Because they don't want pirating to become mainstream.
That is far beyond their control. They can't outlaw knowledge. Bram Cohen wasn't stopped from developing or publishing the BitTorrent protocol and the next best thing will come out just as easy. There is no way you can stop people from learning how to pirate, all you can do is fight the windmill that is illegal distribution but imho this is a meaningless effort. It costs millions of dollars that would be better spent improving your own infrastructure. That's like spending money on destroying car factories because the things drive too fast instead of fixing your roads.
The industry has been moving into an online direction for a long time now. It's gotten to the point where Amazon sells songs for less than a $1 in a DRM-free mp3 format. There are services that offer all-you-can eat music listening for a monthly fee. There are YouTube revenue sharing deals, there's now places like Hulu, etc.
Great, from an American perspective that's all nice and well but from my view as a European Linux user I have exactly 0 benefit from that. Amazon doesn't sell here, Hulu doesn't stream in my country (just like most other online services), Youtube is not worth paying for in any case and please show me the "all you can eat" music services that sell the kind of music I want (exotic stuff). I can see your arguments but from a global perspective that's not even enough to cover half the iceberg's tip.
Competitors who do not respect copyright will drive down the price to near zero while upping the quality. They can do these because they can live well on the slim margins without having to pay to produce the content. They can also rely on people that just want to share without concerns about profit. This is the Pirate Bay model.
There is no Pirate Bay model, you are referring to competing business models but Pirate bay isn't a business. It's a semi-legal loophole that happens to enable people to get stuff for free that they'd otherwise had to pay for. If the quality and portfolio of the legal models would live up (or even get somewhere near) what is available through piracy channels then you'd probably see a drop in these illegal activities. I use pirate sites because the DVDs I want aren't sold in my country or not at all (or as rare collectors items for $50+), the music I want isn't available or has DRM. If Pirate Bay was a place that made money by selling other people's work I would agree with your statement but since they just enable people to give each other free stuff that's not a business in any stretch of the imagination.
I agree to an extent, but between the people who will pay because they feel it's right, and the people who will go out of their way to pirate, there is a large middle who will lean in either direction depending on the environment. If it's trivial to get free with no advertisements, then they will move in that direction.
Well then you'll have to come up with other things that make them want to pay and can't be copied. That's what people like me have been demanding for quite some time now. Let musicians make money by playing Gigs and travelling around. Music and Movies can be free, you just have to sell people enough other stuff to finance it. If you think about it the whole business is run on a "we pay up front anyway" notion. And you can see that innovative investments aren't done, not because of piracy but because the people that put up that kind of money nowadays expect to get more money back. The "we do stuff just to do it and promote ourselves" is almost gone from the big media. That's a development that has been going on long before the elaborate digital "piracy" was even around. It's a consequence of culture turning into an industrialized business with exponential endless growth. That is wrong and can never work, in fact, I'm surprised that it has worked for so long. Some people
If The Pirate Bay wins, the swedish laws will be changed to make sure what they've been doing would be an offence had they done it under the new law.
How do you know that? I mean from an industry standpoint I can see this would make sense to achieve but what I can tell from what is going on in the Swedish public and just the fact that the Pirate Bay is getting a relatively fair trial (the judge did defend their position on the surprise evidence and also made the prosecution cut back on guided questioning) symbolizes to me that there is some actual change in ideas about to be written into law. It will take ages again but it's apparently happening. The WTO outcry after the Raid in 2006 was more than enough proof that the Swedes in general don't accept that American mafia tactics.
If you're from Sweden you probably know better but the way it is communicated to the outside the Swedes like their freedom and refuse to have this kind of stuff be an offence. On top of that, if they changed the EU directive or swedish law so that service providers are then liable for the content, Google and basically any other internet company would be screwed. How would they control and sort out all illegal materials without censoring? How would Google be still top search engine if you couldn't find anything. Think about Youtube... all music videos gone, all illegal movie clips, audio clips, TV shows etc gone. This will never happen. The media industry is big but the internet industry is even bigger and they've just started to grow. What we're seeing now is the "old" industry being forced (by law) to accept that the internet is now boss and that they will have to start kissing some ass to survive. At least that is what I take from all this.
Will they keep on getting it if their Internet connection offered the same stuff for free? Consider a Pirate Bay + media center setup. 100% free. No advertising.
Most people are still incapable of pirating non-mainstream stuff. This is exactly the point of the discussion... why even bother with the people who will pirate anyway? People that get cable could just as well wait a few months for the stuff to air on "free" TV. We don't make road laws and automotive taxes for people that steal cars, do we? The industry (and apparently you) is refusing the idea that they could make lots of money by offering legal means of acquiring content through internet based systems like you mention. Why would you use Piratebay if it's free when it takes two weeks to download a movie because no one is seeding what you want to see? A professionally run, paid alternative with guaranteed seeding would beat that any time of the day. Like I said I'd happily pay that if it granted me fast and easy access, so far TPB is "better" than the legal ones available but that only means that the legal sites are REALLLY awful. Piratebay is a mess, ten versions of the same movie, no subtitles, no real standards.
Advertising is gambling, you can't guarantee revenue from ads. You pay people to force your images on them so their brain gets tricked into preferring that brand next time they need to make a decision. Take people like me that ignore ads completely... you don't make any money off of them anyway. Why even bother spending millions on ads if it's merely a "gamble" for revenue. Spend these millions on better infrastructure and "try something new" models were users get free stuff every now and again with their subscription. That's wayyy more effective than gambling on annoying ads.
It's debatable. There are lots of places now where you can get music on the cheap, yet still we see the rants here about how the RIAA doesn't get it, how they aren't giving the people what they want. Everybody has their own idea of how much they should pay.
Sure it's debatable but the people that need to "debate" are the industry people and resellers. Can we agree that the customers have already made up their mind? No DRM, no shitty restrictions, no proprietary formats or software. Yet, they [the industry] simply say "we don't want to talk" and that's it then. The customers don't get a discussion or debate at all. Since there hasn't been ONE actual alternative so far we will never be able to actually zone in to a price that many people can agree on. Especially not if the people that need to lead the discussion simply refuse and ignore the customers voices. We live in a new era and that means you will have to make deals and try stuff, fall on your face, get screwed over and eventually find a model that works for most of those involved. That's the way of life. Right now the industry uses their lobby power and monopolistic stance to deny that development. This is changing right now, more painfully than it would have if they gave in and actually tried.
There will always be those that don't want to pay at all, fuck them! We need to make the improvements for people that want to take part in the economy. You don't ask a guy that steals food regularly what he would want to pay. You need to change your model and find a balance between those that steal anyway and those that want to pay but are put off by your lack of commitment. Those that don't pay at all aren't your problem because either way, you won't get their money. The industry needs to win back those that used to pay and now prefer the other models because they're not satisfied with what is offered to them anymore but for various societal reasons they can't/don't want to stop consuming media.
The only model that will really cater to the consumers is 100% free, no advertisements, no copyright restrictions. Everything else leads to complaints about why the model isn't good enough and why pirating is rampant.
Bollocks! Who says it has to be 100% free? Cable isn't free either? Still people get it. I would gladly pay a monthly subscription fee to download DRM free content to watch on my machines. You can put it as many ads as you want but don't expect me to watch them (I change the channel or skip them anyhow). This is a bullshit claim, people WANT to pay for stuff if the service is good. I'd love to have a legal TV site with torrents. But it doesn't exist because these greedy fucks can't agree on pricing and power distribution. Until they sort it out, I'll get the best possible solution that is available right now, that it's free isn't my fault... it's theirs for not taking advantage of that market.
So your segment is "They produce it and you watch it without paying or viewing ads?"
As long as they refuse to give me a platform (which I can use) were I can pay for the content and watch it according to my terms, yeah. I'll keep watching pirated TV shows that don't run in my country if they don't sell them to me or give me any other chance of legally consuming them. It's not my choice, it's theirs. I'd pay for the shows but they won't let me. iTunes doesn't run, Hulu doesn't stream, I don't want DVDs because most stuff I watch ONCE. Give me a solution and I'll pay. Don't want to come up with a solution? Stop complaining, I'm not hurting your business anyway. If I don't want to pay and can't watch it it's the same as if I want to pay and can't do so.
"Why isn't Hulu.com available outside the US? Because they need to segment the market to sell country specific ads."
They also should ensure that the adds are legal where they are being broadcasted. For example, it is illegal to target publicity to children in many countries, but not in the US, publicity on medication must mention the side-effects in the US, but not necessarily in other countries.
Internet publicity is still legally uncharted territory and content providers probably don't want to risk a lawsuit...
Don't fool yourself, you really think this is the main reason? Simply not air these ads in question. Maybe we need a global advertisement standard or something. Sure this is complicated but it can't be much harder than producing ACTA secret treaties within democratic structures without involvement of the public. Also, this whole problem could be solved if they just let me pay a monthly fee and download all that stuff without ads. I don't respond to advertisement at all anyway so why bring that up to keep things from moving?
Why the hell does this get introduced as a "Youth" safety act? For the last eight years everything has been justified with abstracted terrorism threat and shit like that and now this isn't fly anymore? Why do they introduce that crap to catch pedophiles but never thought of that when it was about terrorism? Oh wait, they did but no one believes their stupid fucking lies about the threat anymore and so they need to pull something new from their hat. If there are no attacks you can argue against anti-terror but "Think of the children" has no bearing.
In a state were bills like that are passed jail is the best place you can be. Aside from the occasional rape and shanking at least you've got your privacy and the rules aren't as stringent as outside.
Oh America... home of the brave... land of the fr... wait... no I think you need to change the lyrics.
Same happens in Germany just now, they're introducing an Internet censorship archtitecture by proxy of vetting it "against child pornography" even though the majority of researchers and experts tell them it's useless.
The people have grown tired of that invisible threat of terrorism and since no one is scared enough by that anymore they need something new... unfortunately most people are uninformed hysterical douchebags that cry "think of the children" and then burn down the house next door because allegedly a pedophile used to live there ten years ago.
I'm starting to get reeeaaaally fed up by all this lying political bullshit.
It's all about segmentation and more segmentation
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Boxee Drops Hulu Support
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The reason why we have this rampant piracy is that the studios and content creators and rights holders refuse to adopt models that cater to the consumers. Instead the market is artificially segmented into more and more chunks (which are owned by the same few corporations) to make cash and data flow as complicated as possible to charge more and more for it. I'm really getting sick of all this political bullshit.
Why isn't Hulu.com available outside the US? Because they need to segment the market to sell country specific ads.
Why isn't Boxee allowed to stream Hulu content?
Because they want to segment the ad market into "Hulu ads" and "Non-Hulu/Other ads"
Why do DVDs still get released with Region codes?
Because they want to segment the market to sell the same stuff at different prices and make ad contracts for different regions so they can earn a manifold of income.
Why is there still no simultaneous release of movies if many people watch them with subtitles or in English anyway? Because they want to segment the market into the respective "exploitation" zones to draw money out.
Some of these things are happening because the industry wanted them, some because our stupid societies still believe they need borders and nationalities to function and thus establish different tax systems. It could all be so easy if you would only let it get more complicated...
Until this is resolved I'm at the Pirate Bay, watching KingKong, sipping Cider and laughing at all those idiots that still bother to screw around with that antiquated segmentation.
Games, however, aren't exactly essential qualities of an OS or even to life.
I'd doubt that. If you could equally enjoy games on Macs and Linux systems the Windows market share would be much smaller. How many people did switch to Vista merely because the need DX10 and future compatibility? How many people don't even consider a Linux alternative because they know they're shackled to Windows for gaming anyway. I agree that large parts of the OS market aren't bound to the gaming capabilities but the number of gamers that is bound to Windows by their hobby is considerably relevant.
If people could do all their stuff on Linux distros (which I believe most of them could) at some would not have to own Windows just to play games. I suspect many have illegal Windows copies anyway or maintain those on a dualboot system just to get their games while Linux is the primary system.
They're more like artwork, and I am quite willing to pay for good art.
I agree with that statement to some extent but while I would gladly pay for good art I feel a strong discentive in the fact that I have to add a branded locked down room to my house only to enjoy my artwork, simply because they make the frames so they won't stick to any other wall.
Postal 3 isn't developed by Valve. So unless there's specific confirmation that the PC version of Postal 3 will be available on Steam and only Steam, this confirms nothing about Steam for Linux. Notice that neither of the previous games were released on Steam.
Well, that means nothing. The Postal series is highly controversial and back when Postal 1 came out Steam didn't even exist. Postal 2 was a crappy game and based on the Unreal engine (so the license for that would have to lie with Activision and they surely won't give up IP using it's tech to Valve). Postal 3 is a Source title, the IP is held by Running with Scissors and it's a somewhat more "attractive" game to sell. Even if there is no Steam for Postal 3... it will be on Linux. To me that means Valve Games on Linux... and I can't imagine a Valve business strategy NOT involving Steam at this point.
To be quite honest I couldn't care less about Steam. There is a Source engine port coming and I can't imagine how they would NOT use that to sell all their other Source titles on the platform as well. Since Valve's main business is the Steam platform it would be utterly senseless to get a licensed Source port to Linux and not cater to the platform via Steam. I believe it's safe to assume that the work done on Source for Linux will flow back into Valve's pool of technology. The next logical step then is to sell other Source titles and preferrably through your own distribution network.
You are right to some extent, so far there is no official confirmation for a Linux Steam client but to me all the evidence points into this direction.
What is PSGL? PSGL is the high-level graphics library for PlayStation3
PSGL is OpenGL ES
So everyone that is using PSGL is effectively using OpenGL ES and I can't possibly imagine every developer writing their own graphics API. But like I said, please prove me wrong.
What's with that OpenGL press release then? There it specifically says "...the company president showed off the development kit hardware and confirmed and the choice of OpenGL ES as the graphics API in order to facilitate rapid developer adoption and content creation. The Sony Playstation 3 will be using OpenGL ES for the 3D graphics API,..."?
So you have some contradicting information that you can provide? Give me a source that explains what PS3 graphics is build on or something. I'm glad if you can clear that up for me. From what I can see it's OpenGL ES (or maybe they use that for the menus only or what?)
Valve didn't port to OpenGL for the PS3; I'm pretty sure it was written "down-to-the-metal".
Well the speculation is (it makes sense) that the foundation for the Source engine on the PS3 is OpenGL ES (for Embedded Systems) -granted, I got that from Wikipedia "Citation needed" but someone got that info from somewhere. I also know that the PS3 uses OpenGL ES. I'd be very suprised 1) if Valve actually invested that much time and effort into hand-recoding the engine for a not (yet) so lucrative market and 2) if they couldn't use the OpenGL implementation of the PS3 version. It's apparently written to OpenGL specs and it should be a walk in the park re-engineering that to run on regular hardware (at least compared to manually re-writing the whole thing).
But, every major engine has OpenGL support. Some just choose to turn it off. It wouldn't be hard to turn it back on.
I'd don't know about that. Many engines are developed around DirectX nowadays and those need some major code rewrites to work without a Microsoft supported platform. That's why DX is a rather attractive system because it has a lot of tools and does tons of effects for you (basically a non-Open OpenGL).
Steam has been on linux. How else do you get Left 4 Dead linux servers?
Don't jump to false conclusions. A game server is WAY different from the client. Different like Apache is different from Firefox. They both work together all the time but they do completely different things and have other requirements. The client software has to do all the audio/video processing and rendering as well as user inputs and outputs. That's why it is so difficult to write for the different platforms because they all have different APIs and such to do your work. The server on the other hand just receives status informations generated by the client and replies with his set of data combined from all the other players. Linux game servers have been around since forever but someone taking the time porting a high-end client to Linux is actually a great big step forward (I'm still waiting for the UT3 client that was promised to me more than a year ago).
... But it would be nice to see a full, officially supported, Steam client & source engine for linux. It means something.
Let's just hope it actually happens when Postal 3 comes out or at least shortly after. I'd buy P3 even if I don't like the game just because I want to see if and how it runs.
What makes you think there is going to be a Linux steam client?
The only thing I've heard about it is a nonsense rumour from a valve job advertisement.
Maybe you should update your facts. The Postal 3 dev listed Linux as a confirmed platform for the Source Engine in 2009. Since I doubt Valve will sell their games without Steam compatibility if they have a native Source engine I'm assuming they will also provide a native Steam client. This not only to me acts as proof that the "nonsense" rumor (actually from a really unsubstantial source: the Valve website!) is actually true and one of the precursors to a Linux port of Steam and the Source games.
With Source already ported to OpenGL on the PS3 there is further evidence that a port is not only possible but likely. Postal 3 is a confirmed Source engine based game for Linux in 2009. I'm expecting delays but this is as close to a Linux client Valve has ever confessed. They know through their hardware survey and forum participation that their users use WINE and Linux operating systems. They know the direction of the market and know that Steam is the perfect platform to distribute games to alternative OSs. I would actually be more surprised if they hired a Senior Linux Engineer and DIDN'T port Source/Steam.
OMG! PC Games: What systems will Postal III be released on?
That's pretty sad, I run Linux but I pay and play for games because they're fun. Not because the author happened to compile a native binary for my OS.
I really don't understand this kind of behaviour and as a game programmer myself, I'd rather you look at the games themselves rather then the PR around it.
Problem is, most games are practically worthless to me if they don't run natively. WINE isn't really any good to play the stuff I want to play and I already have to swap hard drives to play certain games. I can live without that and most games aren't worth spending the money AND the effort of dual booting or swapping drives. If I buy a game to a half hour I won't do it if I have to through a 15 minute routine of shutting down all my running stuff, swapping the drive, booting it up, updating all the drivers and crap and then play. Too uncomfortable for me to spend money on usually. If it's a really great game like Half-Life2 or A Vampyre Story I will go through the swapping business once a month to play but I'm not buying a casual game like WoG for that.
Sometimes I pirate games to see if they'll run in WINE and if they do I even buy them. But that is seldomly the case. I buy all the games I REALLY want to play anyway but those that I have to go through work routines and are just a "a maybe I'd buy it but since there is all this work with dualboot or WINE, I won't". Like I said I got the full version of WoG because a friend recommended it and the demo was way too short to show me the game properly to see if it was worth 20 bucks. So I got the pirate full version but didn't really bother to play that much. It did, other than the demo, show me that I liked the game enough to buy it, but just not as a Windows executable. This is why I had to wait until now to get my version. I can see your point though but if you actually play the game you should at least seriously consider paying for it.
I already got it for the Wii. I belive it is same for much of the players interested in this game. The linux sale will be low because of this.
I doubt that many other Linux users have a Wii or bought the game for another platform they don't use regularly. Even if they did they now own the game for all OSs (except the consoles of course). Buying it for the Wii is probably the worst option imho because you have to keep it on that one console and can't install it on other computers. But that's just my opinion. I didn't buy it for the Wii because I knew a Linux port was coming so I waited, until today.
Compared to other games the Linux sales will probably be pretty good. Hothead games mentioned that their first Episode of the Penny Arcade Adventures sold really well on Linux.
Because you will have to wait until later this year when Valve announces Steam for Linux natively together with all the Source games in line with the release of the Source Engine powered Postal III
Well, I gotta admit. I belonged to that 90% pirate numbers for the game which I got in a Windoze version and played under WINE as a means of "extended demo". Never really played beyond the third level though because I felt that if I really spend that much time on a game it should run natively. Now that there is a Linux client I'll gladly pay for it even though I'll probably never finish it. Just BECAUSE there is a Linux client made me want to pay for this.
You need to back your opinion up with some serious, verified statistics to convince me, too. Everyone I know who pirates (which with the exception of old people, is almost everyone I know including myself) pirate because what they want to see or hear isn't offered in an acceptable format or distribtution channel. I WANT TO PAY, badly. I would love to give someone my money for the stuff I want if it was fair at all. But it isn't. I discover awesome stuff trough "piracy" and in the last year alone I bought about a dozen DVDs of TV shows and movies just because I could watch them for free first to see if I like it. Every time I buy something without checking it out I run the risk of regretting it later on and cutting back even more on my spending because of this. Yes I do download TV-shows that I could watch on TV if I lived in four different countries at once. Then when I bring it up I am told to buy a 30$ DVD of a TV series that hasn't even finished running or install iTunes on my Linux machine. D'oh. Since they broadcast them publicly and only sell them to my country years later with a terrible dub I'd go for the pirated channels. I buy DVDs that I never heard of before if it wasn't for the pirates (the "lost sales" argument therefore is only partially true with DRM fascism apologists), but I also download movies and music that I NEVER would have bought otherwise. In fact I didn't even know I could buy them. It has to hit cinemas, these overpriced noisy uncomfortable outdated ways of distributing and watching movies has to go. Whenever a mate asks me to go to the cinema and see a dubbed version of a almost guaranteed crap movie I reply "I already downloaded the enjoyable original version, why don't you come over to my place where we can hit Pause and Smoke and whatever without some bastard throwing popcorn at you".
The argument that piracy doesn't hurt sales and cost the companies and artists money, is true. To a company not winning your customers over with content or not winning them over with your service and content as a package comes down to the same. The amount of money "not earned" from people that don't give you money and those that download and don't give you money is exactly 0 and the very same. Only when you start to fantasize about how great it would be to get all the money from the black market then you start to see ominous numbers and want a piece of that action. That is like BMW/Ford/Toyota going "we don't sell as many cars as a few years ago when they still did what people wanted and who now rather drive cheaper foreign cars. We need to get all other cars banned and have a way to force people into buying what we want since their cars run on the same spare parts and tires as ours. If we could only get all the revenue that is illegally generated in the black market to be ours." That's what you want. Instead of changing the way they confront pirates by offering systems that are more comfortable and superior means of equal distribution (how about simultaneous global releases for a start) they are looking for ways to force customers into paying money for something they don't need. If you can get it for free, you might take it. Just as true as the argument that the companies refuse to adapt their sales models to the 21st century and serve the customers they have driven away and now call "criminals". My experience directly proves that.
If someone asked me if I would have bought everything that I downloaded in the last year (which is a LOT) I would say "Nay, it isn't even sold and I couldn't afford it, that's why I'm downloading it. But you would also lose out on the money I DID pay because that I also couldn't spend if it wasn't for things I saved earlier."
So you, as an industry, gotta ask yourself a question. Do you feel lucky? Do you want to keep bullying consumers into shelling out cash they don't have for all kinds of crap or live with the fact that there is a market that you COULD use for your own advantage by making your products and services once again interesting and enticin
The terrible thing about this situation is NOT that the degrading print media and others took their information from Wikipedia which would expose their lack of journalistic precision.
What NO SINGLE FUCKING ONE has mentioned so far is that this guy has just been appointed minister of economic affairs in my country AND NO ONE KNOWS WHO HE IS for fuck sake. They all got his name(s) wrong because this guy hasn't achieved anything yet. They looked him up on Wikipedia because our awful government has just appointed a nameless aristocrat to the most important position in the state during times of an economic crisis.
That, my friends, I find far more disturbing than a few journalists looking up an unimportant guy with way too many names on Wikipedia.
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Because they don't want pirating to become mainstream.
That is far beyond their control. They can't outlaw knowledge. Bram Cohen wasn't stopped from developing or publishing the BitTorrent protocol and the next best thing will come out just as easy. There is no way you can stop people from learning how to pirate, all you can do is fight the windmill that is illegal distribution but imho this is a meaningless effort. It costs millions of dollars that would be better spent improving your own infrastructure. That's like spending money on destroying car factories because the things drive too fast instead of fixing your roads.
The industry has been moving into an online direction for a long time now. It's gotten to the point where Amazon sells songs for less than a $1 in a DRM-free mp3 format. There are services that offer all-you-can eat music listening for a monthly fee. There are YouTube revenue sharing deals, there's now places like Hulu, etc.
Great, from an American perspective that's all nice and well but from my view as a European Linux user I have exactly 0 benefit from that. Amazon doesn't sell here, Hulu doesn't stream in my country (just like most other online services), Youtube is not worth paying for in any case and please show me the "all you can eat" music services that sell the kind of music I want (exotic stuff). I can see your arguments but from a global perspective that's not even enough to cover half the iceberg's tip.
Competitors who do not respect copyright will drive down the price to near zero while upping the quality. They can do these because they can live well on the slim margins without having to pay to produce the content. They can also rely on people that just want to share without concerns about profit. This is the Pirate Bay model.
There is no Pirate Bay model, you are referring to competing business models but Pirate bay isn't a business. It's a semi-legal loophole that happens to enable people to get stuff for free that they'd otherwise had to pay for. If the quality and portfolio of the legal models would live up (or even get somewhere near) what is available through piracy channels then you'd probably see a drop in these illegal activities. I use pirate sites because the DVDs I want aren't sold in my country or not at all (or as rare collectors items for $50+), the music I want isn't available or has DRM. If Pirate Bay was a place that made money by selling other people's work I would agree with your statement but since they just enable people to give each other free stuff that's not a business in any stretch of the imagination.
I agree to an extent, but between the people who will pay because they feel it's right, and the people who will go out of their way to pirate, there is a large middle who will lean in either direction depending on the environment. If it's trivial to get free with no advertisements, then they will move in that direction.
Well then you'll have to come up with other things that make them want to pay and can't be copied. That's what people like me have been demanding for quite some time now. Let musicians make money by playing Gigs and travelling around. Music and Movies can be free, you just have to sell people enough other stuff to finance it. If you think about it the whole business is run on a "we pay up front anyway" notion. And you can see that innovative investments aren't done, not because of piracy but because the people that put up that kind of money nowadays expect to get more money back. The "we do stuff just to do it and promote ourselves" is almost gone from the big media. That's a development that has been going on long before the elaborate digital "piracy" was even around. It's a consequence of culture turning into an industrialized business with exponential endless growth. That is wrong and can never work, in fact, I'm surprised that it has worked for so long. Some people
Whoever wins, the swedish lose.
If The Pirate Bay wins, the swedish laws will be changed to make sure what they've been doing would be an offence had they done it under the new law.
How do you know that? I mean from an industry standpoint I can see this would make sense to achieve but what I can tell from what is going on in the Swedish public and just the fact that the Pirate Bay is getting a relatively fair trial (the judge did defend their position on the surprise evidence and also made the prosecution cut back on guided questioning) symbolizes to me that there is some actual change in ideas about to be written into law. It will take ages again but it's apparently happening. The WTO outcry after the Raid in 2006 was more than enough proof that the Swedes in general don't accept that American mafia tactics.
... all music videos gone, all illegal movie clips, audio clips, TV shows etc gone. This will never happen. The media industry is big but the internet industry is even bigger and they've just started to grow. What we're seeing now is the "old" industry being forced (by law) to accept that the internet is now boss and that they will have to start kissing some ass to survive. At least that is what I take from all this.
If you're from Sweden you probably know better but the way it is communicated to the outside the Swedes like their freedom and refuse to have this kind of stuff be an offence. On top of that, if they changed the EU directive or swedish law so that service providers are then liable for the content, Google and basically any other internet company would be screwed. How would they control and sort out all illegal materials without censoring? How would Google be still top search engine if you couldn't find anything. Think about Youtube
Since when do megalomaniac control freaks need reasons to justify their actions?
Even if you were being sarcastic, jail is never the best place you can be.
Yeah, you don't get sarcasm.
Will they keep on getting it if their Internet connection offered the same stuff for free? Consider a Pirate Bay + media center setup. 100% free. No advertising.
Most people are still incapable of pirating non-mainstream stuff. This is exactly the point of the discussion ... why even bother with the people who will pirate anyway? People that get cable could just as well wait a few months for the stuff to air on "free" TV. We don't make road laws and automotive taxes for people that steal cars, do we? The industry (and apparently you) is refusing the idea that they could make lots of money by offering legal means of acquiring content through internet based systems like you mention. Why would you use Piratebay if it's free when it takes two weeks to download a movie because no one is seeding what you want to see? A professionally run, paid alternative with guaranteed seeding would beat that any time of the day. Like I said I'd happily pay that if it granted me fast and easy access, so far TPB is "better" than the legal ones available but that only means that the legal sites are REALLLY awful. Piratebay is a mess, ten versions of the same movie, no subtitles, no real standards.
... you don't make any money off of them anyway. Why even bother spending millions on ads if it's merely a "gamble" for revenue. Spend these millions on better infrastructure and "try something new" models were users get free stuff every now and again with their subscription. That's wayyy more effective than gambling on annoying ads.
Advertising is gambling, you can't guarantee revenue from ads. You pay people to force your images on them so their brain gets tricked into preferring that brand next time they need to make a decision. Take people like me that ignore ads completely
It's debatable. There are lots of places now where you can get music on the cheap, yet still we see the rants here about how the RIAA doesn't get it, how they aren't giving the people what they want. Everybody has their own idea of how much they should pay.
Sure it's debatable but the people that need to "debate" are the industry people and resellers. Can we agree that the customers have already made up their mind? No DRM, no shitty restrictions, no proprietary formats or software. Yet, they [the industry] simply say "we don't want to talk" and that's it then. The customers don't get a discussion or debate at all. Since there hasn't been ONE actual alternative so far we will never be able to actually zone in to a price that many people can agree on. Especially not if the people that need to lead the discussion simply refuse and ignore the customers voices. We live in a new era and that means you will have to make deals and try stuff, fall on your face, get screwed over and eventually find a model that works for most of those involved. That's the way of life. Right now the industry uses their lobby power and monopolistic stance to deny that development. This is changing right now, more painfully than it would have if they gave in and actually tried.
There will always be those that don't want to pay at all, fuck them! We need to make the improvements for people that want to take part in the economy. You don't ask a guy that steals food regularly what he would want to pay. You need to change your model and find a balance between those that steal anyway and those that want to pay but are put off by your lack of commitment. Those that don't pay at all aren't your problem because either way, you won't get their money. The industry needs to win back those that used to pay and now prefer the other models because they're not satisfied with what is offered to them anymore but for various societal reasons they can't/don't want to stop consuming media.
The only model that will really cater to the consumers is 100% free, no advertisements, no copyright restrictions. Everything else leads to complaints about why the model isn't good enough and why pirating is rampant.
Bollocks! Who says it has to be 100% free? Cable isn't free either? Still people get it. I would gladly pay a monthly subscription fee to download DRM free content to watch on my machines. You can put it as many ads as you want but don't expect me to watch them (I change the channel or skip them anyhow). This is a bullshit claim, people WANT to pay for stuff if the service is good. I'd love to have a legal TV site with torrents. But it doesn't exist because these greedy fucks can't agree on pricing and power distribution. Until they sort it out, I'll get the best possible solution that is available right now, that it's free isn't my fault ... it's theirs for not taking advantage of that market.
So your segment is "They produce it and you watch it without paying or viewing ads?"
As long as they refuse to give me a platform (which I can use) were I can pay for the content and watch it according to my terms, yeah. I'll keep watching pirated TV shows that don't run in my country if they don't sell them to me or give me any other chance of legally consuming them. It's not my choice, it's theirs. I'd pay for the shows but they won't let me. iTunes doesn't run, Hulu doesn't stream, I don't want DVDs because most stuff I watch ONCE. Give me a solution and I'll pay. Don't want to come up with a solution? Stop complaining, I'm not hurting your business anyway. If I don't want to pay and can't watch it it's the same as if I want to pay and can't do so.
"Why isn't Hulu.com available outside the US? Because they need to segment the market to sell country specific ads."
They also should ensure that the adds are legal where they are being broadcasted. For example, it is illegal to target publicity to children in many countries, but not in the US, publicity on medication must mention the side-effects in the US, but not necessarily in other countries.
Internet publicity is still legally uncharted territory and content providers probably don't want to risk a lawsuit...
Don't fool yourself, you really think this is the main reason? Simply not air these ads in question. Maybe we need a global advertisement standard or something. Sure this is complicated but it can't be much harder than producing ACTA secret treaties within democratic structures without involvement of the public. Also, this whole problem could be solved if they just let me pay a monthly fee and download all that stuff without ads. I don't respond to advertisement at all anyway so why bring that up to keep things from moving?
Why the hell does this get introduced as a "Youth" safety act? For the last eight years everything has been justified with abstracted terrorism threat and shit like that and now this isn't fly anymore? Why do they introduce that crap to catch pedophiles but never thought of that when it was about terrorism? Oh wait, they did but no one believes their stupid fucking lies about the threat anymore and so they need to pull something new from their hat. If there are no attacks you can argue against anti-terror but "Think of the children" has no bearing.
In a state were bills like that are passed jail is the best place you can be. Aside from the occasional rape and shanking at least you've got your privacy and the rules aren't as stringent as outside.
... home of the brave ... land of the fr... wait ... no I think you need to change the lyrics.
Oh America
Same happens in Germany just now, they're introducing an Internet censorship archtitecture by proxy of vetting it "against child pornography" even though the majority of researchers and experts tell them it's useless.
... unfortunately most people are uninformed hysterical douchebags that cry "think of the children" and then burn down the house next door because allegedly a pedophile used to live there ten years ago.
The people have grown tired of that invisible threat of terrorism and since no one is scared enough by that anymore they need something new
I'm starting to get reeeaaaally fed up by all this lying political bullshit.
The reason why we have this rampant piracy is that the studios and content creators and rights holders refuse to adopt models that cater to the consumers. Instead the market is artificially segmented into more and more chunks (which are owned by the same few corporations) to make cash and data flow as complicated as possible to charge more and more for it. I'm really getting sick of all this political bullshit.
...
Why isn't Hulu.com available outside the US? Because they need to segment the market to sell country specific ads.
Why isn't Boxee allowed to stream Hulu content? Because they want to segment the ad market into "Hulu ads" and "Non-Hulu/Other ads"
Why do DVDs still get released with Region codes? Because they want to segment the market to sell the same stuff at different prices and make ad contracts for different regions so they can earn a manifold of income.
Why is there still no simultaneous release of movies if many people watch them with subtitles or in English anyway? Because they want to segment the market into the respective "exploitation" zones to draw money out.
Some of these things are happening because the industry wanted them, some because our stupid societies still believe they need borders and nationalities to function and thus establish different tax systems. It could all be so easy if you would only let it get more complicated
Until this is resolved I'm at the Pirate Bay, watching KingKong, sipping Cider and laughing at all those idiots that still bother to screw around with that antiquated segmentation.
Games, however, aren't exactly essential qualities of an OS or even to life.
I'd doubt that. If you could equally enjoy games on Macs and Linux systems the Windows market share would be much smaller. How many people did switch to Vista merely because the need DX10 and future compatibility? How many people don't even consider a Linux alternative because they know they're shackled to Windows for gaming anyway. I agree that large parts of the OS market aren't bound to the gaming capabilities but the number of gamers that is bound to Windows by their hobby is considerably relevant.
If people could do all their stuff on Linux distros (which I believe most of them could) at some would not have to own Windows just to play games. I suspect many have illegal Windows copies anyway or maintain those on a dualboot system just to get their games while Linux is the primary system.
They're more like artwork, and I am quite willing to pay for good art.
I agree with that statement to some extent but while I would gladly pay for good art I feel a strong discentive in the fact that I have to add a branded locked down room to my house only to enjoy my artwork, simply because they make the frames so they won't stick to any other wall.
Postal 3 isn't developed by Valve. So unless there's specific confirmation that the PC version of Postal 3 will be available on Steam and only Steam, this confirms nothing about Steam for Linux. Notice that neither of the previous games were released on Steam.
Well, that means nothing. The Postal series is highly controversial and back when Postal 1 came out Steam didn't even exist. Postal 2 was a crappy game and based on the Unreal engine (so the license for that would have to lie with Activision and they surely won't give up IP using it's tech to Valve). Postal 3 is a Source title, the IP is held by Running with Scissors and it's a somewhat more "attractive" game to sell. Even if there is no Steam for Postal 3 ... it will be on Linux. To me that means Valve Games on Linux ... and I can't imagine a Valve business strategy NOT involving Steam at this point.
To be quite honest I couldn't care less about Steam. There is a Source engine port coming and I can't imagine how they would NOT use that to sell all their other Source titles on the platform as well. Since Valve's main business is the Steam platform it would be utterly senseless to get a licensed Source port to Linux and not cater to the platform via Steam. I believe it's safe to assume that the work done on Source for Linux will flow back into Valve's pool of technology. The next logical step then is to sell other Source titles and preferrably through your own distribution network.
You are right to some extent, so far there is no official confirmation for a Linux Steam client but to me all the evidence points into this direction.
---
On the very first page after the title it says:
What is PSGL?
PSGL is the high-level graphics library for PlayStation3
PSGL is OpenGL ES
So everyone that is using PSGL is effectively using OpenGL ES and I can't possibly imagine every developer writing their own graphics API. But like I said, please prove me wrong.
What's with that OpenGL press release then? There it specifically says "...the company president showed off the development kit hardware and confirmed and the choice of OpenGL ES as the graphics API in order to facilitate rapid developer adoption and content creation. The Sony Playstation 3 will be using OpenGL ES for the 3D graphics API,..."?
So you have some contradicting information that you can provide? Give me a source that explains what PS3 graphics is build on or something. I'm glad if you can clear that up for me. From what I can see it's OpenGL ES (or maybe they use that for the menus only or what?)
[1] http://www.opengl.org/news/comments/sony_confirms_playstation_3_to_use_opengl_es/
Valve didn't port to OpenGL for the PS3; I'm pretty sure it was written "down-to-the-metal".
Well the speculation is (it makes sense) that the foundation for the Source engine on the PS3 is OpenGL ES (for Embedded Systems) -granted, I got that from Wikipedia "Citation needed" but someone got that info from somewhere. I also know that the PS3 uses OpenGL ES. I'd be very suprised 1) if Valve actually invested that much time and effort into hand-recoding the engine for a not (yet) so lucrative market and 2) if they couldn't use the OpenGL implementation of the PS3 version. It's apparently written to OpenGL specs and it should be a walk in the park re-engineering that to run on regular hardware (at least compared to manually re-writing the whole thing).
But, every major engine has OpenGL support. Some just choose to turn it off. It wouldn't be hard to turn it back on.
I'd don't know about that. Many engines are developed around DirectX nowadays and those need some major code rewrites to work without a Microsoft supported platform. That's why DX is a rather attractive system because it has a lot of tools and does tons of effects for you (basically a non-Open OpenGL).
Steam has been on linux. How else do you get Left 4 Dead linux servers?
Don't jump to false conclusions. A game server is WAY different from the client. Different like Apache is different from Firefox. They both work together all the time but they do completely different things and have other requirements. The client software has to do all the audio/video processing and rendering as well as user inputs and outputs. That's why it is so difficult to write for the different platforms because they all have different APIs and such to do your work. The server on the other hand just receives status informations generated by the client and replies with his set of data combined from all the other players. Linux game servers have been around since forever but someone taking the time porting a high-end client to Linux is actually a great big step forward (I'm still waiting for the UT3 client that was promised to me more than a year ago).
... But it would be nice to see a full, officially supported, Steam client & source engine for linux. It means something.
Let's just hope it actually happens when Postal 3 comes out or at least shortly after. I'd buy P3 even if I don't like the game just because I want to see if and how it runs.
What makes you think there is going to be a Linux steam client?
The only thing I've heard about it is a nonsense rumour from a valve job advertisement.
Maybe you should update your facts. The Postal 3 dev listed Linux as a confirmed platform for the Source Engine in 2009. Since I doubt Valve will sell their games without Steam compatibility if they have a native Source engine I'm assuming they will also provide a native Steam client. This not only to me acts as proof that the "nonsense" rumor (actually from a really unsubstantial source: the Valve website!) is actually true and one of the precursors to a Linux port of Steam and the Source games.
With Source already ported to OpenGL on the PS3 there is further evidence that a port is not only possible but likely. Postal 3 is a confirmed Source engine based game for Linux in 2009. I'm expecting delays but this is as close to a Linux client Valve has ever confessed. They know through their hardware survey and forum participation that their users use WINE and Linux operating systems. They know the direction of the market and know that Steam is the perfect platform to distribute games to alternative OSs. I would actually be more surprised if they hired a Senior Linux Engineer and DIDN'T port Source/Steam.
OMG! PC Games: What systems will Postal III be released on?
Vince Desi: Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Mac and Linux.
http://www.omgpcgames.com/content/view/45/37/
That's pretty sad, I run Linux but I pay and play for games because they're fun. Not because the author happened to compile a native binary for my OS.
I really don't understand this kind of behaviour and as a game programmer myself, I'd rather you look at the games themselves rather then the PR around it.
Problem is, most games are practically worthless to me if they don't run natively. WINE isn't really any good to play the stuff I want to play and I already have to swap hard drives to play certain games. I can live without that and most games aren't worth spending the money AND the effort of dual booting or swapping drives. If I buy a game to a half hour I won't do it if I have to through a 15 minute routine of shutting down all my running stuff, swapping the drive, booting it up, updating all the drivers and crap and then play. Too uncomfortable for me to spend money on usually. If it's a really great game like Half-Life2 or A Vampyre Story I will go through the swapping business once a month to play but I'm not buying a casual game like WoG for that.
Sometimes I pirate games to see if they'll run in WINE and if they do I even buy them. But that is seldomly the case. I buy all the games I REALLY want to play anyway but those that I have to go through work routines and are just a "a maybe I'd buy it but since there is all this work with dualboot or WINE, I won't". Like I said I got the full version of WoG because a friend recommended it and the demo was way too short to show me the game properly to see if it was worth 20 bucks. So I got the pirate full version but didn't really bother to play that much. It did, other than the demo, show me that I liked the game enough to buy it, but just not as a Windows executable. This is why I had to wait until now to get my version. I can see your point though but if you actually play the game you should at least seriously consider paying for it.
I already got it for the Wii. I belive it is same for much of the players interested in this game. The linux sale will be low because of this.
I doubt that many other Linux users have a Wii or bought the game for another platform they don't use regularly. Even if they did they now own the game for all OSs (except the consoles of course). Buying it for the Wii is probably the worst option imho because you have to keep it on that one console and can't install it on other computers. But that's just my opinion. I didn't buy it for the Wii because I knew a Linux port was coming so I waited, until today.
Compared to other games the Linux sales will probably be pretty good. Hothead games mentioned that their first Episode of the Penny Arcade Adventures sold really well on Linux.
On Steam I just find the Windows version, why? :(
Because you will have to wait until later this year when Valve announces Steam for Linux natively together with all the Source games in line with the release of the Source Engine powered Postal III
Well, I gotta admit. I belonged to that 90% pirate numbers for the game which I got in a Windoze version and played under WINE as a means of "extended demo". Never really played beyond the third level though because I felt that if I really spend that much time on a game it should run natively. Now that there is a Linux client I'll gladly pay for it even though I'll probably never finish it. Just BECAUSE there is a Linux client made me want to pay for this.
Really? No wai! That's like totally so not Apple y'know. Back when Steve was still around they would've ... like ... never done that.
You need to back your opinion up with some serious, verified statistics to convince me, too. Everyone I know who pirates (which with the exception of old people, is almost everyone I know including myself) pirate because what they want to see or hear isn't offered in an acceptable format or distribtution channel. I WANT TO PAY, badly. I would love to give someone my money for the stuff I want if it was fair at all. But it isn't. I discover awesome stuff trough "piracy" and in the last year alone I bought about a dozen DVDs of TV shows and movies just because I could watch them for free first to see if I like it. Every time I buy something without checking it out I run the risk of regretting it later on and cutting back even more on my spending because of this. Yes I do download TV-shows that I could watch on TV if I lived in four different countries at once. Then when I bring it up I am told to buy a 30$ DVD of a TV series that hasn't even finished running or install iTunes on my Linux machine. D'oh. Since they broadcast them publicly and only sell them to my country years later with a terrible dub I'd go for the pirated channels. I buy DVDs that I never heard of before if it wasn't for the pirates (the "lost sales" argument therefore is only partially true with DRM fascism apologists), but I also download movies and music that I NEVER would have bought otherwise. In fact I didn't even know I could buy them. It has to hit cinemas, these overpriced noisy uncomfortable outdated ways of distributing and watching movies has to go. Whenever a mate asks me to go to the cinema and see a dubbed version of a almost guaranteed crap movie I reply "I already downloaded the enjoyable original version, why don't you come over to my place where we can hit Pause and Smoke and whatever without some bastard throwing popcorn at you".
The argument that piracy doesn't hurt sales and cost the companies and artists money, is true. To a company not winning your customers over with content or not winning them over with your service and content as a package comes down to the same. The amount of money "not earned" from people that don't give you money and those that download and don't give you money is exactly 0 and the very same. Only when you start to fantasize about how great it would be to get all the money from the black market then you start to see ominous numbers and want a piece of that action. That is like BMW/Ford/Toyota going "we don't sell as many cars as a few years ago when they still did what people wanted and who now rather drive cheaper foreign cars. We need to get all other cars banned and have a way to force people into buying what we want since their cars run on the same spare parts and tires as ours. If we could only get all the revenue that is illegally generated in the black market to be ours." That's what you want. Instead of changing the way they confront pirates by offering systems that are more comfortable and superior means of equal distribution (how about simultaneous global releases for a start) they are looking for ways to force customers into paying money for something they don't need. If you can get it for free, you might take it. Just as true as the argument that the companies refuse to adapt their sales models to the 21st century and serve the customers they have driven away and now call "criminals". My experience directly proves that.
If someone asked me if I would have bought everything that I downloaded in the last year (which is a LOT) I would say "Nay, it isn't even sold and I couldn't afford it, that's why I'm downloading it. But you would also lose out on the money I DID pay because that I also couldn't spend if it wasn't for things I saved earlier."
So you, as an industry, gotta ask yourself a question. Do you feel lucky? Do you want to keep bullying consumers into shelling out cash they don't have for all kinds of crap or live with the fact that there is a market that you COULD use for your own advantage by making your products and services once again interesting and enticin
The terrible thing about this situation is NOT that the degrading print media and others took their information from Wikipedia which would expose their lack of journalistic precision.
What NO SINGLE FUCKING ONE has mentioned so far is that this guy has just been appointed minister of economic affairs in my country AND NO ONE KNOWS WHO HE IS for fuck sake. They all got his name(s) wrong because this guy hasn't achieved anything yet. They looked him up on Wikipedia because our awful government has just appointed a nameless aristocrat to the most important position in the state during times of an economic crisis.
That, my friends, I find far more disturbing than a few journalists looking up an unimportant guy with way too many names on Wikipedia.