Antari said:
bananafishtoday said:
Antari said:
So I guess they've never heard of encryption or proxies huh? And considering its the USA, won't this just create other ISP's who won't restrict them? Competition is king after all.
Ha... no.
ISPs here exercise
extraordinary monopoly power because they are not required to share/sell access to their infrastructure. This creates an enormous (almost insurmountable) hurdle for any new ISP looking to enter the market. The established ones typically have gentlemen's agreements within their own industries not to encroach on each other's territory. To wit, I live in New York. In the largest and densest city in the country, every apartment I've ever had, I had a choice between the one cable provider or the one DSL provider that my building happened to be wired for.
The reason that the MPAA/RIAA see dealing with the dominant ISPs directly as viable is because it's virtually impossible for new ISPs to supplant them.
So it would cost a bit more on the initial point because they would have to build infrastructure. If the other option is to be monitored up the ***, I could see more than a few people paying the extra buck.
The problem is that "building infrastructure" would cost tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars, not to mention all the red tape in dealing with govts for permits etc, and the challenge of convincing enough people to switch. I could see some people being willing to pay more for privacy, but the incredible startup costs before you can even hope of turning a profit makes it nearly impossible to enter the market. It's like trying to start a new railroad or phone company: good luck finding the money to lay track or build towers when you have no income.
Internet in places like Canada and the UK is generally faster and cheaper than the US because they force the infrastructure owners to sell access. Internet in places like Japan and South Korea is generally
incredibly fast and cheap because the government funds infrastructure buildout itself. This is just not something the free market can handle.
Stu35 said:
Only way to reduce Piracy (no matter what you do it'll always happen), is to make it easier to legally purchase something than pirate it.
Now, I'm disinclined to back this up with facts right now, so please correct me if I'm wrong - but it is my understanding that iTunes has been a strong influence on why music piracy amongst those with iPods(and other apple based products) is quite low.
Now, personally I fucking hate iTunes, because I'm a dinosaur and I can't work out how to get stuff off my iPod with any level of reliability once it's on there, however buying new music/apps/whatever off iTunes is so fucking easy that pirating it seems like a horribly inconvenient and pointless endeavour.
So yeah, that'd be my solution - appeal to peoples sense of laziness.
Basically this. The best way to combat piracy is to provide a better service than pirates can. Whether businesses like it or are willing to admit it or not, people who upload stuff to P2P networks are their
competition. They are competing with organizations that can provide the same product for free. It doesn't matter that it's illegal. That's just how the market works.
This is why Steam is so successful. It's about as fast as and much easier and more convenient than piracy. Achievements, social features, automatic patching, and the unified library add value that pirates can't provide. DRM is there, but it's generally invisible and unobtrusive. Frequent sales slashing prices in half or down to a quarter help poorer gamers legally acquire titles they want and provide a healthy psychological kick for frugal gamers who love feeling like they got a great deal.
The
worst thing publishers can do is add cumbersome DRM to titles. Crackers will inevitably strip it out, and then guess what? The version of the game they offer is now not only free but
objectively superior.
Though I'm sure part of the reason Apple customers tend to pirate less is that Apple products are really expensive. Their customers tend to be either affluent or aspirational--they either have enough money that they don't need to pirate to get everything they want, or they place high social value on acquiring and spending money.
tippy2k2 said:
SecondPrize said:
tippy2k2 said:
I know you're not getting money from them right now game industry but fucking someone's game up is not a great way to try to win them over...
How is it their game if they pirated it? I don't think those were attempts to win anyone over, just frustrated devs giving the finger to those who've pirated their wares.
I was on my way out the door when I posted so I didn't do as good a job as I should have. Let me
backpedal clarify what I meant (I will also add this to that post in an Edit).
Currently, game companies treat pirates like hardened criminals. While what they are doing is illegal, I do believe that a lot of them are either ignorant that what they're doing is wrong or don't care that what they're doing is wrong. While hilarious, gimping the game seems like it just puts the wrong foot forward. I believe that you want to convert these people into customers, gimping their ill-gotten goods, while hilarious, doesn't send the right message.
I certainly think it's the least harmless so if a developer REALLY wants to exact revenge on pirates without having to sue them for $20,000, I suppose they can go for this tactic. I just think you're going to piss off more potential customers than you are going to gain by doing this.
I just wanted to point out that "illegal" and "wrong" are not the same thing. Whether piracy is morally wrong is debatable. There are tons of little points one could quibble over. But, eh. It's well-trod ground.
Essentially it comes down to this: do artists have a moral right to receive money from every single person who consumes what they create, or do people have a moral right to experience culture regardless of their economic status?
(The following isn't based on anything you've said and is in no way directed at you, just a general rant.) There are plenty of anti-piracy arguments I understand and sympathize with, particularly the notion that copyright law is meant to ensure artists' incomes scale with their popularity, enabling them to devote more time to producing more art. But one argument I have nothing but scorn for is this: "People don't *need* games. If you can't afford a game, too bad."
Fuck that. It's on the same level as arguing that libraries should be closed because poor people don't *need* to read.
