Slashdot Mirror
Sometimes It's OK To Steal My Games
spidweb writes "One Indie developer has written a nuanced article on a how software piracy affects him, approaching the issue from the opposite direction. He lists the ways in which the widespread piracy of PC games helps him. From the article: 'You don't get everything you want in this world. You can get piles of cool stuff for free. Or you can be an honorable, ethical being. You don't get both. Most of the time. Because, when I'm being honest with myself, which happens sometimes, I have to admit that piracy is not an absolute evil. That I do get things out of it, even when I'm the one being ripped off.' The article also tries to find a middle ground between the Piracy-Is-Always-Bad and Piracy-Is-Just-Fine sides of the argument that might enable single-player PC games to continue to exist."
Copyright is just an arbitrary social convention. Three hundred years ago, composers were happy when their music was used by others. Today, the staff at restaurants can’t sing the Happy Birthday song to their customers because it would constitute an unauthorised commercial use.
Copyright was a legal construct the printers (not the writers!) lobbied for in order to increase their profits, and soon, people got used to it and started seeing it as a god-given right. Perhaps in the future it will be possible to copyright individual sentences, and speaking them without the permission of the originator will be seen as ”stealing”. Perhaps there will be moral outrage, like the one over piracy, when people insist on speaking any sentence they like without paying the appropriate fee.
There are some morals which are very basic and vital to society, like the taboos against murder or theft, but copyright is not one of them. Copyright is a legal construct which gives priveleges to some (primarily large media corporations) at the expense of others (consumers). Copyright should be judged on how beneficial it is for society as a whole. It is an economic instrument meant to stimulate the production of literary and artistic works, not to ensure the income of writers and artists.
Do you think in a capitalistic society that having no copyright is going to promote the production of goods such as video games? Or basically any work of similar nature?
That's why Obamacare (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) was passed under "To lay and collect taxes [for] the general welfare". If you don't buy a product, the government reserves the right to tax you for its value and give it to you. Think of it as eminent domain run in reverse.
I don't have to much of a problem with that when it's something that everyone needs, and it works out cheapest when it's centralized: roads, power and data networks, and public healthcare seem to fall under that banner.
The problem for me is that because we are all paying the same amount, everyone (or the government) thinks that we should not be allowed to take any risks with our own bodies, otherwise we'll "be a burden on the healthcare system".
That fucks me off. Again have no qualms about state run monopolies when: A) private companies are legally allowed to compete with them, B) everyone pays for real value of their own, so that I can smoke crack and ride a Harley with no helmet on, if I so choose.
And why should Blizzard's network have any impact at all on my ability to play a game, that I bought, in single-player mode, on my own pc?
Because my right to play that game must be verified via authentication against Blizzard's server.
That qualifies as DRM.
Here's why. Every individual has two commodities they own: 1. Time. 2. Money. People with #2 tend not to have #1, and vice versa. So for someone with a good income, it's just not worth the time involved to locate a torrent, download it from the few people seeding it, etc., etc. (Even if YOU could find it quickly, there's still a learning curve involved for the average person.) The people who pirate software almost always are those who wouldn't buy it in the first place, simply because they don't have any money. But by getting your software, a certain tiny percentage will help you via word of mouth, which in the end helps your bottom line.
I believe Randseed bought the game digitally, which meant he would have had to download the entire installer. Of course he could've done this several days in advance, as Blizzard made the downloader available beforehand to help people avoid the inevitable congestion issues, and simply activated it while installing the game on release day.
Let me get it straight. Your need to earn money is more important than the right of all of the human kind to freely access information?
I have information in my head right now that you probably do not have. If I refuse to share any of this information with you for free (or just refuse because I don't want to share it with you), am I violating your rights?
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks