uploaded) SEVERAL recent movies.

Are you talking about the torrent tracker or whoever is trying to figure out what someone is downloading? In the first case there's tracker-less Bittorrent and for the second case I suggest you read my previous paragraph.

A single infrigement will be unnoticed, but several will likely trigger their detection.

Highly unlikely, to my knowledge the only Bittorrent-related busts I've heard of in Sweden have been against trackers and even there the legal situation is unclear to say the least.

Given your explanation, I guess that you think that only the original seeder is at risk, since he sends the file to everybody.

Possibly, yes.

Anyway, there are still binary newsgroups, and a given site provides you daily free access to those.

Unless of course your usenet provider logs transfers.

It could be extortion

[TheSpoom]

Hey copyright holders! Would you like to sell copies of your IP at our online store? You'll get a (small) cut, but at least you'll get something! And, if you don't play ball, maybe uploaded versions of your files take a few weeks to get deleted. Maybe they don't get deleted at all. You wouldn't want that to happen, right?

rapidshare should be closed

[Anonymous Coward]

youtube's infringement problems are minimal compared to the ip and legal issues rapidshare has.
they aren't waving the freedom of speach flag, just the 'pay me bitch' one
close them now, they don't protect rights, and they don't seem to have any desire to stop their behavior

Good luck with that

[Mathinker]

> You should put that much effort into making sure you don't
> buy MP3's that you can't play.

In the video world, DRM is still king. Why don't you just lay out your "argument" for everyone to see? Let's see:

• Large corporations should be free to advertise as much as they want in order to try to make everyone believe that they need to consume their products.
• In the case of video (or other intangible) products, these same corporations should be free to encumber their product with as much DRM as they want, so that it is difficult or impractical for the consumer to actually own the product they buy and use it however they wish (not including distribution).
• These same corporations should be free to lobby the legislatures with some of the oodles of money they have, in order that these legislatures will pass laws like the DMCA which make it even less possible for consumers to actually own what they pay for.

Let me sum up what you're saying:

Dear consumer, after paying, please lower pants and bend over.

You are wrong.

[HBI]

We lived through this in the late 80s-early 90s and the defeat of copy protection resulted in more and cheaper games. The return of this madness has restricted both the quality and quantity of games. Period.

You are wrong. The proof exists already.

Agreed, it won't work ... but 'former pirate"?

[King_TJ]

I'll openly admit that by the twisted definition of "software pirate" in popular use today, I qualify. But the interesting thing is, I've bought quite a bit of software over the years too. In relation to my total income, I probably spend a larger percentage on "intellectual property" than the average "I don't pirate!" user out there.

The companies trying to rule with an iron fist of copy protection create much of the problem for those of us who have the means to buy software.

Here's just one recent example. I was asked to help a small business transfer over their data from an older, dying PC to a new replacement PC they purchased. Fine, but the old PC apparently had an "OEM version" of Microsoft Office 2003 Pro installed on it, and they couldn't even locate the original CD for it anymore. Their expectation was that the product would keep on working just fine when I was done transferring it over. (That's what any normal, logical-thinking person would assume, right?) But thanks to Microsoft's product activation and arbitrary rules on what limitations exist on OEM vs. retail copies of their products - they were technically stuck buying a whole new copy of Office to remain "legal" and keep using it like they did before the old PC died.

Considering nobody even sells Office 2003 anymore (well, without a LOT of digging online to find some old stock left-over copy someplace obscure, anyway), they weren't even able to continue using the product if they WERE willing to pay for a new copy. They were basically going to be herded into buying a copy of Office 2007 instead, which they didn't want.

Since I was already getting paid to "make this transfer work without any hassles", my best option was to install a different copy of Office 2003 Pro on the PC, using a pirated key. (If you know where to look, there are Asian web sites out there selling such keys, via email, for about $20-25 a pop. The keys they sell will activate with MS product activation just fine and pass all the tests as being genuine. How they're obtained, I honestly don't know and probably don't want to know. But it's an affordable solution to the problem, even IF Microsoft says it's not legal.)

As to how all this relates to Rapidshare? Well, let's just say that Rapidshare's main function for MOST of its users is to obtain copyrighted software they're seeking for any number of reasons (some more "legitimate" than others). If they turn around and bite that hand that feeds, thinking the "industry" is a better partner to please? They're more than welcome to try, but I think they'll find nobody finds any value in Rapidshare offering up suggestions on how to purchase things they were looking to download for free.

rapidshare?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm... I was under the impression that rapidshare was just a virus graveyard...

Good News Everyone!

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel like I might actually like this!

My steps when I want to watch a movie:

1) See if it exists on movie berry dot com or my video lib or similar legal non-DRM site.
2) If it is, pay the $0.25 to $3 depending on quality, and saturate my connection fast enough to stream h.264 1080p. Watch instantly.
3) If movie was not found, fire up rtorrent, and watch it 3 weeks later.

This would put everything in one place for me.

I don't watch enough movies for this to make me broke.

bye bye rapidshare

[Anonymous Coward]

On thing rapidshare fails to understand , is that they exist only at the grace of piracy.
Without piracy , there would be no need to have huge files uploaded and downloaded trough rapidshare , and so no one would buy an account ( well , a lot less people would )

The main reason for the success of rapidshare is that they allow copyrighted materials , until asked to remove the content , in which case they do exactly that : they remove the content , but don't ban the user ( otherwise they would lose money ) . Then that user uploads the files again.

There are plenty of similar file hosting services available , and many are already moving away from rapidshare , and other to better services.

Re:bye bye rapidshare

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget the transfer cap recently introduced... Paying customers are now no longer able to download as much as they'll like; there's a set cap each month.

And now this...

Time to move on! - I'll not be renewing my Rapidshare subscription.

4chan

[roman_mir]

There was a story on /. about 4chan moving into the 'web2' territory or something, I went to see what the site was about and it is a something of a forum where people are posting images, one of the 'rooms' has rapidshare links on it, it's all rapidshare. I think this is already a business with this service, maybe that's one way 4chan makes money, by providing customers to rapidshare?