so... let me get this straight. As technology advances and the percentage of US and western economic output that is digital goes up and up and up, we all benefit from a society that values IP at zero and allows widespread theft of our #1 economic output.
No... that makes zero sense. It might be great for china if we ignore IP law, but its shit for us.
I must disagree. It's VERY easy to distribute content samples or free content without using P2P. What's wrong with web hosting? And thanks to google, I can find almost anything, however cheap and crap the site may be. I'd argue that the laws HELP smaller artists more than big ones. I know I've benefited from the DMCA. I can't afford IP lawyers, but thanks to the DMCA I can still get pirated copies of my content removed simply with one fax or email, in the correct format. I bet that Sony could always bludgeon a website ripping them off into removing some content, but because they got the DMCA into law, I can leverage the work they did to get the same rights applied to my content too. Without the DMCA, a lot of the blatant pirate-havens like rapidshare would tell smaller content owners to fck off, whilst giving in to the big guys.
I know the slashdot consensus is that the DMCA sucks, but when your income depends on digital content, and the DMCA is the only way you can stop wholesale blatant re-distribution of your work, it's hard to see a bad side to it, as its intended to be used.
I agree with you in many ways. Getting noticed as a small time content creator is hard. I make indie PC games, and my biggest problem is getting people to my site, and trying the demos. Beyond that, its much easier. If I could get the traffic that games made by activision or EA get, I'd be doing well.
BUT
That doesn't mean piracy is not a problem for us. Piracy can be a BIG problem. Ask any software or game or music creator if all web traffic is worth the same for example. I know tons of game devs, and the consensus is that traffic from these sites:
slashdot digg boingboing
is virtually worthless. Or even undesirable, because you get bandwidth with no sales, due to the predominance of piracy amongst that crowd. In contrast getting general traffic from google, or from game review sites is WAY more attractive, because that audience is more supportive of IP, and happy to buy the product.
Yes, small content creators need publicity, but they need publicity among people who aren't just going to take the product for free. Frankly, given a choice between 100 hits from gamespot or 5,000 hits from here, I'll take the 100.
I know this will get modded down, but its just the facts. This is why so many slashdot-shown adverts are hardware, rather than software and games and TV shows etc which are massively popular with the/. crowd. Only a fool advertises to people who won't buy, regardless how much they like your product...
you decry the companies who made you aware of your favorite bands, and loaned them the money for recording studios etc as leeches, yet you get free music precisely because other, honest people make the recording possible by buying the music.
In other words, you are a leech.
Go on, mod me down, as everyone gets modded down for daring to give a fuck about content creators.
so who are you to declare that the deal signed between two consenting businesses (artist and record company) is unacceptable? The deals most supermarkets give to farmers are WAY worse that equiv music deals. (I have friends in both industries). So by that logic, you reckon its cool for me to go shoplift some fruit? After all, the same logic should apply right?
so not time to actually stop taking other peoples hard work for zero compensation?
You would rather spend half your life fucking around with encryption and darkents than open your wallet for once and pay the people who create the content you obviously want.
same old armchair economics about it all being the evil music businesses fault for charging too much. Sorry but that's bullshit.
You think that if people reduced the cost of music that people wouldn't dream up a new excuse for stealing it? First it was "the musics not available on-line" so they sold on-line then it was "the music cost too much" so they dropped prices to under $1 a track then it was "there is teh evil DRM" so they ditched the DRM
people like you and other/. readers still pirate 99% of their music. Face facts, you are just looking for excuses. if every album ever made was available tomorrow uncompressed DRM-free for $0.01c on itunes, people like the typical slashdot reader would STILL pirate, and STILL blame someone else for it.
How about admitting why you download copyrighted music. because you like leeching off other people, and you are too tight-assed to compensate musicians for a lifetime learning to play, sing and write songs.
sustained long durations. Google has a minimum bid because that is the cost of production for that ad
even if that's ture, the cost of production must be the same for every ad, and its way below $0.10. I know this because I sue adwords and pay an average below that, and sometimes the minimum bid is $0.02. If you have a helpful, targeted ad to a carefully selected range of keywords, the minimum bid is much lower. Google are trying to ensure the ads are relevant. With niches, thats easy. With huge keywords like "holiday "flash" "car" etc, it's going to be way higher, to ensure that only relevant ads are shown.
Sensible, Google probably would rather not show any ad, than ad which was likely to be considered irrelevant, even if earned them $.0001.
You don't need to feel bad. If you didn't enjoy a game, then you didn't enjoy it, regardless if its something made by satan or by the dalai llama, or what the budget was. games are meant to be fun.
I have to say that I feel that way about 99% of AAA games. Very few RTS game grip me like Company of heroes, and 99% of FPS games bore me to tears. I hardly ever even finish the demo, sometimes even the tutorial of AAA games.
With indie games, I'm not so bothered by this, because the investment is much lower. if I spend $20 on a game and it only entertains me for 1 or 2 evenings, that's not bad. That's the price of an old DVD, or a round of drinks. And of course sometimes you find a game like Lux that you can get hundreds of hours from.
Indie games don't need any sympathy or any special set of rules to thrive. What they need is publicity. If everyone who played AAA games even *tried* a few indie game demos, the scene would be much bigger.
Vista uses the disk the way it likes, I don't see why there is this expectation that they must design their O/S around this companies products. If this was music, this thread would be filled with people telling these guys to "stop bleating about your outdated business model!!111"
Apparently that doesn't apply here, ebcause it would prevent an opportunity to rant at Micro$oft and Vi$ta.
They aren't the only indie games around, just ones that got released (and submitted) this month. Games that don't look like those include:
Lux (http://sillysoft.net/lux/) Mount n Blade (http://www.taleworlds.com/) Mr Robot (http://www.moonpod.com) Cute Knight (http://www.hanakogames.com/knight.shtml) Master of Defense (http://www.master-of-defense.com/) Determinance (http://www.mode7games.com/) and my own games: Democracy (http://www.democracygame.com) and Rock Legend (http://www.rocklegendgame.com)
nope, the mindset of the posters is seriously broken. Apparently its wrong for people who work hard to create popular content to expect people who use it to pay for it, but its just fine to sit on your ass and consume the entire worlds output of creative works for fuck all. Something to do with 'sticking it to the man'. Exactly who the man is, is never mentioned, but presumably its 'everyone else'.
presumably the poster is someone who is a content creator. How is someone who actually PRODUCES content the thief and the leech? Whereas clearly the pirate is the one making a contribution to society... yeah right
if you don't like the terms of the game, don't buy it. Nobody forces you to buy video games. But of course, this is slashdot, you get modded a troll for sticking up for anyone who actually creates entertainment. the slashdot hive mind thinks it was born with a right to take everyone else work for free. Anyone pointing out how selfish this is is apparently *troll*. This is why nobody makes games aimed at this sort of gamer. Why bother?
why? Do you know who they are? where they are from? know the personally? You know who are current members of the groups, and what their motives are?
Personally I do not trust anonymous groups of coders on the internet who cannot be tracked down to run exes on my machine. If ubisoft format my hard drive, I have legal recourse against a known company. The same if my company trashes your machine. Your defence against some random group of kids on the internet is basically fuck all.
I'm surprised how much risk people expose their PC's to in order to avoid having a CD, or (more often) to get free games.
its always easier to break and destroy than to fix and create.
I'm sure there are some very talented people making nocd cracks. I wish those people would actually use their efforts to create good new games, rather than just encouraging games devs to spend yet more time and yet more money creating better stronger DRM. We are all very impressed with their l33t coding skills. Maybe now they could do something constructive with them?
independence comes later in life when you are older and wiser. Your parents have been there and done that, and know when you are heading for trouble before you do.
There are lots of traps out there in society for young, innocent, gullible kids. We all bemoan how easy it is for someone new to teh interwebs to get attacked with spam, malware, adware and viruses. The same is true for someone new to society in general. There are lots of scams and bad decision options out there.
my parents were pretty open, and it didn't stop me rebelling when I was 13. That's what kids do. I don't have kids of my own, but if I did, I'd want to keep an eye on what they were up to. Mainly because, as someone 20+ years older than them, I have more experience of life. I might know when they are getting into something bad when they don't realise it themselves.
They did nothing to the *land*. Its just a lump of rock and earth that has existed for millennia. Yet if I inherited it, its mine without doing anything at all. And regardless how I treat, mistreat or ignore thew land, it will still be mine in 80 years time, or my families in 200,500,10,000 years.
You need somewhere to live. You DON'T need music or movies. Why are people so upset about ownership of one and not the other?
if I buy the house outright, I don't pay them anything. If you want to not pay any time you make a copy of some music, buy the distribution rights. Im afraid they may cost you a million dollars rather than $5.99. But then, if you want a cheaper option on the house that's also available in the form of rent.
if you buy a license to use some IP, that's what you get. if you mistakenly think you bought distribution rights, you are wrong. if I rent a hotel room for a night, then try and sell the hotel or demolish it, I'd be in shit too, because I have just bought the rights to stay in the room, not the room itself.
Slashdot Mirror
so... let me get this straight. As technology advances and the percentage of US and western economic output that is digital goes up and up and up, we all benefit from a society that values IP at zero and allows widespread theft of our #1 economic output.
No... that makes zero sense. It might be great for china if we ignore IP law, but its shit for us.
great. And of course the slashdotters stick everyone else in the 'someone' category, whilst happily coasting through life leeching off them.
What a wonderful attitude.
I must disagree. It's VERY easy to distribute content samples or free content without using P2P. What's wrong with web hosting? And thanks to google, I can find almost anything, however cheap and crap the site may be.
I'd argue that the laws HELP smaller artists more than big ones. I know I've benefited from the DMCA. I can't afford IP lawyers, but thanks to the DMCA I can still get pirated copies of my content removed simply with one fax or email, in the correct format. I bet that Sony could always bludgeon a website ripping them off into removing some content, but because they got the DMCA into law, I can leverage the work they did to get the same rights applied to my content too. Without the DMCA, a lot of the blatant pirate-havens like rapidshare would tell smaller content owners to fck off, whilst giving in to the big guys.
I know the slashdot consensus is that the DMCA sucks, but when your income depends on digital content, and the DMCA is the only way you can stop wholesale blatant re-distribution of your work, it's hard to see a bad side to it, as its intended to be used.
I agree with you in many ways. Getting noticed as a small time content creator is hard. I make indie PC games, and my biggest problem is getting people to my site, and trying the demos. Beyond that, its much easier. If I could get the traffic that games made by activision or EA get, I'd be doing well.
BUT
That doesn't mean piracy is not a problem for us. Piracy can be a BIG problem. Ask any software or game or music creator if all web traffic is worth the same for example. I know tons of game devs, and the consensus is that traffic from these sites:
slashdot
digg
boingboing
is virtually worthless. Or even undesirable, because you get bandwidth with no sales, due to the predominance of piracy amongst that crowd. In contrast getting general traffic from google, or from game review sites is WAY more attractive, because that audience is more supportive of IP, and happy to buy the product.
Yes, small content creators need publicity, but they need publicity among people who aren't just going to take the product for free. Frankly, given a choice between 100 hits from gamespot or 5,000 hits from here, I'll take the 100.
I know this will get modded down, but its just the facts. This is why so many slashdot-shown adverts are hardware, rather than software and games and TV shows etc which are massively popular with the /. crowd. Only a fool advertises to people who won't buy, regardless how much they like your product...
you decry the companies who made you aware of your favorite bands, and loaned them the money for recording studios etc as leeches, yet you get free music precisely because other, honest people make the recording possible by buying the music.
In other words, you are a leech.
Go on, mod me down, as everyone gets modded down for daring to give a fuck about content creators.
so who are you to declare that the deal signed between two consenting businesses (artist and record company) is unacceptable?
The deals most supermarkets give to farmers are WAY worse that equiv music deals. (I have friends in both industries).
So by that logic, you reckon its cool for me to go shoplift some fruit? After all, the same logic should apply right?
so not time to actually stop taking other peoples hard work for zero compensation?
You would rather spend half your life fucking around with encryption and darkents than open your wallet for once and pay the people who create the content you obviously want.
How strange.
same old armchair economics about it all being the evil music businesses fault for charging too much.
Sorry but that's bullshit.
You think that if people reduced the cost of music that people wouldn't dream up a new excuse for stealing it? First it was
"the musics not available on-line"
so they sold on-line then it was
"the music cost too much"
so they dropped prices to under $1 a track then it was
"there is teh evil DRM"
so they ditched the DRM
people like you and other /. readers still pirate 99% of their music. Face facts, you are just looking for excuses. if every album ever made was available tomorrow uncompressed DRM-free for $0.01c on itunes, people like the typical slashdot reader would STILL pirate, and STILL blame someone else for it.
How about admitting why you download copyrighted music. because you like leeching off other people, and you are too tight-assed to compensate musicians for a lifetime learning to play, sing and write songs.
sustained long durations. Google has a minimum bid because that is the cost of production for that ad
even if that's ture, the cost of production must be the same for every ad, and its way below $0.10. I know this because I sue adwords and pay an average below that, and sometimes the minimum bid is $0.02. If you have a helpful, targeted ad to a carefully selected range of keywords, the minimum bid is much lower. Google are trying to ensure the ads are relevant. With niches, thats easy. With huge keywords like "holiday "flash" "car" etc, it's going to be way higher, to ensure that only relevant ads are shown.
Sensible, Google probably would rather not show any ad, than ad which was likely to be considered irrelevant, even if earned them $.0001.
You don't need to feel bad. If you didn't enjoy a game, then you didn't enjoy it, regardless if its something made by satan or by the dalai llama, or what the budget was. games are meant to be fun.
I have to say that I feel that way about 99% of AAA games. Very few RTS game grip me like Company of heroes, and 99% of FPS games bore me to tears. I hardly ever even finish the demo, sometimes even the tutorial of AAA games.
With indie games, I'm not so bothered by this, because the investment is much lower. if I spend $20 on a game and it only entertains me for 1 or 2 evenings, that's not bad. That's the price of an old DVD, or a round of drinks. And of course sometimes you find a game like Lux that you can get hundreds of hours from.
Indie games don't need any sympathy or any special set of rules to thrive. What they need is publicity. If everyone who played AAA games even *tried* a few indie game demos, the scene would be much bigger.
I assumed you were mega-rich by now and didn't need any additional p1mpage!
Vista uses the disk the way it likes, I don't see why there is this expectation that they must design their O/S around this companies products. If this was music, this thread would be filled with people telling these guys to "stop bleating about your outdated business model!!111"
Apparently that doesn't apply here, ebcause it would prevent an opportunity to rant at Micro$oft and Vi$ta.
not to mention that 222 votes is statistically irrelevant. Only a fool would base any business decision on such a woefully small sample size.
They aren't the only indie games around, just ones that got released (and submitted) this month.
Games that don't look like those include:
Lux (http://sillysoft.net/lux/)
Mount n Blade (http://www.taleworlds.com/)
Mr Robot (http://www.moonpod.com)
Cute Knight (http://www.hanakogames.com/knight.shtml)
Master of Defense (http://www.master-of-defense.com/)
Determinance (http://www.mode7games.com/)
and my own games:
Democracy (http://www.democracygame.com) and
Rock Legend (http://www.rocklegendgame.com)
nope, the mindset of the posters is seriously broken. Apparently its wrong for people who work hard to create popular content to expect people who use it to pay for it, but its just fine to sit on your ass and consume the entire worlds output of creative works for fuck all.
Something to do with 'sticking it to the man'.
Exactly who the man is, is never mentioned, but presumably its 'everyone else'.
presumably the poster is someone who is a content creator. How is someone who actually PRODUCES content the thief and the leech?
Whereas clearly the pirate is the one making a contribution to society... yeah right
if you don't like the terms of the game, don't buy it. Nobody forces you to buy video games. But of course, this is slashdot, you get modded a troll for sticking up for anyone who actually creates entertainment. the slashdot hive mind thinks it was born with a right to take everyone else work for free.
Anyone pointing out how selfish this is is apparently *troll*.
This is why nobody makes games aimed at this sort of gamer. Why bother?
Of course, I trust the group
why? Do you know who they are? where they are from? know the personally? You know who are current members of the groups, and what their motives are?
Personally I do not trust anonymous groups of coders on the internet who cannot be tracked down to run exes on my machine. If ubisoft format my hard drive, I have legal recourse against a known company. The same if my company trashes your machine. Your defence against some random group of kids on the internet is basically fuck all.
I'm surprised how much risk people expose their PC's to in order to avoid having a CD, or (more often) to get free games.
its always easier to break and destroy than to fix and create.
I'm sure there are some very talented people making nocd cracks. I wish those people would actually use their efforts to create good new games, rather than just encouraging games devs to spend yet more time and yet more money creating better stronger DRM.
We are all very impressed with their l33t coding skills. Maybe now they could do something constructive with them?
independence comes later in life when you are older and wiser. Your parents have been there and done that, and know when you are heading for trouble before you do.
There are lots of traps out there in society for young, innocent, gullible kids. We all bemoan how easy it is for someone new to teh interwebs to get attacked with spam, malware, adware and viruses. The same is true for someone new to society in general. There are lots of scams and bad decision options out there.
my parents were pretty open, and it didn't stop me rebelling when I was 13. That's what kids do.
I don't have kids of my own, but if I did, I'd want to keep an eye on what they were up to. Mainly because, as someone 20+ years older than them, I have more experience of life. I might know when they are getting into something bad when they don't realise it themselves.
grow up. not everything that happens in the world is orchestrated by TEH EVIL RIAAA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They did nothing to the *land*. Its just a lump of rock and earth that has existed for millennia. Yet if I inherited it, its mine without doing anything at all.
And regardless how I treat, mistreat or ignore thew land, it will still be mine in 80 years time, or my families in 200,500,10,000 years.
You need somewhere to live. You DON'T need music or movies. Why are people so upset about ownership of one and not the other?
if I buy the house outright, I don't pay them anything.
If you want to not pay any time you make a copy of some music, buy the distribution rights. Im afraid they may cost you a million dollars rather than $5.99. But then, if you want a cheaper option on the house that's also available in the form of rent.
if you buy a license to use some IP, that's what you get. if you mistakenly think you bought distribution rights, you are wrong. if I rent a hotel room for a night, then try and sell the hotel or demolish it, I'd be in shit too, because I have just bought the rights to stay in the room, not the room itself.
Do you see the difference?
wow. you called it propaganda and put it in BOLD. so I guess that makes it true.
Maybe you could try actually explaining why one type of property s valid and another isn't, rather than assuming bold typeface does that. It doesn't.