yes i do pay them in advance. someone who works in an office often has to pay for their education, but they still get a regular wage. The difference between me and the contractors is they get paid regardless of the sales of the product and I do not. I thought this was obvious, having stated it before. If I run a shop that sells food, I need criminal law to prop up my business model, else thugs will just smash my windows and take the food. I guess you object to that too? Most sane people think we need laws to enforce contracts between people who make stuff and people who buy it. Some people do not agree. They are, as I tire of saying, anarchists and communists.
hello anonymous coward. Why don't you download the explosion generator that I used for my early games that I made freely available to anyone with no license whatsoever:
"it's the idea that the rest of society should have their freedom restricted in order to subsidise your game development. State-granted monopolies are not a normal feature of capitalism."
do you really SERIOUSLY believe this?
I do not expect ANYONE to subsidise me. I invest my OWN money in my games, I don't take a penny in government subsidy, and I pay every penny of tax I owe. I risk my own ass to make new content. I do not demand money from anyone who does not want the product, and want it enough to purchase it. If you don't want my products, then my company will fail, and I deserve to go out of business. If I make a product people like, I deserve to do well, and will stay in business. This is called capitalism. There is NO subsidy involved. If you want to whine about subsidies, try talking to farmers and oil and auto company lobbyists. To suggest that preventing people taking luxury good like PC games from their creators without payment is somehow an evil government subsidy is just nonsense. What job do you do that is still viable if the consumer takes the product for free? laws are needed to ensure they do not do so. The only example I can think of is academia and state employees, which, ironically would make you a beneficiary of state subsidies.
The artists choose to work on contract for other people for a fixed price, just like most people work for a fixed wage. If my next game tanks, and makes a loss, everyone who worked for me gets paid. In short they are taking no risk whatsoever, in working for me. This is their choice, and my choice. Theres a chance that not only do I make no money, but I actually have to spend my saving to pay them for work that was unprofitable. They have zero risk. I am risking my own money to pay them, and to work without salary myself, because I believe in the project. This is capitalism. Some people prefer the security of a regular wage, some people prefer to speculate. It sounds like for some reason you object to this. You seem to imply that it is morally wrong for me to profit from my own speculation on my business. What would you prefer? that we all work for the state, and there are no entrepreneurs? That is called communism. I'm not having a go at communism, if thats what you believe, go for it, but don't pretend you can be a capitalist, yet opposed to rewarding capital investment, because thats an illogical position.
all US laws amount to that. But the DMCA means that if you knowingly do this, you are basically in a clear cut case of perjury and can have the book thrown at you. That's a good thing. The DMCA specifically reads the riot act to people who issue false claims.
Indeed. I stupidly wrote my own engine, rather than using a pre-made cross-platform one, and I'm used to it now. The games do slowly get ported to the mac at least.
don't get me wrong, using the DMCA to complain about people making backup copies, format shifting, using a song as a backing track in a youtube video, posting sheet music transcriptions you made yourself, re-printing song lyrics etc etc, is all totally and utterly mental, and I have no sympathy for companies that try to enforce that shit. In fact, they probably annoy me more than the average slashdotter, because as well as being evil and stupid, that sort of stuff paints all copyright holders to be assholes, and weakens the argument for a reasonable enforcement of copyright. The DMCA is not perfect, and it's abused. It also does some good stuff, and nobody mentions that.
A very passionate, and one sided view of the current situation. This is to be expected, because generally, you never hear the other side of the coin. The general 'internet view' is that copyright is evil, that the DMCA is only ever used by evil corporations owned by villains, and that the consumer is some mere innocent victim of evil corporate greed.
But this is *not* the whole story.
I'm a content creator. I make small downloadable PC games. Nothing big time or fancy, but it *just* pays the bills. Like anyone who produces content that can be representated digitally, I often encounter people pirating the stuff I make. When you work long hours for a year to make a game, and take your own cash and hire artists and other contractors to provide work for you, all 'on spec' hoping to one day make the investment back, finally produce some original content, and release it for sale (with a demo, a very liberal end user licence, and no intrusive DRM), and then you find some people deliberately copying the game and distributing it for free, you are NOT a happy man. Some of these people go out of their way to constantly reupload the pirated stuff, despite polite requests, and numerous attempts to get it removed. They actually go *out of their way* to try and wreck your business. Like everyone, I have to pay the bills. I'm not a big evil corporate entity. If my games sell well, I can afford a holiday, If they don't, I'm not going anywhere, and fingers crossed, I can still pay the rent. Quite a few small software devs are in a similar position. So how does the DMCA help? The DMCA means that if I find someone sharing illegal copies of stuff, there is a well-understood and documented procedure to get that stuff removed. I've issued a number of DMCA requests, and they have mostly been successful (Don't kid yourselves the piratebay give a rats ass about content providers). I'd wager the *vast* majority of people who complain about abuse of the DMCA have never actually seen what's involved in issuing a takedown. I have to provide my real address, phone number and email address, identify a *specific* file that breaches, AND state that I am claiming that it infringes, knowingly on threat of perjury if I am wrong. This generally has to have a proper signature and be sent by fax. No anonymous web forms here.
You do not issue a DMCA request as a small time author unless you are damned sure that there is a clear-cut case of copyright infringement. Without the DMCA, it would be harder for me to get pirated content removed, and harder for upload sites and ISPS to verify I am the legit copyright owner. The DMCA simplifies and organises this process. Have some big companies abused the DMCA? you bet they have. Does the fact that in a few cases the law has been abused and stretched to do bad stuff invalidate the whole basis of it? No way. The DMCA is absolutely necessary. People who file misleading DMCA takedowns should be prosecuted for it. And people who knowingly breach the DMCA by distributing other peoples work without permission deserve to be prosecuted too. I will get modded down and flamed to death here at slashdot for giving the other side of the story. Nobody ever sticks their head above the parapet and challenges the idea that the DMCA is bad, but I feel it needs to be said. Unless you are an anarchist / communist who believes copyright should be abolished, then you have to accept that we need a law that spells out the way in which copyright can be enforced. It's not perfect, no law is, but right now, the DMCA is that law, and it's better than nothing. Most reasonable people who find that they agree that 99% of DMCA takedowns are entirely justified. The media, especially at slashot and digg and boingboing focuses 100% on that tiny abusive majority.
I'm a game dev who uses a very out of date API for my games (DirectX 7). I do 2D turn based games, so there is zero incentive for me to use a newer API, which would mean rewriting engine code. The problem is not so much that newer cards screw up rendering of old games (although this *can* happen), but that no card driver seems to stick 100% to the directx standard. DirectX is HEAVEN for game devs, because in theory it means we can write to a single standard for the windows platform, and have our games work on any card. The problem is, there are so many minor quirks, differences and tweaks in the way each card implements the same directx calls, that in practice you will *always* encounter people who have rendering issues just on their PC. I wish ATI, intel (worst offenders) and nVdia would take more time to ensure that their cards actually come closer to the supplied reference rasterizer in terms of results. The entire point of directx is to allow devs to be free of individual card woes. shoddy drivers can undo all of that work.
says who? in the 'sane' USA, the state electrocutes people. to some of us in western Europe, that seems insane. should we consider the USA to be a fascist state? Have a little perspective yourself, not everyone agrees with you on what should be legal, and what should be illegal.
oh dear. if I sit down and program a new photo editing program, what fucking 'natural freedoms' am I denying you if I tell you that you cant have the fruits of my labour for free? To insist that you do is communism, you realise that right? What natural freedom do you have to get free Hollywood movies? grow up.
I see. you only want state-sponsored entertainment. Kiss goodbye to all video games except those that teach how government is just fantastic. State sponsored comedy should be pretty cutting edge too. people will throw away all kinds of valuable stuff, if it lets them justify stealing other peoples hard work.
wow you just dont get it do you kid? how does the writer of a piece of photo editing software compete with people offering photoshop, pirated for free? you think that adobe should drop the price to $0 to compete with the pirates? how do they get money to pay the developers? for fucks sake take off your anti-business anti-drm pro-piracy bullshit blinkers and think it through.
The basic problem (and it saddens me that people cannot clearly see this) is that people are not honest, EVEN WITH THEMSELVES when it comes to whether or not they would have bought something after they got it free. That's just the way our brains work. Nobody likes to consider themselves thieves. Even people burgling houses justify it to themselves as being 'only fair'.
The vast majority of people making software want to prevent theft of that software by using copy protection. the jury is not out, businesses every day make this call, and overwhelmingly choose copy protection. No surprise to see people who are not running a business trying to get stuff for free, but don't think that will change anything. Software developers need to eat.
BTW I did a degree in economics and run a business, I understand the concept of zero marginal cost. maybe you should look up fixed costs and explain how they are paid back when the product is stolen by everyone?
*sigh* Have you run a software business? If so, you will know that if its trivial to steal your product, people do it, and you end up flipping burgers for a living. The topic poster is trying to run a business, not some sideshow hobby. Businesses need revenue, and you only get that by taking steps to prevent people taking your product for free. its not complex. If you don't like the way capitalism works, feel free to move to n korea.
face facts, you think all software should be free and have fuck all respect for people who would make a business out of writing high quality software.
Businesses cannot function in the face of such retardedness, which is why they tend to make software that's not aimed at people like you, because you never pay for it. One day when you leave mommys basement and have to get a job you will realise that most people consider it reasonable to pay for the hard work of others.
So if the customers want the product for free, you work for nothing?
It isn't that simple. Customers want unreasonable things. I want every pizza I ordered to be free, delivered instantly by a dozen naked supermodels. But just because my local pizza company will not provide such a service does not mean a new company will materialize to do so.
throwing out glib comments you read on some web forum does not equate to actual business experience. You cannot pay employees or bills with glib expressions, only profits earned from PAYING customers.
how many profitable software companies have you run? because if you have not done so, you aren't in a position to say what will keep his business afloat. If you aren't a software biz owner, you are posting entirely from a 'what the customer wants' POV, which is generally "I want it all, free, with no inconvenience." Giving the customer what they want is important, earning enough money to pay the bills is even more important. If irritating 0.1% of your customers is what pays the rent, that's the choice you 8have* to make.
wow, what awesome insight. you sound like you are answering the question "what is the right price for my software?" to which the slashdot crowd will answer "Free!". You will not get a sensible answer here on slashdot, as this post above me clearly illustrates. there are far too many people in the "stick it to the man!, lets torrent everything!, all software should be free!, information wants to be free! MAFIAAAAA! is dinner ready yet mom?" crowd on here.
Yes, copy protection will annoy a small fraction of legit customers. Tough. That's the price of doing business. Do security guards irritate people in shops? does having to get a security tag taken off clothes at the till slow down the sale and irritate the end user? We get sued to a small amount of hassle in return for businesses preventing casual theft in the real world, the software world should be no different. I'd like to see most of the anti-DRM people on here try to extend your theories to the meatspace world. Try leaving the right money on the counter and walking out of a store next time you go shopping, after all, that guy at the till is just an irritating bit of theft prevention in this case isn't he?
As for this lunacy that you should make it free and charge for support, that gives you zero incentive to ship a bug-free product, and makes you a wage slave again rather than a creator of new products.
plus you can fill out a small claims form online.The sale of goods act is your friend. the product is clearly not fit for purpose, ro of merchantable quality.
something tells me thats bullshit. Can I buy TF2 on its own? thats what I want, and they are not selling it == unhappy customer. its not rocket science.
I want TF2. I either own the other games or do not want them for any price. Valve clearly wont let me do that. Does this make me a moaner? Would you buy World Of Warcraft if it only came in a package with Star Wars Galaxies and Guild Wars? This is an insane pricing strategy.
Slashdot Mirror
yes i do pay them in advance. someone who works in an office often has to pay for their education, but they still get a regular wage. The difference between me and the contractors is they get paid regardless of the sales of the product and I do not. I thought this was obvious, having stated it before.
If I run a shop that sells food, I need criminal law to prop up my business model, else thugs will just smash my windows and take the food. I guess you object to that too? Most sane people think we need laws to enforce contracts between people who make stuff and people who buy it. Some people do not agree. They are, as I tire of saying, anarchists and communists.
hello anonymous coward. Why don't you download the explosion generator that I used for my early games that I made freely available to anyone with no license whatsoever:
http://www.geocities.com/starlinesinc/
or perhaps you want the entire source code to my first game, freely available for anyone to learn from:
http://gpwiki.org/index.php/Files:AsteroidMinerSourceCode.zip
Maybe you should do some basic research before you launch into a diatribe against someone for their views on copyright?
"it's the idea that the rest of society should have their freedom restricted in order to subsidise your game development. State-granted monopolies are not a normal feature of capitalism."
do you really SERIOUSLY believe this?
I do not expect ANYONE to subsidise me. I invest my OWN money in my games, I don't take a penny in government subsidy, and I pay every penny of tax I owe. I risk my own ass to make new content. I do not demand money from anyone who does not want the product, and want it enough to purchase it. If you don't want my products, then my company will fail, and I deserve to go out of business. If I make a product people like, I deserve to do well, and will stay in business. This is called capitalism. There is NO subsidy involved. If you want to whine about subsidies, try talking to farmers and oil and auto company lobbyists. To suggest that preventing people taking luxury good like PC games from their creators without payment is somehow an evil government subsidy is just nonsense.
What job do you do that is still viable if the consumer takes the product for free? laws are needed to ensure they do not do so. The only example I can think of is academia and state employees, which, ironically would make you a beneficiary of state subsidies.
The artists choose to work on contract for other people for a fixed price, just like most people work for a fixed wage. If my next game tanks, and makes a loss, everyone who worked for me gets paid. In short they are taking no risk whatsoever, in working for me. This is their choice, and my choice. Theres a chance that not only do I make no money, but I actually have to spend my saving to pay them for work that was unprofitable. They have zero risk.
I am risking my own money to pay them, and to work without salary myself, because I believe in the project. This is capitalism. Some people prefer the security of a regular wage, some people prefer to speculate.
It sounds like for some reason you object to this. You seem to imply that it is morally wrong for me to profit from my own speculation on my business. What would you prefer? that we all work for the state, and there are no entrepreneurs? That is called communism. I'm not having a go at communism, if thats what you believe, go for it, but don't pretend you can be a capitalist, yet opposed to rewarding capital investment, because thats an illogical position.
all US laws amount to that. But the DMCA means that if you knowingly do this, you are basically in a clear cut case of perjury and can have the book thrown at you. That's a good thing. The DMCA specifically reads the riot act to people who issue false claims.
Indeed. I stupidly wrote my own engine, rather than using a pre-made cross-platform one, and I'm used to it now. The games do slowly get ported to the mac at least.
don't get me wrong, using the DMCA to complain about people making backup copies, format shifting, using a song as a backing track in a youtube video, posting sheet music transcriptions you made yourself, re-printing song lyrics etc etc, is all totally and utterly mental, and I have no sympathy for companies that try to enforce that shit. In fact, they probably annoy me more than the average slashdotter, because as well as being evil and stupid, that sort of stuff paints all copyright holders to be assholes, and weakens the argument for a reasonable enforcement of copyright.
The DMCA is not perfect, and it's abused. It also does some good stuff, and nobody mentions that.
A very passionate, and one sided view of the current situation. This is to be expected, because generally, you never hear the other side of the coin. The general 'internet view' is that copyright is evil, that the DMCA is only ever used by evil corporations owned by villains, and that the consumer is some mere innocent victim of evil corporate greed.
But this is *not* the whole story.
I'm a content creator. I make small downloadable PC games. Nothing big time or fancy, but it *just* pays the bills. Like anyone who produces content that can be representated digitally, I often encounter people pirating the stuff I make. When you work long hours for a year to make a game, and take your own cash and hire artists and other contractors to provide work for you, all 'on spec' hoping to one day make the investment back, finally produce some original content, and release it for sale (with a demo, a very liberal end user licence, and no intrusive DRM), and then you find some people deliberately copying the game and distributing it for free, you are NOT a happy man. Some of these people go out of their way to constantly reupload the pirated stuff, despite polite requests, and numerous attempts to get it removed. They actually go *out of their way* to try and wreck your business.
Like everyone, I have to pay the bills. I'm not a big evil corporate entity. If my games sell well, I can afford a holiday, If they don't, I'm not going anywhere, and fingers crossed, I can still pay the rent. Quite a few small software devs are in a similar position.
So how does the DMCA help?
The DMCA means that if I find someone sharing illegal copies of stuff, there is a well-understood and documented procedure to get that stuff removed. I've issued a number of DMCA requests, and they have mostly been successful (Don't kid yourselves the piratebay give a rats ass about content providers). I'd wager the *vast* majority of people who complain about abuse of the DMCA have never actually seen what's involved in issuing a takedown. I have to provide my real address, phone number and email address, identify a *specific* file that breaches, AND state that I am claiming that it infringes, knowingly on threat of perjury if I am wrong. This generally has to have a proper signature and be sent by fax. No anonymous web forms here.
You do not issue a DMCA request as a small time author unless you are damned sure that there is a clear-cut case of copyright infringement. Without the DMCA, it would be harder for me to get pirated content removed, and harder for upload sites and ISPS to verify I am the legit copyright owner. The DMCA simplifies and organises this process.
Have some big companies abused the DMCA? you bet they have. Does the fact that in a few cases the law has been abused and stretched to do bad stuff invalidate the whole basis of it? No way. The DMCA is absolutely necessary. People who file misleading DMCA takedowns should be prosecuted for it. And people who knowingly breach the DMCA by distributing other peoples work without permission deserve to be prosecuted too.
I will get modded down and flamed to death here at slashdot for giving the other side of the story. Nobody ever sticks their head above the parapet and challenges the idea that the DMCA is bad, but I feel it needs to be said. Unless you are an anarchist / communist who believes copyright should be abolished, then you have to accept that we need a law that spells out the way in which copyright can be enforced. It's not perfect, no law is, but right now, the DMCA is that law, and it's better than nothing. Most reasonable people who find that they agree that 99% of DMCA takedowns are entirely justified. The media, especially at slashot and digg and boingboing focuses 100% on that tiny abusive majority.
I'm a game dev who uses a very out of date API for my games (DirectX 7). I do 2D turn based games, so there is zero incentive for me to use a newer API, which would mean rewriting engine code.
The problem is not so much that newer cards screw up rendering of old games (although this *can* happen), but that no card driver seems to stick 100% to the directx standard. DirectX is HEAVEN for game devs, because in theory it means we can write to a single standard for the windows platform, and have our games work on any card.
The problem is, there are so many minor quirks, differences and tweaks in the way each card implements the same directx calls, that in practice you will *always* encounter people who have rendering issues just on their PC. I wish ATI, intel (worst offenders) and nVdia would take more time to ensure that their cards actually come closer to the supplied reference rasterizer in terms of results. The entire point of directx is to allow devs to be free of individual card woes. shoddy drivers can undo all of that work.
says who? in the 'sane' USA, the state electrocutes people. to some of us in western Europe, that seems insane. should we consider the USA to be a fascist state?
Have a little perspective yourself, not everyone agrees with you on what should be legal, and what should be illegal.
you know nothing about communism, i have read marx and engels work, i can assure you my definition stands. you have reading to do.
oh dear.
if I sit down and program a new photo editing program, what fucking 'natural freedoms' am I denying you if I tell you that you cant have the fruits of my labour for free? To insist that you do is communism, you realise that right?
What natural freedom do you have to get free Hollywood movies?
grow up.
I see. you only want state-sponsored entertainment. Kiss goodbye to all video games except those that teach how government is just fantastic. State sponsored comedy should be pretty cutting edge too.
people will throw away all kinds of valuable stuff, if it lets them justify stealing other peoples hard work.
what percentage of torrents and emule downloads are highly desirable educational textbooks as compared to Hollywood movies, photoshop, games and porn?
I'm guessing a 500:1 ratio myself. Clutching at straws to defend copyright infringement? this must be slashdot.
wow you just dont get it do you kid? how does the writer of a piece of photo editing software compete with people offering photoshop, pirated for free? you think that adobe should drop the price to $0 to compete with the pirates? how do they get money to pay the developers? for fucks sake take off your anti-business anti-drm pro-piracy bullshit blinkers and think it through.
The basic problem (and it saddens me that people cannot clearly see this) is that people are not honest, EVEN WITH THEMSELVES when it comes to whether or not they would have bought something after they got it free. That's just the way our brains work. Nobody likes to consider themselves thieves. Even people burgling houses justify it to themselves as being 'only fair'.
The vast majority of people making software want to prevent theft of that software by using copy protection. the jury is not out, businesses every day make this call, and overwhelmingly choose copy protection. No surprise to see people who are not running a business trying to get stuff for free, but don't think that will change anything. Software developers need to eat.
BTW I did a degree in economics and run a business, I understand the concept of zero marginal cost. maybe you should look up fixed costs and explain how they are paid back when the product is stolen by everyone?
*sigh*
Have you run a software business? If so, you will know that if its trivial to steal your product, people do it, and you end up flipping burgers for a living. The topic poster is trying to run a business, not some sideshow hobby. Businesses need revenue, and you only get that by taking steps to prevent people taking your product for free. its not complex. If you don't like the way capitalism works, feel free to move to n korea.
oh dear, you again.
face facts, you think all software should be free and have fuck all respect for people who would make a business out of writing high quality software.
Businesses cannot function in the face of such retardedness, which is why they tend to make software that's not aimed at people like you, because you never pay for it.
One day when you leave mommys basement and have to get a job you will realise that most people consider it reasonable to pay for the hard work of others.
*sigh*
So if the customers want the product for free, you work for nothing?
It isn't that simple. Customers want unreasonable things. I want every pizza I ordered to be free, delivered instantly by a dozen naked supermodels. But just because my local pizza company will not provide such a service does not mean a new company will materialize to do so.
throwing out glib comments you read on some web forum does not equate to actual business experience. You cannot pay employees or bills with glib expressions, only profits earned from PAYING customers.
how many profitable software companies have you run? because if you have not done so, you aren't in a position to say what will keep his business afloat. If you aren't a software biz owner, you are posting entirely from a 'what the customer wants' POV, which is generally "I want it all, free, with no inconvenience."
Giving the customer what they want is important, earning enough money to pay the bills is even more important. If irritating 0.1% of your customers is what pays the rent, that's the choice you 8have* to make.
wow, what awesome insight. you sound like you are answering the question "what is the right price for my software?" to which the slashdot crowd will answer "Free!".
You will not get a sensible answer here on slashdot, as this post above me clearly illustrates. there are far too many people in the "stick it to the man!, lets torrent everything!, all software should be free!, information wants to be free! MAFIAAAAA! is dinner ready yet mom?" crowd on here.
Yes, copy protection will annoy a small fraction of legit customers.
Tough.
That's the price of doing business. Do security guards irritate people in shops? does having to get a security tag taken off clothes at the till slow down the sale and irritate the end user? We get sued to a small amount of hassle in return for businesses preventing casual theft in the real world, the software world should be no different. I'd like to see most of the anti-DRM people on here try to extend your theories to the meatspace world. Try leaving the right money on the counter and walking out of a store next time you go shopping, after all, that guy at the till is just an irritating bit of theft prevention in this case isn't he?
As for this lunacy that you should make it free and charge for support, that gives you zero incentive to ship a bug-free product, and makes you a wage slave again rather than a creator of new products.
plus you can fill out a small claims form online.The sale of goods act is your friend. the product is clearly not fit for purpose, ro of merchantable quality.
something tells me thats bullshit. Can I buy TF2 on its own? thats what I want, and they are not selling it == unhappy customer. its not rocket science.
I want TF2. I either own the other games or do not want them for any price. Valve clearly wont let me do that. Does this make me a moaner?
Would you buy World Of Warcraft if it only came in a package with Star Wars Galaxies and Guild Wars?
This is an insane pricing strategy.
or we could stop wasting energy. that's a European idea, hasn't really caught on in the USA yet.