Pirates Finding It Harder To Crack New PC Games (engadget.com)

schnell writes: Engadget reports that a few recent top-tier video game releases using updated DRM technology have gone uncracked for more than a month and left DRM hackers stymied thus far. The games FIFA 16 and Just Cause 3, using an updated DRM system called Denuvo, have thus far frustrated experienced Chinese crackers' best efforts far longer than the usual 1-2 weeks it takes for most games to be cracked. Although the article is light on technical details about what makes the new DRM system harder to defeat, it does note that "Based on the current pace of encryption tech, 'in two years time I'm afraid there will be no free games to play in the world,' said one forlorn pirate."

Comments

If it can be played, it can be copied

[Ivan Stepaniuk]

They are only gaining some critical time at launch

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[greenfruitsalad]

the article isn't talking about videos or music

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[110010001000]

This isn't true anymore. Try to copy a Xbox One or PS4 game. Won't work.

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[110010001000]

Really? So you can pirate PS4 games now? How? Was it even possible to pirate PS3 games?

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[RogueyWon]

It's not currently possible to play pirated PS4 games.

The PS4's security does appear to have been at least partially compromised, however. A recent video appears to show Linux running on a PS4, along with a version of Pokemon. Note that we don't yet have independent verification of this, so there's a chance (albeit probably a slim one given the track record of the group in question) that this is a hoax.

It's still a long way from being able to play pirated games, although it is certainly a first step on that road. More to the point, however, it is even further from being able to make full use of pirated games, given the extent to which the full functionality of many PS4 games is tied to online features. History (e.g. the situation with the Xbox 360) suggests that console manufacturers are pretty good, over time, at detecting consoles running pirated software when they connect to online services and locking them out of said services. A PS4 which can't access the PSN is not much of a PS4.

As for pirated games on the PS3, it was possible. Sort of. There was a specific firmware version which, if you didn't update past it, could be tricked into running pirated games (via a USB dongle, if I recall). However, you should note that firmware updates on the PS3 were mandatory both to use online services and to play games released after that firmware version was issued. So in other words, if you had an old PS3 you kept at the right firmware version and never tried to use it online, you could play pirated games which did not require a more recent firmware version. So it was of limited use for most people and was only ever really a proof of concept.

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? So you can pirate PS4 games now? How? Was it even possible to pirate PS3 games?

Yes, the PS3 has a pirate scene. The exploit is based on some old ~3.5 firmware; which is why you'll see people asking where to obtain it. They are basically looking to run pirated games.

There isn't anything for the PS4 yet. The current exploit was patched 16 months ago, and only works on the old 1.76 OS. At the moment they're still trying to run privileged code. So at best, you're talking basic home-brew on what is very much an underpowered PC. There's a further weakening of the performance recently discovered: Sony's harddrive IO uses the USB bus (eeooow), which is why replacing the system drive with an SSD fails to get a worthwhile performance boost.

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[jbmartin6]

Perhaps that is their goal. If the bulk of the sales revenue comes from the first month or so after launch, it might be worth their while to implement DRM even if they know it will get cracked eventually.

Re: If it can be played, it can be copied

[DThorne]

I'm not so sure. A dev I know has been using a certain copy pro package for a few years now and since starting it, has yet to have a crack show up in the wild. And yes, it's a well known app that is a classic target for cracking, and no, the copy pro isn't remotely obnoxious or privacy-shattering since the dev is a privacy aficionado. I think the tech is getting there. Add to this that many games offer real benefits to network connectivity and you might see AAA cracks go away. Then there's the awesome Witcher devs, who simply flip the bird to copy pro altogether, I still see cracks(aka copies, in this case) show up for witcher 3 but the game has done fabulously, simply because it's awesome, everyone loves them and wants to see them be successful for making something so wonderful and for steadfastly refusing to be dicks about DLC. That's the best copy pro of all.

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[argStyopa]

I actually thought that MMOs were the industry's evolved response to the perceived "threat" of piracy: a game which FUNDAMENTALLY had to interact with a centrally located, company owned server. How much more locked-down could you get?

Well, it shows how much I know; the resourcefulness and frankly brilliance of the emulator programmers that black-box reverse-engineer server systems so people can run private servers of WoW, etc leave me pretty impressed. Some are a little wobbly, sure, but by and large there are private servers running WoW that you couldn't distinguish from running the commercial version (the only distinction being player numbers and a network back end that is far more bandwidth constrained, which itself leads me to respect the original games' challenges preventing that from being more apparent in the original...)

Re: If it can be played, it can be copied

[Anonymous Coward]

"copy pro" as in "copy professional" or "copy protection"? Please don't truncate.

Re: If it can be played, it can be copied

[TheReaperD]

^^^ THIS! ^^^

I have troubles understanding why most game/software devs can't get this through their thick skulls. These days a lot of piracy is do to the crap DRM that publishers put on titles. I've known several people that download and run pirate version of software even though they have a legal copy because they actually fucking work! I've even done it myself with multiple version of MS Office, even though I had legal copies as it didn't start giving me activation errors every 26 or so days. (Enterprise licences.) The other pirates that don't have a legal copy aren't going to miraculously go to the store a pay retail price for something because the DRM is tough. They'll either wait for the crack, sneak through a licensing hole or go without. They aren't going to buy your fucking product, period.

Software devs, get this through your thick skulls!

Re: If it can be played, it can be copied

[bfpierce]

I haven't had this problem in over 10 years with DRM on games or enterprise software.

Did you just step out of a time machine or something?

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[110010001000]

So basically they came up with a scheme that can't be realistically cracked. The point is that the statement "if it can be played, it can be copied" isn't true any more. Similar story with the Apple TV's. The ATV3 was never cracked. I doubt the ATV4 will either.

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[Faust6]

That's true, though it seems increasingly less relevant with the rise in availability of these titles for the PC, which are reliably cracked for the most part. Titles missing are typically console exclusives few in numbers.

Re: If it can be played, it can be copied

[TheCarp]

One. I have one game, and its more than 10 years old. JFK Reloaded.

I paid for it new, and even tried my hand at the competition. Within a few years, it dissapeared from the internet and now, the cracked version is the only way to play it; since they used an online token based DRM to handle full versions vs demo.

I paid for the full, I want to play the damned full.

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a pirated market of PS4 game in Brazil, it requires BIOS dumping and a bunch of other thing but it seems to works: http://wololo.net/2015/04/24/ps4-jailbreak-service-rumors-incoming-from-brazil/

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the article is having a dig at Chinese people. The inclusion of "Chinese crackers" was wholly gratuitous, as crackers are an international team, and the best game crackers are still from the US.

Fuck you, racist submitter.

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[p0p0]

There is at least one modchip that works on almost any version PS3. They don't recommend updating because of security fixes, but they aren't very far behind.

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[DrXym]

They are only gaining some critical time at launch

And that's the point. They probably don't give so much of a damn if a game is cracked 3--6 months down the line because the vast majority of their sales are during the launch period. The more time it takes to crack a game the less sales they're going to lose as a result.

Personally I'm surprised that piracy is even a problem any more. It should be pretty straightforward to pad a game out with anti-piracy measures which take a frustrating amount of time to find and disable.

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[eth1]

They are only gaining some critical time at launch

Copied, yes, but potentially not played, if they hold it hostage to connectivity requirements back to the mother ship.

Re: If it can be played, it can be copied

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the team mentioned is from china and considered one of the best, particularly against the drm company used for dragon age and just cause.

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[lgw]

No, it remains true that "if it can be played, it can be cracked", as unencrypted bits are needed at the moment of playing, and are right there in the CPU.

Back in the day, you could buy hardware CPU emulators (ICEs) that would emit a transcript as you ran a program. If you had debugging symbols, they'd give you working source code for everything you executed. Far beyond the price the typical hacker team could pay, but we used them professionally. These days you can virtualize far cheaper. "Trusted computing" is the possible countermeasure, but encrypting a video stream isn't the same as encrypting the executing object code.

It's possible the "trusted" computing architecture could be extended in years to come, especially for consoles, but until art assets and graphics/CUDA code move encrypted from disk to video card memory, it won't help (and even then, it has to be decrypted somewhere on the video card).

Since I can't see PC games restricted to FIPS 140-2 Level 3 vid cards, it will remain true that "if it can be played, it can be copied". At what price though?

Re: If it can be played, it can be copied

[pr0fessor]

If you purchase the latest console, a few accessories, titles, the TV you are going to connect it to, add to that a broadband Internet connection you could easily spend over two grand. Games are not the only entertainment product that is considered an everyday thing but is priced like a luxury item. I know people who always have the latest games, cell phones, see all the new movies, and go to concerts but they generally live on credit. Eventually that runs out and they are broke and in debt with no where to borrow anymore.

This is why games, movies, and music are pirated, they have created an artificial need for luxury priced entertainment products and it's bound to fail.

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[jones_supa]

The PS4's security does appear to have been at least partially compromised, however. A recent video appears to show Linux running on a PS4, along with a version of Pokemon. Note that we don't yet have independent verification of this, so there's a chance (albeit probably a slim one given the track record of the group in question) that this is a hoax.

Yes, they got in through a FreeBSD security vulnerability. The Pokemon game is running in a Gameboy Advance emulator. No, it's not a hoax. Team Fail0verflow has a GitHub repository with all the patches needed for Linux and its GPU drivers. You can follow their Twitter account for updates.

Re: If it can be played, it can be copied

[KGIII]

I know this might come as a shock to you but, yes. I go outside and I even "play" outside. This morning, I was out puttering and getting in the way of the lawn crew. I went for a jog on the beach and the missus and I walked all the way to the State Park and back yesterday. If I were back home in Maine, I might have been out on a snowmobile, ATV, plow truck, or even hopping on a sled and going down the mountain like a five year old.

I not only go outside and play but I'm officially 58 now and I *still* go outside and play. I used to play some video games but then I bought a game called Fallout Tactics and that was the last straw for me. I've not been a gamer since. :( Well, not a serious gamer. I have picked up Fallout and Fallout 2 and replayed them a few times since then. I've not played either of them to completion in a lot of years.

At any rate - I get brave enough to face the Sun once in a while. It's bright, it hurts my eyes, and there are people out there but it's not too bad once you get used to it.

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[KGIII]

I seem to recall reading that they have managed to overcome that obstacle in a number of different ways. Sometimes they edit the binary files and strip out the call, sometimes they emulate a server and feed it back the correct information (gleaned from packet sniffing, presumably), and sometimes they go whole hog and create their own servers that authenticate. I believe some of the Windows versions can be pirated and connected to a temporary authentication server that stays up and running for a while until someone (Microsoft, probably) manages to get it taken down. I'd imagine there's a way to do it locally though I'm not sure if such has actually been done yet.

However, I'm neither a gamer nor do I have to pirate software so I don't really know - I just pay attention to the comments here and on other sites. I imagine it wouldn't take too long to use Google and at least find a forum of willing helpers. It seems some folks do it just because they like to and they enjoy the challenge. I don't really have much in the way of paid software except for my VMware. I'm pretty fond of it so I buy the new versions as they come out. It's one of the things that keeps me from going to GhostBSD on the bare metal.

Re: If it can be played, it can be copied

[dissy]

Then there's the awesome Witcher devs, who simply flip the bird to copy pro altogether, I still see cracks(aka copies, in this case) show up for witcher 3 but the game has done fabulously, simply because it's awesome, everyone loves them and wants to see them be successful for making something so wonderful and for steadfastly refusing to be dicks about DLC. That's the best copy pro of all.

Funny that is the first example I see provided.

Just Cause 3 has been in my Steam wishlist since it was announced at E3. The "This game requires 3rd party DRM registration" message that showed twice in a row kept me from pre-ordering, but remained in my wishlist on the off chance it was some mistake or typo.

Unsure of the exact release date but I first saw it Dec 4th (A Friday) and it wasn't out the weekend before, so was sometime that week.
The multiple 3rd party signup warning was no mistake or typo. And I still refuse to purchase it.
Each week I am in steam catching up on the prior five days of wishlist additions and new releases, I keep debating on removing it.
I generally drop over $100 per week at steam, and in some cases with many good games coming out (this past November and December being good examples) occasionally 2-3 times that. Those two months combined I spent just under $800.

Witcher 3 I dropped the $60 for right after release (again on the weekend - such is the free time schedule these days)
I've since also purchased the full expansion pack (aka season pass) for another $25, so a total of $85 spent so far.

This also urged me to purchase Witcher 1 to complete the series (I already had Witcher 2 from a few years ago, also bought it on release at $60)
I think #1 cost $15 or $20 for the enhanced edition by the time I bought it.

That's a total of $160-165 in a 6ish year period going just to CD Project Red - exactly because they spend their time and developer man hours catering to me, the paying gamer.

Just Cause / Squenix however spends their time and developer hours catering to non-paying "pirates", literally at the expense of people like me, the paying gamer.
They went out of their way to cripple my experience to instead make exactly zero dollars more than they would have before, except they also lost at least my $60 if not very likely more.

All due to DRM that accuses me of being a thieving criminal because I paid them money, and prevents me from playing the very game I paid money for.
I never hear that complaint from pirates, who so far have always gotten to play the game they paid nothing for, even if not on release day as being the only trade off.

Fuck that, and fuck DRM.

These companies need to learn that it is NOT the pirates that will pay their bills and paychecks, it is only us paying customers that can do that, and only if you don't smack us in the face with legal threats and insults while giving us a shittier product than you give to the non-paying customers.

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[WizMorgan]

Your take on the intent of the article might be a little clearer if you RTFA, or if you RTFA that article points to. Then maybe you might be able to make an informed statement about the actual contents of said articles. Not holding my breath here, though.

Re: If it can be played, it can be copied

[Anonymous Coward]

The software devs get it. The publishers are the greedy ones.

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[trewornan]

Besides which "cracker" is a racist name for caucasians not asians.

Re: If it can be played, it can be copied

[aliquis]

Luxury prices?

Visit Humble bundle or use sales and accept that games are the price of a coffee/soda - pizza.

If you think you may enjoy the game as much as either then what's the problem with buying it?

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[johncandale]

They are only gaining some critical time at launch

Games today are like movies, all frontloaded.. If they don't do well the first weekend, they bomb. Games suck, movies suck, their business model sucks. It's all baed on what is marketable, not what is good.

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[DrXym]

A game's executable is only a fraction of the size of a download. Adding some code which only triggers on the first Sunday of the month, or when you choose to do the optional side quest on the 7th level, or when your inventory contains 20 mushrooms is not going to have any significant impact on the download size. It might require the company extra time to QA the game, but the impact on legit customers, even those who download it legally is negligible. For pirates, it becomes an enormous pain in the ass and prestige hit when the cracked title turns out to be broken for a litany of random hard to reproduce reasons.

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[Darinbob]

Except that DRM hurts legal owners of the games as well. DRM is not copy protection, it also includes restrictions on where, when, and how you can play the game. Since most DRM games are cracked very quickly the point was never to stop piracy but to stop reselling the game for a cheaper price (which is allowed legally in most countries).

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[tepples]

Get a job

Child labor laws.

work for a few hours and buy it then.

Region coding. It took well over a decade for Mother to come to North America as Earthbound Beginnings and for Mother 2: Earthbound to come out in Europe. In the meantime, plenty of people pirated it. The world outside Japan still doesn't have Mother 3.

Also console exclusivity. It takes well over "a few hours" to buy a console just for one game, and people who wanted to play Earthbound Beginnings but did not already own a Wii U just pirated it.

Re: If it can be played, it can be copied

[TheReaperD]

The problem with loosing the activations with MS Office were with Office 2007 and 2010 when you used a licensing server. We had some issues with Windows 7, but were mostly able to cheat our way around that problem. The first problem was that the activation server wouldn't work with VLANs that took Microsoft years to fix, then that was still a problem with laptops that were rarely connected to the LAN as VPN and wi-fi connections were more restricted than hardwire connections. Microsoft's "answer" to this problem was to use their single activation licensces but, since we routinely re-imaged PCs, we burned through those like toilet paper.

So, for TL;DR, this problem is a current issue as these software versions are still in use.

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[IamTheRealMike]

It is their goal and the bulk of all sales come immediately after launch. People who love piracy for some reason (presumably because they pirate games themselves) invariably treat any crack as a "win" and celebrate it, although all that does is push more developers to be console only. But they also ignore what should be obvious - nobody gives a shit if you break the DRM on an Amiga game from decades ago. It's obvious that the DRM on that game is worthless due to the age of the game. And yes, there aren't many companies living fat and easy off games they made 5 or even 10 years ago, with the possible exception of subscription MMORPGs like WoW.

The stats I've seen from when games and BluRay makers discuss piracy is that if the DRM lasts more than about a month, that's a win for them, as they can measure the difference it makes in sales. If the game is cracked after that then the lost sales are minimal. If the DRM lasts six months that counts as total victory for them.

Re: If it can be played, it can be copied

[TheReaperD]

Fair enough. I'll grant that it's the middlemen and the PHBs that won't get a clue.

Re: If it can be played, it can be copied

[IamTheRealMike]

They'll either wait for the crack, sneak through a licensing hole or go without. They aren't going to buy your fucking product, period.

Ah yes. The classic "everyone in the entire industry are morons who enjoy burning money" explanation.

Guess what? The people who buy DRM products, and they virtually all do, are not idiot savants who have the intellectual capability to make an AAA video game but somehow can't do basic maths when it comes to their own sales figures. I've seen one sales graph from an indie game where the sales dropped the day a crack became available, and the moment the exploit was patched, sales went back up again (it was a multiplayer game iirc).

You have to be really naive to think that everyone who pirates software is some sort of hard-core PIRACY OR DEATH ideologue. No, it turns out when the data is sifted that - surprise - 99% of them are lazy cheapskates who could easily afford the game, they'd just rather not - but if their only option is buying it then a significant number will go ahead and do so. That's sort of why companies have consistently developed DRM since, well, since the dawn of video gaming itself.

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[AmiMoJo]

On the other hand, intrusive and dangerous copy protection/DRM is stopping me buying some games at all. I think GTA 4 was the biggest one I wanted to play but in the end skipped due to the DRM. I'm hoping GTA 5 is better, when the price hits £20 I'll find out. Steam has a good return policy, if the game fails to install without administrator/UAC permissions.

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[AmiMoJo]

Actually the best people are mostly from Europe. Back in the 80s and 90s Europe had a lot more crackers, probably due to computers being more popular compared to the dominance of consoles in the US. That's also why a lot of the DRM systems are developed there too.

But yeah, Slashdot needs to stop the clickbait summaries, with their unsubtle racism and political biases.

Re: If it can be played, it can be copied

[TheReaperD]

Microsoft's licensing server software is dodgy as hell, but you're legally required to use it unless you use the one-shot activation licenses that you go through like toilet paper if you routinely reimage your workstations like we do. The problem is that Microsoft never wants to take into account that you might want a firewall between your servers and your workstations. Except for Windows built-in firewall, they expect a two-way open communication and stuff wants to break at semi-regular intervals when you don't. I don't know the exact reasons as that was our network team's problem.

Re: If it can be played, it can be copied

[pr0fessor]

I buy used games, CDs, and usually wait for movies to come out on DVD, but when I was in high school I never complained about the price of these things. A movie used to cost $2.50 to get in and granted 1.25 soda was over priced I'd spend about $10 to take my girlfriend to a movie and I made about $100 a week. Things have changed since then, a teen working a minimum wage job probably isn't making 40 hours a week anymore and although the pay has doubled everything else has gone up much more. Today the teen with a minimum wage job will need to spend more than %20 of their earning to take their girl to a movie.

Re:If it can be played, it can be copied

[cwsumner]

... If the game is cracked after that then the lost sales are minimal. If the DRM lasts six months that counts as total victory for them.

And some game makers, such as Egosoft, have sometimes released patches a year later that removed all DRM. And that also resulted in a boost in sales!

But those games last a bit longer than simple fps types.

"encryption tech"

[Anonymous Coward]

Security by obscurity, you mean. The client necessarily exposes the algorithm and any decryption keys, and it's always a matter of undetectably analysing them. This isn't cryptanalysis.

Re:"encryption tech"

[Anonymous Coward]

Think constantly morphing executable in memory with thousands of triggers built into the game to crash or cause issues when a certain check fails.

Even if they delay the piracy of a title for a month, they've won. They gain additional revenue from sales if nothing else.

Re:"encryption tech"

[Anonymous Coward]

They believe to gain additional revenue from sales

FTFY

Re: "encryption tech"

[guruevi]

Besides that it's also about will and market share. Who really wants to spend time on cracking the yearly iteration of a sportsball game or shooter? You can get almost any EA game with the same game experience at the same quality on a PS3 with its 2010-2014 iterations. The PS4 and its games are way less popular than its predecessors and thus it will take longer to crack them because there are less interested parties.

Re:"encryption tech"

[petermgreen]

The problem with that sort of thing is that it can get your game a reputation for being a buggy peice of shit either because the pirates don't disclose that they are running a pirate version or because your triggers accidently get set off by some legitimate users.

Oh, please

[Anonymous Coward]

Once the new scheme is figured out, it will be off to the races again.

It will never last...

[SJ]

... because then the studios won't have a boogie man to blame when their crappy game doesn't sell.

Studio Exec: Oh noes, our awesome game isn't selling because people are pirating it instead.
Random Underling: Sir, no one has cracked our DRM yet....
Studio Exec: Oh shit, hurry up and leak a crack before the shareholders notice our 80 million dollar game sucks

Re:It will never last...

[phishybongwaters]

Well in this case your statement doesn't hold water. Just Cause 3 was anticipated and is selling quite well considering the crowded field of games out there right now. But I feel what you are saying and for a lot of games it's 100% true. This is why almost every game coming out has some form of online connection to something, severely limiting the game while offline if it even plays at all. Honestly, if the game companies would hire some of the crackers and modders to help make products that aren't broken at launch and highly overpriced, piracy likely wouldn't be as big of an issue here in NA.

Re:It will never last...

[SJ]

If it's a good game, then it will sell well. If Just Cause is selling, then I'm assuming it's a good game.

I was referring more to the games that should never have gotten past initial design, or ones that are so completely unplayable due to buggy software.

Re:It will never last...

[110010001000]

Shorts are like long pants. You put them on in a similar fashion.

Re:It will never last...

[TechnoCore]

Yeah it doesn't work like that... Most studios are not "BIG EVIL GAME CORP", but rather small, and work their ass off to make a game. If the game is crappy and sucks, it won't get pirated in any major way anyway. If the game is o.k it will be in risk of being pirated a fair bit, meaning the studio will take a hit in revenue. That revenue could have been used to improve the game, or to make another better game. Only games with free-to-play revenue models (read micro-transactions) will benefit from not getting paid up front. Guess you like them.

Re:It will never last...

[tepples]

How do shorts work?

They keep your private parts in place and warm under your shirt.

Now to others interested in your original question: You can short a stock by borrowing shares from someone else and selling them. To set up a short position, you'll likely need to upgrade your brokerage account to a tier allowing short selling, and you'll need to keep a lot of margin in that account that can be liquidated in case the stock pays dividends or its price rises. The process is described Wikipedia and Personal Finance Stack Exchange.

Short sales of real estate are unrelated, being more similar to foreclosure of an underwater property.

Re:It will never last...

[Cederic]

Crikey, where do you get your games news? There's never been more choice in gaming.

Re:It will never last...

[malditaenvidia]

Honestly, if the game companies would hire some of the crackers and modders to help make products that aren't broken at launch and highly overpriced, piracy likely wouldn't be as big of an issue here in NA.

Funny as it is, GOG.com routinely uses scene cracks to get the old games they sell to run on modern systems.

Re:It will never last...

[ChrisMaple]

The only non-shooter and non-sports games out there are Just Cause and Fallout.

Leisure Suit Larry.

Re:It will never last...

[bobbied]

I wouldnt want to be owning any EA shares right now... How do shorts work?

Shorts are easy, you sell something you don't actually own and promise to repay (cover your position) later by buying what you previously sold. If the price goes up before you cover a short position, you loose money, but if it goes down you make a profit. I used to have stock options though my company and I often would sell short above the option price to lock in the gains, then cover the short by exercising the option and sending the stock to my broker. I used this to take the risk out of the process because it would take a couple of weeks to get the shares once I paid the option price. I think they call that "shorting the box" where you sell a security short in your trading account but you actually hold it someplace else. However, selling short is not that hard to understand. Just remember your risk is literally unlimited (the stock price can always go up) and your profit is limited to your short price (the Stock price can only fall to zero and no more).

Might I suggest "options" as a better alternative. In options trading, you can leverage a bit more and if you are careful you can limit your risk. Options are a bit more complex to understand and effectively use, but basically you are buying or selling Calls and Puts which are contracts which entitle their owner to either buy or sell a security at a specified price before a specified date. You make money in options in two ways, selling contracts and exercising contracts you own which are "in the money". I'll leave it to you to figure out the strategy of options trading, but I caution you to carefully think though all the "what if" scenarios before you start selling contracts because your risks can be greater than your investment when selling contracts. Buying contracts is not so risky, in that you can only loose your initial investment if the contract expires before it's "in the money". If you are careful though, you can make more money on the same amount of stock price movement in options with about the same level of risk as trading the stock directly, but I cannot stress enough that you need to know what you are doing or you will get slaughtered by the program trading houses...

Not mentioned in summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Metal Gear Solid V.

Took forever to get a crack out, and when a crack did come out by 3DM it took a few more days for a version 2 to be playable. Only when you set your timezone to a chinese one were you able to play. Sometimes on a specific set of hardware you needed a new crack made. You had to skip certain chapters of the game because they crashed.

And after 5 days or so? Music started playing. Shifty crack, even in the pirate world, never fully working scene release even to this day.

As a pirate, I can only salute the guys who made Denuvo.

OMG The Horror

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG, The Horror of expecting to be paid for putting blood, sweat, and tears into creating a product the market wants.

Re:OMG The Horror

[Tukz]

"OMG, The Horror of expecting to be able to run a game I've paid for, but the DRM mess up so I can't and have to rely on third party cracks to get it to run"

Re:OMG The Horror

[um... Lucas]

That's the exact attitude that Slashdotters took during the Napster era in trying to protect the products that musicians created.

Re:OMG The Horror

[bickerdyke]

OMG, The Horror of expecting to be paid for putting blood, sweat, and tears into creating a product the market wants.

And it's not a figure of speech if you're talking about EA games....

Re:OMG The Horror

[thegarbz]

If they created a product the market wants there would be no more DRM.

Spoken as someone who routinely cracked games I purchased which:
a) constantly asked for something at start-up.
b) needed an internet connection for no reason.
c) needed a CD for no reason.
d) was tied to one PC because some studio thinks their EULA trumps ownership rights.
e) after a coffee I'm sure I can come up with more.

Re:OMG The Horror

[gfxguy]

I used to crack my legally purchased games to avoid DRM, and I won't argue there aren't other fringe cases for cracking DRM, but let's not be dishonest to suggest that that's why these people are cracking DRM. The vast majority of it is for people to play games without paying for them, and that' s just not cool.

Nowadays the DRM I've encountered is much less annoying. Having to look up some code on a code wheel in order to play a game was bad enough - I had one game that would just stop in the middle of game play and give you a page, paragraph, sentence and word number to find in the manual. It didn't do it just once, just randomly during game play. I was ridiculous - and it negatively affected game play. But that's just not true anymore, that's not how modern DRM works.

I do have a problem with companies that don't consider long term rights, and I applaud all the programmers who've been able to keep old Nintendo, SEGA, and PS games alive through emulators and hacking, so I'm not suggesting these people should stop trying to crack DRM. But let's face it - the vast majority here are cracking games because people don't want to pay to play a game. This isn't stealing bread to feed your family, it's a f#@king game, and if one can afford the game console or the computer to play it, then one should pay for one's games.

Re:OMG The Horror

[ChoGGi]

Personal anecdote here, JC3 works for for playing a few hours at a time.
There was a bug in release that would make it bog down after a very extended period of play, it does seem to be fixed with the latest patch

Though I play it in offline mode (with a cheat for those retarded "challenges")
I won't say it isn't repetitive gameplay, but it's nice for relaxing (it's pretty much JC2 with a facelift)

Re:OMG The Horror

[gfxguy]

The vast majority that play the game without paying wouldn't have paid if there was no crack, so what's the harm?

You're simply not entitled to someone else's IP whether it "hurts" them or not. It's a morally bankrupt justification.

I used to gank stuff all the time when I was a poor high school or college student. Now that I have an income I pay for everything. There's no reason that the poor should be kept from cultural media.

Because it's bullshit that someone can buy a computer capable of playing these games (or spend their money on a console) and then plead "poor." If you can't afford the games, you can't afford the console. And please don't be disingenuous stating people are playing these games on $200 laptops they got for school.

The fact is that if someone has the disposable income to buy a gaming computer or console, then they have enough to pay for some games - maybe not as many as they can illegally copy. So instead of buying one or two, they illegally copy 10. So I do buy into the notion that, given a particular game, a person would otherwise not have paid for it anyway, but I don't buy that they'd never buy anything if they couldn't copy anything.

The bottom line is nobody is entitled to someone else's IP for free (unless that someone else wants it to be free).

Re:Good!

[dskoll]

Don't know why parent was modded down so much. He/she should be modded up.

I don't agree with DRM, but the proper response to DRM'd games (if you don't believe in DRM) is simply not to buy them. It's not to steal them.

Many people don't and won't buy DRM software

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, won't touch the stuff ... greedy, selfish, irresponsible and abusive corporate suits are just thieves producing a lot of over-priced and under-supported crap. These corporations couldn't compete in a free market, so they have to corrupt and control their way to domination. Thank goodness for open source and what's left of democracy ...

Re:Many people don't and won't buy DRM software

[RDW]

... greedy, selfish, irresponsible and abusive corporate suits are just thieves producing a lot of over-priced and under-supported crap. These corporations couldn't compete in a free market, so they have to corrupt and control their way to domination.

Perfect partners for FIFA, then.

Re:Many people don't and won't buy DRM software

[tepples]

Without digital restrictions management, what's to keep people from casually infringing copyright in a video game? Should video game publishers instead follow the RIAA tactic of speculatively invoicing alleged infringers?

Or do you mean many people abstain from the video game market altogether over DRM?

Re:Many people don't and won't buy DRM software

[CastrTroy]

The only reason that DRM is so rampant is because society has proven that they can't be trusted. The law can do nothing to stop stuff from being privately copied, and therefore the publishers of the software have to take their own measure to stop pirates. Similarly to anti-theft tags on clothing, DRM is there because there actually are a lot of people who will just pirate software given the chance.

I agree that certain types of DRM that have been employed in the past (like the Sony Rootkit) go way beyond just protecting the content into the realm of damaging user property. But that doesn't mean that publishers shouldn't be able to use some means to protect their software.

Re:Many people don't and won't buy DRM software

[Cederic]

It's possible to acquire a large number of games that are not encumbered with DRM - between free games, re-releases on sites like gog.com, small developers that can't afford DRM technologies, sensible developers that understand economics and realise DRM doesn't help their overall revenue and ethical developers that choose not to fuck over their customers, there is a tremendous amount of choice available.

Re:Good!

[ArmoredDragon]

Probably because he sounds like a "tough on crime" advocate. Putting marijuana users in jail was bad enough. If you put every pirate in jail, then half of the US would be in jail right now. I'm not sure how you'd fund that.

Re:Good!

[TheCarp]

Why? What does he add to the discussion? What could what a person deserves or doesn't deserve possibly matter? The world isn't fair and the world doesn't owe you anything, including people getting what you think they deserve.

Tons of free games out there.

[Anonymous Coward]

'in two years time I'm afraid there will be no free games to play in the world,'

There are tons of free games.
Many games studios open up there engines to be used by indy game makers and you can find make great games to play tho not cutting edge on the graphics.
Tremulous - tremulous.net
Renegade X - renegade-x.com
Stream has a ton of free to play games just check out there website (Team Fortress 2, Dota 2, Warframe)

Play real free games if you don't want to buy not cracked games.

Re:Tons of free games out there.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but there are so many -cheap- games out there as well. And regular Steam sales--I spent about $20 and got 9 games during the winter sale. Stuff that was highly acclaimed when it came out, too.

You just have to be willing to pass on new releases and get them when they go on sale. By that point you can generally get the GOTY edition with all DLC as well.

I look forward to playing Fallout 4 for $15.

Re:Tons of free games out there.

[malditaenvidia]

Reminder that Dwarf Fortress is free and it's the only game you'll ever need.

Re:Good!

[RavenLrD20k]

I think the problem the mods are having with GP isn't so much about the sentiment, but the semantics. For right or wrong, there are people that don't see this form of piracy as stealing as it's generally thought that a software pirate wouldn't have been a lost sale since the software pirate wouldn't have bought the game to begin with. The people modding him down are probably the same ones that held the mantra "Copyright Infringement is NOT Theft" and shouted it across the lands of /. until their fingers fell off. Now they no longer have the fingers to type out yet another argument, so they just mouse click the down-mod on those who refused to listen to them.

Work-alike

[tepples]

You can program your own work-alike of the game playable on PC. In some cases, that's still copying.

Re:Good!

[Zaowulf]

Privately, of course.

Re:Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

What could what a person deserves or doesn't deserve possibly matter?

It matters because piracy is all-too-often treated on tech forums as a victimless crime and pirates are celebrated as "sticking it to the man," when in reality pirates inflict a real harm on the developers who make these games (and all their employees and investors).

It's the Jesse James phenomenon. Jesse James became a folk hero of sorts to people thanks to dime-store novels and ridiculous folk songs. But IRL, he was just a murderous thug who killed and stole because he was a greedy shit who didn't want to have to actually work for a living.

Definition of stealing

[Roodvlees]

Requires the stolen object to be missing.
Pirating is copyright infringement. Why does the government even protect copyright?
Many people would rather live in a world without copyright.
In that sense I think anarchy would be great. Those who want copyright can live in a city where those monopolies are protected.

Re:Definition of stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

Requires the stolen object to be missing.

Pirating is copyright infringement. Why does the government even protect copyright?

Many people would rather live in a world without copyright.

In that sense I think anarchy would be great. Those who want copyright can live in a city where those monopolies are protected.

Consider living in China then, where copyright isn't respected much.

Or join the open-source movement. I haven't pirated a game since I was a child. Haven't bought any games either. Still play lots of games:
* free games on web pages
* free android games
* open-source games. Some of these are clones of older commercial games, but way better. Once a game gets cloned, it keeps getting improved beyond the original. See openttd for a good example.

Re:Definition of stealing

[tepples]

Say a video game developer wants to "join the open-source movement" as you suggested. Traditional means of funding development of free software don't apply quite as well to video games. Distributing the software as free software and selling related services works only for an MMO, and not all games are MMO. Making software available for others to improve in hopes that they'll offer further improvements upstream works for libraries but not as much for software intended for non-technical home users.

open-source games. Some of these are clones of older commercial games, but way better. Once a game gets cloned, it keeps getting improved beyond the original.

Unless the game's developer uses copyright to shut down clones.

Re:Definition of stealing

[umghhh]

The unfortunate thing is that anarchy although in theory a nice system requires that most people hold to undeclared and unwritten rules and that there are no masses of huns that take or destroy everything at will. In fact the anarchist society built on free will and cooperation seems to attract bullies and said huns which then enslave those nice educated free people. It is enough that the huns destroy things on occasion for the free people to want to give up their freedoms and to have a king that organize knights to kick ass of the barbarians. Once a king and police and the rules are in place you have no choice as to accept the rules or face consequences. t is all the same with property rights etc - there is no god's given right to own any piece of land in private hand. It is our agreement to do so because we found out it works better than any other systen.

I love anarchy in principle. As all ideal systems however it does not work. So now we are stuck with an asshole neighbour who as drunk and uneducated as he is, has the same rights as you do, stuck with a corrupt political class that if its members have any sense they keep big parts of population fed and under mind control.

So here we are - with our copy right shit that is in hands of crooks and extended in perpetuity. As long as they do not rob you because you listened to one pirated song, played one pirated game and saw one pirated pr0n so long all is well.

Re:Definition of stealing

[KGIII]

What an interesting signature you have - and all the more amusing when you so casually talk about taking away the rights of others.

As I've mentioned, I'm a huge fan of Snowden and I don't want to project but I suspect he'd not be impressed with someone who so casually takes away someone else's enumerated rights for their own gain. Maybe those who want their 4th Amendment Rights should go live in their own city too or is it just the rights you want? You want the right to privacy and to be secure in your papers (presumably - seeing as you too believe Snowden is a hero) but also want to give up all your rights (which is what anarchy is, by the way).

You're just a whole fruity bowl of logical inconsistencies, entitlement, and hypocrisy. I don't think I've ever seen quite that same combination or at that great a scale before. I'm truly flabbergasted as to how you manage to rationalize all those inconsistencies. I can only presume you've not actually given any thought to it.

Do you know what it means when a person doesn't have a right to the fruits of their labor? Slavery... We outlawed that but, well, maybe that's your one logical consistency in that you don't believe that people should have rights. I'm not sure how you managed to fit Snowden into your signature. I'm kind of wondering if you have any original thoughts of your own or if you just parrot what looks popular without bothering to see how those ideas all mesh together as one.

Yes, when you infringe on copyright you're taking someone's rights away. It's right there in the name. I dare say that taking away someone's liberty is a crime worse than theft. I'm pretty sure you'll still figure out a way to rationalize it but you may want to reach a point in life where you're at least honest with yourself. I, for instance, pirate documentaries and music because I'm a horrible person and an asshole. I take away their rights for my own ease of access - it's not even about the money, I've got money. I pay for both Netflix and Hulu but never use 'em. I just pirate that shit or find someone who has and I stream it. Why? I'm a self-centered, lazy, prick.

At least man up and admit it to yourself. In the mean time, you do Snowden a disservice by associating his name with you. That's really cool of you.

Re:"No free games in the world"?

[L. J. Beauregard]

"Leftist BS"? Hey waitafugginminute, I though open source software was "leftist BS"!

Re:Good!

[David_Hart]

Probably because he sounds like a "tough on crime" advocate. Putting marijuana users in jail was bad enough. If you put every pirate in jail, then half of the US would be in jail right now. I'm not sure how you'd fund that.

The problem is how you define "pirate".

Personally, I believe that everyone should pay for the content that is consumed be it a game, video, music, digital book, etc. Where I disagree over DRM is a combination of fair use and public rights. The DRM laws, as they stand today, are in direct conflict with the fair use doctrine and they prevent creations from becoming part of the public domain when abandoned. Under the current law, anyone bypassing DRM for these otherwise legal uses would still be branded a "pirate".

So, while I agree with the stance that crime should not pay, I can't, in good conscience, agree with the "tough on crime" stance given the current bad laws.

Cracked games were a thing back then

[bickerdyke]

Cracked games were a thing back at the schoolyard, when we could barely afford the blank floppies to copy the 12 discs of "Another world" or so, Fiddling with cracks and P2P to download stuff isn't simply worth the time anymore when after a few weeks, you can get the game at a decent discount at Steam.

Re:Good!

[TheCarp]

Except that most pirates are nothing like Jessie James. In fact, most evidence i have seen, both from studies and from my own experience is that the same teen and 20something pirating games 20 years ago is paying top dollar today now that he has a job and less time to play games.

In fact, the only people I have seen continueing to pirate much past that point have been both poor and physicaly disabled. Leaving them no extra money but plenty of time to consume volumes and volumes of media.

So basically.... as far as I can tell very little money is lost to piracy because anyone who can afford the game and wants to play it buys it. The only people who pirate it are the ones who wouldn't have otherwise bought it, generally because they couldn't afford to anyway.

So I can't imagine this issue actually matters at all, since the net result of it being different is almost 0.

Fifa x

[LordWabbit2]

Look I don't play sports games much (or more like at all) but a friend does and was complaining about how they are all the FIFA's are the bloody same. Slightly better graphics and an updated player list is all that the new release really brings to the (ahem) field. Just Cause 3 I bought shortly after it came out and it's good fun, someone I know who does not have any spare cash to hand (at least not for a game I suppose) was also complaining about there being no pirate version out as yet, just the usual douchebag fake torrent with a password.

Re:Fifa x

[gl4ss]

jc3 seems to be out though.

engadget seems shitty again.

more publishers will just waste more money on this shitty drm.

da inquisition was shit btw.

Advertising much?

[Kid CUDA]

That article sounds suspiciously like an advertisement for Denuvo. Low content, high keywords, no research...

Re:"No free games in the world"?

[PopeRatzo]

No, stealing stuff is leftist, unless you're stealing land out West to graze your cattle for free. Then it's divinely inspired patriotism.

Re:So, creative people don't deserve to get paid?

[Halo1]

I raise you a blog post by the head of an actual game development company: http://www.lar.net/2012/01/02/...

Re:stolen, not free

[tepples]

If companies want to glorify pirates, then let's all pirate Sid Meier's Pirates, Pirates of the Caribbean, Jake and the Never Land Pirates, and One Piece.

Re:Good!

[ComputerGeek01]

Consider for a moment that those of use who are doing the cracking have already bought the game. It's not about piracy or theft for some of us, it's a puzzle. Since becoming a Dad I haven't had anywhere near enough time to be familiar with this scene, but from what I remember it can be extremely engrossing. Piracy is a byproduct of cracking, not the otherway around.

why bother

[PopeRatzo]

Just wait for the sales and you can get that $60 game for $14 (or less). Unless you play on a console, in which case you don't care because your parents are paying for the games anyway.

Steam, GOG and others have made gaming reasonable enough for anyone.

Re:why bother

[bfpierce]

Can't tell if uneducated or just a trolling neckbeard.

The consoles have pretty much adopted the steam model of sales and direct downloads at this point.

Re:why bother

[JustNiz]

Sorry but thats clueless.
After also buying the season pass, Fallout 4 cost over $100 and it isn't coming down anytime soon.
Sure I could wait a year or more and save maybe save $20 but I'm not that much of a tightwad.
Its going to be probably 5 years if ever, before Fallout4 hits your $14 number. Skyrim is still 19.99 on steam. and it was released in 2011.

Re:why bother

[Type44Q]

Just wait for the sales and you can get that $60 game for $14 (or less).

Not to mention the hardware requirements: while they tend to remain the same (additional horsepower demands from software patches notwithstanding), the costs for said hardware (epecially vidcards) should drop significantly over the [18 to 24 months?] that it takes for a high-profile title to drop over 75% in price...

Re:why bother

[omglolbah]

A lot of power-hungry titles tend to get great boosts in performance after a few weeks to a few months after release as the GPU-drivers get optimized for the game.

Just look at the release notes of the latest nVidia or AMD drivers and you'll see a bunch of "Game X sees ##% increased performance in single GPU configurations" etc.

Re:why bother

[CronoCloud]

Unless you play on a console, in which case you don't care because your parents are paying for the games anyway.

Smile when you say that pardner. :-) My first console was an Atari 2600. When I first owned it there were new sealed games in stores for it. I have a PS4. Now think a moment and realize how old I probably am to have owned a 2600 when you could still buy new games in stores for it and that I'm old enough that I could vote when Solaris for the 2600 came out.

Steam, GOG and others have made gaming reasonable enough for anyone.

Also PSN. There's plenty of free/cheap content on PSN.

Re:why bother

[Nidi62]

Just wait for the sales and you can get that $60 game for $14 (or less).

That's me. Fallout 4, AC:Unity(at least until it was released and everyone saw how bad it was), Far Cry 4, etc. I want to play them all. Can I afford the $50-60 price tag for each? Sure. But why spend that much when I can wait a year (and in the meantime get anywhere from 2-4 games for $20 total to play during that year) then pay $15-20 for the games, with all DLC and preorder goodies (which if you bought at release you could only get 1 preorder goody depending on where you got it) a year later when it goes on sale on Steam? I don't care about multiplayer on any of the new games. If I want multiplayer I just fire up Insurgency or RO2(although I admit I will definitely buy RO2:RS2 day 1, if not preorder). I have been tempted to buy the new Star Wars battlefront game though, but only because I grew up playing Stars Wars games like Tie Fighter and Dark Forces and Played a lot of Battlefield 2 and 2142 in college, so it does have that nostalgia component.

Re:why bother

[PopeRatzo]

My first console was an Atari 2600. When I first owned it there were new sealed games in stores for it. I have a PS4. Now think a moment and realize how old I probably am to have owned a 2600 when you could still buy new games in stores for it and that I'm old enough that I could vote when Solaris for the 2600 came out.

You should be ashamed of still having your parents pay for your games at that age. :-)

Re:why bother

[CronoCloud]

Ha ha, left myself wide open for that one, but there are console gamers with greying hair who buy their own games. Console gamers aren't all 13 year olds playing "Medal of the Battlefied that Duty Calls: Black Honor Flashpoint Master Shooty Sergeant Edition to the Max" or "Seasonal Sports Game"

In fact I don't have ANY CoD or Battlefied games, and zero NFL, NBA, MLB, NCAA, or FIFA games.

Re:why bother

[PopeRatzo]

Console gamers aren't all 13 year olds playing "Medal of the Battlefied that Duty Calls: Black Honor Flashpoint Master Shooty Sergeant Edition to the Max" or "Seasonal Sports Game"

I'm gonna be honest with you: I'd totally own a PS4 but my wife says no, I've spent enough building my sweet gaming PC and anyway, I'm not allowed to sit in the living room playing games in front of the big TV in my underwear because I make funny faces and noises when I play.

I really have a hard time arguing with that logic, so until I can build a gaming wing onto the house, there's no PS4 in my future. And by the way, I would totally play Medal of the Battlefield that Duty Calls: Black Honor Flashpoint Master Shooty Sergeant Edition to the Max. That game sounds awesome.

Re:why bother

[CronoCloud]

I'd totally own a PS4 but my wife says no, I've spent enough building my sweet gaming PC and anyway, I'm not allowed to sit in the living room playing games in front of the big TV in my underwear because I make funny faces and noises when I play.

Heh. Though if you ever do have the spare cash for the PS4, you could hook the thing up to your PC's monitor (if it has HDMI). That actually works fairly well if you play the MMO's available on console, or ran Linux on your PS2/PS3, or both.

How do I know if a game is worth playing?

[davidwr]

I can go to a brick-and-mortar store and play the demo (maybe).

I can play a friend's copy (maybe).

I can borrow a copy from a public library (maybe).

I can play an official free demo (maybe).

I those options are gone, there are 2 real options left:

I can "steal" a copy and buy it if I like it.

I can do without.

There is one more option but it's not gonna happen for anything more than a few bucks: I can buy it and risk getting screwed.

Re:How do I know if a game is worth playing?

[lactose99]

That's excellent, I had no idea Steam offered that, thanks for the info!

Re:Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or perhaps it is modded down because it is misinformative flamebait?
Copyright infringement still isn't theft.

The continuous misuse of that analogy alone makes me want to pirate stuff, but since I don't buy it anyway it will unfortunately not harm anyone.

When works are forced on me

[tepples]

I believe that everyone should pay for the content that is consumed be it a game, video, music, digital book, etc.

Then who should pay when works are forced on me, such as a roommate blaring the TV or a store playing popular music? And who should pay when William Shakespeare's plays are performed?

and they prevent creations from becoming part of the public domain when abandoned

Copyright term extension does a fine job of that by itself, thank you very much.

Re:When works are forced on me

[David_Hart]

I believe that everyone should pay for the content that is consumed be it a game, video, music, digital book, etc.

Then who should pay when works are forced on me, such as a roommate blaring the TV or a store playing popular music? And who should pay when William Shakespeare's plays are performed?

I find it hard to believe that you realistically think that I was talking about paying for content within your listening range or even paying for public domain content, especially given my comments about fair use. My comment, for those that need it spelled out, was concerning paying for the copy of commercial copyright content (per the article on computer games) that you have on your player, computer, etc. that you use, play, etc.

Pus, I also firmly believe that if you pay for content you should have the right to shift it to any format.

and they prevent creations from becoming part of the public domain when abandoned

Copyright term extension does a fine job of that by itself, thank you very much.

Yes, but copyright term is a separate issue from DRM, even though it also needs to be fixed. In theory, copyright terms will have an end date at some point. The added problem with DRM is that even when that date is arrived at, these works will still not end up in the public domain.

Re:When works are forced on me

[Calydor]

a roommate blaring the TV

The roommate.

a store playing popular music

The store.

when William Shakespeare's plays are performed?

The theater goers.

Re:When works are forced on me

[tepples]

The roommate.

That covers who pays. Thank you for your answer. I now have a follow-up question: Now who compensates me for having been tainted with "access" to the copyrighted works that the roommate or store plays?

The theater goers.

That covers who pays. Thank you for your answer. I now have a follow-up question: To whom shall royalties be paid for a performance of a play by Shakespeare?

Re:When works are forced on me

[Calydor]

The roommate.

That covers who pays. Thank you for your answer. I now have a follow-up question: Now who compensates me for having been tainted with "access" to the copyrighted works that the roommate or store plays?

The same people who compensate you for seeing a piece of art you don't like, or who puts people in jail with opinions you disapprove of. Ie., no one compensates you.

The theater goers.

That covers who pays. Thank you for your answer. I now have a follow-up question: To whom shall royalties be paid for a performance of a play by Shakespeare?

I would have to look it up to be entirely sure, but I suspect Shakespeare's plays are in the public domain by now.

Re:When works are forced on me

[tepples]

no one compensates you.

Then what steps should someone who has been tainted with knowledge of those works take to avoid inadvertently infringing copyright in those works when creating his own works?

I suspect Shakespeare's plays are in the public domain by now.

And you are correct under current law. But hypothetically, if copyright were restored to them, as it was restored to works whose author had died between 50 and 69 years ago when the EU adopted a standard life plus 70 year term in 1993, who would get the royalties?

don't count abandonware / peopel who don't rebuy

[Joe_Dragon]

don't count abandonware / people who don't re buy software (in our eye you are a Thieve for not re buying the game that comes with dosbox) when you use your old cdrom and dosbox.

Solve the free rider problem

[sjbe]

Pirating is copyright infringement. Why does the government even protect copyright?

The reason we have copyright (and patents) is because of the free rider problem. If you have a way to deal with that problem more effectively then maybe we can do away with copyright. But so far nobody has come up with a better solution. The free rider problem has huge and measurable economic costs. It results in Pareto Inefficiency which I recommend you study.

Many people would rather live in a world without copyright.

Many people want all kinds of crazy things. Doesn't make it a good idea.

In that sense I think anarchy would be great.

So go live someplace like Somalia where anarchy is basically the de-facto system of government. I think you'll find it isn't so pleasant as you imagine.

Re:Solve the free rider problem

[mattventura]

From your own link "Free riding is considered an economic problem when it leads to the non-production or under-production of a public good". So unless there's actual evidence that the losses due to underproduction outweight the gains from some people being able to pirate it who wouldn't have otherwise bought it, then the net effect of piracy is positive.

Can someone enlighten me on

[Kartu]

What on earth has "harder to crack" have to do with "encryption tech"?
I'd understand "encryption" talk in the context of PS4/Xbone, but we are talking about PC games here.

Re:Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations operate under the assumption that the right course is whatever is the most profitable to them, even when its ethically and morally questionable and/or outright illegal. I simply apply the same reasoning to my personal life. I have no respect for the rule of law so clearly perverted into a tool of oppression instead of protection.

It's not about "Freedom", its about the complete lack thereof. We are what the world makes us and the world makes us apathetic.

crappy games

[phorm]

It could also be that these aren't exactly A-list games (regardless of how much they might want to hype up "Just Case 3"), so there are less people working on a crack.

The real statistics...

[wardrich86]

The important statistics should be:

How much more money they made VS other games that have been cracked right away?

How much worse is this DRM for my computer when compared to other DRM methods?

Game abundance & indies make pirating obsolete

[Qbertino]

Piracy getting harder? That's not a problem.
Videogame abundance and the mass-move towards indie-development makes pirating obsolete anyway.

I get all my Games for 10 Euros or less out of the bargain bin. The occasional totally DRM-free 15 Euro download for Shadowrun Hong Kong (Kickstarter Project / Indie Game) adds to that. I'm OK giving 15 Euros for a very neat DRM-free game to an indie studio. It's still dirt-cheap.

Currently I'm playing Deus Ex:Human Revolution for XBox 360. Cost me 9.99 for an original mint copy of the directory cut special edition. Awesome game, pricepoint is a steal.

No one needs piracy or the triple-a publishers in a time where Gamedevs are going indie left, right and center (Hideo Kojima anyone?) and games drop hard off the 60 dollar benchmark as soon as they're published on non-current gen platforms or mobile or the novelty effect has worn off.

Street Performer Protocol

[tepples]

Doesn't the Street Performer Protocol, as implemented by services such as Kickstarter, solve free rider? No pledges, no game.

Re:Good!

[bfpierce]

Jail time is a little strong.

If you walk into wal-mart and steal a game you're not going to end up in jail. It's called petty larceny. Huh, interesting that, we actually have a law for this, that can be applied.

Rather than allowing these companies to sue you for millions of dollars they don't deserve.

But can everything actually be bought?

[tepples]

Go fuck yourself and actually buy the stuff you use.

Tell me a site where U.S. residents can buy lawfully made DVD copies of the film Song of the South, the film Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night, and the TV series Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea, and I'll do my best to stop pirating.

Re:But can everything actually be bought?

[Coren22]

Pinocchio: Sorry, this Seller doesn’t deliver to the United States Learn more

The other two, are you sure they are legal sources?

Re:But can everything actually be bought?

[KGIII]

Wait, what? You don't actually believe you're entitled to lawfully purchase anything you want - do you? They're not exactly required to make everything available to you. I know that might sound odd but you're not actually entitled to view those movies. Sheesh...

Also, why are you wearing a dress and gloves while raking your lawn? It does look comfy but the gloves really stand out.

At any rate, we all know copyright's absurdly long but one doesn't necessarily have a right to access anything they want - no matter how easy it would be or how silly it is to not make it available. You're perfectly free to not provide lawful products to Zanzibar if you want. It's silly not to but it is your right. It might be annoying, frustrating, and straight up stupid - but we're not entitled to everything we want.

I just accept that I'm a horrible person because I have both time and means to get most anything I want but I still pirate music and documentaries. I'm okay with that. On the scale of horrors that I could commit, well, that's pretty trivial. I pay for Netflix and Hulu and never actually use 'em, so there's that. Actually, over NYE weekend, I gave my Netflix name and password to someone else - a someone that actually visits this site and comments fairly frequently. I'm not only a horrible person but I enable others to be as bad as I am. (I'm pretty sure that Netflix is only supposed to be shared with members of the household. I have never actually read Hulu's policy.)

At any rate, being able to lawfully buy Song of the South and Pinocchio and Emperor of the Night and the others is immaterial to the argument. If it's unavailable to lawfully purchase that doesn't make pirating it any more justified - it just means you're now not only taking away the rights of the rights holder in two ways instead of one.

Not really news

[Anonymous Coward]

Every now and then a new DRM tech gets launched that is hard for the crackers to break.

Securom was one I remember when that hit it took more than a couple of weeks to be broken properly.

Sure this one currently is tricky but its not actually DRM, I took this from their website:

"Denuvo Anti-Tamper technology prevents the debugging, reverse engineering and changing of executable files to strengthen the security of games. It is not a DRM solution, but rather, Denuvo Anti-tamper protects DRM solutions"

So basically it is resisting debugging / reverse engineering. But as any Virus researcher will tell you this is something that is constantly happening and there are way's around it. I doubt that this system will remain uncrackable. And while this means piracy it also means that virus's and trojans can be debugged as well. If an unbreakable tech existed it will be used by the good and the bad guys and then we would all suffer.

Console games

[swb]

The local Microsoft store generously donated an XBox 360 to our school's charity raffle, probably 6 months after the XBox One was released.

We didn't own any gaming system at all, and my son immediately griped that there would be "no games because its old". The day after we got the console, we went to a local pawn shop and bought 5 games for $30, all of which played just fine. I think we might be up to about 15 games now, and I'd doubt that even with the 2 games my son has bought new, we're out more than $150 on games.

I think with consoles, this is the way to do it -- there are so many used games for the previous model that if you stay just slightly behind whatever's current, you have an endless supply of cheap games.

Maybe this is a problem for someone who's really into gaming, wants the latest and greatest, but honestly, for an 11 year old boy (and a 49 year old man...) I have a hard time understanding what you're missing on a brand new console for the extra money.

Re:Console games

[cfalcon]

Well, YOU are missing a few things.

First, some of games require online drama. When older, these games are in some cases entirely unplayable, and in other cases are missing whole game modes. Obviously you're smart enough to dodge those games, but the point is, you HAVE to dodge those games. If you want online multiplayer (which an 11 year old and a 49 year old probably don't), you're going to need to go much more modern, because it's based in large part on the actions of other people. I'll bet you that in 6 years, your son will either not care about games or care enough to want to play a modern thing.

Second, even absent that entirely, if your son makes friends with people who game, or simply wants to talk about current games with those people (IRL I'm assuming) he won't really be able to. He may or may not care, but even if he doesn't, recognize that many would. When I was a kid, no one would talk about the Atari 2600- it was too old, even though it had a huge library of games, many of which were fun.

Third, new games really do offer new experiences. Maybe not as many as they used to, but to someone who plays a lot of games, they'll want the latest and greatest even absent social reasons or multiplayer reasons.

Fourth and finally- note that many games companies are looking for ways to "obsolete" their older games. Microsoft almost shipped the Xbone in a way that they could remotely cancel all the games at a later time (the system would need to check in, etc- picture if Atari had had that requirement!). They failed, but the presence of used games, and the fact that game companies are trying constantly to target them (for instance, many games ship with "downloadable content included", which, when resold, is not accessible to the next guy in line). This isn't going to be a problem for you or your son, but it's likely going to be an issue for someone in 10 years.

The big thing you are correct about, however, is this: The number of games is large and increasing, and the older games are still very fun. They will probably always be fun. Pacman and Mario I are still fun. Someone in a hundred years won't be having the conversation in the same way we are now, and somewhere between now and then gaming will have to shift. I can't really predict how, simply that it must in some way.

Re:Console games

[swb]

I get that the old console strategy has its limitations, especially if you're older, want to get into online content, etc. You gotta pay to play, at least if you want to play at the current release.

What's kind of funny is that he has a fairly modern PC (well, maybe not gaming wise, it's a top of the line NUC) and if given the choice for screen time, about half the time he will play stupid flash games from some web site they have access to at school.

It's kind of like the old story about Christmas day, where the kid has more fun playing with empty boxes than the new toys they came in.

Re:Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an exception. I purchase games but commonly "pirate" games. Single-player ones, anyway. That's because I'm sick of silly restrictions like having to get the CD/DVD off the shelf and put it in the drive to validate that my purchase is legit, or wait for some kind of on-line validation process that is irrelevant for a single-player game, so I often get the "no-CD" cracks and install those mods. I buy the game legitimately, then break the DRM (and the law, technically) for the sake of convenience. I don't buy decent hardware and install software on an SSD only to be told I have to jump through DRM hoops before I can use it.

All this "unbreakable" DRM probably means is that I will never buy those games or play them.

Wrong

[BitZtream]

Not sure about FIFA, I can imagine that at this point no one cares about the same game with the name changed from 15 to 16, however I can assure you that JC3 has been cracked even if its not yet public.

If you think it hasn't been cracked, you just haven't looked.

Re:Wrong

[JustNiz]

I admit I haven't tried downloading a supposedly cracked game for years, but even back in the day it was at best maybe a 1-in-10 success between downloading something that claimed to be a "l33t full 100%haxored game" to actually getting what it claimed to be. Most of the time you'd get something that obviously wouldnt even run and/or was just basically a bundle of virusses and trojans that would take a dump all over your PC. Even though I haven't personally tried, I can't imagine these days that success rate is anything but a whole lot worse, and even trying is more dangerous.
Basically its just not worth it. Honestly I'd rather just buy whatever game I want off steam, at least that way you also get a reasonable level of peace of mind about what it really is that you're actually installing on your PC.

Traitor tracing

[tepples]

I wonder why video game developers haven't resorted to traitor tracing by distributed copies of the program with the subroutines and variables in different orders for each copy. In early 2010, I did a little experiment on a homebrew NES game I made called Concentration Room. I added a preprocessor that would randomize the order of variable declarations between lines and subroutine definitions within a file. Even with an executable on the order of 16 KiB, I was able to theoretically generate more unique, identically functioning copies than the number of atoms in the universe. Squared.

Re:Traitor tracing

[ChrisMaple]

Writable disks are more expensive than stamped disks, and aren't as durable. Stamped disks are difficult or impossible to individualize (AFAIK). I suppose it would be possible to laser-write something individual on each stamped disk, but even that would add cost that somebody would have to justify to the accountants. Resold disks complicate matters, and disks sold in countries that don't respect copyright or otherwise flout the law don't provide the manufacturer any protection.

Still, it seems like a good idea.

Re:Traitor tracing

[tepples]

Writable disks are more expensive than stamped disks

I addressed that in my reply to Anonymous Coward.

I suppose it would be possible to laser-write something individual on each stamped disk

Every GameCube disc and every Wii disc includes information laser-written into the Burst Cutting Area, as well as some extra pinholes in the lead-in. These are used to establish a decryption key.

Resold disks complicate matters

They have been complicating matters since the release of Half-Life 2, the first major PC game to require online activation.

Re:Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

Self-righteous dumbasses will always claim that having their derp modded down proves that they're right.

Re:So, creative people don't deserve to get paid?

[serviscope_minor]

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/g...

Re:Good!

[TheReaperD]

Copyright infringement is NOT theft. Read the legal definition of theft:

"n. the generic term for all crimes in which a person intentionally and fraudulently takes personal property of another without permission or consent and with the intent to convert it to the taker's use (including potential sale)."

To be the legal definition of theft, you must remove the item from the person's possession. That is why legally, it is called copyright infringement instead of "petty theft" or "grand theft" which would be the charges if it met that legal definition. So, for the hard of understanding, if I come and take your physical copy of your software without your permission, depriving you of its use, then it is theft; if I make a copy of your software, with or without your permission, but, do not deprive you of its use, then it is copyright infringement. Many companies have tried to make a case that copyright infringement is theft to the courts and they have failed to convince even one court that it is theft. Which is why they cannot use the term theft when talking about pirates because that is libel or slander (depending on the medium) as they would be accusing them of a crime they did not commit.

As far as the lost sales, the RIAA and MPAA's own studies showed that piracy does not typically hurt profits. Often the most pirated titles are also the highest grossing titles and the most prolific pirates are also their highest paying customers. There are exceptions such as bad movies, music and software. Once people realize how horrible something is, they're not going to pay money for it. Thanks to the internet, it is much harder to pedal garbage and make a profit. Between the internet and Germany changing their tax laws, it broke Ewe Bowl's business model. He couldn't make a profit on crap movies anymore so he went into the lawsuit business (extortion) instead.

Re:Good!

[Faust6]

Unless it's cleverly designed, relatively non-intrusive DRM consumers don't recognize as such (i.e. Steam). But yeah I agree. Game piracy has turned into such a hassle I imagine that fewer are engaging. Mind you, I see the value in hobbyist hacking/modding consoles and emulation, particularly for older stuff.

Re:So, creative people don't deserve to get paid?

[davids-world.com]

thanks, a lot of truth in that... (Doesn't apply to video games though, does it..)

Windows

[fluffernutter]

I was going to say there will always be free Solitaire, but I guess Microsoft took that away too didn't they.

Re:Windows

[zlives]

no its their new UI

Re:Good!

[TheCarp]

lol I think 2005 was about when I started getting most of my games through steam. However, I still go to stores and see box software and games, so I assume someone buys it and....I dunno, do they still do that?

I thought the rage now was to sell the DVD with only partial content so an internet connection is required anyway. The DVD is essentially little more than a partial installer cache to speed up the install.

Re:Good!

[RavenLrD20k]

Adding my bias in where I tried to remove it in my original post. I completely agree with your stance... unfortunately we can yell this up and down the tree until we're blue in the face and people like the the GP I was talking about before STILL won't understand this fundamental flaw in their argument; whether it be through ignorance or shilling is in material to the fact that they will continually spout it off.

In the case above, I decided to forego the use of my mod-points and instead use my nubs to rationalize why the GP was getting down-modded to the Parent. Unfortunately, in my attempt to remove evidence of my bias, I seem to have made it appear that I was entirely arguing a point that was against my own point of view. Though now I almost want for my mod-points back because he's now an AC that's overrated at +1 for not contributing anything to the discussion at hand and the sentiment is most certainly not interesting as the modifier suggests. Almost.

Re:Good!

[epyT-R]

Nah, if you wanted to be the ultimate tyrant, you'd make The People fund their own oppression.

I said "U.S." and "lawfully made"

[tepples]

lawfully made DVD copies

http://classicmoviereel.com/so...
[...]
http://8store.8thman.com/belle...

There are lots of bootlegs floating around. What evidence do you have that that DVD is lawfully made?

site where U.S. residents can buy

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pinocc...

"Sorry, this Seller doesn’t deliver to the United States"
"Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)"

Re:Good!

[epyT-R]

I think both are appropriate responses. Not buying the software only sends the message that the product is undesirable in some way. Breaking the drm repeatedly demonstrates why.

Re:Good!

[gfxguy]

While I agree with some of what you say, believing that playing a game is important enough to violate copyright law shows a worse lack of moral compass than someone who thinks game publishers ought to be compensated for their product. How much a company or person makes is irrelevant... if someone creates a popular product, they deserve the reward.

That said, I'm no fan of DRM, and I don't see how advances in DRM are a good thing. People can still play games they legally purchased for old game systems that haven't been produced in decades. Why should I forfeit my right to play games I legally purchased because the manufacturer no longer supports the platform? People are able to play their ps and ps2 games years after the fact... if the companies "win," in a few years, if your system breaks, you won't be able to play your legally purchased games ever again. Used systems will only last so long.

However, the fact that you may not be hurting someone is not justification for violating someone else's rights in order to play games.

Re:Good!

[epyT-R]

or maybe people like you should get real jobs instead of expecting the state to back your artificial scarcity.

Re:Good!

[epyT-R]

Nowadays, the publishers give them incentive. Treat paying customers like crap with abusive drm schemes and they'll go elsewhere.

Denuvo punishes paying customers

[timrod]

Ever since game devs started using Denuvo, I've refused to buy anything that uses it on the grounds that it unfairly punishes the paying end-user. The devteam behind Lords of the Fallen, which was one of the first games to use Denuvo, admitted that they were sacrificing large amounts of performance (as much as 10 to 15 percent framerate) in order to use it. There were also a lot of concerns from SSD users, because Denuvo uses up a ton of read/write operations due to constantly encrypting and decrypting files, putting far more stress on an SSD than a non-Denuvo game does.

If game developers are going to sacrifice performance and the potential for mod support to use the most draconian DRM they can find, I'm not going to be buying it.

Re:Denuvo punishes paying customers

[gfxguy]

Good to know. The casual game buying public (me, at least in the last ten years) is completely unaware.

I'm fully against DRM - as fully against it as I am against illegally copying.

Re:Good!

[dskoll]

I certainly don't think all people who violate copyright should be jailed; that would be crazy. The penalty should be proportional to the loss they cause. So an end-user who casually pirates a $50 game should probably be fined around $100. The fine needs to be a bit higher than the price of the game to act as a deterrent, but not orders of magnitude higher.

But large-scale copyright violators who can be shown to have caused massive losses, in the $250K and up range? Yeah, they should be subject to criminal sanctions.

Re:Good!

[Coren22]

No one has been sued for millions of dollars for downloading a copy. Now, making the cracks/copies available to millions of people, sure that could get you a huge fine.

Re:Good!

[gfxguy]

Personal property includes IP, and why the courts use the terms "theft of IP" all the time. They don't turn around and look at the lawyers and say "nuh uh, you can't steal IP."

That said, the equating of copyright infringement to piracy is the poster child example for hyperbole.

I also think that DRM is anti-consumer, your RIAA and MPAA examples are the best examples. They spend millions of dollars on DRM - licenses to use DRM, DVD and BluRay players have to license and build the technology to decrypt, and who ultimately pays for all of that? The consumer... so the consumer legally buys some media (that includes a price for the DRM built in) and a player (that includes a price for decryption) and can't make a legal copy (device shift), or they move to a different country and buy a new player and their library will no longer play. All because they want to prevent people who wouldn't have paid otherwise anyway from making a copy. And the consumer is forced to pay for the technology restricting their rights. Then the millions these companies pay lawyers and all the millions of tax payer dollars they use going to court... it's all incredibly counterproductive.

That said, there's simply no excuse for copyright infringement in order to play a game without paying for it. None.

Re:Good!

[present_arms]

You should put down the spliff before you post, even as anonymous

Day one patch

[tepples]

And if you only traitor-trace online copies, then the pirates will get an offline copy from a physical shop and just distribute that instead.

Then include only the installer and non-executable portions on the disc, and push the actual game out as a day one patch.

Re:wrong.

[qpqp]

Most of these 400'000 would not have bought your software in any case. Get. That. Into. Your. Head!

Re:stolen, not free

[Coren22]

Companies also do some funny things to pirates:

http://www.cracked.com/article...

A while back, I was reading about a game that if you pirate it, you turn into a pirate in the game, but I didn't see the game in a Google search.

Re:Good!

[ChrisMaple]

Not every wrong is stealing. Trespass isn't stealing. Murder isn't stealing. Forgery isn't stealing. Battery isn't stealing.

Copyright infringement is wrong, but it is not stealing, and your electric charges argument is both technically wrong and silly. If you are unable to distinguish copyright infringement from stealing, that's your loss, and you shouldn't be polluting the intellectual atmosphere with your smoggy hypothesis.

Re:Good!

[KGIII]

To be fair, he probably doesn't actually realize that many of the "non-cunt" people he meets are stoned as fuck but still very much functional and normal. They're not even smelly hippies who are heavily into a drug culture scene.

Re:Good!

[KGIII]

Why? What does he add to the discussion?

Judging by the number of comments, quite a bit.

Re:wrong.

[tnk1]

If only 100,000 people *could* pay for it, then you lost nothing.

Certainly, if there are those who pirate games in the group of people with disposable income who could reasonably buy it, that could be seen as loss of revenue. You can't argue realistically, however, that a game I would have never bought if it cost money is somehow a loss to a business when I get it for free. It isn't. If it wasn't free, it wouldn't have been bought any more than I would have to automatically buy a car if I could not hitch rides. I'd have to simply do without either.

And I know a lot of people who pirated games when they were younger who are happy to buy the sequels of those games now that they are older and have more income.

I even know someone who pirated Minecraft, realized that he'd been playing it long enough that it was definitely worth buying, and proceeded to purchase it, even after he'd spent something like 200 hours of play on it.

Piracy can be a grey area. You can certainly lose revenue in the sense you are talking about if the revenue loss is in the actual group you could realistically expect to be paid by. However, by increasing the population playing the game, you enlarge, and even create, a new market for follow ons, which can be worth a great deal to you.

Consider that Microsoft is happy to let people pirate their stuff up to the point where it may impact their core market segment who has the money. They do not seriously prevent you from pirating Windows or Office (with the usual caveats about security and non-support) because every person using those tools increases their market penetration and makes them familiar with the MS way of doing things.

MS then runs software anti-piracy initiatives to pick off businesses who have hit a certain critical mass of users and revenue so that they now the capability to pay. This is brilliant because if you do use unlicensed MS products to build a business, you're basically creating new revenue for MS if you become successful. All they need to do is keep an eye on whose head pops up above the unwashed masses of pirate software users, and either convince them to join the fold, or lop their heads off. And if you really do rely on MS products for your successful business, you probably can and want to pay for full service.

It is different for games, of course, because businesses are unlikely to buy entertainment in the amounts they would business software or operating systems. Nevertheless, the building of a network through piracy is real, while at the same time, they don't have to declare that they are devaluing their game as a loss leader. They get to keep their prices high, while they still get the effect of discounting their games. With the amount of money that many of these companies are making on their AAA games, it is difficult to see how piracy has really affected them. They have to cry about it because they have to show that they are defending their copyrights, but especially in the case where their DRM is sufficient to delay cracks until after the launch, it is win-win for any publisher of a good game.

And really, no one actually wants to steal a game. Cracked games can be buggy, unstable, and filled with malware. The problem is that some people don't want to allocate 60-80 dollars upfront on a game that they are going to end up not playing because it is buggy or they dislike it. I think piracy might well go the way of the dodos if they manage to bring prices down and/or ensure reasonable return policies like some distributors have.

Re:wrong.

[dissy]

Theft does not require me to take something you already have. Theft can require me to take something you are entitled to but you haven't received it yet.

I am entitled to a million dollars of your money.
Since that check hasn't arrived or cleared, you are a thief. I hope you go to jail for it :P

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Good!

[Bert64]

Also people in poor countries who couldn't otherwise afford to buy the media in question...
If not for piracy, Linux would likely have a dominant marketshare in countries like China because users can't or wouldn't pay for any software.

Re:stolen, not free

[ChrisMaple]

Piracy provides consumers with a mechanism to acquire something that the author prices outside of what it is worth,

Although "worth" can be objective (Nails are worth a lot because they hold my house together.), many uses of worth are subjective. Your claim leads to the demand "I find the author's work to be worthless, therefor he must allow me to copy it for no charge."

Just as a person owns the product of his physical labor and has the legally protected right to keep or trade that product, so he has the ownership right to the product of his mind and (within certain limits) that right is legally protected. The BASIS of intellectual property is the individual, not societal utility. You don't have a right to what I created, except on my terms, and I don't have a right to what is yours.

Re:wrong.

[Bert64]

If those 400,000 people could not pirate it, the vast majority of them would not have used it at all - they would have used something else that they could obtain for free.
Not only that, but how many of the 100,000 users might have heard of the software through word of mouth or network effects from the 400,000?

You weren't supposed to get anything, and might even have got considerably less had none of those users pirated.

Re:Good!

[blazer1024]

Last time I looked at the PC games section at a store (Target), it was... pretty much only the Sims (3 and 4)... maybe Starcraft II and some random bargain bin junk.

Re:stolen, not free

[lactose99]

As a content creator, if there's no right for me to profit off of my work, I would give second thoughts of spending the time and effort to create it in the first place. I have to eat, I need a place to live. If I am to spend any significant amount of time creating something (and plenty of games have significant development cycles), I need money simply to live in order to do that. Therefore my creation has value, insofar as my cost of living while creating it. I need to recoup that cost somehow.

Yes, many people create content for fun and give it away for free, and that's certainly their right. Hell FOSS thrives under this model and I'm incredibly grateful for it (and hence give back in my own contributions). Most developers, even FOSS ones that aren't in school any longer, usually work for dev shops that produces some content of value that is sold or licensed. They make their living in that fashion so they can give other works away for free.

As a content creator, it should be up to me what the value of my content contributions are, and if I feel they warrant a price I should be able to set that and have the free market determine if others think it valuable.

Note I'm speaking in the general sense of piracy and copyright, not in the edge cases mentioned in various threads here like DRM preventing you playing an old game that doesn't work on a modern OS. Those are different scenarios entirely.

Re:Good!

[malditaenvidia]

Not to mention console games used to be actually expensive to produce back in the day (cartridges, specifically), nowadays it's either cheap plastic discs or just digital downloads. They still somehow justify charging full price for something that costs nothing to distribute.

Re:Game pirating that common?

[captjc]

In Developed countries, no. Companies like to bitch and moan that it is the profitable markets like we are doing most of the pirating, but that is just plain false. Claiming that it is the US and Europe is just ways to get stockholder and government sympathy. The piracy rates of developed countries is the lowest in the world [1].

The problem areas are the rest of the world where this stuff is openly sold on the streets and people just don't care. So when people bring up things like Steam Sales and cheap games they are right, stuff is too cheap for the majority of us to pirate, but elsewhere in the world, it is not.

[1] http://www.nationmaster.com/co... info/stats/Crime/Software-piracy-rate

Re:Good!

[Ralph Wiggam]

Why would you want to play a game created by evil people?

Only Chinese Hackers?

[BrendaEM]

Story has an provocative propaganda payload.

Good

[Ryan McLaughlin]

If you want to play a game, pay for it.

The Lost Cause.

[westlake]

Copyright infringement is NOT theft. Read the legal definition of theft.

The geek has been fighting this war of words for as long as long as I can remember. He never wins.

18 U.S. Code Chapter 113 - STOLEN PROPERTY

2319. Criminal infringement of a copyright
2319A. Unauthorized fixation of and trafficking in sound recordings and music videos of live musical performances
2319B. Unauthorized recording of Motion pictures in a Motion picture exhibition facility

U.S. Code > Title 18 > Part I > Chapter 113 - STOLEN PROPERTY

In popular usage, the notion that the pirating of copyrighted works was theft was current while the Black Flag still flew over the Caribbean.

The geek thinks he is being clever when he names his site The Pirate Bay [and settles in somewhere 10,000 distant miles distant from the U.S.,] but all he has really accomplished is to bind file sharing and theft even more strongly in the public mind.

Re:Good!

[AlanBDee]

Completely agree. For the "real" pirates I know cracking the game is the game.

No free games?! BS.

[intnsred]

'in two years time I'm afraid there will be no free games to play in the world,'

That's absurd. First, there will always be DRM-free games. People like me will not buy them. I don't care if I have to wait 5 years before I play a game, selling my soul, privacy, control of my computer, and all the other hassles of DRM is not worth it. Eventually software companies will realize that they're losing out on people like me and our money, and eventually they'll come around.

Secondly, aside from DRM-free, closed-source, non-free commercial software, there are numerous free software games out there of varying quality.

Re:No free games?! BS.

[ADRA]

"That's absurd. First, there will always be DRM-free games. People like me will not buy them. I don't care if I have to wait 5 years before I play a game, selling my soul, privacy, control of my computer, and all the other hassles of DRM is not worth it. Eventually software companies will realize that they're losing out on people like me and our money, and eventually they'll come around."

I don't care specifically about the issue anymore as I haven't pirated a game in well over a decade, but you're absolutely deluded if publishers will ever care about anti-DRM absolutists. If anything, the group has shrunk proportionately with the PC gaming audience as a whole. If anything, the PC world has moved largely to online linked services even more than consoles (possibly to stem cracks). Many developers may want to sell DRM free PC games, but instead sell it to consoles where the cracks are far less likely and revenues far higher. There are certainly many DRM-free dev's out there, but they generally aren't respected or honoured for their choices. I will give a nod to http://rimworldgame.com/ as its a pretty fun builder game. If you're looking for something DRM free, you may want to consider it.

Online games end forever

[tepples]

You just have to be willing to pass on new releases

But not so long that the publisher turns off its matchmaking servers. This goes double for things like FIFA, where the vast majority of players have moved to this year's edition with this year's rosters.

Many games are still region locked

[tepples]

It did when a video game was still in arcades. Now it does when a game is in a "timed exclusive" on some console, or not released in your country...

Was that strip from before Kickstarter?

[tepples]

The Oatmeal doesn't appear to give dates of first publication of its comics. The "Exposure" strip might have applied before the Street Performer Protocol was widely implemented. Nowadays I guess exposure pays when the developer's next project reaches its Kickstarter goal with room to spare. So, saying exposure is worthless is like saying education is worthless, just because it doesn't pay for life's necessities over a week's term.

Reminds me of smurfberries

[tepples]

From "The pirate in me":

That’s why I’m a believer in the pay as you go model. If I play for one hour, I’m happy to pay a reasonable price

That sounds disturbingly like the present trend of microtransactions. Further:

On cloud gaming as a future: [...] I also don’t want to end up in the hands of one or two monopolistic portals.

Except that's how it ended up going. PlayStation bought up both Gaikai and OnLive.

FIPS 140-2 Level 3 console GPUs perhaps

[tepples]

Since I can't see PC games restricted to FIPS 140-2 Level 3 vid cards

All that means is that certain major-studio games will remain console exclusive, such as all but a handful of games by Nintendo and any game by the division of Sony that didn't become Daybreak.

DNAS 103

[tepples]

Perhaps [online multiplayer and other services provided through PSN are] the reason why there's yet to be a break on the PS4 [...] I mean, seriously, the good games that are multiplayer are good because of the other players. That means you can play 10+ year old multiplayer games, become really good from all that play time, and really have little reason to move to "New PC games".

Ten years of online multiplayer on PlayStation? I must have missed some change over the past decade, because when I bought games for my PlayStation 2, I would take the disc out of the shrink wrap, put it in my PS2, and be greeted with a DNAS error saying the publisher had permanently shut down the matchmaking server.

Allowing outside play is child endangerment

[tepples]

I know this might come as a shock to you but, yes. I go outside and I even "play" outside.

I'l let a headline answer that: Mom lets kid play outside, faces jail. "Stranger danger" hysteria has taken over.

Re:Allowing outside play is child endangerment

[Anonymous Coward]

Our current society is far more dangerous to children than any of these imaginary threats.

Re:stolen, not free

[jonwil]

Calling it piracy is wrong as well since it doesn't involve ships at sea.

If everyone would call it "illegal copying" or something accurate instead of calling it theft or piracy, things would be much better.

In time

[corezz]

This post is longer than the article. Given enough time it always ends up cracked. Because one group in the world hasnt cracked it doesnt mean that it is uncrackable. The bigger the challenge the more interest it gains.

How does unavailability "promote the Progress"?

[tepples]

Also, why are you wearing a dress

Why do the Chipmunks wear "dresses"? Why does John from Peter Pan wear a "dress"? Why do many men in the Middle East wear "dresses"? Why did Jesus wear a "dress"? (source)

and gloves

To prevent blisters.

It's silly not to [make a work available to all markets] but it is your right.

In what way does this right to act like the dog in the manger "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts"?

you're now not only taking away the rights of the rights holder in two ways instead of one

If I don't pirate, the publisher is leaving money on the table. If I do pirate, the publisher is leaving exactly the same amount of money on the table. It shows that the publisher doesn't believe in a "potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."

Re:How does unavailability "promote the Progress"?

[KGIII]

I should probably joke about you wearing a dress and worrying about your girlie hands. ;-)

How does it promote it? It encourages people to produce stuff - that way they're assured of protections for it, for a limited time, and that they have a chance to profit on it if it is marketable.

The price is not one concern - it's their rights that you're infringing on. Obviously, it should be a much shorter time, by the way. It promotes the progress by giving enticement for people to create and invest in them. But you knew that.

Either way, we can just conclude that you're comfortable taking basic human rights away from people. The Constitution doesn't give you rights, it enumerates rights you already have (or should have). The only thing it does is stop infringing on your rights in certain areas. "We hold these truths to be self evident..." And here you are trying to justify violating someone's basic human rights... Sheesh indeed.

Also, concerning your other post... Someone needs to be cracked in the jaw for that. I'd suggest the mother start with her nosy neighbors and work her way up through the police and the district attorney. The kid was 120' away and in a gated community... Yeah, that's endangerment. Man, I'd have been in prison. I let my kids be kids. Meh, they turned out okay. If someone had kidnapped 'em, we'd have just built another one. (Only partially kidding.)

Re:Good!

[tepples]

So the fact that they won't steal when they're older makes it okay for them to steal now?

I doubt they're shoplifting in any substantial numbers. Copyright infringement is not stealing, and stealing is not copyright infringement.

very little money is lost to piracy

Developers would seem to disagree, so much so that they're willing to spend a considerable amount of money and effort to add DRM to their games.

Developers or publishers?

Every time a PC game is pirated, it moves the developer closer to going console-only with their next release

Which leaves an opening for another studio to enter the PC market. In fact, a new studio has to enter the PC market first because console makers require studios to show financial stability and experience.

Change the roster and renew the server lease

[tepples]

They change the rosters. Online opponents are unlikely to be willing to settle for outdated rosters, even if the publisher chooses to keep running the matchmaking servers for versions with outdated rosters.

Re:Good!

[preflex]

Which is why they cannot use the term theft when talking about pirates because that is libel or slander (depending on the medium) as they would be accusing them of a crime they did not commit.

"Piracy" is the act of robbery or criminal violence at sea. Therefore, calling copyright infringers "pirates" is just as slanderous as calling them thieves.

Inflation, for one

[tepples]

Remember as a kid, you were told that if you didn't copy that floppy, that game prices would go down?

Well, back then, I'd pay $50 for a game.

"Don't Copy That Floppy" was in 1992. The Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator estimates that $50.00 in 1992 had the same buying power at $84.58 last year (2015). Moreover, the play-through time of a modern game is far longer than that of a typical NES game.

Heard of ASCAP?

[tepples]

Maybe one idea is to have a clearinghouse by each country to handle it, where part of people's taxes go to fund said clearinghouse, and people get a royalty to how often their content is downloaded or seen.

I think that's what collecting societies such as BMI, ASCAP, and Harry Fox were supposed to be for. But unfortunately, not enough kinds of work have collecting societies.

Star Fox

[tepples]

The game drops to 15FPS on consoles

Star Fox drops to 15 FPS on consoles yet still sold. What makes Just Cause 3 materially different from Star Fox in this respect?

Answering your likely next thought-terminating cliché: What makes oranges materially different from apples?

Did you try doing without?

[tepples]

There are at least two games I like to play that were only ever released in Japan, as they are a licensed property of a company over there, there is no way a PC or SNES game from 1993 is going to be made available on the WIi U there or here. So my only option is to play a pirate copy in a SNES or PC emulator because these games were never officially localized.

Now I'm waiting for KGIII to pipe up and call you an entitled whiner. As KGIII explained in a reply to one of my own comments to this story, you have the option to do without the game, and in fact, doing without is the only legal option.

Copyright is not a right, despite the name

[tepples]

How does it promote it? It encourages people to produce stuff

Except often, someone who produces stuff gets sued by someone who produced older stuff, claiming that the new stuff is too similar to the older stuff.

The price is not one concern - it's their rights that you're infringing on.

Despite its name, copyright is not a right but a privilege. Again, how does the grant of the privilege to withdraw a work from availability "promote the Progress"?

The Constitution doesn't give you rights, it enumerates rights you already have (or should have).

Copyright is not listed as an enumerated right of the people. It is listed there as an enumerated power of the Congress, one that it may choose to exercise or not to exercise. And unlike several other enumerated powers, it has its purpose ("To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts") written directly in the Constitution, ostensibly to give the people a way to measure whether the Congress is doing its job.

"We hold these truths to be self evident..."

Sorry, wrong document. This appears in the Declaration, not the Constitution.

Re:Copyright is not a right, despite the name

[KGIII]

In order...

Irrelevant, but I'll answer anyhow. They were not first. Sucks to be them but we don't all get to win the race. Not to mention, it's copyright - you can pretty easily get around it IF you're doing something that's new and (reasonably) original. If you're not then, well, sucks to be you. Come up with your own ideas instead of trying to deprive others of their rights. You'll notice the distinct lack of shortage of media and even software. If copyright were truly onerous we'd not have LibreOffice, AbiWord, OO.org, and Leafpad. It's not. There's still plenty of things to create, plenty of ways to do so without depriving others of their rights. Again, you're not entitled to anything you want just because you want it. Sorry, it doesn't work like that in a society that outlaws slavery.

Yes it is - in fact, it's created on inception. As soon as I post this, I have copyright. How does granting the privilege to withdraw a work promote progress? Ownership, it's a thing. Why create if you don't have ownership? When you refuse to give someone the fruits of their labor it is slavery. When you fail to compensate someone for the fruits of their labor, it is slavery. These are pretty basic concepts. It's called ownership and with ownership comes the ability to revoke access. Without complete and total ownership, including revocation, why not work? Ownership is complete - that's what ownership is. It promotes the arts and sciences because they're able to control it and thus decide how it's used, when it is used, and who gets to use it. See GPL for a good example of exercising ownership to ensure their will is met.

It is an enumerated right. Perhaps you have a funny definition of enumerated. I believe it is something like Article 1 that gives congress the right to make such a law and they have done so, justifiably so, albeit they need to lessen the duration.

I know where it's from - one follows the other. They were then listing rights that they have. Rights aren't given to you by the government. You already have them by grace of birth. Do you have to ask the government to breath? For the fruits of your labor? To think independent thoughts and not be forced to disclose them? Why not? Because you already have them - that's why they're enumerated, it's to make sure the government can't (without justification - such as public good) take them away. But, just because the Declaration had ended doesn't mean that the same process isn't carried through to the Constitution.

Do you say you only have the right to the freedom of speech because the government grants you that right? Of course not. You have that just for being human. It was up to Congress to set the regulations (and be able to adjust them as needed - which they've done poorly at) for copyright. That's why it's in there - because it is a right and something for them to do and to adjust as needed without having to amend the Constitution when it needs reworking because the process to get an amendment is pretty damned hard - and for a reason.

No, you have a right to the fruits of your labor. You own your labor and may control access to that. Anything else is slavery. If you want to argue for slavery then go ahead and do so. If you want to say that the law is currently fucking broken then we're in complete and total agreement.

Oh - I forgot to mention this earlier. I'm not entirely sure but I think the Chipmunks were in "night shirts" which are sometimes called "dresses" or "night dresses" though we've probably not called them that in a long time. At least not normal people. It looks comfy though. I'd so sport that out in public. I'm even moderately dark skinned - I bet I'd scare the shit out of people down here in Florida if I wore something like that.

The bastard regulation that we do have is horrific, that is true and not even something I'd bother debating. The right to the ownership of the fruits of one's labor, to maintain control of one's property, is an essential liberty. The ability to own it, to control it, even to revoke a

Re:Copyright is not a right, despite the name

[tepples]

Irrelevant, but I'll answer anyhow. They were not first. Sucks to be them but we don't all get to win the race.

So before I publish a work that I created, what can I do to tell whether it unintentionally violates another's copyright?

Yes it is [a right] - in fact, it's created on inception.

Yes, under current law, the privilege of copyright comes into being when a work is fixed in tangible medium. But when copyright begins is independent of whether it is a right.

When you fail to compensate someone for the fruits of their labor, it is slavery.

Is our failure to continue to compensate the heirs of the inventor of patent leather "slavery"?

Ownership is complete - that's what ownership is. It promotes the arts and sciences because they're able to control it and thus decide how it's used, when it is used, and who gets to use it.

How are you certain that absolute ownership is a better way "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" than something other than absolute ownership?

I believe it is something like Article 1 that gives congress the right to make such a law

Article I, clause 8, gives Congress the power to create copyright but not the obligation to do so. This differs from the Bill of Rights, which gives Congress the obligation not to create certain laws by taking powers away from it.

Rights aren't given to you by the government. You already have them by grace of birth. Do you have to ask the government to breath?

Yes. People had to petition the government for the Clean Air Act.

For the fruits of your labor?

Fruits of one's labor include externalities. And yes, in general, people do have to petition the government for exclusive rights to extract rents from externalities. Copyright is a rent extracted from the externality of the existence of a work of authorship.

The ability to own it, to control it, even to revoke access (an unfortunate side effect but must be included because it's ownership, by right) is a basic human right.

Say I build and sell you a chair. Should I have the power to demand that you return that chair because I want "to revoke access" to its design? I disagree with you that the right to revoke access to something that has been published "is a basic human right". And no, I'm not the only person to believe that way; Leigh Beadon agrees with me and disagrees with you.

the GPL that I know you're familiar with and (as I recall) a fan of - is also based on copyright and gets its powers from copyright regulations. Should someone just be able to take the code, edit it, and sell it without giving back to the community and not give out the source when they do so?

If there were no copyright, it would be lawful to disassemble proprietary software, thoroughly comment the disassembly, and distribute the commented disassembly to others. In fact, I'm pretty sure that that's what Richard Stallman had originally planned to do in the printer driver kerfuffle that kicked off the whole GNU project.

Re:Copyright is not a right, despite the name

[tepples]

I'm not entirely sure but I think the Chipmunks were in "night shirts"

Which fits in with the apparel of John Darling and Mickey "the Yellow Kid" Dugan, which are called nightshirts in canon. In fact, the big reason that men don't dress that way all the time is because of cavalry. But now that vehicles have replaced horseback riding, trousers are obsolete technology.

Where'd you pick it up?

I buy most of them from the men's section of AlHannah.com. When I explain it to others on the bus, I sometimes call it "Al and Hannah's" to disguise that it's an Islamic clothing store. You can find other places selling them by searching the web for "thobe" or "dishdasha". When it gets cold, you can wear over-the-calf socks and a shorter (knee-length) flannel nightshirt under it. Just make sure to wear typical western-world headgear with it, not anything obviously Arabic, and don't grow a long beard.

Fortunately, there's no copyright on the act of wearing a nightshirt with a top hat. US law largely considers costume designs "useful articles" rather than works of authorship unless they have a pictorial work printed on them. It's "fruits of one's labor" yet not subject to exclusive rights.

Re: Good!

[ArmoredDragon]

Bullshit and y'all know it.

No, it's not, and I'll show you why below.

A pirated game, movie or song is a lost sale. A transformed copy is not. The MPAA/RIAA/BSA/ESA etc, don't see it that way. They see both a transformed copy and a counterfeit copy as lost sales. This is the one point that pirates and fair use advocates agree on.

You could argue a that a counterfeit sale is a lost sale to an extent, but somebody downloading a torrent or copying a CD isn't. This comes down to simple price elasticity. Here's a real world example:

At the college I went to, a soda vending machine typically sells sodas for $1.50 per 24 oz bottle. One day, during a long economics course, during the break time, a student walks out and comes back with a soda, and announces to the class that the vending machine is erroneously selling them for 5 cents a bottle. So, most of the class gets up and buys a soda.

Had the soda been regular price, almost none of them would have purchased a soda, except for the one student that found the price to begin with. In such a scenario of it being regular price, does that mean they lost a sale from those 20 something students? Of course not. It just means that at regular price, the demand for a soda is lower, and those people never would have paid for a soda anyways.

The same thing applies for downloading free copies off of torrent sites or copying a CD: When the price becomes free, then more people want a copy. However those same people still wouldn't pay for a copy otherwise.

So you see, that's why each pirated copy doesn't result in a lost sale. However that doesn't mean that no sales are lost. Because some people know that there's a way to get it free, they might just say "meh, I won't pay anyways" even if they really want a copy. It's difficult to quantify just how many people that is, but the reality is that for some 90% of pirates, no matter whether they can get it free or not, they just won't pay for a copy, even if piracy wasn't a thing at all. Usually what they do (if they can't get it free) is opt for a substitute good, which when it comes to entertainment, can be just about anything that's fun and (for the person) free, anything from swimming to masturbating.

Now let's consider a counterfeit sale; let's say that the counterfeit copy was sold at half price. That does mean that if the publisher did sell the copy at half price themselves, they could have made that extra money instead. And guess what, they do actually do this: In some markets where people have less money, (especially Eastern Europe and Asian markets) they know that they can't ask the same prices that they can in first world markets. So, in order to get any sales at all, they sell at a lower price there. This is exactly why movie studios love region locks: They like to make sure that Westerners don't buy an identical copy of the same movie in cheaper markets, because they want to charge the Westerners more. Game studios do the same thing, by the way.

Anyways that's somewhat going off topic, but even a basic understanding of economics should tell you why a pirated copy isn't a lost sale.

Re:Good!

[bzipitidoo]

I believe the problem is deeper Copying is easy, been getting easier and easier for years, but it's not that. Seriously, one of the main protections of the audio CD when it first came out in the early 1980s was simply that it contained too much data for easy handling, 700M at a time when hard drives weren't even 40M, there was no mp3 format, and wide area networking for the masses was done on 2400 baud modems, which would need days to transmit all the data on one CD. Also no CD ROM drive, though no doubt an audio CD player could have been hacked to rip CDs. Anyway, it's not that, not that copying is easy, and enforcement of copyright against millions of individuals is all but hopeless, it's that copying should be a basic human right.

Sharing of knowledge should be a basic human right Perhaps sharing could be regarded as a form of speech, and therefore protected under the 1st Amendment. But if not, sharing deserves no less protection, maybe should be even better protected. A system that attempts to compensate artists by regulating and restricting the sharing of knowledge in order to impose a toll, is fundamentally broken. There is no essential difference between teaching children the 3 R's, and copying songs. Both are a transmission of knowledge. Sharing of knowledge is fundamental to civilization and humanity. Our ability to communicate and cooperate better than any other animal put us on top of the animal kingdom. We sure can't compete with most animals on hardiness, strength, or any purely physical measure. One man, naked, no weapons or clothes, just bare hands, vs one lion is going to end in victory for the lion 99% or more of the time. But with the knowledge to build weapons, now it's the other way around. The lion has no chance whatsoever against a man backed with modern weapons tech. To give control of that power into the hands of a few is to put the rest of us in the same fix as any wild beast, utterly helpless to resist their will whenever it conflicts with our own. The 2nd Amendment is the right to bear arms. Maybe it should've been the right to bear pens, since The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword.

A typical objection to removing these tolls and restrictions on the sharing of knowledge is that artists will starve. How can any artists make any money without copyright? Well, there are other business models. Patronage is one. The usual objection to patronage is that it doesn't work, can't possibly work, which ignores that patronage has been around for centuries. The next objection I usually hear is based on the thinking that patronage has not changed, only the wealthy can afford it, which overlooks that now, thanks to the awesome expansion of communication the Internet has made possible, we can "crowdfund", as it has been called.

So, please, when you call copying a crime, think of piracy as a moral wrong, you are merely parroting the propaganda of the copyright extremists.

One correction

[yacc143]

The system mentioned is not a drm, it's a code obfuscation system that makes sure that the steam (or whatever) drm stays in and cannot be just easily removed.

Re:So, creative people don't deserve to get paid?

[Boronx]

No, creative people don't deserve to get paid. If there were not multi-billion dollar market for each of movies, games, books, the world would keep spinning. Civilization would not collapse. We would even still have some books, movies and games. Whether we want to maintain these markets is a fair question, but it's not a moral issue.

Give it time

[djnforce9]

Just give it time; Ubisoft's online DRM also took a long time to crack (over a month if I recall) but it happened. DRM is completely useless by nature and no scheme will ever be unbeatable.