Not to mention (in the UK at least) the game has a certification age of 18. If anyone is selling digitised death to children it's irresponsible retailers or parents.
And yet when people are playing a war game outside the context of WWII (as is the case with CoD:BO) and still want to use the symbol, what other logical conclusion can you draw than that they are trying to be purposely inflammatory? Most people wouldn't take offence at someone wearing a Nazi uniform at a historic re-enactment, but someone wearing a swastika when they're having a drink in the local pub where they know people will be offended has determined to send out a message.
Not only that, he'd need to either be completely ignorant of its alternative meaning or not care that he was using it in an environment where people are likely to take offence. If the former is the case then he's not really culturally informed (or rather, he is but only for a narrow spectrum of global culture), if it's the latter then he's acting himself from a standpoint of intolerance to other people's views, it would be highly hypocritical of him to then complain people were being intolerant of his views.
Well this story pertains to XBOX Live, which is a global world where the western world is probably not a minority (or if it is, it's likely a significant one, I don't have the figures but sales would seem to indicate a much greater western audience).
How is it "obviously futile"? Lots of places in the world allow you to text emergency services - they don't make a big deal out of it, it just works. Likewise you might expect such a service would exist already for the benefit of the deaf/mute. Besides, if you have no choice in the matter (i.e. you can't get to a better position to call and if it works you might save some lives, your own included) then it would still be worth a try, even if you were 90% sure that it wasn't going to work. As for texting a friend and getting them to call 911... yes, if my friends at school had sent me a text to tell me they were being held hostage at gunpoint, I definitely would have believed them...
But that's talking about a different and existing function of mobile phones. Being able to send a text to emergency services is something entirely new which likely will need an update to the software on the phones themselves. In that case it's not unreasonable to say that, until the solution is fully implemented and this becomes free, it becomes the responsibility of the phone's owner to keep a little bit of credit on it purely for text emergencies (remember, dialling will still be free so it's a very limited use case).
Nevertheless, it's better to have something in the interim, even if that level of functionality is added incrementally over time. For instance, being able to bypass passwords to dial 911 is one thing, being able to bypass them to get to the text messaging app is something else entirely which would have to be added via a firmware update on the handsets themselves - that's not going to happen overnight, and nor should it (to avoid bugs) - still better in the meantime to be able to text even if it requires credit/a password/etc.
You'd have to be pretty stupid to prank call/text the emergency services from your own mobile. It's not like these things are hard to trace back to the owner. I guess it might be more of an issue if kids prank other kid's phones since you'd land them in hot water, but people would just have to be more careful with their possessions.
Albeit, I'm a nurse and former fire fighter and know what to provide: "2 car MVC, Any Street and Bob Road, 3 passengers with injuries, one ejected. Send EMS."
For some reason made me think of this:
Rimmer: White-hole-spewing-time-engines-dead-air-supply-low-advice-please.
Holly: Excuse me?
Rimmer: White-hole-spewing-time-engines-dead...
Holly: I can't understand a word you're saying.
Rimmer: White...
Holly: Yes.
Rimmer: Hole...
Holly: Right.
Rimmer: Spewing...
Holly: Yes.
Rimmer: Time.....
Holly: With you.
Rimmer: Engines dead...
Holly: Oh.
Rimmer: Air supply low...
Holly: Ah.
Rimmer: Advice please.
Holly: Right!
Is that really the situation in the US? Here in the UK they have to investigate every call, even if it's an obvious hoax call (kids giggling on the other end or something). That's why there's such a big deal about not calling unless it's a real emergency, because it's a big drain on resources to follow these things up (but I guess they feel it's worth it for the one time they don't follow it up and it's something serious).
This is about helping to determine the appropriate response, though. It could be the difference between "it's probably an accidental dial, we'll have someone pop around in a couple of hours while he's doing the doughnut run" and "armed siege in progress, we'll have SWAT there in munutes".
Not only that, he's assuming those people will never become customers in the future. If a broke student downloads my game for free today and decides he likes it, in a few years when he's earning he will probably buy the sequel. If a broke student downloads my game and I send him a fine or drag him into court, I'm guessing he'll never touch my future products with a long stick. Even crack dealers are smart enough to give the taster for free.
Everyone wants to sell more, of course. But going after pirates is a waste of resources. It's like me coming up with a cake recipe then complaining because some people figure out my recipe and are making their own cakes instead of buying mine. What I should be doing is making my cake better so that my existing customers are happy. Instead we have DRM, which is the digital equivalent of me putting a special coating on my cakes meaning they are tasteless without a decoating agent I personally hand out (okay, cakes were a bad analogy, I'm trying my best) - such a move would do nothing to stop people baking their own cakes, it just makes life miserable for my existing customers (and maybe forces some of them to go down the route of baking their own cakes).
As someone who does actively give money to developers I want my voice heard for once. I don't care about pirates, I don't care that people are getting stuff for free, I care about the quality of what I am paying for, so focus on that if you don't want to lose my actual real money while you're busy chasing theoretical money.
We've already seen how the music industry use this. They fire out a bunch of blanket demand notices based on nothing more than an IP and they rely on the fact that the fine is just low enough that people will be too scared or won't be able to afford the cost or effort to dispute the fine (even if they know they're not guilty) to ensure payment. The music industry and its lawyers have already been heavily criticised recently for this practice. Demanding money without proof of guilt and with the threat of legal action is certainly extortion. What makes you think the gaming industry will be any more responsible in how they use this?
Well, sneaking into a movie isn't quite the same as downloading a movie. You are depriving the cinema of something - not the price of the ticket (because there's no way to determine that you would have paid if sneaking was not an option) but rather the seat you occupy. When the cinema is empty, of course, the real world effect is that it won't hurt the cinema. If the screening is full then at the very least they'll have to spend time and effort identifying that the seat has been occupied by someone without a ticket and dealing with having you removed. That's because seats in cinemas represent a physical resource with the opportunity to be exhausted by demand. Digital media, on the other hand, has no such restraints. If someone copies your game you don't have one less copy to sell, it doesn't affect your offering at all. That's why artificial restraints are being imposed in the form of copyright and so forth to try and negate this effect.
I disagree with you on the incentives front. For me, it would be ridiculously easy to get all my media by downloading. This has been the case since at least the mid 90's. I'm reasonably tech savvy to the extent that I could manage this in such a way that it would not be traced back to me (either by using an anonymous downloading solution or just by piggy-backing off someone else's connection). I choose not to do this. I like the feeling of buying a physical product knowing that the money will find it's way back to the people who made the product. Sometimes I'll buy a product because there's something special in the way it's produced (like a collector's edition of a game with some goodies included). Other times it's just a lot more convenient to buy, I'm short of spare time and I'd rather spend that playing the game than hunting down torrents.
I'm a living example that, even where it's trivially easy to pirate without repercussions, people are still willing to pay for products. I'm also probably a developer's worst nightmare because I don't pre-order everything months in advance and will only buy after I've read independent reviews from real gamers. Poorly produced games are far more likely to lose you my sale than the ready availability of a free download. Instead of wasting money fighting piracy games companies should be spending that money polishing their games (but in actual fact if they weren't spending it on piracy they'd put it in marketing because they get more bang for their buck hyping an inferior product than soft-launching a superior one - if you want to talk disincentives to buy, talk about that one first).
One minute the developers are unhappy that they're not being paid, and claim this as a lost sale, the next they take it upon themselves to impose a fine that amounts to more than the cost of the game? I can understand them saying "you didn't pay for this copy, but give us the money equal to what you should have paid and we'll take no further action", but asking for more money than the copy should have cost is clearly just an attempt to bully people in the same way as the music industry have been doing by sending out mass mailings demanding small sums of money (they know people will just pay, sometimes even if they're innocent, because the fee isn't sufficient to justify the effort fighting it). When did private companies become the legal system, that we're happy for them to determine guilt and hand down their own punishments? By all means demand the sum you feel you've lost (and if the downloader disgagrees then have your day in court), but going beyond that feels like an abuse.
Where has this been proven? Citation, please, just saying it's a proven fact without demonstrating such doesn't cut it. Most of the studies into this area tend to show that people who download are actually largely buying more media than everyone else, not less. I have yet to see a study that proves definitively (across more than a single instance) that the ready availability of a free alternative in any way harms sales. It should be a simple enough thing to show, take a system where piracy is easy (XBOX), take another where it's not (PS3) take a game that is released for both and isn't seen as pandering to a specific console's market and compare sales as a percentage of owners of those consoles. Do that for maybe a minimum of ten games (more is better), just to normalise any anomalies. If they're significantly lower on the console which has more piracy then you may have a point. The fact that the industry have never released such figures, despite them being trivial to obtain, suggests to me that they know piracy is a non-issue and they're simply using it as a smoke screen. Why else would they sit on the proof?
Nobody is claiming that, but copyright isn't meant to be a law set up to punish people who are getting freebies. Unless you can show their actions are harming your business (and so far nobody has been able to definitively do this) then using copyright against them is just co-opting the law for your own bullying purposes. If you think it's wrong that some people get free stuff, then lobby for your own law to prevent that, don't try and shoe-horn something that doesn't fit. Downloaders are freeloading, but they're not killing the gaming industry or taking the food from people's tables (go look at the figures).
What, nobody is allowed to criticise a system unless they can propose a better system? That's patently ridiculous. If people dislike the system their opinion is valid regardless of whether they can come up with an alternative. When copyright was first introduced, do you think it was a hybrid of the ideas of every person who formed society at that time, or do you think a handful of people bashed it out in response to a large minority asking for a change to what they saw as the then broken system? You can continue believing it's the former if you want, but for me a person doesn't have to have all the answers to be able to recognise something's not working. Car analogy time: if my car won't start, despite having a full tank, I know it's broken - I don't need to be a mechanic.
We're not talking about some theoretical breech of copyright that may or may not happen in the future. This is already happening. It's been happening since the dawn of games on computers, and even with the advent of the internet and mass downloading it's been happening for the best part of two decades. Doesn't the fact that people still have jobs as games developers prove that it's still worth their spending 8 hours a day developing games, even when file sharing is ubiquitous on the net? We have actual real world data that piracy doesn't kill the games industry, we have probably 30 years worth of said data at this point (and the same goes for movies and music). I can understand why the games industry (and the entertainment industries as a whole) wants to perpetuate the myth - after all for them it's about being able to control what we consume, how we consume it and, most importanly, who we can buy it from - but I can't for the life of me understand why so many people are willing to blindly buy into it.
If your argument revolves around it not being fair that some people get stuff for free, then you are incorrectly applying copyright. It's not meant to be there as a means to punish people because they're doing something you don't think is fair, it's meant to be there to ensure that people can earn a licing from their ideas or skills. Using copyright to go after filesharers - if you assume filesharers aren't impinging on the right to earn a living - is an incorrect application of the law and inherently wrong. Would you go after a filesharer for dangerous driving or manslaughter because you think it's unfair that they get stuff for free? And as someone who pays for their content, I have to ask why you even care. I don't care, people can copy what they like, if word of mouth from people copying a game helps me with my purchasing decisions (both for and against) then that's fine by me. At one time it might have been worth my while copying (I'm thinking school days, when I had lots of time and little money), but I simply wouldn't have the time or inclination to do that today when I can just pick up the game from pretty much anywhere on my way home from work.
What these companies fail to realise is that a lot of the people who are time rich and cash poor right now won't always be the same - when they're working and have a family they will be in exactly the same situation where it's easier to buy. By going after the file sharers of today, they're potentially annoying the buyers of tomorrow (and by going after the file sharers of today using techniques like DRM or live server authentication, they're also annoying the buyers of today - don't make me jump through hoops when I've already given you my money!).
You don't read too, apparently. IT DEPRIVES THEM OF THE VALUE OF THEIR TIME.
Nonsense. Unless they went into the industry with no prior knowledge that such a thing as piracy existed, then we have to accept that they are developing games in spite of this knowledge. That means that they have made a determination that, even in a world where piracy exists, it is still worth their time to develop games. Maybe you could argue that their time would be a little more valuable if there was zero piracy, maybe I could argue that schemes like DRM or forcing customers to purchase from one source to allow more control over prices drives away customers and without these their time would be a little more valuable. Nevertheless the developers have made a decision that, in the current climate, it's still a valuable use of their time to write games.
As to "dumb arguments", if I teach myself some rudimentary medicine, am I depriving doctors of sales? If I build an exact replica of a Ferrari, am I depriving them of a sale? If I self-tutor, am I putting a teacher out of a job? Have you ever photocopied or printed something? Then by your argument you're guilty of stealing from scribes. Did you type up your own comment? How dare you steal work from qualified secretaries? See, we can all make up strawmen to support our arguments, but that gets us nowhere when the facts speak for themselves, the games industry is huge despite years of it being trivial to pirate.
I think this sounds like a great system. Unfortunately, I don't think copyright will ever return to anything close to sensible. There are too many companies/artists who already have IP rights on properties that are way beyond what would be a sensible period. Disney alone would probably lose revenue streams worth millions if copyright was reduced even by a few years, let alone to get it to a low enough point that the proposed system would work. If they have so many millions at stake, they would sooner pour ALL of that money into defending the status quo than see it vanish overnight. That's just one company, anyone else who is currently in the same position could afford to pretty much give away that money today to prevent future earnings being lost tomorrow, and that's without counting all the others who would see supporting the existing system as an investment because they have properties that they believe will be popular for many years to come. Money talks, and unfortunately it talks a lot louder than the guy in the street to the people who make the laws, which is why I think what you're proposing is a great system that will never transpire.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to mention (in the UK at least) the game has a certification age of 18. If anyone is selling digitised death to children it's irresponsible retailers or parents.
Not really. The key word was "game".
And yet when people are playing a war game outside the context of WWII (as is the case with CoD:BO) and still want to use the symbol, what other logical conclusion can you draw than that they are trying to be purposely inflammatory? Most people wouldn't take offence at someone wearing a Nazi uniform at a historic re-enactment, but someone wearing a swastika when they're having a drink in the local pub where they know people will be offended has determined to send out a message.
Not only that, he'd need to either be completely ignorant of its alternative meaning or not care that he was using it in an environment where people are likely to take offence. If the former is the case then he's not really culturally informed (or rather, he is but only for a narrow spectrum of global culture), if it's the latter then he's acting himself from a standpoint of intolerance to other people's views, it would be highly hypocritical of him to then complain people were being intolerant of his views.
Well this story pertains to XBOX Live, which is a global world where the western world is probably not a minority (or if it is, it's likely a significant one, I don't have the figures but sales would seem to indicate a much greater western audience).
How is it "obviously futile"? Lots of places in the world allow you to text emergency services - they don't make a big deal out of it, it just works. Likewise you might expect such a service would exist already for the benefit of the deaf/mute. Besides, if you have no choice in the matter (i.e. you can't get to a better position to call and if it works you might save some lives, your own included) then it would still be worth a try, even if you were 90% sure that it wasn't going to work. As for texting a friend and getting them to call 911... yes, if my friends at school had sent me a text to tell me they were being held hostage at gunpoint, I definitely would have believed them...
But that's talking about a different and existing function of mobile phones. Being able to send a text to emergency services is something entirely new which likely will need an update to the software on the phones themselves. In that case it's not unreasonable to say that, until the solution is fully implemented and this becomes free, it becomes the responsibility of the phone's owner to keep a little bit of credit on it purely for text emergencies (remember, dialling will still be free so it's a very limited use case).
Nevertheless, it's better to have something in the interim, even if that level of functionality is added incrementally over time. For instance, being able to bypass passwords to dial 911 is one thing, being able to bypass them to get to the text messaging app is something else entirely which would have to be added via a firmware update on the handsets themselves - that's not going to happen overnight, and nor should it (to avoid bugs) - still better in the meantime to be able to text even if it requires credit/a password/etc.
You'd have to be pretty stupid to prank call/text the emergency services from your own mobile. It's not like these things are hard to trace back to the owner. I guess it might be more of an issue if kids prank other kid's phones since you'd land them in hot water, but people would just have to be more careful with their possessions.
Albeit, I'm a nurse and former fire fighter and know what to provide: "2 car MVC, Any Street and Bob Road, 3 passengers with injuries, one ejected. Send EMS."
For some reason made me think of this:
Rimmer: White-hole-spewing-time-engines-dead-air-supply-low-advice-please.
Holly: Excuse me?
Rimmer: White-hole-spewing-time-engines-dead...
Holly: I can't understand a word you're saying.
Rimmer: White...
Holly: Yes.
Rimmer: Hole...
Holly: Right.
Rimmer: Spewing...
Holly: Yes.
Rimmer: Time.....
Holly: With you.
Rimmer: Engines dead...
Holly: Oh.
Rimmer: Air supply low...
Holly: Ah.
Rimmer: Advice please.
Holly: Right!
Is that really the situation in the US? Here in the UK they have to investigate every call, even if it's an obvious hoax call (kids giggling on the other end or something). That's why there's such a big deal about not calling unless it's a real emergency, because it's a big drain on resources to follow these things up (but I guess they feel it's worth it for the one time they don't follow it up and it's something serious).
This is about helping to determine the appropriate response, though. It could be the difference between "it's probably an accidental dial, we'll have someone pop around in a couple of hours while he's doing the doughnut run" and "armed siege in progress, we'll have SWAT there in munutes".
Not only that, he's assuming those people will never become customers in the future. If a broke student downloads my game for free today and decides he likes it, in a few years when he's earning he will probably buy the sequel. If a broke student downloads my game and I send him a fine or drag him into court, I'm guessing he'll never touch my future products with a long stick. Even crack dealers are smart enough to give the taster for free.
Everyone wants to sell more, of course. But going after pirates is a waste of resources. It's like me coming up with a cake recipe then complaining because some people figure out my recipe and are making their own cakes instead of buying mine. What I should be doing is making my cake better so that my existing customers are happy. Instead we have DRM, which is the digital equivalent of me putting a special coating on my cakes meaning they are tasteless without a decoating agent I personally hand out (okay, cakes were a bad analogy, I'm trying my best) - such a move would do nothing to stop people baking their own cakes, it just makes life miserable for my existing customers (and maybe forces some of them to go down the route of baking their own cakes).
As someone who does actively give money to developers I want my voice heard for once. I don't care about pirates, I don't care that people are getting stuff for free, I care about the quality of what I am paying for, so focus on that if you don't want to lose my actual real money while you're busy chasing theoretical money.
We've already seen how the music industry use this. They fire out a bunch of blanket demand notices based on nothing more than an IP and they rely on the fact that the fine is just low enough that people will be too scared or won't be able to afford the cost or effort to dispute the fine (even if they know they're not guilty) to ensure payment. The music industry and its lawyers have already been heavily criticised recently for this practice. Demanding money without proof of guilt and with the threat of legal action is certainly extortion. What makes you think the gaming industry will be any more responsible in how they use this?
Well, sneaking into a movie isn't quite the same as downloading a movie. You are depriving the cinema of something - not the price of the ticket (because there's no way to determine that you would have paid if sneaking was not an option) but rather the seat you occupy. When the cinema is empty, of course, the real world effect is that it won't hurt the cinema. If the screening is full then at the very least they'll have to spend time and effort identifying that the seat has been occupied by someone without a ticket and dealing with having you removed. That's because seats in cinemas represent a physical resource with the opportunity to be exhausted by demand. Digital media, on the other hand, has no such restraints. If someone copies your game you don't have one less copy to sell, it doesn't affect your offering at all. That's why artificial restraints are being imposed in the form of copyright and so forth to try and negate this effect.
I disagree with you on the incentives front. For me, it would be ridiculously easy to get all my media by downloading. This has been the case since at least the mid 90's. I'm reasonably tech savvy to the extent that I could manage this in such a way that it would not be traced back to me (either by using an anonymous downloading solution or just by piggy-backing off someone else's connection). I choose not to do this. I like the feeling of buying a physical product knowing that the money will find it's way back to the people who made the product. Sometimes I'll buy a product because there's something special in the way it's produced (like a collector's edition of a game with some goodies included). Other times it's just a lot more convenient to buy, I'm short of spare time and I'd rather spend that playing the game than hunting down torrents.
I'm a living example that, even where it's trivially easy to pirate without repercussions, people are still willing to pay for products. I'm also probably a developer's worst nightmare because I don't pre-order everything months in advance and will only buy after I've read independent reviews from real gamers. Poorly produced games are far more likely to lose you my sale than the ready availability of a free download. Instead of wasting money fighting piracy games companies should be spending that money polishing their games (but in actual fact if they weren't spending it on piracy they'd put it in marketing because they get more bang for their buck hyping an inferior product than soft-launching a superior one - if you want to talk disincentives to buy, talk about that one first).
One minute the developers are unhappy that they're not being paid, and claim this as a lost sale, the next they take it upon themselves to impose a fine that amounts to more than the cost of the game? I can understand them saying "you didn't pay for this copy, but give us the money equal to what you should have paid and we'll take no further action", but asking for more money than the copy should have cost is clearly just an attempt to bully people in the same way as the music industry have been doing by sending out mass mailings demanding small sums of money (they know people will just pay, sometimes even if they're innocent, because the fee isn't sufficient to justify the effort fighting it). When did private companies become the legal system, that we're happy for them to determine guilt and hand down their own punishments? By all means demand the sum you feel you've lost (and if the downloader disgagrees then have your day in court), but going beyond that feels like an abuse.
Where has this been proven? Citation, please, just saying it's a proven fact without demonstrating such doesn't cut it. Most of the studies into this area tend to show that people who download are actually largely buying more media than everyone else, not less. I have yet to see a study that proves definitively (across more than a single instance) that the ready availability of a free alternative in any way harms sales. It should be a simple enough thing to show, take a system where piracy is easy (XBOX), take another where it's not (PS3) take a game that is released for both and isn't seen as pandering to a specific console's market and compare sales as a percentage of owners of those consoles. Do that for maybe a minimum of ten games (more is better), just to normalise any anomalies. If they're significantly lower on the console which has more piracy then you may have a point. The fact that the industry have never released such figures, despite them being trivial to obtain, suggests to me that they know piracy is a non-issue and they're simply using it as a smoke screen. Why else would they sit on the proof?
Nobody is claiming that, but copyright isn't meant to be a law set up to punish people who are getting freebies. Unless you can show their actions are harming your business (and so far nobody has been able to definitively do this) then using copyright against them is just co-opting the law for your own bullying purposes. If you think it's wrong that some people get free stuff, then lobby for your own law to prevent that, don't try and shoe-horn something that doesn't fit. Downloaders are freeloading, but they're not killing the gaming industry or taking the food from people's tables (go look at the figures).
What, nobody is allowed to criticise a system unless they can propose a better system? That's patently ridiculous. If people dislike the system their opinion is valid regardless of whether they can come up with an alternative. When copyright was first introduced, do you think it was a hybrid of the ideas of every person who formed society at that time, or do you think a handful of people bashed it out in response to a large minority asking for a change to what they saw as the then broken system? You can continue believing it's the former if you want, but for me a person doesn't have to have all the answers to be able to recognise something's not working. Car analogy time: if my car won't start, despite having a full tank, I know it's broken - I don't need to be a mechanic.
We're not talking about some theoretical breech of copyright that may or may not happen in the future. This is already happening. It's been happening since the dawn of games on computers, and even with the advent of the internet and mass downloading it's been happening for the best part of two decades. Doesn't the fact that people still have jobs as games developers prove that it's still worth their spending 8 hours a day developing games, even when file sharing is ubiquitous on the net? We have actual real world data that piracy doesn't kill the games industry, we have probably 30 years worth of said data at this point (and the same goes for movies and music). I can understand why the games industry (and the entertainment industries as a whole) wants to perpetuate the myth - after all for them it's about being able to control what we consume, how we consume it and, most importanly, who we can buy it from - but I can't for the life of me understand why so many people are willing to blindly buy into it.
If your argument revolves around it not being fair that some people get stuff for free, then you are incorrectly applying copyright. It's not meant to be there as a means to punish people because they're doing something you don't think is fair, it's meant to be there to ensure that people can earn a licing from their ideas or skills. Using copyright to go after filesharers - if you assume filesharers aren't impinging on the right to earn a living - is an incorrect application of the law and inherently wrong. Would you go after a filesharer for dangerous driving or manslaughter because you think it's unfair that they get stuff for free? And as someone who pays for their content, I have to ask why you even care. I don't care, people can copy what they like, if word of mouth from people copying a game helps me with my purchasing decisions (both for and against) then that's fine by me. At one time it might have been worth my while copying (I'm thinking school days, when I had lots of time and little money), but I simply wouldn't have the time or inclination to do that today when I can just pick up the game from pretty much anywhere on my way home from work.
What these companies fail to realise is that a lot of the people who are time rich and cash poor right now won't always be the same - when they're working and have a family they will be in exactly the same situation where it's easier to buy. By going after the file sharers of today, they're potentially annoying the buyers of tomorrow (and by going after the file sharers of today using techniques like DRM or live server authentication, they're also annoying the buyers of today - don't make me jump through hoops when I've already given you my money!).
You don't read too, apparently. IT DEPRIVES THEM OF THE VALUE OF THEIR TIME.
Nonsense. Unless they went into the industry with no prior knowledge that such a thing as piracy existed, then we have to accept that they are developing games in spite of this knowledge. That means that they have made a determination that, even in a world where piracy exists, it is still worth their time to develop games. Maybe you could argue that their time would be a little more valuable if there was zero piracy, maybe I could argue that schemes like DRM or forcing customers to purchase from one source to allow more control over prices drives away customers and without these their time would be a little more valuable. Nevertheless the developers have made a decision that, in the current climate, it's still a valuable use of their time to write games.
As to "dumb arguments", if I teach myself some rudimentary medicine, am I depriving doctors of sales? If I build an exact replica of a Ferrari, am I depriving them of a sale? If I self-tutor, am I putting a teacher out of a job? Have you ever photocopied or printed something? Then by your argument you're guilty of stealing from scribes. Did you type up your own comment? How dare you steal work from qualified secretaries? See, we can all make up strawmen to support our arguments, but that gets us nowhere when the facts speak for themselves, the games industry is huge despite years of it being trivial to pirate.
I think this sounds like a great system. Unfortunately, I don't think copyright will ever return to anything close to sensible. There are too many companies/artists who already have IP rights on properties that are way beyond what would be a sensible period. Disney alone would probably lose revenue streams worth millions if copyright was reduced even by a few years, let alone to get it to a low enough point that the proposed system would work. If they have so many millions at stake, they would sooner pour ALL of that money into defending the status quo than see it vanish overnight. That's just one company, anyone else who is currently in the same position could afford to pretty much give away that money today to prevent future earnings being lost tomorrow, and that's without counting all the others who would see supporting the existing system as an investment because they have properties that they believe will be popular for many years to come. Money talks, and unfortunately it talks a lot louder than the guy in the street to the people who make the laws, which is why I think what you're proposing is a great system that will never transpire.