To be honest I think that Chrome OS is the closest thing to what people want that I've seen. The world just isn't ready for it yet because the web apps aren't there. Most consumers just want the web.
That's true, but lets be completely frank about this. The iPad is a threat to open computing which in turn is a threat to open markets.
IMHO in the future there will be a cross-platform app standard that any device capable must support or be banned from sale.
Consider if Apple disallowed certain websites (not including Flash) from their iPad and iPhone. They would most certainly be in trouble for anticompetitive practices. They are already doing this with applications.
I know I'm just feeding the troll. I really don't want to do this.
I didn't lump them into one group. I didn't say they had the same motives. Forbid me for using generalized terms! And it's still irrelevant.
In my linked article he stated that the number of people who couldn't pay for one reason or another was so low that he made contributions on their behalf. Even if people didn't have access to the payment system they could have emailed and arranged something. But most these pirates failed to even do that.
Piracy will happen no matter what, this proved it. However, this also proved that there are ways to reduce the piracy rate, none of which involved directly combating piracy. Considering the low rate of piracy here compared to other games, it shows that not worrying about piracy is BENEFICIAL. If you can't see this, then you're completely closed minded and assume that every one who pirates something, only does so because they want something for free and would definitely buy things they couldn't pirate. Perhaps you're a fan of 1 download = 1 lost sale? Try again.
It doesn't take an accountant to figure out that lowering the price of something makes people less likely to steal it. These methods lowered piracy but they did so only by throwing profitibility out the window. This was a charity but the point is to fight piracy and remain profitable. This is not the case here.
What money? For all you know, every person who pirated it would not have paid thus the developers and charities would have made no extra money. Again, you're lumping every pirate together in as one group.
There is value in IP. Money is usually exchanged for that value. The fact that people who pirated it would not have paid is irrelevant. Again, even if pirates decided to pay it was at the expense of profits.
It proves several things. It proves that even though pirates claim they pirate because of DRM, low quality, or low value products, they will still pirate even when those needs are met. It also proves that pirates are so petty that even 1 cent is too much for them. Even when that money would go to charity.
I agree that paying customers shouldn't be screwed by DRM. I don't see how this proves that piracy isn't worth worrying about. I'm sure that those developers and/or charities could have used that money.
I like that analogy. It's actually the first one I think I've heard that people can really make sense of. Plus the person's property technically can't be destroyed in the case of copyright infringement. Unless it gets to the point of slander (who knows, could happen).
It's not about making money off the use of the property. It's about getting value from property where payment for that value is expected. I do believe that when we get into the case of copyright infringement the misuse of the term "thief" is really just semantics. Someone took something where payment was expected. A thief happens to walk off with the actual goods while an infringer replicates them.
I agree that digital wares are not the same as physical. But piracy still has an impact. If I'm selling artwork and somebody replicates it without my permission, that's still someone benefiting from my work without my benefit.
OK. I admit it. This time I didn't read all of your post. You love to hone on the fact that I used "DRM" in my original post when this isn't what it's about. The parent said that piracy was meaningless. I was simply telling them that it is not meaningless because when piracy happens people are using your work without paying/authorization/whatever. Am I wrong?
It's nice to see a calm response from you after you trolling so much.
Seeds, cracks, it's all facts.
I'm making an assumption. You are also making an assumption. We know the crack is out there. You are making the assumption that nobody used it to pirate your software. Or you are making the assumption that it has been used to pirate your software and you don't care. Boy would I hate to be your shareholder.
Lost sales aren't the only thing that matter to some people. Unauthorized use may matter whether or not sales have been lost. The facts are good enough indicators of unauthorized use.
That is not at all what I'm saying or have said. I guess I'll have to repeat it... again. I have no actual proof any piracy has happened.
I did read your post. If cracks, seeds, and other records aren't enough to prove that piracy has happened then I don't know what is. Your inability to find that piracy has happened because of these facts is both naive and irrelevant. People are using your software without being authorized to. I don't care if they are lost sales or not. I'm just saying what's obvious.
Eat lunch by yourself so that you won't be obligated to reveal personal information.
You can be a loner if you want. But when it comes down to it you want someone to vouch for you if you're on the chopping block.
Where I work right now it was pretty hard to get in with the already tightly knit group. It didn't help that I sat away from my team and had unrelated work. But it's never too late to try and socialize. If they see that you're making an effort even if you appeared to be a snob before, they'll probably accept you. It can take some hard work but just keep on trying.
When you quote text and place your own after it you should try to respond directly to it. Otherwise it's just confusing. You don't make a good case for brevity either.
But the whole point is that piracy is costing me money, right?
That's what I'm getting at. You're OK with people using your software and not paying. Others are not.
Piracy is not meaningless. People are still using your product unlawfully.
So?
The way I see it, businesses don't make games because of a principle. They do so because you want to make money. And, annoying your customers with DRM might well make you less money.
Of course they make games to make money, I wasn't saying they make games on principle. I was saying they implement DRM on the principle that people should use their product only when authorized to.
Why don't you try hinging your livelihood on writing a book and then have people photocopy it instead of buying it? We'll see how you feel about piracy then.
Cory Doctorow seems to be doing fine. I bought a physical copy of the Mercurial book [red-bean.com], though it's all right there, in the link. With source available. I also paid for the games linked above.
Although you bought a copy not everyone will. Clearly Cory Doctorow has the ability to not get as much revenue from this product and still get by. It would be wonderful if this was the case for every content producer. Sadly it is not. Other content producers may be able to get by but still want to get revenue for every use of their product. Are you going to hold that against them? Are you OK with going into work and having your employer just decide not to pay you for the last X amount of hours you put in?
Piracy is not meaningless. People are still using your product unlawfully. They simply don't have the right to play a game that they are not authorized to.
Throughout most of video game history you are/were not able to return a game you did not like. This is called the "Open Your Mouth and Close Your Eyes" business model.
I don't see how this applies to what I said. I'm talking about people using a whole product and not paying for it. You're talking about using part of the product and taking it back.
Your software may happen to not get pirated enough to hurt your bottom line. There are probably many reasons that it isn't getting pirated very much. You noted that it isn't very popular and it fills a niche market. Those are some huge factors right there. You also seem to be OK with the fact that a crack has come out. Meaning that more likely than not there are lost sales and that there's money missing from your pockets.
But take products are popular and fill a large market. Look up Assassins Creed 2 and Call of Duty Modern Warefare 2 on thepiratebay.org. I can count over 3000 seeds alone. Look for music and you'll find much larger numbers. Companies see those numbers and count how much cash they would have gotten if those were sales -- why wouldn't you expect them to try? It's stupid not to.
Piracy is not meaningless. People are still using your product unlawfully. They simply don't have the right to play a game that they are not authorized to. I believe that game companies are implementing DRM not just to help their bottom line but also on principle.
You're right that most pirates wouldn't have bought the game anyway. But you can't deny that SOME sales are lost due to piracy.
Why don't you try hinging your livelihood on writing a book and then have people photocopy it instead of buying it? We'll see how you feel about piracy then.
I agree. Though I think services like Virtual Console are targeting people who have never played those classic titles, it's a shame that they won't give it to you for free if you own the original.
If the games are so bad then there's no reason to pirate them, let alone buy them. Or does a product being "low quality" give you the right to steal it?
Windowed interfaces have shown us that they can be useful. The problem is that they gave us these windows without a decent way to resize them. How often do you actually drag the side/corners of windows to resize them instead of just pressing the maximize button?
The second issue is that many apps don't resize very well and instead try to take over the entire display, or such a portion that it would crowd out other apps. Hell, even web browsers don't resize when their content only covers a half of your display. It's pretty ridiculous.
Smartphone OSes are claiming that you don't need more than one app showing at a time. This works for small devices, however as these OSes get ported to larger devices such as the iPhone and Android software on tablets, we quickly see that a windowed interface would provide more advantages.
So give us better control of our windows that snap to one another, give us apps that resize better, and give us an OS that can properly scale from windowed to windowless for larger and smaller displays. And keep the task-switching hotkeys for apps that don't conform. There's not much more to it than that.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh come on. Every email he sends out probably goes through 10 publicists before it goes out the door.
To be honest I think that Chrome OS is the closest thing to what people want that I've seen. The world just isn't ready for it yet because the web apps aren't there. Most consumers just want the web.
That's true, but lets be completely frank about this. The iPad is a threat to open computing which in turn is a threat to open markets.
IMHO in the future there will be a cross-platform app standard that any device capable must support or be banned from sale.
Consider if Apple disallowed certain websites (not including Flash) from their iPad and iPhone. They would most certainly be in trouble for anticompetitive practices. They are already doing this with applications.
Did you RTFA? He mentioned that it is a companion device many times.
I know I'm just feeding the troll. I really don't want to do this.
I didn't lump them into one group. I didn't say they had the same motives. Forbid me for using generalized terms! And it's still irrelevant.
In my linked article he stated that the number of people who couldn't pay for one reason or another was so low that he made contributions on their behalf. Even if people didn't have access to the payment system they could have emailed and arranged something. But most these pirates failed to even do that.
Piracy will happen no matter what, this proved it. However, this also proved that there are ways to reduce the piracy rate, none of which involved directly combating piracy. Considering the low rate of piracy here compared to other games, it shows that not worrying about piracy is BENEFICIAL. If you can't see this, then you're completely closed minded and assume that every one who pirates something, only does so because they want something for free and would definitely buy things they couldn't pirate. Perhaps you're a fan of 1 download = 1 lost sale? Try again.
It doesn't take an accountant to figure out that lowering the price of something makes people less likely to steal it. These methods lowered piracy but they did so only by throwing profitibility out the window. This was a charity but the point is to fight piracy and remain profitable. This is not the case here.
What money? For all you know, every person who pirated it would not have paid thus the developers and charities would have made no extra money. Again, you're lumping every pirate together in as one group.
There is value in IP. Money is usually exchanged for that value. The fact that people who pirated it would not have paid is irrelevant. Again, even if pirates decided to pay it was at the expense of profits.
First paragraph is completely irrelevant. Would you rather we call them copyright infringers?
Second paragraph doesn't say anything about why piracy shouldn't be worried about.
And the last paragraph fails to show that charities and developers couldn't have used that money.
It's all well and good that you can find justification for pirating but it still doesn't make it OK.
It proves several things. It proves that even though pirates claim they pirate because of DRM, low quality, or low value products, they will still pirate even when those needs are met. It also proves that pirates are so petty that even 1 cent is too much for them. Even when that money would go to charity.
I agree that paying customers shouldn't be screwed by DRM. I don't see how this proves that piracy isn't worth worrying about. I'm sure that those developers and/or charities could have used that money.
I like that analogy. It's actually the first one I think I've heard that people can really make sense of. Plus the person's property technically can't be destroyed in the case of copyright infringement. Unless it gets to the point of slander (who knows, could happen).
It's not about making money off the use of the property. It's about getting value from property where payment for that value is expected. I do believe that when we get into the case of copyright infringement the misuse of the term "thief" is really just semantics. Someone took something where payment was expected. A thief happens to walk off with the actual goods while an infringer replicates them.
Except that it still got pirated.
I agree that digital wares are not the same as physical. But piracy still has an impact. If I'm selling artwork and somebody replicates it without my permission, that's still someone benefiting from my work without my benefit.
Shop owner: Stop that thief! He just ran out of here with a $150 pair of shoes!
Police officer: Pfft. He wouldn't have paid for them anyway. We'll let him off this time.
OK. I admit it. This time I didn't read all of your post. You love to hone on the fact that I used "DRM" in my original post when this isn't what it's about. The parent said that piracy was meaningless. I was simply telling them that it is not meaningless because when piracy happens people are using your work without paying/authorization/whatever. Am I wrong?
It's nice to see a calm response from you after you trolling so much.
Seeds, cracks, it's all facts.
I'm making an assumption. You are also making an assumption. We know the crack is out there. You are making the assumption that nobody used it to pirate your software. Or you are making the assumption that it has been used to pirate your software and you don't care. Boy would I hate to be your shareholder.
Lost sales aren't the only thing that matter to some people. Unauthorized use may matter whether or not sales have been lost. The facts are good enough indicators of unauthorized use.
That is not at all what I'm saying or have said. I guess I'll have to repeat it... again. I have no actual proof any piracy has happened.
I did read your post. If cracks, seeds, and other records aren't enough to prove that piracy has happened then I don't know what is. Your inability to find that piracy has happened because of these facts is both naive and irrelevant. People are using your software without being authorized to. I don't care if they are lost sales or not. I'm just saying what's obvious.
Eat lunch by yourself so that you won't be obligated to reveal personal information.
You can be a loner if you want. But when it comes down to it you want someone to vouch for you if you're on the chopping block.
Where I work right now it was pretty hard to get in with the already tightly knit group. It didn't help that I sat away from my team and had unrelated work. But it's never too late to try and socialize. If they see that you're making an effort even if you appeared to be a snob before, they'll probably accept you. It can take some hard work but just keep on trying.
When you quote text and place your own after it you should try to respond directly to it. Otherwise it's just confusing. You don't make a good case for brevity either.
But the whole point is that piracy is costing me money, right?
That's what I'm getting at. You're OK with people using your software and not paying. Others are not.
My current job is what it is in large part because it involves working with and contributing to open source software.
I'm going to guess that you get paid for your job.
Don't get into semantics here about the principle thing. You're taking it way too far.
Piracy is not meaningless. People are still using your product unlawfully.
So? The way I see it, businesses don't make games because of a principle. They do so because you want to make money. And, annoying your customers with DRM might well make you less money.
Of course they make games to make money, I wasn't saying they make games on principle. I was saying they implement DRM on the principle that people should use their product only when authorized to.
Why don't you try hinging your livelihood on writing a book and then have people photocopy it instead of buying it? We'll see how you feel about piracy then.
Cory Doctorow seems to be doing fine. I bought a physical copy of the Mercurial book [red-bean.com], though it's all right there, in the link. With source available. I also paid for the games linked above.
Although you bought a copy not everyone will. Clearly Cory Doctorow has the ability to not get as much revenue from this product and still get by. It would be wonderful if this was the case for every content producer. Sadly it is not. Other content producers may be able to get by but still want to get revenue for every use of their product. Are you going to hold that against them? Are you OK with going into work and having your employer just decide not to pay you for the last X amount of hours you put in?
Piracy is not meaningless. People are still using your product unlawfully. They simply don't have the right to play a game that they are not authorized to.
Throughout most of video game history you are/were not able to return a game you did not like. This is called the "Open Your Mouth and Close Your Eyes" business model.
I don't see how this applies to what I said. I'm talking about people using a whole product and not paying for it. You're talking about using part of the product and taking it back.
Your software may happen to not get pirated enough to hurt your bottom line. There are probably many reasons that it isn't getting pirated very much. You noted that it isn't very popular and it fills a niche market. Those are some huge factors right there. You also seem to be OK with the fact that a crack has come out. Meaning that more likely than not there are lost sales and that there's money missing from your pockets.
But take products are popular and fill a large market. Look up Assassins Creed 2 and Call of Duty Modern Warefare 2 on thepiratebay.org. I can count over 3000 seeds alone. Look for music and you'll find much larger numbers. Companies see those numbers and count how much cash they would have gotten if those were sales -- why wouldn't you expect them to try? It's stupid not to.
So true, so true.
Piracy is not meaningless. People are still using your product unlawfully. They simply don't have the right to play a game that they are not authorized to. I believe that game companies are implementing DRM not just to help their bottom line but also on principle.
You're right that most pirates wouldn't have bought the game anyway. But you can't deny that SOME sales are lost due to piracy.
Why don't you try hinging your livelihood on writing a book and then have people photocopy it instead of buying it? We'll see how you feel about piracy then.
I agree. Though I think services like Virtual Console are targeting people who have never played those classic titles, it's a shame that they won't give it to you for free if you own the original.
If the games are so bad then there's no reason to pirate them, let alone buy them. Or does a product being "low quality" give you the right to steal it?
Care to elaborate?
Windowed interfaces have shown us that they can be useful. The problem is that they gave us these windows without a decent way to resize them. How often do you actually drag the side/corners of windows to resize them instead of just pressing the maximize button?
The second issue is that many apps don't resize very well and instead try to take over the entire display, or such a portion that it would crowd out other apps. Hell, even web browsers don't resize when their content only covers a half of your display. It's pretty ridiculous.
Smartphone OSes are claiming that you don't need more than one app showing at a time. This works for small devices, however as these OSes get ported to larger devices such as the iPhone and Android software on tablets, we quickly see that a windowed interface would provide more advantages.
So give us better control of our windows that snap to one another, give us apps that resize better, and give us an OS that can properly scale from windowed to windowless for larger and smaller displays. And keep the task-switching hotkeys for apps that don't conform. There's not much more to it than that.