Slashdot Mirror
Witcher 2 Torrents Could Net You a Fine
An anonymous reader writes with this quote from Eurogamer:
"Gamers who download upcoming PC exclusive The Witcher 2 illegally could receive a letter demanding they pay a fine or face legal action. If gamers refuse to pay the fine, which will be more than the cost of the game, they could end up in court, developer CD Projekt told Eurogamer. 'Of course we're not happy when people are pirating our games, so we are signing with legal firms and torrent sneaking companies,' CD Projekt co-founder Marcin Iwiski said. 'In quite a few big countries, when people are downloading it illegally they can expect a letter from a legal firm saying, "Hey, you downloaded it illegally and right now you have to pay a fine." We are totally fair, but if you decide you will not buy it legally there is a chance you'll get a letter. We are talking about it right now.' Interestingly, The Witcher 2 will be released free of digital rights management – but only through the CD Projekt-owned digital download shop GOG.com. That means owners will be able to install it as many times as they like on any number of computers – and it will not requite an internet connection to run."
They're going after people who in no way, shape, or form inflicted any damages on them or even interacted with them. They merely copied their product. Instead of acknowledging the fact that the system is broken due to its insistence on utilizing artificial scarcity, they blame people who have nothing to do with said systems shortcomings.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Ok, so all those people still think they can change human nature using laws and papers...
Or, you could play now and buy it later. But if you enjoy feeling good about pointless actions that benefit nobody, go for it!
Dilbert RSS feed
Hell no. What I am going to do is save up my money until I have enough extra to buy a copy for myself. The problem with people nowdays is that they are whiny little bitches who cry, "I want, I want, I want."
You do know that - unlike pirates - you're almost certainly hurting the economy, right? Let's see why.
Firstly, you want "Call of Duty: Black Ops" specifically. You're not going to rush out and buy a similar game just because it's cheaper. This is normal, but it means there's no price signalling that would otherwise lower the price towards the cost of production.
Secondly, the money you saved up to buy it is money that you're not spending on something else. Now, some of that money goes to useful things like paying people's wages - but because games have artificial scarcity that breaks the usual price-signalling mechanisms, a lot of the money becomes excess profit that doesn't do anything economically useful. What's more, this is also why so many game studios are really badly run, get away with employing highly-paid idiots as managers, etc - there's no competition or price pressure that would force them to become more efficient.
Add this up across all the other people out there who think like you, and the loss to the overall economy is probably enormous. I've no idea how you'd put an exact figure on the total losses or the number of people who are jobless because of this economic inefficiency, let alone how much better off we'd be on average, but it's probably fairly impressive.
The pirates are almost certainly better for the economy than you are - because as far as I can tell, they're the main force counteracting this effect.
Of course it matters. Stealing is taking something away, not just copying something. You can argue that it's immoral, but if you say it's "stealing", you're just wrong by definition.
All you do is start a pointless argument about the definition of "stealing". Just talk about what is actually happening, don't try to bend the language to make it seem more evil.
Dilbert RSS feed