I'm not saying the laws are right or wrong, I'm simply trying to find out how you think the games that you pirate and enjoy are going to be made if nobody pays for them? Is it "OK" because somebody else paid for it? So now one person can buy it and share with everybody else for free and that will somehow allow the continued development of these games? I won't say copyright is a perfect solution, but at least it's *a* solution.
I'm not opposed to paying, and I paid for almost all games I've played (except those that were free in the first place, of course).
Opposing copyright is not the same as opposing paying for stuff.
Your postal worker example is irrelevant. If the post office is replaced by technology, fine. If game developers are replaced by technology, fine. Problem is game developers aren't being replaced by technology and unlike the post office, video games are still in demand.
My point is that's irrelevant. Copyright violates essential human rights. You don't violate human rights because it's profitable.
Show me a system where free redistribution of a game is the norm that still allows the game developer to earn a wage.
That's already the reality on non-DRMed PC games; and in fact, the most successful games are also the most "pirated".
Or better yet, implement that system and make your own money hand over fist.
Fallacy. I never claimed they'd be more profitable.
Any guess as to why people aren't doing it already?
Because it's not more profitable. Which, to repeat, I never claimed it was.
The specific reason I'm replying to you is because you're equating piracy to gift-giving. Gift giving requires means once it's given, you don't have it anymore.
I disagree. "Gift" simply means giving without expecting reciprocity. And "giving" is used for non-material things, e.g. giving insight.
Piracy isn't though, and if it's rampant enough it will no longer be cost effective to develop in the first place.
You're contradicting yourself. You had accepted that "pirates" buy plenty, now "piracy" is suddenly inversely correlated with income?
The fact is that there's little evidence that rampant "piracy" means the product is not profitable: the best selling games and movies are also the most "pirated"; "piracy" of films has increased steadily, yet the MPAA has been having record profits, year after year.
Hence, society rightfully sees "sharing" as criminal behavior
Law sees "sharing" as criminal behavior. Society is much more divided: 34% are opposed to any kind of punishment, and even in the 52% who think punishment is due, 75% only support relatively small fines (less than $100) and most don't support disconnections or throttling.
And that's now: in younger people (18-29), 70% have committed copyright infringement, so we'll see in a few years how large is that support.
More bad analogies. There's no inconsistency between supporting laws condemning people who distributed data obtained by illegal means and not support copyright. Your argument is absolutely flawed.
The "copyright or bankruptcy" dichotomy is simply false. Maybe there will be less money to go around, but that's all.
You know who will really suffer? People who sell shit and don't take refunds, because pirates try before they pay. But should we really give a crap about them?
Actually, there is a "bittorrent network": Mainline DHT. uTorrent, BitComet, Transmission, etc all use the same network (although apparently Vuze has its own).
Copyright law has been twisted all sorts of ways, but this is the fundamental thing it is in place to prevent: allowing one person to take your work and broadly distribute it without your authorization.
And where I live 40 years ago people weren't legally entitled to criticize their government or leave the country. Laws aren't always right.
These things take time and money to make - not many people can do it out of the goodness of their hearts. Even game developers need to eat.
Two objections:
Postal workers need to eat too, should we ban email? Ensuring a profitable business model is not a valid reason to remove essential human rights.
"Pirates" don't have to be entitled to anything. People are voluntarily sharing copies of the stuff with them - you don't need to be entitled to accept a gift.
The question is, why the fuck do some people feel entitled to tell others what they can or cannot do with their legally bought CDs/DVDs, computers and internet connections.
Actually, it's the other way around. Buyers, not pirates, are keeping the prices high.
Companies don't set prices by theur "feelings", that's ridiculous. They set prices based on what people are willing to pay. Therefore, it's the buyers fault, by being willing to pay $60/game, that prices are this high.
While I agree that WebM is doomed already, I disagree with your generalized assertion that technically superiority is all that counts. Cost, for example, wins over technical superiority regularly.
This is mainly due to the fact that there is no "stable" Wikipedia -- things change so quickly that citing Wikipedia makes it very difficult for anyone to actually look up whatever you were citing. If there were "snapshots" that were widely distributed, say at the end of each year, one could simply cite those snapshots.
There are stable snapshots, and you don't have to wait for the end of the year to get them:
Go to the article you want
Click on "View History"
Click on the most recent date in the revisions list
There, you now have an URL to an immutable version of the article as it is when you read it. Even if the base article is edited afterwards, your link will never change.
Assuming you mean Motoral Mobility, that's owned by Google, which gives everyone "a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, transfer, and otherwise run, modify and propagate the contents of this implementation of VP8", that applies to any patent owned by Google, including future patents.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not saying the laws are right or wrong, I'm simply trying to find out how you think the games that you pirate and enjoy are going to be made if nobody pays for them? Is it "OK" because somebody else paid for it? So now one person can buy it and share with everybody else for free and that will somehow allow the continued development of these games? I won't say copyright is a perfect solution, but at least it's *a* solution.
I'm not opposed to paying, and I paid for almost all games I've played (except those that were free in the first place, of course).
Opposing copyright is not the same as opposing paying for stuff.
Your postal worker example is irrelevant. If the post office is replaced by technology, fine. If game developers are replaced by technology, fine. Problem is game developers aren't being replaced by technology and unlike the post office, video games are still in demand.
My point is that's irrelevant. Copyright violates essential human rights. You don't violate human rights because it's profitable.
Show me a system where free redistribution of a game is the norm that still allows the game developer to earn a wage.
That's already the reality on non-DRMed PC games; and in fact, the most successful games are also the most "pirated".
Or better yet, implement that system and make your own money hand over fist.
Fallacy. I never claimed they'd be more profitable.
Any guess as to why people aren't doing it already?
Because it's not more profitable. Which, to repeat, I never claimed it was.
The specific reason I'm replying to you is because you're equating piracy to gift-giving. Gift giving requires means once it's given, you don't have it anymore.
I disagree. "Gift" simply means giving without expecting reciprocity. And "giving" is used for non-material things, e.g. giving insight.
Piracy isn't though, and if it's rampant enough it will no longer be cost effective to develop in the first place.
You're contradicting yourself. You had accepted that "pirates" buy plenty, now "piracy" is suddenly inversely correlated with income?
The fact is that there's little evidence that rampant "piracy" means the product is not profitable: the best selling games and movies are also the most "pirated"; "piracy" of films has increased steadily, yet the MPAA has been having record profits, year after year.
Hence, society rightfully sees "sharing" as criminal behavior
Law sees "sharing" as criminal behavior. Society is much more divided: 34% are opposed to any kind of punishment, and even in the 52% who think punishment is due, 75% only support relatively small fines (less than $100) and most don't support disconnections or throttling.
And that's now: in younger people (18-29), 70% have committed copyright infringement, so we'll see in a few years how large is that support.
http://piracy.ssrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/AA-Research-Note-Infringement-and-Enforcement-November-2011.pdf
Under the assumption that few will buy but all will share
Flawed assumption. File sharers buy, a lot: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/21/study-finds-pirates-buy-more-music
More bad analogies. There's no inconsistency between supporting laws condemning people who distributed data obtained by illegal means and not support copyright. Your argument is absolutely flawed.
Sharing and buying are not incompatible:
As it currently stand the purchase once and give away free to everyone is not sustainable.
You're falling for the mental trap they've set up. That situation simply won't happen. People who share also pay: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/21/study-finds-pirates-buy-more-music
Hell, they buy it even before it's made: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure/
The "copyright or bankruptcy" dichotomy is simply false. Maybe there will be less money to go around, but that's all.
You know who will really suffer? People who sell shit and don't take refunds, because pirates try before they pay. But should we really give a crap about them?
But why would you steal, when you can just download it? ;)
Actually, there is a "bittorrent network": Mainline DHT. uTorrent, BitComet, Transmission, etc all use the same network (although apparently Vuze has its own).
No, the site is just unreliable. Which is fine for their purposes, I guess.
Hypocrisy my ass. If we're stuck with copyright anyway, why shouldn't we use it?
Nobody "took" anything. The content was bought and then shared.
Are you trying to convince us you're BadAnalogyGuy?
I don't want my DNA sequence being shared, therefore I won't sell it. People who don't want their content being distributed can do the same.
Copyright law has been twisted all sorts of ways, but this is the fundamental thing it is in place to prevent: allowing one person to take your work and broadly distribute it without your authorization.
And where I live 40 years ago people weren't legally entitled to criticize their government or leave the country. Laws aren't always right.
These things take time and money to make - not many people can do it out of the goodness of their hearts. Even game developers need to eat.
Two objections:
"Pirates" don't have to be entitled to anything. People are voluntarily sharing copies of the stuff with them - you don't need to be entitled to accept a gift.
The question is, why the fuck do some people feel entitled to tell others what they can or cannot do with their legally bought CDs/DVDs, computers and internet connections.
Actually, it's the other way around. Buyers, not pirates, are keeping the prices high.
Companies don't set prices by theur "feelings", that's ridiculous. They set prices based on what people are willing to pay. Therefore, it's the buyers fault, by being willing to pay $60/game, that prices are this high.
So if the MPEG-LA raised their royalties significantly, the H.264 would suddenly become worse than VP8 technically? That makes no sense.
While I agree that WebM is doomed already, I disagree with your generalized assertion that technically superiority is all that counts. Cost, for example, wins over technical superiority regularly.
How does that in any way invalidate what I wrote?
This is mainly due to the fact that there is no "stable" Wikipedia -- things change so quickly that citing Wikipedia makes it very difficult for anyone to actually look up whatever you were citing. If there were "snapshots" that were widely distributed, say at the end of each year, one could simply cite those snapshots.
There are stable snapshots, and you don't have to wait for the end of the year to get them:
There, you now have an URL to an immutable version of the article as it is when you read it. Even if the base article is edited afterwards, your link will never change.
And we shall return to the 90s, when each video website required a different codec.
What the FUD? You don't lose your WebM patent grant just because one of you customers decides to sue someone.
As it says right there, you only lose if the people suing is one of:
A costumer is none of those. There's no "timebomb", that's plain false.
you'll still have to sniff out which version to show
Just wanted to point out that this isn't true: they can just add two <source> elements and the browser will choose whatever it supports.
Assuming you mean Motoral Mobility, that's owned by Google, which gives everyone "a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, transfer, and otherwise run, modify and propagate the contents of this implementation of VP8", that applies to any patent owned by Google, including future patents.
So how exactly will they sue anyone?
No. WebM is technically worse than h.264. How much does that count is subjective.
I think that's a naive way of looking at Google; those are only unrelated businesses if you're looking at the frontend.
Google's core competencies are not search engine, ad delivery or music retailing expertize, they are:
All of Google's businesses are essentially an application of these core competencies to a certain domain.
Uh, five years ago Microsoft was the second biggest player in the video game consoles, with 24 million units sold.