AOL are the folks behind Engadget, Joystiq, wow.com, autoblog, games.com etc. They are, for better or for worse still quite relevant (if much smaller), and apparently very good good at making people ignore their involvement in things. Probably a good thing.
It doesn't do much for the current generation, but education does slowly secularize the subsequent generations. How do you think the U.S went from having pockets of people who think singing is a sin to... well something considerably more tolerant at least.
AOL runs sites like Engadget, Joystiq, wow.com, autoblog, etc. They seemed to have been trying to rebrand themselves as a nerdy information hub for quite some time.
Forgive me, but I'm afraid I've lost track. This has what to do with piracy again?
Well, not much I guess. You made a remark where you mentioned wanting to support artists, but not the middleman. Since most piracy affects both, I was wondering why you drew the distinction. But I'm pretty sure I get why now.
Not really. My position is that I consider piracy a relatively benign act when all things are considered. Everyone agrees that there is some measure of lost sales from noncommercial file sharing. Measuring it is impossible, and it's stupid to just assume that every download is a lost sale. I personally think that the percentage of downloads that would constitute lost sales is rather small, because there are several reasons one might download something from a p2p network that don't involve simply getting the content for free. On the other hand, you can't discount the idea that file sharing helps artists, mostly by spreading their content to a wider audience and the "try before you buy" ethos (essentially the ethical pirate you mentioned earlier). Again, measuring financial benefits from piracy is impossible, which would put us back at square one- but then consider that, as I said earlier, none of the creative industries that have been crying foul about piracy have tanked. In the US, at least, the recording industry has lost a bit of revenue, but there are other explanations for that (such as artificially high sales after the CD first debuted) and the motion picture industry is actually doing better than ever, despite a decade of p2p. Video games are doing fine as far as I know. Same with software and books. This leads me to conclude that piracy does not cause the financial harm that it is purported to cause, which removes the biggest justification for condemning it. For this reason it gets under my skin when people criticize file sharers, because they are attacking a subset of people without good cause.
Do you have any numbers for the industry profits? Not demanding them or anything (god knows I'm not using citations), but you would be helping my search. Still overall, I believe this is where I should just agree to disagree. While it may be true that piracy is benign or even a boost, I'm still of the opinion that the moral pirates are a minority of pirates (probably due to an Asian background) and therefore not an ethical bunch overall. Not to mention, even if you manage to convince me pirates in the U.S are ok, you'll have a much harder time convincing me universal piracy (especially in Asia) is ok.
Then let's be honest- I know that copyright law gives the rights holder the right to determine how their work is sold, etc etc, but if the price is high enough to discourage people from buying the legit product and to drive them towards a pirated version, why not lower the price? Or otherwise make the offer more attractive?
I know Microsoft does just that, so it probably isn't a stretch to say Sony, Square Enix, etc. tried that as well. I can only assume piracy, the lowered prices (eh, and probably a bit of racial drama) made such practices impractical.
So shouldn't your original statement be amended to "I'm reminded of things like how Japan pretty much refuses to sell games in either China, or Korea due to the language barrier, although they get to use piracy as an excuse."
The interest in Japanese pop culture has existed in Asia long before the U.S caught on, and arguably it's even more popular there. Yet, China gets virtually no entertainment imports from Japan, and Korea gets some things anime, movies, etc, but video games almost never get there. And it's not just the Japanese, Korea doesn't have a real gaming industry outside of MMOs for this exact same reason.
What? What kind of question is that? Artists are the people with the actual creative talent who put their time and energy into a creative work. Corporate middleman distributors take ownership of the work and get to keep the vast majority of any profits it makes, in exchange for paying the artist pennies on the dollar and for distributing it. The Internet is taking away the need for the corporate middleman distributor by letting the artist release the work online. Also, artists are not famous for egregious abuses of copyright and harassment of the public, whereas the corporate middleman distributors are. Which one should we be supporting again?
Indeed, let me amend the question. What's the difference between the two when I go out to buy something not indie? If I wanted to buy Spore and support the artist, do I get a special method of paying for it that ignores the middle man?
I'm oversimplifying the pirate demographics?
Yes, you seem to see the pirates as a universal force of good, that supports the industry without taking anything else into consideration. A game geared towards a large demographic like Spore might recoup it's losses if they tried being piracy friendly, but would a game geared towards folks with no money (aka. kids) like Nintendogs do the same?
Aren't those, you know, really poor countries whose citizens don't want to spend a month's wages on a CD?
Some places, not all of them. All of South Korea, China's growing middle class, well parts of any Asian middle class could easily afford to buy legit instead of bootleg, but it doesn't matter, they still buy bootleg/pirate. And I'm not just talking about expensive imports here, I'm also looking at stuff produced locally that's fairly affordable.
Refusing to sell a creative work in a certain region guarantees that that work will be pirated and that the creator will earn nothing because there is no legal way to buy the content. How does this teach those pirates a lesson again?
You forget that virtually no Korean, or Chinese person can understand Japanese. There isn't any noticeable piracy unless one considers the few games that aren't language dependent, and the even fewer games that will be fan translated. But assuming there IS a common language, (like games released in the U.S but not the EU or Australia) then I agree the game maker won't get money and there will be piracy. But considering that distribution and promotion also costs money, it can be economical to just let that happen. I don't really consider cases like these to be punishing anyone, since how can someone want a game they probably don't know exists?
I think you're too critical of the file sharing community. The majority of what Internet trolls will call selfish freeloaders are actually fans who do, in fact, buy content to support the artists (reminder: artists, not corporate middleman distributors) they like. No content industries are dying an agonizing death despite their cries to the contrary, so I'm not sure why you think we're a civilization of people who don't believe in supporting good content creators
With the exception of indie works, is there a real difference between artist, and corporate middleman distributor? I think you're oversimplifying the pirate demographics. Though I must admit I've no real academic statistics, I've found that in the U.S at least, the younger pirates (13 through college) are the "selfish freeloaders" as you call them with very few exceptions. Those older folks are more ethical, it seems to come with having a full time job. Things are quite different in Asia (with the maybe exception of Japan), everyone pirates there with no concern for the creators.
Then the person to whom I replied also made a mild insult when he made a blanket statement that piracy is immoral, did he not?
Well, no. Whether or not piracy is moral will rage on for years. The subjectivity of morality is rarely up for debate. It's the difference between saying Java is a good/bad programming language vs. Java is object oriented programming.
Really? What's wrong with it? This interview [torrentfreak.com] with movie director Sam Bozzo gives an interesting perspective on pre-release leaks. Essentially, he says that the only works (in his case, movies) that are actually harmed by pre-release leaks are mediocre or bad movies that rely on hype and marketing to bring people into the theater. Pre-release leaks allow people to determine for themselves whether a certain movie is good or bad, and let's not forget that the experience of seeing a movie in the theater cannot be pirated, so it's entirely likely that good movies that are leaked online prior to release will draw in a larger audience than those that don't leak. Bad movies, on the other hand, will financially suffer, which is exactly what's supposed to happen.
The "ethical pirate" argument if I may quote a commenter from that site. They exist all right, but I find the director to be way too optimistic. I'm reminded of things like how Japan pretty much refuses to sell games in either China, or Korea due to the high amount of piracy there. Or how folks use the I'm a poor student excuse while not even tipping a meager dollar towards the media they like. Hopefully we'll culturally evolve so that we feel morally obligated to support works of art we enjoy, but I don't believe we're quite there yet. Bozzo created a socially relevant movie, and a niche movie on a topic interesting to the technologically inclined. I wonder if he would've recouped his loss if he used the 100k from used on his first movie to create a A list game for example.
No matter what side you're on, please don't mention morality being subjective. That's obvious to everyone, and comes across as a mild insult, or pointless padding at best. Not to mention in the whole point of morality debates is to attack tackle that subjectivity, and try to show the other side how it could be wrong using your logic and morals and some of their own. Course in some cases one might feel the attempt would be fruitless, but then if you don't want to make an effort, it's probably best to stay silent. Simply spouting your sides rhetoric doesn't change anyone's mind, and usually irritates them and further mires a person in their POV.
I (and everyone else here probably) has at least an inkling on how bad copyright abuse can be. But in all likelihood kiwimate was referring to the other side of the coin where individuals would download media days before/after it's release (the whole "why two wrongs make a right" line) which I think most here would find objectionable.
Eh, to play devil's advocate one also isn't a hypocrite if that person actively spends their life trying to cause human extinction. Killing sprees would be the obvious choice of course, although I suppose encouraging friends and family to not have kids would also technically work.
Cute, but comes off as bitter and silly. What pray tell does immoral stem cell treatments have to do with religion? Not to mention only a part of all religions would try to take advantage of the desperate. Your average Christian church for example will offer prayer and condolences to the terminally ill, and not ask for anything.
Just wondering, since if a young person is supposed to eventually give 21 months of his life to the armed forces, then he would no longer be competition worthy, and replaced. It would make the gamers more expendable I suppose.
There is a small problem with the don't insult rationale. Too many of them already attack each other simply through their dogma. Islam states the other Abrahamic faiths are a corrupt and impure version of the true faith, and a Christian might say it's offensive a misguided man (or maybe Satan) is considered holier than the Lord and Saviour. And of course both faiths don't have anything nice to say about Hinduism. I do agree it would be in in bad taste to, I dunno, draw Muhammad pooping on his followers, or something. But there is a reason why such drawing must be permitted. The alternative is to go back to the bad old days when we'd try to ban faiths for their offensive and intolerant content.
I'd say more like paranoid. Frankly, after hearing IT folks here and in other places screech about how one must have CONSTANT VIGILANCE, this doesn't surprise me.
Not listening when you're REALLY pissed is a trait shared by both sexes. I mean have you ever been in an internet debate where you're clearly in the right but the other guy won't listen because he's just that emotional?
For the record I agree with those that say the woman was being far too pessimistic and irrational. Even if we allow for the "women are emotional" stereotype. It takes a certain amount of contempt and/or arrogance and/or distrust to assume someone bought a "gift" that's really for themselves. At the very least, I'd hold off on judging until I saw the dude hogging the machine. For the record I'm not just speaking as myself, but as one of those dudes who had plenty of female friends throughout life.
That's true, but people do get curious, and like the GP mentioned adding the info is such a trivial thing. I mean to make an analogy, lets say (god forbid) Linus Torvalds died. I don't think anyone would say we shouldn't talk about his life anymore because as a corpse he's no longer relevant to the living.
During the dark ages, when the net was new, and most teachers never tried out the newfangled thing know as the internet, you somehow got your professors to look up and believe an online dictionary instead of a physical one?
My random guess is because Windows users have a greater amount of games to choose from, they're less likely to consider donating alot of money to a single game making group.
That's true, but even in terms of Trek, you can't help but wonder why when Sisko recreated a Bajoran lightship, he had the ship launch from a space station, instead of the surface of Bajor. He was supposedly going for a almost genuine (with the exception of zero g) experience afterall.
Truth be told, I just see this as a law not limiting it's citizens, but a major corporation from screwing with our kids minds, and making them want something I consider maybe borderline food. It's not like you're forbidden from getting little Johnny, or Suzie a cheap piece of 99 cents toy if you still feel like it.
Slashdot Mirror
AOL are the folks behind Engadget, Joystiq, wow.com, autoblog, games.com etc. They are, for better or for worse still quite relevant (if much smaller), and apparently very good good at making people ignore their involvement in things. Probably a good thing.
It doesn't do much for the current generation, but education does slowly secularize the subsequent generations. How do you think the U.S went from having pockets of people who think singing is a sin to... well something considerably more tolerant at least.
AOL runs sites like Engadget, Joystiq, wow.com, autoblog, etc. They seemed to have been trying to rebrand themselves as a nerdy information hub for quite some time.
Forgive me, but I'm afraid I've lost track. This has what to do with piracy again?
Well, not much I guess. You made a remark where you mentioned wanting to support artists, but not the middleman. Since most piracy affects both, I was wondering why you drew the distinction. But I'm pretty sure I get why now.
Not really. My position is that I consider piracy a relatively benign act when all things are considered. Everyone agrees that there is some measure of lost sales from noncommercial file sharing. Measuring it is impossible, and it's stupid to just assume that every download is a lost sale. I personally think that the percentage of downloads that would constitute lost sales is rather small, because there are several reasons one might download something from a p2p network that don't involve simply getting the content for free. On the other hand, you can't discount the idea that file sharing helps artists, mostly by spreading their content to a wider audience and the "try before you buy" ethos (essentially the ethical pirate you mentioned earlier). Again, measuring financial benefits from piracy is impossible, which would put us back at square one- but then consider that, as I said earlier, none of the creative industries that have been crying foul about piracy have tanked. In the US, at least, the recording industry has lost a bit of revenue, but there are other explanations for that (such as artificially high sales after the CD first debuted) and the motion picture industry is actually doing better than ever, despite a decade of p2p. Video games are doing fine as far as I know. Same with software and books. This leads me to conclude that piracy does not cause the financial harm that it is purported to cause, which removes the biggest justification for condemning it. For this reason it gets under my skin when people criticize file sharers, because they are attacking a subset of people without good cause.
Do you have any numbers for the industry profits? Not demanding them or anything (god knows I'm not using citations), but you would be helping my search. Still overall, I believe this is where I should just agree to disagree. While it may be true that piracy is benign or even a boost, I'm still of the opinion that the moral pirates are a minority of pirates (probably due to an Asian background) and therefore not an ethical bunch overall. Not to mention, even if you manage to convince me pirates in the U.S are ok, you'll have a much harder time convincing me universal piracy (especially in Asia) is ok.
Then let's be honest- I know that copyright law gives the rights holder the right to determine how their work is sold, etc etc, but if the price is high enough to discourage people from buying the legit product and to drive them towards a pirated version, why not lower the price? Or otherwise make the offer more attractive?
I know Microsoft does just that, so it probably isn't a stretch to say Sony, Square Enix, etc. tried that as well. I can only assume piracy, the lowered prices (eh, and probably a bit of racial drama) made such practices impractical.
So shouldn't your original statement be amended to "I'm reminded of things like how Japan pretty much refuses to sell games in either China, or Korea due to the language barrier, although they get to use piracy as an excuse."
The interest in Japanese pop culture has existed in Asia long before the U.S caught on, and arguably it's even more popular there. Yet, China gets virtually no entertainment imports from Japan, and Korea gets some things anime, movies, etc, but video games almost never get there. And it's not just the Japanese, Korea doesn't have a real gaming industry outside of MMOs for this exact same reason.
What? What kind of question is that? Artists are the people with the actual creative talent who put their time and energy into a creative work. Corporate middleman distributors take ownership of the work and get to keep the vast majority of any profits it makes, in exchange for paying the artist pennies on the dollar and for distributing it. The Internet is taking away the need for the corporate middleman distributor by letting the artist release the work online. Also, artists are not famous for egregious abuses of copyright and harassment of the public, whereas the corporate middleman distributors are. Which one should we be supporting again?
Indeed, let me amend the question. What's the difference between the two when I go out to buy something not indie? If I wanted to buy Spore and support the artist, do I get a special method of paying for it that ignores the middle man?
I'm oversimplifying the pirate demographics?
Yes, you seem to see the pirates as a universal force of good, that supports the industry without taking anything else into consideration. A game geared towards a large demographic like Spore might recoup it's losses if they tried being piracy friendly, but would a game geared towards folks with no money (aka. kids) like Nintendogs do the same?
Aren't those, you know, really poor countries whose citizens don't want to spend a month's wages on a CD?
Some places, not all of them. All of South Korea, China's growing middle class, well parts of any Asian middle class could easily afford to buy legit instead of bootleg, but it doesn't matter, they still buy bootleg/pirate. And I'm not just talking about expensive imports here, I'm also looking at stuff produced locally that's fairly affordable.
Refusing to sell a creative work in a certain region guarantees that that work will be pirated and that the creator will earn nothing because there is no legal way to buy the content. How does this teach those pirates a lesson again?
You forget that virtually no Korean, or Chinese person can understand Japanese. There isn't any noticeable piracy unless one considers the few games that aren't language dependent, and the even fewer games that will be fan translated. But assuming there IS a common language, (like games released in the U.S but not the EU or Australia) then I agree the game maker won't get money and there will be piracy. But considering that distribution and promotion also costs money, it can be economical to just let that happen. I don't really consider cases like these to be punishing anyone, since how can someone want a game they probably don't know exists?
I think you're too critical of the file sharing community. The majority of what Internet trolls will call selfish freeloaders are actually fans who do, in fact, buy content to support the artists (reminder: artists, not corporate middleman distributors) they like. No content industries are dying an agonizing death despite their cries to the contrary, so I'm not sure why you think we're a civilization of people who don't believe in supporting good content creators
With the exception of indie works, is there a real difference between artist, and corporate middleman distributor? I think you're oversimplifying the pirate demographics. Though I must admit I've no real academic statistics, I've found that in the U.S at least, the younger pirates (13 through college) are the "selfish freeloaders" as you call them with very few exceptions. Those older folks are more ethical, it seems to come with having a full time job. Things are quite different in Asia (with the maybe exception of Japan), everyone pirates there with no concern for the creators.
Then the person to whom I replied also made a mild insult when he made a blanket statement that piracy is immoral, did he not?
Well, no. Whether or not piracy is moral will rage on for years. The subjectivity of morality is rarely up for debate. It's the difference between saying Java is a good/bad programming language vs. Java is object oriented programming.
Really? What's wrong with it? This interview [torrentfreak.com] with movie director Sam Bozzo gives an interesting perspective on pre-release leaks. Essentially, he says that the only works (in his case, movies) that are actually harmed by pre-release leaks are mediocre or bad movies that rely on hype and marketing to bring people into the theater. Pre-release leaks allow people to determine for themselves whether a certain movie is good or bad, and let's not forget that the experience of seeing a movie in the theater cannot be pirated, so it's entirely likely that good movies that are leaked online prior to release will draw in a larger audience than those that don't leak. Bad movies, on the other hand, will financially suffer, which is exactly what's supposed to happen.
The "ethical pirate" argument if I may quote a commenter from that site. They exist all right, but I find the director to be way too optimistic. I'm reminded of things like how Japan pretty much refuses to sell games in either China, or Korea due to the high amount of piracy there. Or how folks use the I'm a poor student excuse while not even tipping a meager dollar towards the media they like. Hopefully we'll culturally evolve so that we feel morally obligated to support works of art we enjoy, but I don't believe we're quite there yet. Bozzo created a socially relevant movie, and a niche movie on a topic interesting to the technologically inclined. I wonder if he would've recouped his loss if he used the 100k from used on his first movie to create a A list game for example.
No matter what side you're on, please don't mention morality being subjective. That's obvious to everyone, and comes across as a mild insult, or pointless padding at best. Not to mention in the whole point of morality debates is to attack tackle that subjectivity, and try to show the other side how it could be wrong using your logic and morals and some of their own. Course in some cases one might feel the attempt would be fruitless, but then if you don't want to make an effort, it's probably best to stay silent. Simply spouting your sides rhetoric doesn't change anyone's mind, and usually irritates them and further mires a person in their POV.
I (and everyone else here probably) has at least an inkling on how bad copyright abuse can be. But in all likelihood kiwimate was referring to the other side of the coin where individuals would download media days before/after it's release (the whole "why two wrongs make a right" line) which I think most here would find objectionable.
Eh, to play devil's advocate one also isn't a hypocrite if that person actively spends their life trying to cause human extinction. Killing sprees would be the obvious choice of course, although I suppose encouraging friends and family to not have kids would also technically work.
Cute, but comes off as bitter and silly. What pray tell does immoral stem cell treatments have to do with religion? Not to mention only a part of all religions would try to take advantage of the desperate. Your average Christian church for example will offer prayer and condolences to the terminally ill, and not ask for anything.
You keep saying PA, what does it mean?
Not to mention even with TOR down you'll still need to take care of Freenet, Perfect Dark, I2P, and others.
Just wondering, since if a young person is supposed to eventually give 21 months of his life to the armed forces, then he would no longer be competition worthy, and replaced. It would make the gamers more expendable I suppose.
There is a small problem with the don't insult rationale. Too many of them already attack each other simply through their dogma. Islam states the other Abrahamic faiths are a corrupt and impure version of the true faith, and a Christian might say it's offensive a misguided man (or maybe Satan) is considered holier than the Lord and Saviour. And of course both faiths don't have anything nice to say about Hinduism. I do agree it would be in in bad taste to, I dunno, draw Muhammad pooping on his followers, or something. But there is a reason why such drawing must be permitted. The alternative is to go back to the bad old days when we'd try to ban faiths for their offensive and intolerant content.
I'd say more like paranoid. Frankly, after hearing IT folks here and in other places screech about how one must have CONSTANT VIGILANCE, this doesn't surprise me.
Not listening when you're REALLY pissed is a trait shared by both sexes. I mean have you ever been in an internet debate where you're clearly in the right but the other guy won't listen because he's just that emotional?
For the record I agree with those that say the woman was being far too pessimistic and irrational. Even if we allow for the "women are emotional" stereotype. It takes a certain amount of contempt and/or arrogance and/or distrust to assume someone bought a "gift" that's really for themselves. At the very least, I'd hold off on judging until I saw the dude hogging the machine. For the record I'm not just speaking as myself, but as one of those dudes who had plenty of female friends throughout life.
High School teachers... Ah, now that's a different story. I figured you were talking about college.
That's true, but people do get curious, and like the GP mentioned adding the info is such a trivial thing. I mean to make an analogy, lets say (god forbid) Linus Torvalds died. I don't think anyone would say we shouldn't talk about his life anymore because as a corpse he's no longer relevant to the living.
During the dark ages, when the net was new, and most teachers never tried out the newfangled thing know as the internet, you somehow got your professors to look up and believe an online dictionary instead of a physical one?
So what should you do? Stop using Twitter?
Not a bad solution, this link claims locking your twitter account would also work.
My random guess is because Windows users have a greater amount of games to choose from, they're less likely to consider donating alot of money to a single game making group.
That's true, but even in terms of Trek, you can't help but wonder why when Sisko recreated a Bajoran lightship, he had the ship launch from a space station, instead of the surface of Bajor. He was supposedly going for a almost genuine (with the exception of zero g) experience afterall.
Truth be told, I just see this as a law not limiting it's citizens, but a major corporation from screwing with our kids minds, and making them want something I consider maybe borderline food. It's not like you're forbidden from getting little Johnny, or Suzie a cheap piece of 99 cents toy if you still feel like it.
The teachers and professors in my life would like to kindly disagree.
I blame his pesky human side.