It's a fantasy. If this actually worked, and was actually beneficial to the artist, we would be seeing more artists operating this way by choice.
I mean, come on. Did you really think that you could just force artists to provide you with free services, without repercussions? The artists who would be happy doing this, chances are, they are already doing this. If you're so interested in the artists' welfare, why don't you let them make up their own mind, eh?
And besides, I don't see what's so great about concerts, merchandise, tv appearances, product endorsements, etc. With the exception of concerts, I am not interested in any one of these products, and you seem awfully keen to turn artists into peddlers of said "services". I mean, if that's what gets you to support them, then that's what they're going to concentrate on. Certainly not this "recording" business, all of which just gets copied ad nauseum, and is just listened to as a substitute for coming to live gigs and paying real money.
So yeah, it is a pretty demotivating outlook for artist, with a future where they are dictated to a terrible business model by their so-called fans. It's a pretty demotivating outlook for us too, in a world where recordings are shafted to sell more concert tickets.
Now, you see? There's a good way to do racism and there's a bad way to do racism. You have to have more imagination! Think of something witty! Show how intelligent and thoughtful a kid in his mummy's basement, pretending to be an ignorant hick, can be!
Well, it may well be a simple problem of business model, but as they say, a problem is only a problem if you have a solution. Currently, we don't have a solution, or at least, not one that solves the problem without introducing a whole lot of new, more serious problems.
If Spain (or any other country) makes P2P sharing of copyrighted works legal, then that's copyright essentially gone. Commercial copying? Who cares? It's the free copying that's by far the most appealing, and the practice that kills the most sales. And yes, without sales, such artists are fucked. They need to eat, etc, etc, etc. To summarise:
Legal copying ---> Everyone can get works for free legally ---> Tragedy of commons; paying for it is nobody's problem ---> No money goes to the artist ---> Artist is either fucked, or quits and finds a real job ---> Nobody gets to hear anything new from that artist
Games have become such huge business surrounded by such huge marketing hype that the games companies can now basically do what they like.
You are so wrong.
When you're a company, it doesn't matter how much money you're making, so long as you can make more, you are never happy. There's no "financial freedom" in the world of business, only a mathematically optimal point at which you strive to reach, and once you've reached it, you follow that point as it changes over the ever-changing market.
So yeah, DRM will stay, but not because the companies "want" it. It will stay because the companies compulsively must have it.
How does waiting for a publisher to loosen DRM equate to fighting DRM?
Well, for one, it rewards the companies for removing DRM much more quickly. They much prefer to strike while the iron is hot and the hype is prevalent than months later when a new game has come out.
However, it is true that while people pirate the games when they come out, companies are not going to release without DRM. So, I suppose, the best way to fight DRM is to not pirate it, even when the DRM is broken/removed. Show that it's presence is largely redundant.
I hardly think digital transmission of data destroys anything.
Ah, this is an easy trap to fall into. Information can be very powerful. This is, in fact, the main reason why we enshrine free speech, as a weapon against corruption. To say that the mere stream of bits, or the vibrations of air molecules could destroy a person, or even a large group of people, seems counter-intuitive, but it can happen, and it has happened before. So, in general, don't underestimate the the transmission of data! It's a good thing the founding fathers didn't make the same mistake!
In this case, the digital transmission of data, in certain circumstances, will destroy the profits of these artists and these companies, and will make it less likely that there will be data worth transmitting in the future. Their existence is dependent upon their providing data to those who wouldn't otherwise have it, and the people paying them back for it. Taking without paying does them nothing but harm. So yeah, the GP got it pretty much right. If P2P of copyrighted files is allowed, then all artists in Spain using copyright are pretty much fucked.
Content suffers from censorship. People aren't help by censorship. Good games are not purchased because of censorship. Children are not protected by censorship. The only people who win from censorship are the censors, and they are the very people who our society should not allow to triumph. We don't need video game censorship, at least not in its current form.
Jesus, could you get a more narrow and simplistic opinion?
OK, imagine if there were no ratings on games. None. Not even just advisory ratings. What would happen? Would we enter a golden age where parents would allow kids to play whatever they want, and stop obsessing over what their kids watched and played? No, what we would get is paranoid parents, refusing to pay for anything that they, a friend, or a trusted reviewer, haven't specifically okayed beforehand. There would be considerably less emphasis on good games, and good games would be less likely to be made, since parents are now trying to minimise offensive content in their children's games, not listen to which games are good. Game companies would work harder to self-censor their content, in case the paranoid chinese whispers known as "word of mouth" shed an unfavourable light on their game. I fail to see how the system would be any better.
You are living in the libertarian dystopian fantasy (which is only 75-90% imaginary), where the government's censorship attempts are oppressing its people, against their wishes, or if not their wishes, then at least contrary to their best interests. The fantasy also dictates that there cannot be but a single positive effect of censorship. No matter how many negative effects accompany it, no matter how many different and complex situations that censorship can be applied, there can never be a single situation where censorship can help a single person, unless that person is in a position of power, and therefore evil (this was the tell-tale property that tipped me off).
The fact is that a lot of people genuinely want game censorship (although, the kind of censorship that bans games altogether will most probably go out of favour) and a lot of people believe that adult games do psychological damage to kids. We are currently in the process of deciding this claim, through a series of studies, so it's pointless claiming that they are harmful or not, especially so if you decide to make broad, sweeping statements about their lack of effect on all children.
Also, another tip-off about your living in this fantasy is the claim that censors "win" from censorship, without any mention about what exactly "winning" entails for a censor. I suppose the censor keeps his job, but that's also a win for many other people out there. Short of censors being part of a truly gargantuan government conspiracy to turn us into slaves, I don't see how censorship being instituted is a win exclusively for censors.
(Mods: just because you don't agree with it, doesn't mean it's flamebait)
You have to remember that this study isn't suggesting that young children who play games grow up to be uninformed adults. All it's suggesting is the obvious: that playing video games can hinder learning. And it can, just like any other goofing off.
If they wanted to show the long-term effects of childhood gaming, they would design a completely different study. And, I guess, in a way, this kind of study paves the way for the more general study, since it establishes that gaming has some effect on learning.
Abso-fucking-lutely not! The same critical flaw that applies to the individual's case applies thousandfold to the government! The argument only works if the watchers (in this case, the people) are only interested in what's relevant to the job. That is, there's no need for keeping details private, unless they are relevant, in which case the public needs to know.
The reality is far removed from this situation. A sizable portion of the US won't vote for a president who doesn't believe in God (or at least, say he does on camera). Or they won't vote for a guy because of an opinion he held in high school. Or they won't vote for a guy without a family. Or they won't for a guy who isn't, well, a guy. All stuff that varies from not at all correlated to extremely weakly correlated to their ability to govern. Just a human mistake will be enough to get people at their throats, even if it's clear they won't make the same mistake again.
The fact is, the public are terrible watchers, akin to a government literally out to find the tiniest excuse to imprison you for life. They don't care about reason, fairness, or impartiality when judging governments. Often, they just want heads on pikes.
Remember, any power that can be abused will be abused.
Am I the only one who, whenever they hear these statements, feels the need for proof? It's not just this particular one, but as someone said earlier in the thread:
people seek power, power corrupts
These too require proof. Certainly the first one, I've seen plenty of counterexamples with my own eyes. I'm not convinced that any one of these statements actually holds well in real life.
I would also like to mention that proximity is not really a huge factor, these days, in determining threats. It takes less than a day to get just about anywhere by plane, and the internet has made it possible to instantaneously do damage (in a limited scope) from anywhere in the world. The government, on the other hand, is large, unwieldy, naturally self-destructive, and under constant watch by people who hate them. They're not going to pull something drastic any time soon. I suppose neither is any foreign countries at the moment, but I certainly wouldn't rank the government much higher in terms of being a threat.
Did they infringe any of your rights? Well, no. You have no obligation to buy from them.
Assuming that you did buy from them, did they infringe any of your rights, or at least inconvenience you in some way? No, you still have the same game, pixel for pixel. You were given what exactly what you paid for, no more, no less. Oh, except for a, for all intents and purposes, useless block of data on the disc that you were never going to access anyway.
Assuming you did buy from them, and you wanted to buy the DLC, did they... yada yada yada? Hmm, still no. The price, the transaction, all of it is the same. The only difference is that you don't have to download the data in order to play it. How cool is that!?
The only possible way you could feel victimised after this is if you believe that you are entitled to play the DLC for free, just for buying the original game. All I can say is that this mentality doesn't lead to better, more extensive games for the same price, rather it just leads to games being more limited or games being more expensive.
Yeah, I might call them sheeple too, if there were a single rational argument against this practice. Remind me: who's rights are being infringed? Who's being inconvenienced? Who's the victim? If you can't answer those, at least tell me which law is being broken by 2K.
Oh right, I guess only sheeple think about these kind of questions.
It's pure appeal to emotion. There's no rational basis to this.
If I bought a car that was advertised without cupholders, I would expect nothing more than a car without cupholders. If I felt that I wanted a car with cupholders for the same price, I wouldn't have bought the friggin' car! I would take it as a bonus that I didn't have to wait at the mechanics for a cupholder to be installed (and still pay the premium, by the way), should I want cupholders installed in the car.
What this episode teaches 2K is that they should never try to optimise this process. If they want to distribute a DLC, they should never efficiently use the otherwise wasted space on the disk image. No, they should always subject people to a lengthy download period, so people can feel that they were previously deprived.
Can you understand that -having- content but being unable to use it as frustrating?
You don't have the content. Can you understand why not having any effort barrier to acquire the content may be simply a better way of doing things?
But this is different... it was already on the disk!
You might as well come to terms with it: price is not set by production costs, it's set by demand. Why can't 2K charge for DLC? They worked to create it, they advertised their game without it, you bought the game without it, playing the game with it is completely optional. I'm failing to see how distributing it on the disc is unethical.
It's only really unethical if you somehow believe you have some kind of entitlement to the "DLC", but I really can't see how that would fly. You were given the game you paid for. Pure and simple.
I would imagine that copyright would be different, since it benefits, on the whole, the government, corporations, and the people. There's interest at all levels to prevent infringement.
The only potentially reluctant party is the other country, but like I said, the US has the power here.
The US isn't going to trade with them if it means operating at a loss. That "lip service" will be enough for it to be beneficial to the US, or the trade won't happen.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a fantasy. If this actually worked, and was actually beneficial to the artist, we would be seeing more artists operating this way by choice.
I mean, come on. Did you really think that you could just force artists to provide you with free services, without repercussions? The artists who would be happy doing this, chances are, they are already doing this. If you're so interested in the artists' welfare, why don't you let them make up their own mind, eh?
And besides, I don't see what's so great about concerts, merchandise, tv appearances, product endorsements, etc. With the exception of concerts, I am not interested in any one of these products, and you seem awfully keen to turn artists into peddlers of said "services". I mean, if that's what gets you to support them, then that's what they're going to concentrate on. Certainly not this "recording" business, all of which just gets copied ad nauseum, and is just listened to as a substitute for coming to live gigs and paying real money.
So yeah, it is a pretty demotivating outlook for artist, with a future where they are dictated to a terrible business model by their so-called fans. It's a pretty demotivating outlook for us too, in a world where recordings are shafted to sell more concert tickets.
I repeat: everybody loses.
Now, you see? There's a good way to do racism and there's a bad way to do racism. You have to have more imagination! Think of something witty! Show how intelligent and thoughtful a kid in his mummy's basement, pretending to be an ignorant hick, can be!
Well, it may well be a simple problem of business model, but as they say, a problem is only a problem if you have a solution. Currently, we don't have a solution, or at least, not one that solves the problem without introducing a whole lot of new, more serious problems.
If Spain (or any other country) makes P2P sharing of copyrighted works legal, then that's copyright essentially gone. Commercial copying? Who cares? It's the free copying that's by far the most appealing, and the practice that kills the most sales. And yes, without sales, such artists are fucked. They need to eat, etc, etc, etc. To summarise:
Legal copying
---> Everyone can get works for free legally
---> Tragedy of commons; paying for it is nobody's problem
---> No money goes to the artist
---> Artist is either fucked, or quits and finds a real job
---> Nobody gets to hear anything new from that artist
Long term: everybody loses.
Hm. Let me post it again.
Okay? Got that? It will be at the end of the post too, so you won't forget! Now let's try reading this again:
If I had meant "every single circumstance", I would have said "every single circumstance".
I mean, exactly how dumb are you? Did you really, truly think I meant that downloading via iTunes was hurting artists? Really?
You are so wrong.
When you're a company, it doesn't matter how much money you're making, so long as you can make more, you are never happy. There's no "financial freedom" in the world of business, only a mathematically optimal point at which you strive to reach, and once you've reached it, you follow that point as it changes over the ever-changing market.
So yeah, DRM will stay, but not because the companies "want" it. It will stay because the companies compulsively must have it.
Well, for one, it rewards the companies for removing DRM much more quickly. They much prefer to strike while the iron is hot and the hype is prevalent than months later when a new game has come out.
However, it is true that while people pirate the games when they come out, companies are not going to release without DRM. So, I suppose, the best way to fight DRM is to not pirate it, even when the DRM is broken/removed. Show that it's presence is largely redundant.
Ah, this is an easy trap to fall into. Information can be very powerful. This is, in fact, the main reason why we enshrine free speech, as a weapon against corruption. To say that the mere stream of bits, or the vibrations of air molecules could destroy a person, or even a large group of people, seems counter-intuitive, but it can happen, and it has happened before. So, in general, don't underestimate the the transmission of data! It's a good thing the founding fathers didn't make the same mistake!
In this case, the digital transmission of data, in certain circumstances, will destroy the profits of these artists and these companies, and will make it less likely that there will be data worth transmitting in the future. Their existence is dependent upon their providing data to those who wouldn't otherwise have it, and the people paying them back for it. Taking without paying does them nothing but harm. So yeah, the GP got it pretty much right. If P2P of copyrighted files is allowed, then all artists in Spain using copyright are pretty much fucked.
Actually, for a racist AC troll, his comment was pretty funny.
I'm jewish (by race, not by religion) so it's OK for me to say this. ;-)
Really? Is there some fact/rumour/speculation of a kill switch in the iPhone?
Jesus, could you get a more narrow and simplistic opinion?
OK, imagine if there were no ratings on games. None. Not even just advisory ratings. What would happen? Would we enter a golden age where parents would allow kids to play whatever they want, and stop obsessing over what their kids watched and played? No, what we would get is paranoid parents, refusing to pay for anything that they, a friend, or a trusted reviewer, haven't specifically okayed beforehand. There would be considerably less emphasis on good games, and good games would be less likely to be made, since parents are now trying to minimise offensive content in their children's games, not listen to which games are good. Game companies would work harder to self-censor their content, in case the paranoid chinese whispers known as "word of mouth" shed an unfavourable light on their game. I fail to see how the system would be any better.
You are living in the libertarian dystopian fantasy (which is only 75-90% imaginary), where the government's censorship attempts are oppressing its people, against their wishes, or if not their wishes, then at least contrary to their best interests. The fantasy also dictates that there cannot be but a single positive effect of censorship. No matter how many negative effects accompany it, no matter how many different and complex situations that censorship can be applied, there can never be a single situation where censorship can help a single person, unless that person is in a position of power, and therefore evil (this was the tell-tale property that tipped me off).
The fact is that a lot of people genuinely want game censorship (although, the kind of censorship that bans games altogether will most probably go out of favour) and a lot of people believe that adult games do psychological damage to kids. We are currently in the process of deciding this claim, through a series of studies, so it's pointless claiming that they are harmful or not, especially so if you decide to make broad, sweeping statements about their lack of effect on all children.
Also, another tip-off about your living in this fantasy is the claim that censors "win" from censorship, without any mention about what exactly "winning" entails for a censor. I suppose the censor keeps his job, but that's also a win for many other people out there. Short of censors being part of a truly gargantuan government conspiracy to turn us into slaves, I don't see how censorship being instituted is a win exclusively for censors.
(Mods: just because you don't agree with it, doesn't mean it's flamebait)
You have to remember that this study isn't suggesting that young children who play games grow up to be uninformed adults. All it's suggesting is the obvious: that playing video games can hinder learning. And it can, just like any other goofing off.
If they wanted to show the long-term effects of childhood gaming, they would design a completely different study. And, I guess, in a way, this kind of study paves the way for the more general study, since it establishes that gaming has some effect on learning.
"Hello World" uses over 90% of his "iHello World" work. You would be hard pressed to make a fair use argument here. ;-)
It's times like this I'm glad I'm with Facebook!
Really? What's your source? Do you have the undeniably accurate and complete set of confessions of all torturees?
(And no, even if your claim is incorrect, that would not justify torture.)
Abso-fucking-lutely not! The same critical flaw that applies to the individual's case applies thousandfold to the government! The argument only works if the watchers (in this case, the people) are only interested in what's relevant to the job. That is, there's no need for keeping details private, unless they are relevant, in which case the public needs to know.
The reality is far removed from this situation. A sizable portion of the US won't vote for a president who doesn't believe in God (or at least, say he does on camera). Or they won't vote for a guy because of an opinion he held in high school. Or they won't vote for a guy without a family. Or they won't for a guy who isn't, well, a guy. All stuff that varies from not at all correlated to extremely weakly correlated to their ability to govern. Just a human mistake will be enough to get people at their throats, even if it's clear they won't make the same mistake again.
The fact is, the public are terrible watchers, akin to a government literally out to find the tiniest excuse to imprison you for life. They don't care about reason, fairness, or impartiality when judging governments. Often, they just want heads on pikes.
The government... is that you?
Am I the only one who, whenever they hear these statements, feels the need for proof? It's not just this particular one, but as someone said earlier in the thread:
These too require proof. Certainly the first one, I've seen plenty of counterexamples with my own eyes. I'm not convinced that any one of these statements actually holds well in real life.
I would also like to mention that proximity is not really a huge factor, these days, in determining threats. It takes less than a day to get just about anywhere by plane, and the internet has made it possible to instantaneously do damage (in a limited scope) from anywhere in the world. The government, on the other hand, is large, unwieldy, naturally self-destructive, and under constant watch by people who hate them. They're not going to pull something drastic any time soon. I suppose neither is any foreign countries at the moment, but I certainly wouldn't rank the government much higher in terms of being a threat.
Hence indecent exposure laws.
Tell me: how has 2K victimised you?
Did they infringe any of your rights? Well, no. You have no obligation to buy from them.
Assuming that you did buy from them, did they infringe any of your rights, or at least inconvenience you in some way? No, you still have the same game, pixel for pixel. You were given what exactly what you paid for, no more, no less. Oh, except for a, for all intents and purposes, useless block of data on the disc that you were never going to access anyway.
Assuming you did buy from them, and you wanted to buy the DLC, did they ... yada yada yada? Hmm, still no. The price, the transaction, all of it is the same. The only difference is that you don't have to download the data in order to play it. How cool is that!?
The only possible way you could feel victimised after this is if you believe that you are entitled to play the DLC for free, just for buying the original game. All I can say is that this mentality doesn't lead to better, more extensive games for the same price, rather it just leads to games being more limited or games being more expensive.
Yeah, I might call them sheeple too, if there were a single rational argument against this practice. Remind me: who's rights are being infringed? Who's being inconvenienced? Who's the victim? If you can't answer those, at least tell me which law is being broken by 2K.
Oh right, I guess only sheeple think about these kind of questions.
It's pure appeal to emotion. There's no rational basis to this.
If I bought a car that was advertised without cupholders, I would expect nothing more than a car without cupholders. If I felt that I wanted a car with cupholders for the same price, I wouldn't have bought the friggin' car! I would take it as a bonus that I didn't have to wait at the mechanics for a cupholder to be installed (and still pay the premium, by the way), should I want cupholders installed in the car.
What this episode teaches 2K is that they should never try to optimise this process. If they want to distribute a DLC, they should never efficiently use the otherwise wasted space on the disk image. No, they should always subject people to a lengthy download period, so people can feel that they were previously deprived.
You don't have the content. Can you understand why not having any effort barrier to acquire the content may be simply a better way of doing things?
Oh man, you just hit the nail on the head.
You might as well come to terms with it: price is not set by production costs, it's set by demand. Why can't 2K charge for DLC? They worked to create it, they advertised their game without it, you bought the game without it, playing the game with it is completely optional. I'm failing to see how distributing it on the disc is unethical.
It's only really unethical if you somehow believe you have some kind of entitlement to the "DLC", but I really can't see how that would fly. You were given the game you paid for. Pure and simple.
I would imagine that copyright would be different, since it benefits, on the whole, the government, corporations, and the people. There's interest at all levels to prevent infringement.
The only potentially reluctant party is the other country, but like I said, the US has the power here.
The US isn't going to trade with them if it means operating at a loss. That "lip service" will be enough for it to be beneficial to the US, or the trade won't happen.