Seeing as no one plays for 1 month continuously, that's a rather weak argument.
I suppose you could argue that while you're traveling, you're not casting spells and stuff, reducing server load *shrug*
It's not really that difficult to grasp his point, but you seem to be doing a great job of missing it anyway.
If you pay for a month of play, there's only a certain number of minutes you can physically play the game - that would be your play time (not sleeping, working, or doing other normal things). Let's say you only have 1800 minutes of play time every month - that's 60 minutes per day, the amount of time a normal healthy person with a life would have to play. Now, that 60 minutes could be spent battling new monsters, going on raids, exploring new areas, etc. Things that might be considered fun. Or, from that 60 minutes, you could spend 10 minutes fighting and exploring, and 50 minutes travelling to/through places you've already been. That's 50 minutes worth of content that that Blizzard don't have to create, and it means you have to spend 5 more days to do what you should have been able to do in 1 day.
And then what do you think happens? The player is left unfulfilled because they didn't get much done that month because of all the time spent travelling, they didn't get to fight that new monster on the other side of the map, they barely even reached the entrance to the new dungeon, or they didn't reach the level they wanted to, or whatever it is MMO players do (I'm not one). So now they have to pay for another month. Ergo, wasting the player's time with bullshit like travelling leads to more revenue for the developers.
What's wrong with the labels is that they're usually not used in reference to vaguely-defined styles of gaming, but that they're branded against people (as in "casual gamer" vs "hardcore gamer") or consoles. Which becomes a major problem when you have someone such as myself, who enjoys playing Wii Sports, Mario Galaxy, Boom Blox or LEGO Batman on Wii one day, then playing Sins of a Solar Empire, Supreme Commander, DEFCON or Starcraft on PC another day. God forbid I should also play Peggle, Spore or World of Goo on PC and MadWorld, No More Heroes or House of the Dead Overkill on Wii, because that just fucks everything up and the little self-assuring pigeon-holing definitions become as pointless as A/V-philes arguing that DVD is for "casual movies" and Blu-Ray is for "hardcore movies" .
Then why tell me? Tell it to the parent. He's the one with the +5 Interesting for calling the article bullshit because it's possible to implement an unreliable AutoRun feature.
Yeah, and now people disable it because they think it'll give them a virus, and everyone bitches about Microsoft wasting effort on AutoRun instead of fixing insert favorite bug here. Seems to me that CD AutoRun pretty much proves his assumption of what would happen of the feature was on floppy drives.
Sorry, but it's a little difficult to take you seriously after this little blunder:
I'd argue the comparison to printing counterfeit money (in that someone gains but nobody else directly loses from it), and then you'd look quite the fool.
counterfeiting money devalues the currency, undermining the entire economy and making everyone slightly poorer.
people only care about value when they're buying or selling something. That's the only time value is important.
Hmm, you wash your hands of the counterfeiting comparison by saying it devalues everyone's copies of the currency and therefore is wrong (I can only assume morally wrong, since you don't believe "illegal" is actually wrong at all). Then all of a sudden, the argument is that nobody really cares about value, it's only important if you're buying or selling (and no surprise, you even ignored the impact of it then). Bravo. Well, I guess a mistake like that is the only logical conclusion when your whole argument is structured solely to absolve you of any morally wrong-doing just to help you sleep at night.
I also can't help but notice you didn't take me up on that offer to raise funds for a game no one knows anything about, from a developer no one's heard of. Quite telling that even you yourself doesn't believe that system would work.
It isn't. Software is subject to sales contracts like anything else. But no one is obligated to enter into such a contract: just because you want to sell me a copy of a game for $50 doesn't mean I have to get it from you, rather than from someone else who's offering it for free.
But the person who's offering it for free obviously does not have any legal distribution rights, so you're guilty of receiving stolen goods.
"It's wrong to harm people" is a general tenet of most systems of morality.
And yet, I have this feeling that illegally obtaining a work you have no right to, is conveniently not a part of this magical "morality" you refer to.
No, it's still quite clear. You're never obligated to buy a product from someone just because he really, really wants your money.
But you're not obligated to steal it either, so why do you?
You're just rephrasing what I said. You think they own a particular arrangement of toaster parts, and I'm sorry, but that's just stupid. You can't own an arrangement any more than you can own a color, or a length, or a weight. It's an attribute of a thing, not an actual thing.
Obviously you can, otherwise we wouldn't have a whole subset of laws specifying how you can and what you can do with it. But that's really irrelevent, since you didn't even address the argument.
It's not scarce; there's no justification for preventing me from using a certain arrangement of parts when it can't possibly interfere with anyone else's use of that same arrangement.
You're right about one thing: there's no justification for YOU to not steal property. We call that being selfish.
Once again, just because someone expends labor to draw up the original plans for the toaster, that doesn't mean they "own" that arrangement of parts.
Once again, it DOES, that's why there's laws for it.
Still having trouble seeing the difference between morality and legality, huh? That's a shame. Maybe when you're older you'll be able to grasp the distinction.
Still have trouble addressing arguments, being intelligent, and not being a criminal huh? Oh well, maybe that will all stop when you're dead.
Ha! No, sir, I'm not jealous, because that's what I do for a living. And amazingly enough, I don't need to sell copies in order to make a living as a developer.
You really need to break out of that fantasy world.
Yes, essentially, because they'd have no other choice. That would be the only way to get new games: paying developers to make them. And since everyone would still want new games, and still have money to spend on them, those developers would get paid.
If people today are willing to make a choice which could lead to fines or jail, I'm sure people in your fantasy world would have no problems hanging out for a few months while other people pay for the development of games you're too cheap to.
Once again, we've already established that there's nothing wrong with "interfering with the value" of another person's property, as long as you don't interfere with the actual property itself.
No, we haven't. YOU have this strange idea in your head that people care about physical property, when all they really care about is value. Reality is on a different page.
That's right (assuming you managed to obtain a copy of the book without trespassing, vandalism, theft, etc.).
Funny, I don't really see what you've lost physically by me trespassing? Because as YOU'VE established, nobody cares about anything except loss of physical property.
In that scenario, I made a big mistake when I agreed to get paid based on sales. Why would I do that, when I knew that someone could come along and distribute the
Good point. So why is software exempt
from sales contracts?
The difference that matters here between a sales contract and copyright law is that a contract
carries with it a moral obligation, and the law does not. You are morally obligated to do what you
promise to do; you're not morally obligated to obey a piece of paper just because it was signed by the
governor or the president or the king or whoever signs bills into law in this alternate universe of
yours.
I promise to kill you. What now?
If you don't see a moral difference between killing a sentient human being and copying a file
without permission, then you sound awfully dangerous to be around. You're not posting from prison, are
you?
Once again, show me the concrete rule that says murder is immoral but breaking other laws
isn't.
For the record, I'm not religious. You don't need a Bible to see the difference between an act
that directly harms someone and an act that reduces the likelihood that they'll receive a few dollars
which they might never have received anyway.
True. But how about the difference between killing
someone who's a matter of minutes away from dying anyway, and a game developer who's only a few hundred
dollars short of a life-saving operation for his 10 year old son? Not so clear then, huh? Hey, you know
what, maybe we could come up with a set of rules, let's call them "laws", that prevents either of these
things happening, so then we don't have to make stupid assumptions about why some people deserve legal
protection and others don't.
It's as if you think they own the concept of putting a few parts together in a certain
arrangement!
No, not the concept of doing it, just the specific way they do it. I'm not sure
what you're talking about, but it's certainly not copyright (your confusion makes all the more sense
now!). Unless of course you believe that work has no value, and we're back to square one: why are you
wasting time on something you believe has no value? If it has no value, surely it must be easy to
re-construct your own version of it from scratch right?
If I buy those parts, I'm entitled to put them together into a toaster. If I don't know how to
put them together, and I find someone out there who'll tell me how to do it, there's absolutely nothing
wrong with enlisting their help. I have no obligation to reinvent the wheel just because I don't want
to pay $100 for a toaster.
Right, but putting parts together into "a toaster", with or without
an engineer/electrician's help, is not the same as putting them together knowingly in the exact same
configuration as an existing product, which had actual people perform actual work on it (it's this
crazy concept called labour). Unless of course you can prove that the exact replica is purely
coincidence. Regardless, I fail to see how this relates to piracy. There's no piracy law that prevents
you from putting together program code to make "a game" either, and as explained, even if you manage to
make it identical to an existing game, no one will really care as long as you keep it to yourself.
If you see two stores selling identical items, one for $100 and the other for $25, is there
anything wrong with buying it from the cheaper store? Of course not. It's a consensual transaction.
They have an item, they can sell it for whatever price they want. If they think $25 is a fair price,
then there's nothing wrong with buying it at that price.
And if a store is selling a toaster for
$100, but a shady guy in an alley outside is selling the same product for $5 from the boot of his car,
but without the fancy packaging, why, that's a perfectly legal transaction too, right?
But it is a valid point. Show me a store who's offering legal copies of video games for
Sorry, but that's simply not true. Nothing like that appears anywhere in the text of US copyright law, except perhaps the mechanical licenses used by radio broadcasters.
I see you are unfamiliar with the concept of logical opposites then. Sales contract: you must fulfil conditions X in return for Y. Copyright: you cannot use/copy/distribute Y without fulfilling conditions X. Or hey, let's mix and match this crazy thing just to confuse you! Sales contract: you cannot take Y without fulfilling conditions X. Copyright: you must fulfil conditions X before you can use/copy/distribute Y. I know, it's really difficult to understand, but just concentrate real hard, I'm sure you'll get it eventually!
Incorrect. Murder is immoral for reasons that have nothing to do with its legality, and even if it were legal, it would still be immoral. Morality and legality are separate issues: copyright violation may be illegal, but that doesn't make it immoral.
I'm not aware of any definitive concept which makes murder immoral but copyright infringement not immoral. Perhaps you could elaborate? I know, I know, your big powerful God says murder is bad, while copyright law was only invented by a bunch of lowly humans during an era in which the most intelligent thinking human minds existed; but still, surely you have some definitive, concrete definition of those morals?
However, if both toasters were priced at $100, I wouldn't be willing to buy either of them. I'm not paying $100 for a toaster, period. If I could download pirated plans to build the same toaster from $10 worth of parts, I might do that. That doesn't mean I think toasters have no value, it means that the value of a toaster in my mind is less than $100 but more than $10.
And because you don't value the toaster at $100, it also doesn't mean you can take the toaster without paying anything. But it's lovely to see that your answer to "this product isn't worth $100!" is "this product is worth only the cost of materials from a third party, but knowing that I'm not smart enough to design my own toaster I have to abuse the work that somebody else put into designing one".
Or looking at it without the analogy, if you don't like the price of a video game, you're free to download programming tutorials legally off the internet and make your own game. And hey, as long as you don't release it publicly or sell it, I'm sure no one would even care if you made it as identical to the original as humanly possible, despite the trademark/copyright infringements. It wouldn't even cost you anything, and is more or less legal. Seems like the only reason to resort to piracy is pure laziness (or mental retardedness, attention seeking, etc).
No action I've committed, encouraged, or condoned implies that I believe games have no value, either, but whatever.
So despite acknowledgement that video games, as digital products, have value, you don't see anything wrong with obtaining something of value without remuneration for the work that went into creating that item of value? Despite the fact that it devalues every instance of that product, new and old, devalues the industry in general, and leads to annoying protective measures (that is then used to justify MORE crime)? Now THAT'S amusing!
Not just "other events", but other events -- deliberate actions, in fact -- which we all consider perfectly acceptable. By accepting those actions, we've already established that there's nothing inherently wrong with devaluing another person's property, so you can hardly expect to use that as an argument against copying.
Just like how if someone's going to die anyway, it doesn't really matter if they get killed, right? I mean, we accept "dying of old age", why not "dying of being shot"? Just as we accept that older games have less value, there should be no problem devaluing them by stealing them too, right? Or perhaps we could m
First, copyright law is quite different from a sales contract. A contract says "if you give me $X, I'll give you product Y". Copyright law says "if you make unauthorized copies, you're in trouble".
The law doesn't obligate anyone to buy copies of your work just because you spent time making it; unlike a sales contract, they can uphold the law simply by ignoring your work.
False.
A sales contract says "you get X in exchange for Y". Copyright law says "you get X in exchange for Y", where X is something along the lines of "the right to use Z". Both are types of obligation, both legal
and moral, instituted and protected by law.
Second, you have a moral obligation to fulfill your promises, but you have no moral obligation to obey the law.
So it's not immoral to commit murder then?
You're confusing economic value with utility: people download games not because they're worth money, but because they're useful (i.e. fun to play).
And utility gives what? VALUE.
Or look at it this way: there are two toasters for sale. Both are the same price, same brand, model, physically identical in every way. Except one works fine, while the other is in 1000 pieces and obviously
doesn't work. You're getting the same product either way, and you've just made the argument that utility doesn't imply value. It doesn't really matter to you which toaster you get, right?
But of course I never said games have no value, anyway.
Your actions speak louder than your words.
I'm not sure what argument you think I'm making here, but again, I never said games have no economic value. Obviously they do: people do pay for copies of games. What I said is that diminishing a used
game's resale value doesn't destroy its usefulness the way counterfeiting money destroys the currency's usefulness.
You're making the argument that it's ok to devalue a product by committing a crime,
because there are already other events which devalue that product anyway.
Having a lot of pirated copies out there might make it harder for me to resell my own copy, but no one really cares about that. People don't buy games just so they can resell them at a loss; they buy
games to play them, and making copies doesn't diminish anyone else's ability to play them.
Try telling that to the myriad of stores that deal with second-hand video games. Then stop and think for all
of 3 seconds why those stores no longer trade in second-hand PC games. Oh, you forgot one tiny problem: having lots of pirated copies around also makes it harder for retailers to sell NEW copies, and even
for the developers to sell original copies also (physical or digital). And all the other people along the way: distributers, logistics, advertisers etc. But no one really cares about them. One magic hand
wave and Whoosh! you've absolved yourself of any liability in that.
If you want to argue that copyright infringement is wrong because it diminishes the economic value of copies, then like I said, you must also believe that writing negative reviews is wrong for the
same reason: people won't pay as much for a product that they think sucks.
No, I mustn't, because it's a fallacy. You're essentially saying that it's morally ok to key someone's car and snap the
aerial off, thus decreasing the car's value without physically taking anything, because the owner never really lost anything, and there are lots of other ways that the car's value will decrease so it doesn't
really make any difference. Congratulations! You've just legitimized vandalism!
I assume you're asking where it would come from in a game industry that weren't based around selling copies.
No, I'm not talking about some fantasy neo-communist future society where everything is free and the world is made out of candy, all because some juvenile, im
The labor needed to create a video game, however, has already been performed by the time anyone has a chance to pirate it. It's a fixed cost.
And the labour that goes into cooking a meal has already been performed, so why should you pay for it afterwards right? It's not like it costs them any more if you didn't eat it. Or that loan with the bank you have, they've already paid you the money, so they're not losing anything from you not paying it back, right?
Ha, please, I'd like to see how think the creators of a game are going to get paid without anyone buying it.
Well, I care if we steal from them, but copying isn't stealing. It makes one person richer without making anyone else poorer.
Haha, yes, and killing isn't murder, it's just assisted undesired suicide.
Please, give it a shot. I can't wait to see how you handwave away the fact that counterfeiting money devalues the currency, undermining the entire economy and making everyone slightly poorer.
And copying games devalues the them, making the entire gaming industry and anyone who legitimately owns those games poorer. Or are you really that blinded to the simple fact?
Yes, but that insurance money doesn't just appear out of thin air.
But the labour needed to create a video game does, right?
As I wrote, "bank robbers deprive other people of money" -- for a bank that's insured, the loss is borne by the insurer instead of the account holders,
If it weren't for bank robbers, the insurance company wouldn't even exist in the first place.
but the robber's action still causes someone to become poorer.
But just as the money doesn't appear out of thin air, it doesn't disappear into it either. The robbers will be using the money for something else - possibly even investing it in that very same bank. So the bank/insurer gets poorer, but somebody else - maybe even the same entities - become equally richer. It's simply the movement of funds from the rich to poor, isn't that what we immortalise Robin Hood for?
But hey, consider the context, we're talking about piracy remember? Nobody really cares about the big evil corporations, they have enough money, who cares if we steal from/"infringe" upon them?
Of course at this point you could shift your argument into an example of the 'parable of the broken window' and hope nobody notices you were never really arguing that at all, but then you'd have to apply the same principles to software piracy and your argument that nobody really loses from it would fall apart. At which point I'd argue the comparison to printing counterfeit money (in that someone gains but nobody else directly loses from it), and then you'd look quite the fool.
But I'll save you the humiliation because, hey, that's just the type of guy I am.
Wow, you've signed up with a bank that takes money out of your personal account every time it gets robbed? That's pretty sad.
In my country, our banks are insured (more than often than not, self-insured) so they can cover losses like that. Perhaps you should consider switching banks.
Bioshock took several weeks to crack.
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory took over a year.
CSS took 2.5 years.
For what it's worth, only legitimate bank users ever have to pay fees, while bank robbers don't ever have to pay a cent, yet that's hardly a great reason to support the robbing of banks. Not that, you know, simple logic would ever change your mind or anything...
Step 2 is "Have your product cost less than all your competitors while still maintaining massive consumer interest in it". That's why it's a better business model.
Didn't realise Source engine was 64 bit, and yeah that definitely boosts the total number of 64-bit games, but other than that there really aren't many. I too am sure Far Cry was the first, Crysis had it too, there are a couple of RTSs which have it (Company of Heroes I think), and I believe WoW has it too. But all things considered, it's still only a handful of games out of the hundreds of blockbusters - and it's also worth noting that pretty much all these games had/have massive issues in 64 bit (that aren't the fault of the OS or drivers).
I think you're forgetting something, or maybe it's only subtly implied but, the fact is Vista is the first 64-bit system for many users, which really compounded the problem of incompatible software, drivers etc. I guarantee you if Vista was 32-bit only, or XP x64 had several more years before Vista was released, there wouldn't be half as many issues as there are now.
The upgrade to Vista from XP doesn't seem so error-prone when you consider that the majority of users were migrating to an entirely new platform which didn't have much support from most software developers at the time, and still doesn't (I can count on one hand the number of games which will run natively in 64-bit).
If you truly were a decent, moral person with legitimate reasons for hating DRM, you would want to be doing everything you could to prevent its use, not encouraging it. Right? By claiming that DRM is the reason X% percentage of pirates download games, you basically show that you agree that it's a valid reason in and of itself. You don't even have to agree that it's a legitimate excuse for piracy, all you have to do is agree that it's true, which is what you're doing.
Of course the simple fact is that it isn't a true statement, it's yet more lies brought to you by the people who have every reason to say anything they can to legitimise what they do (breaking the law) lest people have reason to think they might just be doing it because they're bad, immoral people, or just plain assholes. There's always some excuse - it hasn't always been DRM - but the last thing you want to do is carelessly legitimise those excuses.
(As an aside, people like yourself don't make very good judges, because all you'd end up doing is letting everyone off. "Oh, he just needed to feed his family, it's ok that he stole that food", "You say you promise you'll pay back the dealership for that car you stole? Well that's good enough for me. Everyone needs a car", "I agree, that guy was being a jerk, he really did deserve to die. No murder setence for you!")
Because if you legitimise it, you give more reason for more people to do it more often. Which as we know is only going to lead to more invasive DRM - and because no software is perfect, more people who claim DRM wrecked their computer (even if these claims are never backed by evidence); or God forbid prevents them from installing the same game on the 10+ dedicated gaming machines they just happen to have lying around; all frequently used, naturally.
In other words attacking DRM, instead of attacking the cause of it (piracy), (or you know, doing something constructive like coming up with better, non-invasive implementations of DRM) is only going to lead to more DRM, which you claim to be against. This is about as simple as it gets - YOU (not personally, but people with your mindset) are the cause of increasing DRM.
It is for this reason I do not believe you truly have good intentions in your anti-DRM arguments at best, and at worst are merely a troll spreading DRM FUD to help fuel your justification for criminal behaviour. Somewhere in the middle is the possiblility that you're extremely incompetent, and simply unable to comprehend the ramifications of your actions.
Another reason I don't believe your intentions are honorable, is that you keep claiming piracy and DRM are unrelated, yet you also keep claiming DRM is a major cause of piracy. Clearly both cannot be the case. This isn't your only contradiction, but it is by far the easiest to point out for the sake of argument.
Nobody WANTS to be typing in that CD key at install. Obviously no one WANTS even the remote possibility that their product might not work in the future. You'd have to be crazy to enjoy it. But some people tolerate it because it's in their best interests (more peace of mind for developers - whether substantiated or not - means more productions, more risk in innovation, lower profit margins); and some people don't tolerate it because, in their opinion, the clear benefits outweigh the inconvenience of having to unlock your software like you do your home, which brings about the possibility that one day, the key might break, get lost/stolen, or someone changes the locks on you, and that's the fault of the lock salesman. You obviously belong to the latter category. But the way you go about trying to resolve that intolerance, if not hatred, is not going to get you what you want, and in fact will only get you further from that goal.
Unfortunately, something tells me you're either going to ignore the message this post is conveying, nitpick at it, or misinterpret it and create some strawman argument for why this cannot be the case. As you have proven time
Exactly WHAT wild, baseles claim did I make in the post you replied to?
Well primarily I was referring to the claim that DRM physically breaks hardware. And yes, re-reading your post, I can see you personally didn't claim that, but as I said, all these people with the same stupid rhetorical gets me confused.
Were have I shown any hatred to "companies protecting their investment"?
Here:
You seems to use "piracy" as an excuse for adding any and all sorts of control to a product that in many cases has nothing to do with piracy or have severe effects not realted to piracy. Just scream "piracy" and everyone should accept anything and anything is excused appearantly.
That sure looks like hatred to me.
Perhaps you are of the opinion that any and all critisim or complain equals hatred and should not be allowed and that consumers should just accept anything that companies do with the argument "we protect our investment"?
And perhaps you are of the opinion that any security mechanism is an abuse of your imaginary personal right to do whatever you want with the stuff you bought, almost as if you have no basic concept of written law.
For the record, for me, buying a game is an investment, I I also protect that investment and want to make sure that I can use it in the same way anything else I buy without the maker interfering with that in ways I gave examples of above. You seem to not accept that. Sad.
Obviously then, you've never bought a car, which comes with locks you can't feasibly remove, creates an inconvenience to you, and does nothing to stop criminals from stealing it or its contents. Oh sure, technically if you really wanted to you could remove the locks, if you don't mind paying for someone to do that, then perpetually paying higher insurance premiums. Almost like constantly buying the same game, or being fined for circumventing the DRM, really. You seem not to understand that. Oh poor fool, how I pity thee.
At no point did he say DRM was an excuse for piracy.
Correct. I should have directed that comment to you. I apologise. It's hard to keep up with all these different users who, purely out of coincidence, all happen to be using the exact same roundabout logic, have the same hatred of companies protecting their investment, and all make the same wild, baseless claims.
Are you really a bot set to respond with certain arguments whenever a keyword is used?
Yes. I find it's easier that way. It works so well too, because you just keep using the same stupid circular arguments again and again, it really isn't that hard to write a bot that refute them and predict what's coming next.
Firstly, it makes no difference whether DRM is actually effective or not. If companies perceive it to be effective, DRM measures will stop increasing. One way to incite companies to perceive DRM as working, and arguably the easiest way since it can be done by consumers, is to stop breaking the fucking law. It really isn't that difficult a concept, yet here we are, what, 10 posts later, still explaining the same fucking thing over and over again.
Secondly, leaving things behind after install - here's the part where we reintroduce the DirectX thing, because it seems the fatal flaw of the rabid anti-DRM crowd (aside from being illogical, irrational, zealous, etc) is they can't remember an argument for more than 12 hours before going round in another circle.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, talk about WHOOSH.
But I bet he has no defence against Blue Steel.
Kill The Malaysian Prime Minister!
Seeing as no one plays for 1 month continuously, that's a rather weak argument. I suppose you could argue that while you're traveling, you're not casting spells and stuff, reducing server load *shrug*
It's not really that difficult to grasp his point, but you seem to be doing a great job of missing it anyway.
If you pay for a month of play, there's only a certain number of minutes you can physically play the game - that would be your play time (not sleeping, working, or doing other normal things). Let's say you only have 1800 minutes of play time every month - that's 60 minutes per day, the amount of time a normal healthy person with a life would have to play. Now, that 60 minutes could be spent battling new monsters, going on raids, exploring new areas, etc. Things that might be considered fun. Or, from that 60 minutes, you could spend 10 minutes fighting and exploring, and 50 minutes travelling to/through places you've already been. That's 50 minutes worth of content that that Blizzard don't have to create, and it means you have to spend 5 more days to do what you should have been able to do in 1 day.
And then what do you think happens? The player is left unfulfilled because they didn't get much done that month because of all the time spent travelling, they didn't get to fight that new monster on the other side of the map, they barely even reached the entrance to the new dungeon, or they didn't reach the level they wanted to, or whatever it is MMO players do (I'm not one). So now they have to pay for another month. Ergo, wasting the player's time with bullshit like travelling leads to more revenue for the developers.
What's wrong with the labels is that they're usually not used in reference to vaguely-defined styles of gaming, but that they're branded against people (as in "casual gamer" vs "hardcore gamer") or consoles. Which becomes a major problem when you have someone such as myself, who enjoys playing Wii Sports, Mario Galaxy, Boom Blox or LEGO Batman on Wii one day, then playing Sins of a Solar Empire, Supreme Commander, DEFCON or Starcraft on PC another day. God forbid I should also play Peggle, Spore or World of Goo on PC and MadWorld, No More Heroes or House of the Dead Overkill on Wii, because that just fucks everything up and the little self-assuring pigeon-holing definitions become as pointless as A/V-philes arguing that DVD is for "casual movies" and Blu-Ray is for "hardcore movies" .
But, who does Number Two work for?
Then why tell me? Tell it to the parent. He's the one with the +5 Interesting for calling the article bullshit because it's possible to implement an unreliable AutoRun feature.
Yeah, and now people disable it because they think it'll give them a virus, and everyone bitches about Microsoft wasting effort on AutoRun instead of fixing insert favorite bug here. Seems to me that CD AutoRun pretty much proves his assumption of what would happen of the feature was on floppy drives.
I'd argue the comparison to printing counterfeit money (in that someone gains but nobody else directly loses from it), and then you'd look quite the fool.
counterfeiting money devalues the currency, undermining the entire economy and making everyone slightly poorer.
people only care about value when they're buying or selling something. That's the only time value is important.
Hmm, you wash your hands of the counterfeiting comparison by saying it devalues everyone's copies of the currency and therefore is wrong (I can only assume morally wrong, since you don't believe "illegal" is actually wrong at all). Then all of a sudden, the argument is that nobody really cares about value, it's only important if you're buying or selling (and no surprise, you even ignored the impact of it then). Bravo. Well, I guess a mistake like that is the only logical conclusion when your whole argument is structured solely to absolve you of any morally wrong-doing just to help you sleep at night.
I also can't help but notice you didn't take me up on that offer to raise funds for a game no one knows anything about, from a developer no one's heard of. Quite telling that even you yourself doesn't believe that system would work.
Bye bye now! Come visit us when you grow up!
It isn't. Software is subject to sales contracts like anything else. But no one is obligated to enter into such a contract: just because you want to sell me a copy of a game for $50 doesn't mean I have to get it from you, rather than from someone else who's offering it for free.
But the person who's offering it for free obviously does not have any legal distribution rights, so you're guilty of receiving stolen goods.
"It's wrong to harm people" is a general tenet of most systems of morality.
And yet, I have this feeling that illegally obtaining a work you have no right to, is conveniently not a part of this magical "morality" you refer to.
No, it's still quite clear. You're never obligated to buy a product from someone just because he really, really wants your money.
But you're not obligated to steal it either, so why do you?
You're just rephrasing what I said. You think they own a particular arrangement of toaster parts, and I'm sorry, but that's just stupid. You can't own an arrangement any more than you can own a color, or a length, or a weight. It's an attribute of a thing, not an actual thing.
Obviously you can, otherwise we wouldn't have a whole subset of laws specifying how you can and what you can do with it. But that's really irrelevent, since you didn't even address the argument.
It's not scarce; there's no justification for preventing me from using a certain arrangement of parts when it can't possibly interfere with anyone else's use of that same arrangement.
You're right about one thing: there's no justification for YOU to not steal property. We call that being selfish.
Once again, just because someone expends labor to draw up the original plans for the toaster, that doesn't mean they "own" that arrangement of parts.
Once again, it DOES, that's why there's laws for it.
Still having trouble seeing the difference between morality and legality, huh? That's a shame. Maybe when you're older you'll be able to grasp the distinction.
Still have trouble addressing arguments, being intelligent, and not being a criminal huh? Oh well, maybe that will all stop when you're dead.
Ha! No, sir, I'm not jealous, because that's what I do for a living. And amazingly enough, I don't need to sell copies in order to make a living as a developer.
You really need to break out of that fantasy world.
Yes, essentially, because they'd have no other choice. That would be the only way to get new games: paying developers to make them. And since everyone would still want new games, and still have money to spend on them, those developers would get paid.
If people today are willing to make a choice which could lead to fines or jail, I'm sure people in your fantasy world would have no problems hanging out for a few months while other people pay for the development of games you're too cheap to.
Once again, we've already established that there's nothing wrong with "interfering with the value" of another person's property, as long as you don't interfere with the actual property itself.
No, we haven't. YOU have this strange idea in your head that people care about physical property, when all they really care about is value. Reality is on a different page.
That's right (assuming you managed to obtain a copy of the book without trespassing, vandalism, theft, etc.).
Funny, I don't really see what you've lost physically by me trespassing? Because as YOU'VE established, nobody cares about anything except loss of physical property.
In that scenario, I made a big mistake when I agreed to get paid based on sales. Why would I do that, when I knew that someone could come along and distribute the
But this is losing sight of the original point.
Good point. So why is software exempt from sales contracts?
The difference that matters here between a sales contract and copyright law is that a contract carries with it a moral obligation, and the law does not. You are morally obligated to do what you promise to do; you're not morally obligated to obey a piece of paper just because it was signed by the governor or the president or the king or whoever signs bills into law in this alternate universe of yours.
I promise to kill you. What now?
If you don't see a moral difference between killing a sentient human being and copying a file without permission, then you sound awfully dangerous to be around. You're not posting from prison, are you?
Once again, show me the concrete rule that says murder is immoral but breaking other laws isn't.
For the record, I'm not religious. You don't need a Bible to see the difference between an act that directly harms someone and an act that reduces the likelihood that they'll receive a few dollars which they might never have received anyway.
True. But how about the difference between killing someone who's a matter of minutes away from dying anyway, and a game developer who's only a few hundred dollars short of a life-saving operation for his 10 year old son? Not so clear then, huh? Hey, you know what, maybe we could come up with a set of rules, let's call them "laws", that prevents either of these things happening, so then we don't have to make stupid assumptions about why some people deserve legal protection and others don't.
It's as if you think they own the concept of putting a few parts together in a certain arrangement!
No, not the concept of doing it, just the specific way they do it. I'm not sure what you're talking about, but it's certainly not copyright (your confusion makes all the more sense now!). Unless of course you believe that work has no value, and we're back to square one: why are you wasting time on something you believe has no value? If it has no value, surely it must be easy to re-construct your own version of it from scratch right?
If I buy those parts, I'm entitled to put them together into a toaster. If I don't know how to put them together, and I find someone out there who'll tell me how to do it, there's absolutely nothing wrong with enlisting their help. I have no obligation to reinvent the wheel just because I don't want to pay $100 for a toaster.
Right, but putting parts together into "a toaster", with or without an engineer/electrician's help, is not the same as putting them together knowingly in the exact same configuration as an existing product, which had actual people perform actual work on it (it's this crazy concept called labour). Unless of course you can prove that the exact replica is purely coincidence. Regardless, I fail to see how this relates to piracy. There's no piracy law that prevents you from putting together program code to make "a game" either, and as explained, even if you manage to make it identical to an existing game, no one will really care as long as you keep it to yourself.
If you see two stores selling identical items, one for $100 and the other for $25, is there anything wrong with buying it from the cheaper store? Of course not. It's a consensual transaction. They have an item, they can sell it for whatever price they want. If they think $25 is a fair price, then there's nothing wrong with buying it at that price.
And if a store is selling a toaster for $100, but a shady guy in an alley outside is selling the same product for $5 from the boot of his car, but without the fancy packaging, why, that's a perfectly legal transaction too, right?
But it is a valid point. Show me a store who's offering legal copies of video games for
Sorry, but that's simply not true. Nothing like that appears anywhere in the text of US copyright law, except perhaps the mechanical licenses used by radio broadcasters.
I see you are unfamiliar with the concept of logical opposites then. Sales contract: you must fulfil conditions X in return for Y. Copyright: you cannot use/copy/distribute Y without fulfilling conditions X. Or hey, let's mix and match this crazy thing just to confuse you! Sales contract: you cannot take Y without fulfilling conditions X. Copyright: you must fulfil conditions X before you can use/copy/distribute Y. I know, it's really difficult to understand, but just concentrate real hard, I'm sure you'll get it eventually!
Incorrect. Murder is immoral for reasons that have nothing to do with its legality, and even if it were legal, it would still be immoral. Morality and legality are separate issues: copyright violation may be illegal, but that doesn't make it immoral.
I'm not aware of any definitive concept which makes murder immoral but copyright infringement not immoral. Perhaps you could elaborate? I know, I know, your big powerful God says murder is bad, while copyright law was only invented by a bunch of lowly humans during an era in which the most intelligent thinking human minds existed; but still, surely you have some definitive, concrete definition of those morals?
However, if both toasters were priced at $100, I wouldn't be willing to buy either of them. I'm not paying $100 for a toaster, period. If I could download pirated plans to build the same toaster from $10 worth of parts, I might do that. That doesn't mean I think toasters have no value, it means that the value of a toaster in my mind is less than $100 but more than $10.
And because you don't value the toaster at $100, it also doesn't mean you can take the toaster without paying anything. But it's lovely to see that your answer to "this product isn't worth $100!" is "this product is worth only the cost of materials from a third party, but knowing that I'm not smart enough to design my own toaster I have to abuse the work that somebody else put into designing one".
Or looking at it without the analogy, if you don't like the price of a video game, you're free to download programming tutorials legally off the internet and make your own game. And hey, as long as you don't release it publicly or sell it, I'm sure no one would even care if you made it as identical to the original as humanly possible, despite the trademark/copyright infringements. It wouldn't even cost you anything, and is more or less legal. Seems like the only reason to resort to piracy is pure laziness (or mental retardedness, attention seeking, etc).
No action I've committed, encouraged, or condoned implies that I believe games have no value, either, but whatever.
So despite acknowledgement that video games, as digital products, have value, you don't see anything wrong with obtaining something of value without remuneration for the work that went into creating that item of value? Despite the fact that it devalues every instance of that product, new and old, devalues the industry in general, and leads to annoying protective measures (that is then used to justify MORE crime)? Now THAT'S amusing!
Not just "other events", but other events -- deliberate actions, in fact -- which we all consider perfectly acceptable. By accepting those actions, we've already established that there's nothing inherently wrong with devaluing another person's property, so you can hardly expect to use that as an argument against copying.
Just like how if someone's going to die anyway, it doesn't really matter if they get killed, right? I mean, we accept "dying of old age", why not "dying of being shot"? Just as we accept that older games have less value, there should be no problem devaluing them by stealing them too, right? Or perhaps we could m
First, copyright law is quite different from a sales contract. A contract says "if you give me $X, I'll give you product Y". Copyright law says "if you make unauthorized copies, you're in trouble". The law doesn't obligate anyone to buy copies of your work just because you spent time making it; unlike a sales contract, they can uphold the law simply by ignoring your work.
False.
A sales contract says "you get X in exchange for Y". Copyright law says "you get X in exchange for Y", where X is something along the lines of "the right to use Z". Both are types of obligation, both legal and moral, instituted and protected by law.
Second, you have a moral obligation to fulfill your promises, but you have no moral obligation to obey the law.
So it's not immoral to commit murder then?
You're confusing economic value with utility: people download games not because they're worth money, but because they're useful (i.e. fun to play).
And utility gives what? VALUE.
Or look at it this way: there are two toasters for sale. Both are the same price, same brand, model, physically identical in every way. Except one works fine, while the other is in 1000 pieces and obviously doesn't work. You're getting the same product either way, and you've just made the argument that utility doesn't imply value. It doesn't really matter to you which toaster you get, right?
But of course I never said games have no value, anyway.
Your actions speak louder than your words.
I'm not sure what argument you think I'm making here, but again, I never said games have no economic value. Obviously they do: people do pay for copies of games. What I said is that diminishing a used game's resale value doesn't destroy its usefulness the way counterfeiting money destroys the currency's usefulness.
You're making the argument that it's ok to devalue a product by committing a crime, because there are already other events which devalue that product anyway.
Having a lot of pirated copies out there might make it harder for me to resell my own copy, but no one really cares about that. People don't buy games just so they can resell them at a loss; they buy games to play them, and making copies doesn't diminish anyone else's ability to play them.
Try telling that to the myriad of stores that deal with second-hand video games. Then stop and think for all of 3 seconds why those stores no longer trade in second-hand PC games. Oh, you forgot one tiny problem: having lots of pirated copies around also makes it harder for retailers to sell NEW copies, and even for the developers to sell original copies also (physical or digital). And all the other people along the way: distributers, logistics, advertisers etc. But no one really cares about them. One magic hand wave and Whoosh! you've absolved yourself of any liability in that.
If you want to argue that copyright infringement is wrong because it diminishes the economic value of copies, then like I said, you must also believe that writing negative reviews is wrong for the same reason: people won't pay as much for a product that they think sucks.
No, I mustn't, because it's a fallacy. You're essentially saying that it's morally ok to key someone's car and snap the aerial off, thus decreasing the car's value without physically taking anything, because the owner never really lost anything, and there are lots of other ways that the car's value will decrease so it doesn't really make any difference. Congratulations! You've just legitimized vandalism!
I assume you're asking where it would come from in a game industry that weren't based around selling copies.
No, I'm not talking about some fantasy neo-communist future society where everything is free and the world is made out of candy, all because some juvenile, im
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The labor needed to create a video game, however, has already been performed by the time anyone has a chance to pirate it. It's a fixed cost.
And the labour that goes into cooking a meal has already been performed, so why should you pay for it afterwards right? It's not like it costs them any more if you didn't eat it.
Or that loan with the bank you have, they've already paid you the money, so they're not losing anything from you not paying it back, right?
Ha, please, I'd like to see how think the creators of a game are going to get paid without anyone buying it.
Well, I care if we steal from them, but copying isn't stealing. It makes one person richer without making anyone else poorer.
Haha, yes, and killing isn't murder, it's just assisted undesired suicide.
Please, give it a shot. I can't wait to see how you handwave away the fact that counterfeiting money devalues the currency, undermining the entire economy and making everyone slightly poorer.
And copying games devalues the them, making the entire gaming industry and anyone who legitimately owns those games poorer. Or are you really that blinded to the simple fact?
Yes, but that insurance money doesn't just appear out of thin air.
But the labour needed to create a video game does, right?
As I wrote, "bank robbers deprive other people of money" -- for a bank that's insured, the loss is borne by the insurer instead of the account holders,
If it weren't for bank robbers, the insurance company wouldn't even exist in the first place.
but the robber's action still causes someone to become poorer.
But just as the money doesn't appear out of thin air, it doesn't disappear into it either. The robbers will be using the money for something else - possibly even investing it in that very same bank. So the bank/insurer gets poorer, but somebody else - maybe even the same entities - become equally richer. It's simply the movement of funds from the rich to poor, isn't that what we immortalise Robin Hood for?
But hey, consider the context, we're talking about piracy remember? Nobody really cares about the big evil corporations, they have enough money, who cares if we steal from/"infringe" upon them?
Of course at this point you could shift your argument into an example of the 'parable of the broken window' and hope nobody notices you were never really arguing that at all, but then you'd have to apply the same principles to software piracy and your argument that nobody really loses from it would fall apart. At which point I'd argue the comparison to printing counterfeit money (in that someone gains but nobody else directly loses from it), and then you'd look quite the fool.
But I'll save you the humiliation because, hey, that's just the type of guy I am.
Wow, you've signed up with a bank that takes money out of your personal account every time it gets robbed? That's pretty sad.
In my country, our banks are insured (more than often than not, self-insured) so they can cover losses like that. Perhaps you should consider switching banks.
Bioshock took several weeks to crack.
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory took over a year.
CSS took 2.5 years.
For what it's worth, only legitimate bank users ever have to pay fees, while bank robbers don't ever have to pay a cent, yet that's hardly a great reason to support the robbing of banks. Not that, you know, simple logic would ever change your mind or anything...
Step 2 is "Have your product cost less than all your competitors while still maintaining massive consumer interest in it". That's why it's a better business model.
Didn't realise Source engine was 64 bit, and yeah that definitely boosts the total number of 64-bit games, but other than that there really aren't many. I too am sure Far Cry was the first, Crysis had it too, there are a couple of RTSs which have it (Company of Heroes I think), and I believe WoW has it too. But all things considered, it's still only a handful of games out of the hundreds of blockbusters - and it's also worth noting that pretty much all these games had/have massive issues in 64 bit (that aren't the fault of the OS or drivers).
I think you're forgetting something, or maybe it's only subtly implied but, the fact is Vista is the first 64-bit system for many users, which really compounded the problem of incompatible software, drivers etc. I guarantee you if Vista was 32-bit only, or XP x64 had several more years before Vista was released, there wouldn't be half as many issues as there are now.
The upgrade to Vista from XP doesn't seem so error-prone when you consider that the majority of users were migrating to an entirely new platform which didn't have much support from most software developers at the time, and still doesn't (I can count on one hand the number of games which will run natively in 64-bit).
If you truly were a decent, moral person with legitimate reasons for hating DRM, you would want to be doing everything you could to prevent its use, not encouraging it. Right? By claiming that DRM is the reason X% percentage of pirates download games, you basically show that you agree that it's a valid reason in and of itself. You don't even have to agree that it's a legitimate excuse for piracy, all you have to do is agree that it's true, which is what you're doing.
Of course the simple fact is that it isn't a true statement, it's yet more lies brought to you by the people who have every reason to say anything they can to legitimise what they do (breaking the law) lest people have reason to think they might just be doing it because they're bad, immoral people, or just plain assholes. There's always some excuse - it hasn't always been DRM - but the last thing you want to do is carelessly legitimise those excuses.
(As an aside, people like yourself don't make very good judges, because all you'd end up doing is letting everyone off. "Oh, he just needed to feed his family, it's ok that he stole that food", "You say you promise you'll pay back the dealership for that car you stole? Well that's good enough for me. Everyone needs a car", "I agree, that guy was being a jerk, he really did deserve to die. No murder setence for you!")
Because if you legitimise it, you give more reason for more people to do it more often. Which as we know is only going to lead to more invasive DRM - and because no software is perfect, more people who claim DRM wrecked their computer (even if these claims are never backed by evidence); or God forbid prevents them from installing the same game on the 10+ dedicated gaming machines they just happen to have lying around; all frequently used, naturally.
In other words attacking DRM, instead of attacking the cause of it (piracy), (or you know, doing something constructive like coming up with better, non-invasive implementations of DRM) is only going to lead to more DRM, which you claim to be against. This is about as simple as it gets - YOU (not personally, but people with your mindset) are the cause of increasing DRM.
It is for this reason I do not believe you truly have good intentions in your anti-DRM arguments at best, and at worst are merely a troll spreading DRM FUD to help fuel your justification for criminal behaviour. Somewhere in the middle is the possiblility that you're extremely incompetent, and simply unable to comprehend the ramifications of your actions.
Another reason I don't believe your intentions are honorable, is that you keep claiming piracy and DRM are unrelated, yet you also keep claiming DRM is a major cause of piracy. Clearly both cannot be the case. This isn't your only contradiction, but it is by far the easiest to point out for the sake of argument.
Nobody WANTS to be typing in that CD key at install. Obviously no one WANTS even the remote possibility that their product might not work in the future. You'd have to be crazy to enjoy it. But some people tolerate it because it's in their best interests (more peace of mind for developers - whether substantiated or not - means more productions, more risk in innovation, lower profit margins); and some people don't tolerate it because, in their opinion, the clear benefits outweigh the inconvenience of having to unlock your software like you do your home, which brings about the possibility that one day, the key might break, get lost/stolen, or someone changes the locks on you, and that's the fault of the lock salesman. You obviously belong to the latter category. But the way you go about trying to resolve that intolerance, if not hatred, is not going to get you what you want, and in fact will only get you further from that goal.
Unfortunately, something tells me you're either going to ignore the message this post is conveying, nitpick at it, or misinterpret it and create some strawman argument for why this cannot be the case. As you have proven time
Exactly WHAT wild, baseles claim did I make in the post you replied to?
Well primarily I was referring to the claim that DRM physically breaks hardware. And yes, re-reading your post, I can see you personally didn't claim that, but as I said, all these people with the same stupid rhetorical gets me confused.
Were have I shown any hatred to "companies protecting their investment"?
Here:
You seems to use "piracy" as an excuse for adding any and all sorts of control to a product that in many cases has nothing to do with piracy or have severe effects not realted to piracy. Just scream "piracy" and everyone should accept anything and anything is excused appearantly.
That sure looks like hatred to me.
Perhaps you are of the opinion that any and all critisim or complain equals hatred and should not be allowed and that consumers should just accept anything that companies do with the argument "we protect our investment"?
And perhaps you are of the opinion that any security mechanism is an abuse of your imaginary personal right to do whatever you want with the stuff you bought, almost as if you have no basic concept of written law.
For the record, for me, buying a game is an investment, I I also protect that investment and want to make sure that I can use it in the same way anything else I buy without the maker interfering with that in ways I gave examples of above. You seem to not accept that. Sad.
Obviously then, you've never bought a car, which comes with locks you can't feasibly remove, creates an inconvenience to you, and does nothing to stop criminals from stealing it or its contents. Oh sure, technically if you really wanted to you could remove the locks, if you don't mind paying for someone to do that, then perpetually paying higher insurance premiums. Almost like constantly buying the same game, or being fined for circumventing the DRM, really. You seem not to understand that. Oh poor fool, how I pity thee.
At no point did he say DRM was an excuse for piracy.
Correct. I should have directed that comment to you. I apologise. It's hard to keep up with all these different users who, purely out of coincidence, all happen to be using the exact same roundabout logic, have the same hatred of companies protecting their investment, and all make the same wild, baseless claims.
Are you really a bot set to respond with certain arguments whenever a keyword is used?
Yes. I find it's easier that way. It works so well too, because you just keep using the same stupid circular arguments again and again, it really isn't that hard to write a bot that refute them and predict what's coming next.
Firstly, it makes no difference whether DRM is actually effective or not. If companies perceive it to be effective, DRM measures will stop increasing. One way to incite companies to perceive DRM as working, and arguably the easiest way since it can be done by consumers, is to stop breaking the fucking law. It really isn't that difficult a concept, yet here we are, what, 10 posts later, still explaining the same fucking thing over and over again.
Secondly, leaving things behind after install - here's the part where we reintroduce the DirectX thing, because it seems the fatal flaw of the rabid anti-DRM crowd (aside from being illogical, irrational, zealous, etc) is they can't remember an argument for more than 12 hours before going round in another circle.