Canadian Study: Piracy Created by Greedy Capitalists

[Gindil]

No,I wouldn't pay it.

Where's the video game industry of Brazil?

I'm not really sure what you mean, I can point the country out on a map for you if you want :s

As for the industry, from the post I quoted along with yours it seems pretty much non existant.

My point is if they're having problems with the absurd prices for games, why don't they make games themselves, where they can price them at more reasonable levels for their own country?

From the book itself:

Spoiler: Brazil

The first test of the adequacy of business models under local conditions is simply the
presence or absence of goods in the market.93 By this standard, Brazil fares poorly. For physical
goods such as music CDs and DVDs, high-cost licensing creates a high-priced and culturally
impoverished market of the kind documented throughout this report. With regard to digital
platforms, Brazil is far down the list when it comes to industry internationalization strategies.
As of late 2010, Brazilians had no access to iTunes, Spotify, Hulu, or the PlayStation Network
and were only recently granted access to a (functionally restricted) version of Xbox Live. Some
of these issues are clearly amenable to public-private cooperation but remain at the margins
of a discourse that emphasizes the moral failings of consumers, questionable links between
piracy and organized crime, and inflated loss numbers. The CNCP?s recent endorsement of
the Fecomércio-RJ campaign message that ?those who buy pirated products pay with their
lives? is a good example of this pattern of avoidance of serious debate on these issues. Brazil?s
upcoming hosting of the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016 is, unfortunately,
likely to strengthen this trend as multinational corporate sponsors bear down and as Brazilian
officials seek paths of least resistance through the many challenges associated with these highprofile
events.

There's more I could link but seriously, it's worth checking out...

interesting. They really had no access to iTunes? That's absurd, how do the Brazilian people feel about this? I'd be very angry if I were Brazilian.

There's actually two other things you can look into. I'll put up another Brazil post from the website regarding their Xbox Live:

Spoiler: Brazil again

Yes, long read but worth it:
Xbox Live in Brazil
In many countries, it can be difficult to be a legal
gamer. Although game culture has become global in the past decade, game markets, in many
instances, have not. In Brazil?by all accounts a high-piracy country for video games?Sony has
withheld release of PlayStation 3 despite its relative immunity to hacking. Microsoft and Nintendo market current-generation consoles and games in Brazil, but most third-party game publishers do not, resulting in a very diminished legal retail market.

Brazilian customers have been locked out of many of the newer digital services, such as Xbox
Live, a popular online portal that enables Internet play of Xbox 360 games, which was not launched in Brazil until late 2010. Adding to the difficulty, prices for consoles and most games are higher than in the United States and Europe. An Xbox 360 that costs $299 in the United States retails for over $700 in Brazil?a premium attributable to high taxes on foreign-software imports and complicated local certification requirements.

... Although the console has been successfully hacked, the Xbox Live service
has not, enabling Microsoft to effectively exclude users of modded machines. Before the service was legally available in their country, Brazilian gamers got around this by subscribing under false addresses, and?according to our sources?they
mostly still do: a recent spot-check found that the Brazilian version of the service had only a few games available.

Microsoft can identify player location by IP address but has a variety of reasons
for tolerating these practices and their associated informal markets?among them, the intense
customer loyalty demonstrated by the effort to access the service. Among hard-core gamers,
high game prices and the high value of the XBox Live service can justify having two Xbox 360s: one modded for pirated games and one reserved for Xbox Live use. Similar strategies allow Brazilians access to Sony?s online portal, the PlayStation Network, which is still unavailable through legal channels.

Now keep the last sentence in mind as you look at the second link, or where it all began:

A Nation of Pirates - An Escapist story [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_189/5762-A-Nation-of-Pirates]

 

[Cid Silverwing]

FOR ONCE, something that-oh wait. This won't convince the corporate fuckwits anyhow.

Still nice to see there are people out there who understand why piracy is so rampant and only worsens when corporate fuckwits try to stamp it out.

 

[Mangue Surfer]

Living in a third world country or, as some like call "emerging market" (here inBrazil we are emerging for three decades and still seems to me very deep) I can assure to you, it's more complicated than that.

Yes, the price factor is a problem. Counting shipping and taxes the price of new games reach 100 ? 120USD . In a country in which the average wage is 300USD only a few rich bastards as I can afford to buy retail games.

But there is another even more important factor. Evasion.


Understand.

The people who make and publish games don't live in third world countries. So if a Brazilian buys a game, let's say, Dragon Age 2. The money goes to Bioware ? EA. It means, the money goes to Canada and USA. Now, people who work at EA - BioWare spend their money in Brazil? No! Then the money escaped, gone, evade.

What means. Piracy isn't only cheaper but also is culturally encouraged. The punishments for use pirate products are incredibly bland, government only pretends to fight when actually encourages by taxing games in more than 80%.

I can certainly say: in countrys that not export entertainment the government doesn't give a shit to combat piracy and is actually encouraged.

 

[Gindil]

What's your point? Our ancestors were thieves so we have no grounds to protest current thieves? If our ancestors were mass murderers, should we also overlook genocide? Certainly a large portion of our American ancestors owned slaves, should we just overlook slavery? I see no logic to the claim that because people in one country got away with it in the past we should take a less harsh stance on it today. Maybe if it was the same people in office dictating the current rules we could make a case that they were hypocrites, but really that's not even a sound, reasonable argument for why it shouldn't be allowed even if it was the case (which it's not). The fact remains that there are good reasons copyright laws are in place and enforced today, and so long as there are, infringement is not justifiable for luxury items.

The copyright system has changed plenty since that time, surely, but I'm hardly an expert, but it doesn't matter. Even taking for granted that there was no sound justification for it at that time, us getting away with it then doesn't change the present situation. It was wrong then, and it's wrong now; all that's changed is the willingness of the US to enforce the law. Does that mean that it will not be selectively enforced, even today? Of course not, and while that's regrettable, that's a question of enforcement, not principle.

I would exercise extreme caution with how exactly you're expressing copyright here. The appeal to tradition might be flawed, but you do have to look at the fact that our forefathers (namely Jefferson and Madison) would argue that copyright, as it is now, is all about imposing limits on ideas. That is far removed from the dichotomy of ideas/expression that has been brought up recently in copyright law.

I would note that though copyright laws are enforced, they've been enforced quite badly and almost unilaterally abused. The main ones to bring up these lawsuits are the ones in positions to afford lawyers, not necessarily artists or creators.

And given that enforcement is done only for the richer clientele in the US or anywhere else, it's really becoming a socio-economic barrier artificially.

The other problem is the rights afforded people to be protected from ex officio powers that have been granted in the copyright cause. These are important concerns and I would strongly advise reading this report to understand exactly why the enforcement policy is truly flawed.

 

[Gindil]

besides arnt Americans still the biggest media pirates on the planet?

I think it was Germany. Especially if the broadband limits come through...

 

[mdkcde]

The minimum Brazilian salary is around 400$. (on paper and where it is enforced)

A contrabanded 3DS, right now is around 380$, more expensive if you try to buy a legal one since consumer electronics get absurd taxes for non-brazilian made stuff.

Im just saying, some people spend a lot of time in order to simply acquire their console of choice. Most probably don't think about paying for games, because in their heads they are comparing it to buying a tv an watch local aired stuff instead of buying the movies they want to see.

 

[JMeganSnow]

So it's not necessarily a positive sum game as you're suggesting.

I know it's not *necessarily* worth the effort. But there are ways they could get a profit out of this market without wasting a bunch of money lobbying the local governments to crack down on pirates. THAT can't be free EITHER.

 

[Ulvai]

Of course thats crazy considering the shipping costs

But asking someone who is going to travel to India for their own personal/business reasons to pick some stuff up for you, promising that you will compensate them for the trouble, is completely realistic. In fact, my family (and many others) does it all the time, which is why my Dad usually comes back with an additional suitcase then when he left.

So yeah...when the opportunities arises, you can count on websites cropping up that offer such a business model

Oh my god companies will lose up to 100 bucks on this!!! We cannot allow that to happen! Bill Gates might STARVE!
Seriously do you think persons traveling will make any kind of impact on multi-billion industry?

 

[Krelias]

Ha Ha Ha ! Called it ! [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.195464-Is-piracy-bad-when-you-dont-have-a-choice#6264602]

 

[SemiHumanTarget]

As an American living in Japan I am uniquely affected by a lot of these laws that are, in the end, ridiculous and mistargeted. During the Tohoku earthquake/tsunami and aftermath, I was unable to access MSNBC video coverage because of ridiculous international anti-piracy laws. I speak Japanese fluently, but I feel terrible for expatriate residents of Japan who cannot, because up-to-date information about the goings on in Japan in English is blocked from users who live here.

And aside from emergencies, it is also frustrating that I am unable to view TV shows, etc. online here in Japan, that I would otherwise be able to watch hassle-free in America on the internet. If I can watch an episode of 30 Rock for free in America on TV, and also on the web, why am I not afforded the same luxury, as an American citizen, just because I live in another country?

The bottom line is, humanism is an important factor in law making, but when large amounts of money get involved, that goes out the window, and it is a shameful injustice when it happens.

 

[PunkRex]

Cheaper options wouldn't do anything. Look at the anime industry. Anime in japan costs easily 2-10x the amount it costs American consumers and yet Americans still pirate it like crazy despite steep discounting. Dirty pirates will be dirty pirates.

this is a) your opinion, b) anecdotal evidence at best, and c) of little relevance to the discussion.
thanks for ruining it!

You mean like how this is your opinion and has no relevance to this discussion? Thanks for making a worthless comment.

it's great you want to say something about "dirty pirates" without adding to the conversation (and probably start a flamewar a few posts from now) but seriously, this is the first thread i've seen in this here forum that didn't have an abundance of people like you. you know, the people who just say things cause they can say things, the people who can't cite sources because they're just SAYING THINGS, people who turn a decent discussion into hyperbole, "this is what my uninformed self thinks" and "pay attention to me!" if only we could take back the ten seconds it took for you to sully this thread with a vomit of irrelevant posts.

Are you saying that everything I need to say on a fucking forum needs to be properly cited, complete with a bibliography at the bottom? Sorry, no, it's a forum not an essay.

The guy who you originally quoted had a very valid point, whether or not it was supported by a bunch of studies. Do you need someone to tell you how to put two and two together? No, sometimes you can take a rough stab at something yourself. There is no need to be a dick - this is a forum, hardly a formal place.

I agree, I have no idea why hes been slapped with a 3 day ban! I admit its abit predjudice towards Americans and his final sentance is abit 4-chan but come on, Anime IS pirated up the Wazzoo in not just America but most 1st world countries. Ever been on Watchanimenow or Crunchyroll? Its rediculous just how well put together and freakin alphabetized these sites are.

Now I dont bother pirating games as I live in England and although im not exactly well off (laid off twice within a year WOOOOOOO!) I dont buy that many AAA games, the last I think being Bulletstorm. However I LOVE ANIME AND MANGA and infact plan to dedicate my life to drawing comics. However getting a hold of Japanese cartoons and comics is EXPENSIVE and actually next to impossible if you want to be up to date. Again, I dont copy and re-sell issues of Shounen Jump but let me just say Thank God for Bleachexile. I know if I was in the same shoes as those in these 3rd world countries when it came to games, which I also love, I would proberly do the same HOWEVER when it comes to it in 1st world countries it may be a completly different or at least slightly different argument, JUST LOOK AT ANIME IN 1ST WORLD COUNTRIES!

Also, he has a Fluttershy gif, COME ON! LOOK AT THEM EYES!!!

 

[Therumancer]

[
While I generally agree with your point here I think you do your argument a disservice. There is a minimum price a Bently can be sold for and turn a profit, a price that is easily tens of thousands of dollars. Ignoring the R&D costs one must pay for the base components, the salaries of people turning base components into car parts, the salaries of people who assemble the car, and the salaries of people who maintain all the equipment directly associated with the manufacture of said parts. Then you must pay various transport costs all while realizing that the people who will inevitably sell the product are going to want a cut for themselves. By contrast, the absolute necessary cost of selling a game such that the game itself (i.e. the disc and its associated packaging) is around two bucks. Simply moving a unit of Bently at a price that the car itself (not necessarily the line) is profitable still places it in the "very expensive item" category where, by contrast, simply moving a single unit of game at a price where one is not losing money on each disc sold is a pittance.

Thus, while I agree that people ought not steal something easily classified as a luxury item because they cannot afford it I also recognize that it would be possible to make at least some quantity of sales in regions where a 60 USD game is something only the wealthy afford if they dramatically slashed the price. It might be impossible to make money on a game that cost 30 million USD to develop if all copies were sold at 10 USD, but if a title has already turned a profit you might as well pad that number with sales in regions that would otherwise refuse to purchase the game, even if each unit sold only brought in a few paltry bucks to the bottom line.

Much snipped, as we seem to more or less agree on most things, where we disagree comes down to this point:

I agree that the gaming industry is greedy and corrupt. I've said as much in a lot of my posts. However when your talking about doing things like slashing game prices to 1/5 I think your overlooking the international nature of business. If you slash prices that much somewhere, people are just going to buy up all those reduced cost items and re-introduce them to a market where the prices are higher for a profit. This is why things like region encoding (which people hate due to accessibility more than anything) exist (at least on paper), and it really doesn't help much.

What's more I think there is this perception that piracy is really "free" in a lot of these other nations, simply because it is in the US. If you read articles here on The Escapist like "Nation Of Pirates" (dealing with Brazil) and another article (the name eludes me) dealing with China, they talk about how the pirates in these countries charge money. They own the machines and pretty much burn off the games right there in the shop. In nations like Brazil piracy is one of the things run by organized crime. The thing is that your looking at businesses being run based off of piracy in these nations, as opposed to a bunch of users ripping off free games.

If you look at the big picture (beyond the scope of those articles) your looking at a situation where the companies would wind up needing to undercut the pirates, assuming they could deal with the whole issue of people buying up cheap games and reselling them in other markets (game smuggling could become a big deal). Not to mention the way how organized crime is linked so heavily to the goverment in these places, which is going to influance any kind of trade policy on the subject, and simply that the crime syndicates are going to object to losing that money. Even if it's a trivial amount of cash compared to their other revenues, it's still worth killing for (and we're dealing with millions of dollars minimum here). If a company like Activision-Blizzard actually managed to penetrate these markets on their own, you'd probably start finding guys like Bobby Kotick stuffed into the storage compartments
on their private jets sporting columbian neckties.

This basic arguement could be applied on a larger scale to IP theft, patent violations, and knock offs in general. What specific companies can do is minimal. To really have an effect you need things like the US goverment to look at the overall amount of money this is costing (including to it's own revenues via taxes and trade tariffs) and get involved directly, which involves putting aside a lot of morality we've promoted and enforced internationally to start using our power for our financial well being (ie publically admitting we're slaughtering people for money, and not shedding a tear about it). While Activision-Blizzard or any company ranging from clothing, to music, to drugs, or whatever can't go toe to toe with foreign organized crime and cartels, major goverments can. This is done by both slaughtering civilians to influance the market (and turn the people there against their goverment and cartels, after all these groups operate through threat of violence, however they have them outnumbered and fighting them even if it means a lot of deaths becomes more appealing when it means certain death at the hands of a group they can't even fight... a guy with an AK-47 aimed ar your family is less intimidating than a jet who is going to just napalm you, your family, and everyone around you without you even getting to see who did it), and of course attacking those crime syndicates. There are limits to the amount of security guys like executives can have, but goverment officials have dedicated protective mechanisms in the form of the CIA and Secret Service who would be a lot more active in such a conflict, and of course while we might lose leaders, so will the other side at the hands of our own assasins and commandos. I actually think economics and trade will eventually be a major factor of what causes World War III (due to nations like China... but that's a whole differant arguement).


Of course also to be a complete realist, I imagine other than morality a big part of why the goverment isn't more involved here is simply that politicians and lawmakers are receiving pay offs from foreign goverments and crime syndicates not to do this kind of thing or get that ball rolling. Politicians have little direct gain from doing this kind of thing, but periodic briefcases full of money and free drugs for you and your kids is something that DOES directly benefit them.

The point is that while seemingly psychotic, there are people who actually make money on the other side of this kind of thing, who themselves are going to want to protect their interests. It's not something that is entirely under the control of the industry on our end. Their greed *IS* a factor, but at the same time you have to look at the way the market has evolved, and like it or not you have to deal with the existing realities.

Consider also that things like the R4 carts are a big deal because they allow the piracy of DS games. Guys in China can whip off copies of brand new games and then sell them for a fraction of the price of what they sell for retail in the US. This is how you see all those deals coming from Hong Kong sellers with say brand new Pokemon games going for like $15 (which might even include the international shipping). They sell these things by the millions, and are making money off of it. The industry feels threatened and is trying countermeasures, but in the end what do you think is going to happen if they ever
succeeded and nothing new came along? Do you think that the Triad losing millions of dollars might find it worth the cost to whack a few people from Nintendo? I'd also imagine they are aware of this.... which of course has a lot to do with why games are so expensive (and rising in price) in the US, because we're a relatively safe market, and they use us to offset those development costs and so on.


The point is that there are a lot of issues involved here, and honestly I don't think the issues with piracy in "developing nations" are quite what people think.

Honestly with the billions of dollars in profits as things are, I'm more concerned about them lowering prices in the safe "first world", than the global condition of piracy, because really that's an issue for goverments, not directly for businesses. What's more the game industry is a tiny business that is already accounted for in discussions about things like patent violations and international IP theft. It's just that things like the drug and garmet industries could buy and sell video gaming easily. Activision/Blizzard or EA might be big boys in their own arena, but the piracy of even the best selling games is a tiny trickle compared to what companies like Pfizers have at stake with things like Viagra knock offs, or what clothing companies lose to things like counterfeit blue jeans in the global marketplace.

 

[Atmos Duality]

besides arnt Americans still the biggest media pirates on the planet?

No. That would be China.
Assuming we're talking about copyright violations and infringement (which is exactly what piracy is), China beats all comers by a *huge* margin. I've seen knock-offs of everything from Disney plushie dolls, to giant mecha statues, to Calloway Golf Clubs, to every form of electronic device imaginable (with corresponding software).
And all of it illegal by international copyright law.

The R4 device that Nintendo has been fighting for the better part of 6 years now was manufactured en-masse in China.
It's stunning how efficient the black market can be in creating and distributing contraband based on only reverse-engineered models.

 

[DuX1112]

This is hilarious. These "studies" are absolutely useless and pointless. The real reason are that people are just too dam stupid and cheap. Games do not cost too much and regardless of the so called excuses that they claim are "reasons" the facts still remain. That fact is that Pirates are still stealing the software and need to be dealt with.

What's the difference between not buying and pirating? Because in poor countries few people can afford to buy media. Why would pirates need to be dealt with if they aren't making a difference? (talking about the people who can't afford the product, not the ones who are too cheap)
P.S. I pirate software that costs thousands of dollars every year (more than my income).
P.P.S. Autodesk has free educational versions of its programs, Adobe does not.

Mod Edit: Piracy is illegal

If they can afford the hardware to run it then they can afford the software as well. Pure and simple.

Actually no - because a low-end PC costs around $300, which translated into videogames is between 3 and 6 (WOW:Cataclysm costs +$110, while others/budgets go lower here, like around $50, rarely $40). And one buys a PC every 2-3 years or something (speaking for myself, while other people are less fortunate), while a game can be bought/acquired, played and finished in like, 2 days. How many people then have the money to buy $50 to $100 games if buying a PC is already a luxury, what do you think? Not many. Almost no one. Maybe if they cost between $10 and $20... All above is luxury ($20's getting ridiculous too, because it approaches 20% of some people's monthly income). Hell, you could feed yourself here for 2 weeks with those money... Let alone $50-$100 per game, ugh. >_<

 

[The Long Road]

People do NOT deserve entertainment they cannot afford.

So a person who has very little/no choice on how much they can get paid, due to the overall economy of their country of origin, doesn't deserve entertainment because they don't live in a developed, probably Western, nation?

Seriously?

Things should be sold in a particular market at a reasonable price for the consumers in that market. If that means slashing your prices in that market by half of what they would be in another market, in order for the price for the goods to be the same relative to those goods in a different market, that's what you do. You don't just decide to screw them for every penny their worth, which, if you use the same £40-50 as they do in the UK, is about half a months wages, if not more.

If companies just want to fuck people over just because they live in a developing nation, they deserve to be pirated.

Why is it a corporation's job to cater to everyone? Have you ever heard of the term "target audience"? It varies for each company, but it's usually comprised of people who have means of compensation for the goods/services they purchase.

Arguments like yours always, always, always lead to price control laws, which have never worked on a large scale for any extended period of time. If corporations feel that they aren't being fairly compensated for their work, they're not just going to grin and bear it, they're going to stop being a corporation. That way, instead of some people getting something, nobody gets anything. Hence the fall of Communism.

There's a reason we use a medium of exchange in this world. We have limited resources, and people want as much as they can get. If they can get the resources needed to survive and even some for leisure by making a game, they can set whatever price they like. Some will lead to more personal resources, so that's the direction they'll go. Now that developers are getting married and having kids more than ever, they need more resources than ever to provide for a family. Then we have you, complaining that you can't buy a game because "those greedy companies just want to fuck people over".

If you want your anti-capitalist rhetoric to hold any weight at all, try complaining about something with a little more gravity than games. Just keeping it in the Western world, you could complain about medical supply companies or hospitals in keeping with the semi-recent health care debate. Or leave North America and Europe and whine about OPEC keeping oil flowing like molasses in January. Or Chinese companies who treat workers like cattle. When you start demanding that companies change to suit your gaming needs, you aren't a champion of the downtrodden, you're just being irrational.

 

[Chibz]

I'm sorry, but no. Piracy isn't caused by greedy capitalists. Piracy is caused by greedy consumers. Any claims to the contrary are just silly.

 

[Gindil]

I'm sorry, but no. Piracy isn't caused by greedy capitalists. Piracy is caused by greedy consumers. Any claims to the contrary are just silly.

... Please explain. That's not making any sense in real world context.