I actually think that it does prove it to be as harmful as they say, if not moreso, because I understand the economics of expansion packs.
Companies make quite a bit less on expansion packs than they do on original titles. The expectation is to sell at a lower price point, and usually, expansions only sell to about 40-60% of the original legal install base. (Check sales figures for Mechwarrior 3: Pirate's Moon and Quake III: Team Arena for textbook examples.)
Usually, expansions are released to either give the original title some extra legs while they develop a sequel (Age of Empires: Rise of Rome, Age II: The Conquerors), to correct shortcomings in the original title (Aliens vs. Predator Gold), or to bring in just a little bit of extra cash to fund other titles (All of the add-ons for "The Sims.")
So, to take your original hypothetical example, assuming the 150k copies sold to a best-case 60% of the total install-base, that means that there were 250,000 copies out there. If they only sold 100,000, that means that there were 150,000 pirated copies.
Assume $2 net per original, and $1 net per expansion. Without piracy, Blue Byte would have netted $650k. With piracy, Blue Byte netted $350k.
The information I mentioned was publicly posted by the founder of Blue Byte about four months after the mission pack was released.
And true, right now, SafeDisc is easily defeated. However, the original version was unlike anything that had been seen before. It took seven months before a pirated copy appeared on the network.
And as far as casual copiers/game traders, there is major loss there. These are people that WOULD have purchased the title if they couldn't easily get the original. That is what this stat shows.
One of the most common justifications of software piracy is that it doesn't hurt the publisher or the creator. However, there are documented cases of it doing just that.
Blue Byte released an amazing game called "Incubation: Time Is Running Out," which sold moderately well...but not enough to cover their original expenditure on the product. They then released an expansion pack, "Incubation: The Wilderness Missions," which was the first product ever to use SafeDisc. The mission pack outsold the original game by 1.5x.
How can you justify piracy when so few titles break even on their development costs?
I understand that...I was merely trying to answer his direct question, not the unsaid comment that lurked beneath.
I also understand that with current P2P clients, it is nearly impossible to limit your traffic to a local network without a consistent configuration among ALL clients on the local network. If even a single client on the local network is allowed to connect to the outside world, the rest of the P2P local network is opened as well.
These clients do chew up a lot of bandwidth. I wonder if any universities have done the same studies that some ISP's recently did.
The university most likely does not pay for traffic inside of its own network unless they pay a local provider for the infrastructure.
As long as the traffic remains completely within their network, they only pay with a decrease in overall network performance, not in pennies. The moment it leaves their network, however, THAT is when the financial charges come.
Slashdot is celebrating that C# Programming isn't going to be taught, and yet nothing is said about Java Programming now being a required CS course in several universities.
Whatever happened to keeping politics of all sorts out of school curriculum? I guess that went out the door when a Women's Studies course was instated at my local university, but a Men's Studies course was removed because it wasn't "politically correct."
Oh, well. It could be worse. This could degenerate into some sort of Bourne Shell vs. Bourne Again Shell argument.
To take your analogy to the next logical step, the WinBoat (the massively hole-riddled boat) has a crew which is now admitting that they are leaky and working to fix it, and the LinBoat (the less hole-riddled boat) has a crew which constantly professes that they have no holes because if they did have holes, someone on their crew could see them and fix them, even though the number of people who are actually fixing the holes is very small compared to the crew.
Analogies can be used for good or evil. It's usually better to just say what you mean straight out, rather than couch yourself in a comfortable metaphor.
Sorry, but I'm not an editor. I read the article and submitted it, and while I was submitting it, a similar article appeared on the Apache sub-section.
I am glad that they used my submission without censorship, though.
One person farther down says that if something like this had been reported about Windows, it would have been Bill's fault, but when something happens on Linux, it's the sysadmin's fault. Personally, I think both are the sysadmin's fault. Nine times out of ten, patches are available for software shortly after the worm is first out there. If a sysadmin keeps up on his/her patches, the likelihood of infection/damage is very low.
Personally, I'd be very happy if/. would stop attacking Microsoft and start attacking the people who make the actual attacks. However, the likelihood of that happening is slim to nil, I'm afraid.
Region locking encrypts certain blocks on your DVD, as well as requires that the drive authenticate with the media, hence the copy protection. Given staggered theater and DVD release dates, I can see the reasoning behind the region locks, even if I don't agree with them. Region 0 DVD's (such as the original release of "Monty Python's The Life Of Brian") don't have any encryption, but do have Macrovision protection enabled.
The Macrovision stuff is simply a bit flipped in the DVD header. Macrovision protection is integrated into the hardware with DVD's, not the media like with VHS tapes, and is required to be supported in order to qualify for the "DVD Video" logo.
To test this, download SmartRipper and rip a DVD (or a single chapter) to your hard drive twice: first with the Macrovision bit set, second with the Macrovision bit cleared. Play them back using a hardware DVD decoder and try to tape them. After verifying the Macrovision protection works/doesn't work appropriately, do a diff to see exactly how the files changed. You might be surprised.
And to respond to your final comment, one of my primary job duties is copy protecting software. While I may be philosopically opposed to it (as are most people in this industry), I recognize the need for it, and act as such.
The only catch to that is that while copy protection does hurt the honest, it also is a major help to those that do copy protect.
The best example that I can give is from the PC realm. Blue Byte Software released an amazing turn-based strategy game called "Incubation: Time Is Running Out." There was no copy protection on the game, and it sold decently enough to warrant an expansion pack, "Incubation: The Wilderness Missions."
The expansion pack was one of the first titles to use SafeDisc, and as a result, the expansion pack outsold the original game by 1.5x.
I understand the need for copy protection on PC titles from a sales standpoint: most PC titles sell less than 100k units. While I don't condone it, I also understand the need for region locks on DVD's and the reasoning behind the copy protection.
However, my issue is with what is being stated. The copying itself should not be attacked...the distribution is what should be attacked.
I use Xmpeg 4.5 to convert my region-free DVD's to a temporary AVI file at 640x480 using the MS MPEG-4 V3 codec at 6000 kbps, default quality. That creates a temporary file that's usually between 1.1Gb and 1.7Gb. Then, I use Windows Media Encoder 7.1 to convert the AVI file into a WMV file using a custom profile I created and tweaked, which creates a movie file that's just under 700Mb for a 2-hour flick.
By not copying my region-encoded DVD's, I don't need to worry about the DMCA, as I'm not breaking any encryption. However, if someone wanted to rip their region-encoded DVD's and didn't care about the DMCA, they could use any of the DVD rippers out there.
A quote:
"The Rio merely makes copies in order to render portable, or 'space-shift,' those files that already reside on a user's hard drive." In its reasoning, the court stated that this type of format conversion falls within the personal use right of consumers to make analog or digital recordings of copyrighted music for private, noncommercial use. According to the ruling, "Such copying is paradigmatic noncommercial personal use entirely consistent with the purposes of the Act."
So again, my question: what is so fundamentally different between DVD's and CD's that I can space-shift one legally, but not the other?
My question is this: there is nothing legally wrong with space-shifting my CD collection, so what is legally wrong with space-shifting my DVD collection?
I copy my CD's to MP3 format and take those into work so that I won't have my CD's stolen. I do the same with my DVD's, except I convert them to Windows Media 8 format.
As long as you own a copy of the video in question, aren't you basically doing what is already legal to do with CD's? (Aside from the whole DMCA riff, which is OK, because I have several region-free DVD's.)
I'm not talking about distributing those copies. That is, of course, illegal as hell. I'm talking about using a copy of your own item for personal use.
Benjamin Franklin, inventor of the musical warp core.
Actually, I found it fascinating that people can and will find any means to musically express themselves. Enya has transformed her vocal cords into an instrument, Blue Man Group has turned PVC pipe into tunes, and Franklin used a combination of science and artistry to transform glass into music.
Those in the know about any subject almost always think those who are not in the know are complete idiots.
When you are supporting something, you become a genre expert, and as such, have a domain of knowledge about the product that few outside of tech support could hope to attain.
Besides, when you've worked tech support, you only remember the bad calls, never the good ones.
The UOP [user operation] is prohibited during the PGC [program chain].
The DVD specs require a DVD player to check for user operation blocking.
The disk specifications are available, but exact verbage is under NDA. The requirement I referred to is what is required by the DVD FLLC if you are to put the DVD logo on your disk. If you don't mind spending a few thousand smackers, you can get the specification I'm talking about from http://www.dvdfllc.co.jp/.
If you buy a house, you get the house. If you want the blueprints to your house, they usually cost extra. You usually have to pay either the architect or the city planner for a copy. Having the blueprints allows you to build something with the same functionality, but having the blueprints isn't the same as having the functionality. You have to do something with the blueprints to make them useful.
And as you said...the functionality is already in Windows, and exposed through interfaces. If you are on Windows and just want to use the interfaces without knowing about the plumbing, you still can...just like you can use your front door without a schematic of the lock.
In all honesty, I agree with you. It could be that simple. Unfortunately, we've seen too many instances where minor variances from the standard have rendered disks completely unusable by certain players (Snow White and The Matrix are very good examples - both use slight tweaks of certain DVD instructions, and as a result, both have problems playing in certain players).
It's even worse now that some region-coded disks are querying the box as to which region they are in, and if they are reporting region 0 (unlocked boxes), they're refusing to play.
As I said, everything has consequences...usually unintended.
Unfortunately, there are licensing issues involved here on the media side.
The DVDCCA license states that for region-coded disks, there must be one track that cannot be skipped. Most DVD publishers use that track for "required" legal verbage. Some place this chapter at the end of a movie, and use it to display the DVD authoring houses information. Some, like Disney, used it for advertising, and got quite a PR backlash for it. Newer Disney DVD's still have the ads, but have it as a seperate chapter so that you can skip them.
That information about which track is which is stored as a script file on the DVD. The players simply read and execute that script.
While it would be possible to do something like that (code something to skip required tracks), that same hack would break several of the fancier menu systems (Harry Potter extended DVD, etc.)
Just remember that changes always have consequences you may not be aware of. (The tester's motto)
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Companies make quite a bit less on expansion packs than they do on original titles. The expectation is to sell at a lower price point, and usually, expansions only sell to about 40-60% of the original legal install base. (Check sales figures for Mechwarrior 3: Pirate's Moon and Quake III: Team Arena for textbook examples.)
Usually, expansions are released to either give the original title some extra legs while they develop a sequel (Age of Empires: Rise of Rome, Age II: The Conquerors), to correct shortcomings in the original title (Aliens vs. Predator Gold), or to bring in just a little bit of extra cash to fund other titles (All of the add-ons for "The Sims.")
So, to take your original hypothetical example, assuming the 150k copies sold to a best-case 60% of the total install-base, that means that there were 250,000 copies out there. If they only sold 100,000, that means that there were 150,000 pirated copies.
Assume $2 net per original, and $1 net per expansion. Without piracy, Blue Byte would have netted $650k. With piracy, Blue Byte netted $350k.
And true, right now, SafeDisc is easily defeated. However, the original version was unlike anything that had been seen before. It took seven months before a pirated copy appeared on the network.
And as far as casual copiers/game traders, there is major loss there. These are people that WOULD have purchased the title if they couldn't easily get the original. That is what this stat shows.
Blue Byte released an amazing game called "Incubation: Time Is Running Out," which sold moderately well...but not enough to cover their original expenditure on the product. They then released an expansion pack, "Incubation: The Wilderness Missions," which was the first product ever to use SafeDisc. The mission pack outsold the original game by 1.5x.
How can you justify piracy when so few titles break even on their development costs?
Interesting viewpoint. I was always under the impression that Pascal was designed as a language to teach computer programming fundamentals.
I also understand that with current P2P clients, it is nearly impossible to limit your traffic to a local network without a consistent configuration among ALL clients on the local network. If even a single client on the local network is allowed to connect to the outside world, the rest of the P2P local network is opened as well.
These clients do chew up a lot of bandwidth. I wonder if any universities have done the same studies that some ISP's recently did.
As long as the traffic remains completely within their network, they only pay with a decrease in overall network performance, not in pennies. The moment it leaves their network, however, THAT is when the financial charges come.
If you're going to do it, use a dial-up account with your own ISP, because we can't afford all of the bandwidth.
Plant apple seed in ground.
Add water and fertilizer at regular intervals.
Remove weeds at regular intervals.
Eventually, you'll have an Apple.
Nothing wrong with being a Jedi unless you're Australian! [grin]
Whatever happened to keeping politics of all sorts out of school curriculum? I guess that went out the door when a Women's Studies course was instated at my local university, but a Men's Studies course was removed because it wasn't "politically correct."
Oh, well. It could be worse. This could degenerate into some sort of Bourne Shell vs. Bourne Again Shell argument.
While there may be a double-standard in the minds of many /.'ers, I hope that you don't think that my post helped it along.
Analogies can be used for good or evil. It's usually better to just say what you mean straight out, rather than couch yourself in a comfortable metaphor.
I am glad that they used my submission without censorship, though.
One person farther down says that if something like this had been reported about Windows, it would have been Bill's fault, but when something happens on Linux, it's the sysadmin's fault. Personally, I think both are the sysadmin's fault. Nine times out of ten, patches are available for software shortly after the worm is first out there. If a sysadmin keeps up on his/her patches, the likelihood of infection/damage is very low.
Personally, I'd be very happy if /. would stop attacking Microsoft and start attacking the people who make the actual attacks. However, the likelihood of that happening is slim to nil, I'm afraid.
Region locking encrypts certain blocks on your DVD, as well as requires that the drive authenticate with the media, hence the copy protection. Given staggered theater and DVD release dates, I can see the reasoning behind the region locks, even if I don't agree with them. Region 0 DVD's (such as the original release of "Monty Python's The Life Of Brian") don't have any encryption, but do have Macrovision protection enabled.
The Macrovision stuff is simply a bit flipped in the DVD header. Macrovision protection is integrated into the hardware with DVD's, not the media like with VHS tapes, and is required to be supported in order to qualify for the "DVD Video" logo.
To test this, download SmartRipper and rip a DVD (or a single chapter) to your hard drive twice: first with the Macrovision bit set, second with the Macrovision bit cleared. Play them back using a hardware DVD decoder and try to tape them. After verifying the Macrovision protection works/doesn't work appropriately, do a diff to see exactly how the files changed. You might be surprised.
And to respond to your final comment, one of my primary job duties is copy protecting software. While I may be philosopically opposed to it (as are most people in this industry), I recognize the need for it, and act as such.
The only catch to that is that while copy protection does hurt the honest, it also is a major help to those that do copy protect.
The best example that I can give is from the PC realm. Blue Byte Software released an amazing turn-based strategy game called "Incubation: Time Is Running Out." There was no copy protection on the game, and it sold decently enough to warrant an expansion pack, "Incubation: The Wilderness Missions."
The expansion pack was one of the first titles to use SafeDisc, and as a result, the expansion pack outsold the original game by 1.5x.
I understand the need for copy protection on PC titles from a sales standpoint: most PC titles sell less than 100k units. While I don't condone it, I also understand the need for region locks on DVD's and the reasoning behind the copy protection.
However, my issue is with what is being stated. The copying itself should not be attacked...the distribution is what should be attacked.
I use Xmpeg 4.5 to convert my region-free DVD's to a temporary AVI file at 640x480 using the MS MPEG-4 V3 codec at 6000 kbps, default quality. That creates a temporary file that's usually between 1.1Gb and 1.7Gb. Then, I use Windows Media Encoder 7.1 to convert the AVI file into a WMV file using a custom profile I created and tweaked, which creates a movie file that's just under 700Mb for a 2-hour flick.
By not copying my region-encoded DVD's, I don't need to worry about the DMCA, as I'm not breaking any encryption. However, if someone wanted to rip their region-encoded DVD's and didn't care about the DMCA, they could use any of the DVD rippers out there.
A quote:
"The Rio merely makes copies in order to render portable, or 'space-shift,' those files that already reside on a user's hard drive." In its reasoning, the court stated that this type of format conversion falls within the personal use right of consumers to make analog or digital recordings of copyrighted music for private, noncommercial use. According to the ruling, "Such copying is paradigmatic noncommercial personal use entirely consistent with the purposes of the Act."
So again, my question: what is so fundamentally different between DVD's and CD's that I can space-shift one legally, but not the other?
My question is this: there is nothing legally wrong with space-shifting my CD collection, so what is legally wrong with space-shifting my DVD collection?
I copy my CD's to MP3 format and take those into work so that I won't have my CD's stolen. I do the same with my DVD's, except I convert them to Windows Media 8 format.
As long as you own a copy of the video in question, aren't you basically doing what is already legal to do with CD's? (Aside from the whole DMCA riff, which is OK, because I have several region-free DVD's.)
I'm not talking about distributing those copies. That is, of course, illegal as hell. I'm talking about using a copy of your own item for personal use.
Actually, I found it fascinating that people can and will find any means to musically express themselves. Enya has transformed her vocal cords into an instrument, Blue Man Group has turned PVC pipe into tunes, and Franklin used a combination of science and artistry to transform glass into music.
What next? "Tubular Waterfalls?"
When you are supporting something, you become a genre expert, and as such, have a domain of knowledge about the product that few outside of tech support could hope to attain.
Besides, when you've worked tech support, you only remember the bad calls, never the good ones.
The UOP [user operation] is prohibited during the PGC [program chain].
The DVD specs require a DVD player to check for user operation blocking.
The disk specifications are available, but exact verbage is under NDA. The requirement I referred to is what is required by the DVD FLLC if you are to put the DVD logo on your disk. If you don't mind spending a few thousand smackers, you can get the specification I'm talking about from http://www.dvdfllc.co.jp/.
And as you said...the functionality is already in Windows, and exposed through interfaces. If you are on Windows and just want to use the interfaces without knowing about the plumbing, you still can...just like you can use your front door without a schematic of the lock.
It's even worse now that some region-coded disks are querying the box as to which region they are in, and if they are reporting region 0 (unlocked boxes), they're refusing to play.
As I said, everything has consequences...usually unintended.
The DVDCCA license states that for region-coded disks, there must be one track that cannot be skipped. Most DVD publishers use that track for "required" legal verbage. Some place this chapter at the end of a movie, and use it to display the DVD authoring houses information. Some, like Disney, used it for advertising, and got quite a PR backlash for it. Newer Disney DVD's still have the ads, but have it as a seperate chapter so that you can skip them.
That information about which track is which is stored as a script file on the DVD. The players simply read and execute that script.
While it would be possible to do something like that (code something to skip required tracks), that same hack would break several of the fancier menu systems (Harry Potter extended DVD, etc.)
Just remember that changes always have consequences you may not be aware of. (The tester's motto)