don't be stupid, unlike you I've read and verified the article and it's sources. you're the type who doesn't collect facts and come up with an informed opinion you use hearsay and hysteria to form opinions. piracy has not diminished since the 80s. ever heard of the internet. since then piracy has sky-rocketed and with p2p only gotten easier and widespread. if you can't even get that basic level of knowledge right please don't quote me or speak to me again. idiotAntari said:
Which is the bigger problem? Piracy or DRM?
- Thread starter Vault101
- Start date
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yeah sorry about that postSonic Doctor said:This mentality makes no sense to me. It is like saying the illness that a person caught wouldn't be around if the experimental drug created to stop it hadn't been created.EvilMaggot said:the problem is DRM... there wouldnt be piracy if that shitty DRM... i got alot friends that download games instead of buying them because then they dont have to be online all the time (ubisoft im looking at you) so its better for piracy
The illness(piracy) came first, stealing has been around before video and computer games. (DRM) is an experimental drug created to fight the illness. In some cases, this new drug makes the illness worse, but in this case not because of the drug, but because the people are misusing the drug.
These friends you speak of, need to learn how to just cope. Being pirates by downloading pirated games, they are supporting the thing that the DRM is trying to stop. This will create stronger DRM. It is a vicious cycle. If they learn to cope with this DRM and not pirate, and we get other people to follow suit, we will see DRM become less and less of a problem.
We have to weed out the wrong doers. One thing I think would be awesome, if we could all band together, find some honest computer experts that can hack these hackers/pirates that copy games for people that want them for free, and destroy their ability to do such things. We also need to stop sites that allow torrents of pirated games to be downloaded.
Besides, these friends of yours, if they don't like the DRM, guess what, they don't have to buy it. Along with that, they don't have to play it. They don't have a right to play those games they downloaded wrongly for free. If they want to play it, pay it, or don't play at all.
in my mind it was the other way around... but im just really tired xDI have made a detailed commentary on this article, if you are interested.thebighead01 said:
tweakguides.com article on piracy
I only quote the points on which I disagree, if I did not quote it I mostly agreed to it, and I read the whole thing several times. Of note is the authors opinion on Steam, that I share completely.
I read the previous versions of this article some time before, when I didn't really start to think on the subject. I already disagreed on some points, but I really liked it and it opened my eyes to the complexity of the issue. It is one of the things that made me study dialectics, and now I am going up against it's author. Since he is smarter and way more knowledgeable than most of the loud armchair specialists of the internet I have much respect in his insights. I hope that he could be open to reconsider some of his opinions when presented with the correct arguments, as I am.
page 2- the legality of piracy
-"digital piracy allows perfect reproduction with no quality loss. Thus digital copies combined with a mass distribution channel like the Internet equate to far greater potential to cause economic loss to the software and entertainment industries than ever before."
->The opposite side could say with as much reason that digital copies+internet equates to a greater potential for exposition of general culture, and so a greater incentive to actually buy more creations (see the point on page 3 and the one on the conclusion for more on this).
page 2- the rationale of copyright
-"you cannot copyright an idea"
->indeed, but there is more than one side on this point. One can discuss the idea presented in an article but not pass the article itself around, or if the article is in digital form it is itself assimilable to an idea, and can thus be passed around. The only limits being basic respect for the author, which means giving credit to the one who put the idea in this form.
->When one says he "owns" something after buying it he means that he owns the right to use it as he sees fit, and sharing is not publishing. It's understandable that many artist would like perfect control on what people do with their creations after they bought it, but this is simply delusional.
-->further discussion on how the digitalisation of a work could reduce it to the equivalent of an idea may be needed. This does not mean the work becomes worthless however, see the point on Conclusion.
page 3- on the free rider problem and the incidence of positive word of mouth
-"However the argument deliberately ignores one fundamental problem: there's no evidence to suggest that positive word of mouth from pirates results in anything other than more people pirating a particularly popular game."
-"the evidence does not support the claim that anything beyond a minority of pirates actually wind up purchasing the games they pirate."
->The zeitgeist article on the situation of last century's Germany seems to be relevant here ( http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,710976,00.html ), it's main drawback is it's an historical study made of hindsights, it still is better than a flimsy study. A minority is still better than nothing, at least that is a solid gain, opposed to an hypotetic loss.
-->Is the current situation with online piracy identical, partly related, or completely different to what happened in last century's Germany despite the similarities ? That is yet to be determined objectively.
page 4- global piracy rates
-"In any case, we can conclude that the proportional rates of piracy shown above do indicate quite clearly that the scale of piracy is very high all around the world, and that there must be some genuine and likely quite significant economic losses incurred in aggregate due to all this piracy, even if it's not on the basis of each pirated copy being a full-price lost sale."
->The scale of piracy, while impressive, is not a proof of loss. (see previous point, and some of what follows)
page 6- PC vs Console (part 2)- is piracy solely to blame ?
-"So far there's a very strong case for the premise that piracy is a substantial reason why there's such a discrepancy between sales of the same game among different platforms. No other plausible explanation accounts for the way in which console games outsell PC games by such a large factor."
->The other factors (pc versions don't need emulators, casual/console gamers are the majority...) are at least equally important. The numbers of piracy would be more relevant then the other factors if the losses were not just potentials.
->Actual losses due to the unavoidable arms race against crackers can be considered, since publishers do have to invest in complex security measures constantly just to discourage the casual piracy. But even consoles need DRMs , a console is itself a DRM, so this is just a change of battlefield .
-->It's human behavior that dictates this situation, but can it be changed ? how ? Shifting to other audiences is not a long term solutions to this problems. For instance, console emulators may just become more common.
page 6- PC vs Console (part 2)- a cautionary tale
-in relation to the article Piracy bleeds Mac game makers dry.
->This is the same issue but in the smaller Mac world and that's a crucial difference, I can think of several rebutal to this point.
-->this was too small a market, especially with mac users generally not being pc gamers at all. (knowing a few mac users personally, I can tell). For that reason it is safe to say too few would have paid, if they did not have a choice, to make a difference.
-->too few publishers, and/or too little publicity.
-->the games didn't sell much because they either were not good to begin with, or were not to the tastes of the mac users.
-->mac games makers and publishers bailed out because finding a profitable solution did not hold as much short term benefit as switching to the already existent, and much larger, PC market.
--->As a conclusion to this, I would say that total destruction of the PC game market in the same way is impossible, as the proportion of paying customers is non negligible, at least for the talented developpers (as the profits of some indies like Minecraft's creator can prove). The majors switching completely to the console would leave the indie developpers freer to expand and eventually become majors themselves. Because, Finally, due to the number of PC being so large in the first place, the proportion of paying customers cannot be reduced to the point that this market would be entirely unsustainable, no matter how bad piracy gets. It's easy to stay fixated on downloads being orders of magnitude greater than the sells, it does not make them more than potentials.
page 7- Online and Subscriber-Based Business Models
-"even single-player games now usually have a multiplayer component tacked on in the hopes of building an online following and thus providing further incentive for more people to actually buy the game rather than pirate it."
->"usually" only for the most popular titles. A minority of players are not interested in any kind of multiplayer, adding multiplayer to an otherwise sound single player game may attract gamers with an interest in multiplayer, not force the single players to pay.
-->Will exclusively single player games be a thing of the past because of this ? Despite the problems raised by piracy it does not look like it, or does it matter anyway, if the single player mode is good despite ressources spent on multiplayer ?
page 7- Online and Subscriber- Episodic Content Business Models
-"We did this with Operation Flashpoint and experienced a sales spike after each new episode was released as people with conterfeit copies were forced to go out and buy the legitimate product. We are talking about many tens of thousands of extra sales gained this way."
->The other side of the coin, that is not any less valid, is that those tens of thousand of extra sales (or a part of them, to be more fair than this quote) would not have happened had the game not been downloaded and tried by these persons in the first place.
->The way episodic content is done now (à la half-life 2 etc...) is clearly wrong in that it's to the detriment of the players, but it has the potential to be a good compromise with human behavior. the quality of the add-ons and the games is a different issue, poor quality is not sustainable on the long term, and the game industry already crashed because of poor quality, not piracy.
-->is the current poor quality of games due to piracy ? That is another debate, though this is only making something unavoidable into a scapegoat: the only real reason for a lack of quality will always be a lack of talent. A lack of talent may be due to a lack of incentive, but if this lack of incentive is unavoidable there is no loss to begin with. Anyway profits are still being made, so there is no way for incentives to disappear completely in a large enough market (that include the market for non-casual games).
page 7- Online and Subscriber- Desirable or Undesirable Changes?
-"It's one thing for consumers to constantly demand that the PC games industry create better quality games which are not only cheaper and run well on lower spec hardware, but also have no copy protection; it's another thing altogether for companies to somehow find a practical way to turn this fantastic and often unrealistic request into a business model that works."
->The logic for AAAs is different because it draws the casual pirates, but that is still a reasonable expectation for niche genres. A game, good or bad, only cost more today because of the public expectations on graphic quality. Ambience, story and gameplay depth have become secondary because developpers keep targetting the largest possible audience (they would do the same even with no piracy), which is mainly concerned about the costly eye candy ; even though these elements together are proved to more than compensate for a bit less detailed game.
-"it's likely that certain types of games, possibly entire genres, will be relegated to niche status, or in extreme cases die off altogether as adventure gaming did. This is discussed in more detail in the Conclusion."
->Great games tends to be unsuccessfull because they are often too sophisticated for the larger audiences, a loss of potential sells is not any more probable than the public for these games not being large enough yet. The current publishers and devs can leave, but there will be others to fill in the gaps sooner or later, be it the frustrated gamers themselves (see point on page 10- PC Gaming is Dead). Side note, products having a life cycle is normal, it's not a point but a constatation unrelated to the authors thesis against piracy.
-->Publishers and developpers running scared of niche genres for this reason, are not helping in getting the public for these games to grow. This vicious circle could be broken if the casual gamers tastes evolve toward some of the years old classics that are still being praised. Time will tell.
page 8-Copy Protection & DRM
-on DRM being only meant to discourage casual piracy and being effective at that.
->This is easy to overlook in a heated debate, DRMs discourage the shallow casual players only interested in the new big titles. For the niche players this is a different story, it seems the ones attracted to more sophisticated, unknown or ancient games will always be savy enough to decide if they want to pay, drm or not. In effect DRMs are relevant only in proportion to the genre's popularity, as Stardock found out.
-->the conscience of gamers attracted to niche genres how they tend to pay more, and how their excuses may be more valid than the casual pirates' is yet another debate.
-on "DRM Causes Piracy"
->More popular games will attract more casual gamers, which are the casual pirates, in direct proportion. So naturally a highly popular game without protection will let them all try it, this can have some bad consequences obviously. This and the poor reviews that follow are only due to common stupidity, not on piracy simply being "bad". There are games, as mentioned in this article, who were pirated because of their DRMs, even if it was due to hysteria and more or less valid excuses. So, DRMs do cause piracy maybe as much as they fight it, at least in some cases. In other words, DRMs fight zero day piracy, but encourage the ongoing file-sharing.
page 9- Copy Protection & DRM (part 2)
-on the vested interests against starforce and others.
->It's easy to pinpoint the torrent sites owner making big profits on publicity for being amoral bastards, indeed that is what most of them are. Yet this is not enough to make sharing amoral in itself (see point on page 10- practical solutions).
page 9- Copy Protection & DRM (part 2)- DRM and the Future
-"piracy has forced increasingly intrusive DRM upon us. No-one likes it, but it's here to stay so long as people pirate things rampantly under a range of excuses. If you want to be outraged about DRM, direct a lot of that anger towards the pirates who've made it necessary."
->DRMs are a necessity agains casual piracy, piracy is unavoidable and so is the constant arms race between the crackers and the security engineers. I would rather save my anger for the crackers, but piracy can't go on without the crackers, and vice-versa in a lot of cases. In the end this is an unavoidable situation, there is no point in just getting angry about it. More intrusive DRMs fueled by hatred toward freeloaders are only food for the crackers. They may be necessary for popular games but nothing will ever change by seeing them as the one and only thing to do.
page 10- Practical Solutions & Conclusion- PC Gaming is Dead
-"while PC gaming as a whole may thrive based on the sales success of subscriber-driven MMOs and casual puzzle games for example, many PC gamers may see their favorite types of games become casualties to changing business models in search of gamers who actually pay for the games they play."
->There is no reasons to think that attracting more people with casual games will change the proportions of consumers and freeloaders. This is like chasing a mirage. At least this could have the good side effect of making niche gamers desperate enough to give more support to whatever few games and developers they like (or take matters into their own hands, see the thief serie, it's mods, and the Dark Project) .
page 10- Practical Solutions & Conclusion- The Culture of Piracy
-"Not only are the people who are pirating games openly bragging about it, they're flowering it up with a range of excuses, even suggesting that it's their right to do so."
->I can only answer this bia with my own. The right to share is a basic thing if you take the humanistic view, one may be dead set against piracy but still owe his human rights to Humanism, period. For the non casual downloader who pays for most of what he gets this is neither a flowering up nor a farce, for the casual however this is only a convenient excuse. Humanists online, interested in the betterment of all humanity through all things (not just video games, movies and music, but paintings and ebooks for example), represent only a microscopic fraction of the downloaders, but this is not enough to negate the good in humanism or in sharing.
page 10- Practical Solutions & Conclusion- Practical Solutions
-"What's objectionable about this practice isn't so much the amount of money these people are making, but the fact that they're doing it without contributing a single cent to the people who are actually responsible for creating the content that is being pirated. These sites are the ultimate free riders, because their content is almost entirely made up of other peoples' hard work."
->Wherever there is easy profits there will be nosy bastards, it remains that torrent sites have no "content" but "access to the ones sharing the products", that would be the torrent client. The torrent sites owners may be downright cynical (as are many downloaders) and yellow livered about it, they still help in a humanistic goal. At least ad-blockers are there to give back some of the cynicism.
-->some practical solutions for the torrent sites themselves would be to stop being so hilariously greedy and put links to the authors sites or even paypal accounts, to actively encourage and facilitate donating to the artists on the same pages where the clients can be found, befriend the authors who use Creative Commons by helping them to get known and so on.
page 10- Practical Solutions & Conclusion- Conclusion
-"With the Culture of Piracy so prominent now, it seems everyone is demanding freedom without understanding that freedom does not equal free; everything has a cost, and we need to recognize that if content creators provide us with entertainment, they need to be rewarded fairly for it. We need to demonstrate that we can exercise the freedoms we have responsibly if we don't want to lose them. People can conjure up all manner of excuses to justify rampant piracy all day long, however neither the data nor logic bear any of these excuses out in the end."
->With the digitalisation of all medias, for the first time in history, freedom = free since this digitalisation is making them a lot closer to ideas than to material goods. It's giving credit where credit is due that is not free, people not respecting that is more of a maturity issue. There is no need to ask for a honor system, because with piracy already being free and practical that is how things already work. If anti-piracy arguments were all completely true there would already be no more musicians and video games, they're obviously not about to disappear either.
->Data nor logic goes against the fact that from a humanistic view, the view that did more good than all the materialistic ones combined (see Human Rights, of course that can be debated, I'll defend my position on this too), sharing is beneficial for everyone on the long term.
This will be very hard to accept for some, but I don't use humanism to justify myself, it is a fact, not an excuse, that noone managed to refute.
I pirate because I can, I do not feel guilty.
I did feel guilty about it in the past, I have read hundreds of articles and studies for and against piracy myself, and now I know I don't have to feel that way. At least because I know that I paid for more than I would have if there was no file sharing. Proving or disproving this claim once and for all should be the real goal, rather than fighting up there on our respective moral high horses.
I only quote the points on which I disagree, if I did not quote it I mostly agreed to it, and I read the whole thing several times. Of note is the authors opinion on Steam, that I share completely.
I read the previous versions of this article some time before, when I didn't really start to think on the subject. I already disagreed on some points, but I really liked it and it opened my eyes to the complexity of the issue. It is one of the things that made me study dialectics, and now I am going up against it's author. Since he is smarter and way more knowledgeable than most of the loud armchair specialists of the internet I have much respect in his insights. I hope that he could be open to reconsider some of his opinions when presented with the correct arguments, as I am.
page 2- the legality of piracy
-"digital piracy allows perfect reproduction with no quality loss. Thus digital copies combined with a mass distribution channel like the Internet equate to far greater potential to cause economic loss to the software and entertainment industries than ever before."
->The opposite side could say with as much reason that digital copies+internet equates to a greater potential for exposition of general culture, and so a greater incentive to actually buy more creations (see the point on page 3 and the one on the conclusion for more on this).
page 2- the rationale of copyright
-"you cannot copyright an idea"
->indeed, but there is more than one side on this point. One can discuss the idea presented in an article but not pass the article itself around, or if the article is in digital form it is itself assimilable to an idea, and can thus be passed around. The only limits being basic respect for the author, which means giving credit to the one who put the idea in this form.
->When one says he "owns" something after buying it he means that he owns the right to use it as he sees fit, and sharing is not publishing. It's understandable that many artist would like perfect control on what people do with their creations after they bought it, but this is simply delusional.
-->further discussion on how the digitalisation of a work could reduce it to the equivalent of an idea may be needed. This does not mean the work becomes worthless however, see the point on Conclusion.
page 3- on the free rider problem and the incidence of positive word of mouth
-"However the argument deliberately ignores one fundamental problem: there's no evidence to suggest that positive word of mouth from pirates results in anything other than more people pirating a particularly popular game."
-"the evidence does not support the claim that anything beyond a minority of pirates actually wind up purchasing the games they pirate."
->The zeitgeist article on the situation of last century's Germany seems to be relevant here ( http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,710976,00.html ), it's main drawback is it's an historical study made of hindsights, it still is better than a flimsy study. A minority is still better than nothing, at least that is a solid gain, opposed to an hypotetic loss.
-->Is the current situation with online piracy identical, partly related, or completely different to what happened in last century's Germany despite the similarities ? That is yet to be determined objectively.
page 4- global piracy rates
-"In any case, we can conclude that the proportional rates of piracy shown above do indicate quite clearly that the scale of piracy is very high all around the world, and that there must be some genuine and likely quite significant economic losses incurred in aggregate due to all this piracy, even if it's not on the basis of each pirated copy being a full-price lost sale."
->The scale of piracy, while impressive, is not a proof of loss. (see previous point, and some of what follows)
page 6- PC vs Console (part 2)- is piracy solely to blame ?
-"So far there's a very strong case for the premise that piracy is a substantial reason why there's such a discrepancy between sales of the same game among different platforms. No other plausible explanation accounts for the way in which console games outsell PC games by such a large factor."
->The other factors (pc versions don't need emulators, casual/console gamers are the majority...) are at least equally important. The numbers of piracy would be more relevant then the other factors if the losses were not just potentials.
->Actual losses due to the unavoidable arms race against crackers can be considered, since publishers do have to invest in complex security measures constantly just to discourage the casual piracy. But even consoles need DRMs , a console is itself a DRM, so this is just a change of battlefield .
-->It's human behavior that dictates this situation, but can it be changed ? how ? Shifting to other audiences is not a long term solutions to this problems. For instance, console emulators may just become more common.
page 6- PC vs Console (part 2)- a cautionary tale
-in relation to the article Piracy bleeds Mac game makers dry.
->This is the same issue but in the smaller Mac world and that's a crucial difference, I can think of several rebutal to this point.
-->this was too small a market, especially with mac users generally not being pc gamers at all. (knowing a few mac users personally, I can tell). For that reason it is safe to say too few would have paid, if they did not have a choice, to make a difference.
-->too few publishers, and/or too little publicity.
-->the games didn't sell much because they either were not good to begin with, or were not to the tastes of the mac users.
-->mac games makers and publishers bailed out because finding a profitable solution did not hold as much short term benefit as switching to the already existent, and much larger, PC market.
--->As a conclusion to this, I would say that total destruction of the PC game market in the same way is impossible, as the proportion of paying customers is non negligible, at least for the talented developpers (as the profits of some indies like Minecraft's creator can prove). The majors switching completely to the console would leave the indie developpers freer to expand and eventually become majors themselves. Because, Finally, due to the number of PC being so large in the first place, the proportion of paying customers cannot be reduced to the point that this market would be entirely unsustainable, no matter how bad piracy gets. It's easy to stay fixated on downloads being orders of magnitude greater than the sells, it does not make them more than potentials.
page 7- Online and Subscriber-Based Business Models
-"even single-player games now usually have a multiplayer component tacked on in the hopes of building an online following and thus providing further incentive for more people to actually buy the game rather than pirate it."
->"usually" only for the most popular titles. A minority of players are not interested in any kind of multiplayer, adding multiplayer to an otherwise sound single player game may attract gamers with an interest in multiplayer, not force the single players to pay.
-->Will exclusively single player games be a thing of the past because of this ? Despite the problems raised by piracy it does not look like it, or does it matter anyway, if the single player mode is good despite ressources spent on multiplayer ?
page 7- Online and Subscriber- Episodic Content Business Models
-"We did this with Operation Flashpoint and experienced a sales spike after each new episode was released as people with conterfeit copies were forced to go out and buy the legitimate product. We are talking about many tens of thousands of extra sales gained this way."
->The other side of the coin, that is not any less valid, is that those tens of thousand of extra sales (or a part of them, to be more fair than this quote) would not have happened had the game not been downloaded and tried by these persons in the first place.
->The way episodic content is done now (à la half-life 2 etc...) is clearly wrong in that it's to the detriment of the players, but it has the potential to be a good compromise with human behavior. the quality of the add-ons and the games is a different issue, poor quality is not sustainable on the long term, and the game industry already crashed because of poor quality, not piracy.
-->is the current poor quality of games due to piracy ? That is another debate, though this is only making something unavoidable into a scapegoat: the only real reason for a lack of quality will always be a lack of talent. A lack of talent may be due to a lack of incentive, but if this lack of incentive is unavoidable there is no loss to begin with. Anyway profits are still being made, so there is no way for incentives to disappear completely in a large enough market (that include the market for non-casual games).
page 7- Online and Subscriber- Desirable or Undesirable Changes?
-"It's one thing for consumers to constantly demand that the PC games industry create better quality games which are not only cheaper and run well on lower spec hardware, but also have no copy protection; it's another thing altogether for companies to somehow find a practical way to turn this fantastic and often unrealistic request into a business model that works."
->The logic for AAAs is different because it draws the casual pirates, but that is still a reasonable expectation for niche genres. A game, good or bad, only cost more today because of the public expectations on graphic quality. Ambience, story and gameplay depth have become secondary because developpers keep targetting the largest possible audience (they would do the same even with no piracy), which is mainly concerned about the costly eye candy ; even though these elements together are proved to more than compensate for a bit less detailed game.
-"it's likely that certain types of games, possibly entire genres, will be relegated to niche status, or in extreme cases die off altogether as adventure gaming did. This is discussed in more detail in the Conclusion."
->Great games tends to be unsuccessfull because they are often too sophisticated for the larger audiences, a loss of potential sells is not any more probable than the public for these games not being large enough yet. The current publishers and devs can leave, but there will be others to fill in the gaps sooner or later, be it the frustrated gamers themselves (see point on page 10- PC Gaming is Dead). Side note, products having a life cycle is normal, it's not a point but a constatation unrelated to the authors thesis against piracy.
-->Publishers and developpers running scared of niche genres for this reason, are not helping in getting the public for these games to grow. This vicious circle could be broken if the casual gamers tastes evolve toward some of the years old classics that are still being praised. Time will tell.
page 8-Copy Protection & DRM
-on DRM being only meant to discourage casual piracy and being effective at that.
->This is easy to overlook in a heated debate, DRMs discourage the shallow casual players only interested in the new big titles. For the niche players this is a different story, it seems the ones attracted to more sophisticated, unknown or ancient games will always be savy enough to decide if they want to pay, drm or not. In effect DRMs are relevant only in proportion to the genre's popularity, as Stardock found out.
-->the conscience of gamers attracted to niche genres how they tend to pay more, and how their excuses may be more valid than the casual pirates' is yet another debate.
-on "DRM Causes Piracy"
->More popular games will attract more casual gamers, which are the casual pirates, in direct proportion. So naturally a highly popular game without protection will let them all try it, this can have some bad consequences obviously. This and the poor reviews that follow are only due to common stupidity, not on piracy simply being "bad". There are games, as mentioned in this article, who were pirated because of their DRMs, even if it was due to hysteria and more or less valid excuses. So, DRMs do cause piracy maybe as much as they fight it, at least in some cases. In other words, DRMs fight zero day piracy, but encourage the ongoing file-sharing.
page 9- Copy Protection & DRM (part 2)
-on the vested interests against starforce and others.
->It's easy to pinpoint the torrent sites owner making big profits on publicity for being amoral bastards, indeed that is what most of them are. Yet this is not enough to make sharing amoral in itself (see point on page 10- practical solutions).
page 9- Copy Protection & DRM (part 2)- DRM and the Future
-"piracy has forced increasingly intrusive DRM upon us. No-one likes it, but it's here to stay so long as people pirate things rampantly under a range of excuses. If you want to be outraged about DRM, direct a lot of that anger towards the pirates who've made it necessary."
->DRMs are a necessity agains casual piracy, piracy is unavoidable and so is the constant arms race between the crackers and the security engineers. I would rather save my anger for the crackers, but piracy can't go on without the crackers, and vice-versa in a lot of cases. In the end this is an unavoidable situation, there is no point in just getting angry about it. More intrusive DRMs fueled by hatred toward freeloaders are only food for the crackers. They may be necessary for popular games but nothing will ever change by seeing them as the one and only thing to do.
page 10- Practical Solutions & Conclusion- PC Gaming is Dead
-"while PC gaming as a whole may thrive based on the sales success of subscriber-driven MMOs and casual puzzle games for example, many PC gamers may see their favorite types of games become casualties to changing business models in search of gamers who actually pay for the games they play."
->There is no reasons to think that attracting more people with casual games will change the proportions of consumers and freeloaders. This is like chasing a mirage. At least this could have the good side effect of making niche gamers desperate enough to give more support to whatever few games and developers they like (or take matters into their own hands, see the thief serie, it's mods, and the Dark Project) .
page 10- Practical Solutions & Conclusion- The Culture of Piracy
-"Not only are the people who are pirating games openly bragging about it, they're flowering it up with a range of excuses, even suggesting that it's their right to do so."
->I can only answer this bia with my own. The right to share is a basic thing if you take the humanistic view, one may be dead set against piracy but still owe his human rights to Humanism, period. For the non casual downloader who pays for most of what he gets this is neither a flowering up nor a farce, for the casual however this is only a convenient excuse. Humanists online, interested in the betterment of all humanity through all things (not just video games, movies and music, but paintings and ebooks for example), represent only a microscopic fraction of the downloaders, but this is not enough to negate the good in humanism or in sharing.
page 10- Practical Solutions & Conclusion- Practical Solutions
-"What's objectionable about this practice isn't so much the amount of money these people are making, but the fact that they're doing it without contributing a single cent to the people who are actually responsible for creating the content that is being pirated. These sites are the ultimate free riders, because their content is almost entirely made up of other peoples' hard work."
->Wherever there is easy profits there will be nosy bastards, it remains that torrent sites have no "content" but "access to the ones sharing the products", that would be the torrent client. The torrent sites owners may be downright cynical (as are many downloaders) and yellow livered about it, they still help in a humanistic goal. At least ad-blockers are there to give back some of the cynicism.
-->some practical solutions for the torrent sites themselves would be to stop being so hilariously greedy and put links to the authors sites or even paypal accounts, to actively encourage and facilitate donating to the artists on the same pages where the clients can be found, befriend the authors who use Creative Commons by helping them to get known and so on.
page 10- Practical Solutions & Conclusion- Conclusion
-"With the Culture of Piracy so prominent now, it seems everyone is demanding freedom without understanding that freedom does not equal free; everything has a cost, and we need to recognize that if content creators provide us with entertainment, they need to be rewarded fairly for it. We need to demonstrate that we can exercise the freedoms we have responsibly if we don't want to lose them. People can conjure up all manner of excuses to justify rampant piracy all day long, however neither the data nor logic bear any of these excuses out in the end."
->With the digitalisation of all medias, for the first time in history, freedom = free since this digitalisation is making them a lot closer to ideas than to material goods. It's giving credit where credit is due that is not free, people not respecting that is more of a maturity issue. There is no need to ask for a honor system, because with piracy already being free and practical that is how things already work. If anti-piracy arguments were all completely true there would already be no more musicians and video games, they're obviously not about to disappear either.
->Data nor logic goes against the fact that from a humanistic view, the view that did more good than all the materialistic ones combined (see Human Rights, of course that can be debated, I'll defend my position on this too), sharing is beneficial for everyone on the long term.
This will be very hard to accept for some, but I don't use humanism to justify myself, it is a fact, not an excuse, that noone managed to refute.
I pirate because I can, I do not feel guilty.
I did feel guilty about it in the past, I have read hundreds of articles and studies for and against piracy myself, and now I know I don't have to feel that way. At least because I know that I paid for more than I would have if there was no file sharing. Proving or disproving this claim once and for all should be the real goal, rather than fighting up there on our respective moral high horses.
Antari's point is that one biaised article who agrees with you, even if it's good and informative, does not change the truth.
I'd be happy to discuss the details, if you are willing to defend your views. Beware though, I'm not an easy oponent.
Hi I know I'm new to the table but I wanna say a few things. Yes Piracy is bad, because I know people who have hacked systems just to pirate(I myself have hacked systems but I think my 40+ psp collection and 70+ ds collection shows I don't pirate just to pirate) and I also refuse to help hack systems for people who I know just want to pirate games (It pisses me off they only want to have a opened system just to steal, I even un hacked some systems when I found out that's all they wanted). But publishers have no reason to cry about piracy, I mean read this article
http://www.maxconsole.net/content.php?42950-Incredible!-Black-Ops-makes-360m-in-ONE-day-from-TWO-countries
I don't see Activision complaining about the lost sales from piracy here. And the Nintendo DS does gets hit with heavy piracy but still sales like hot cakes and with all it's games(and to anyone who says no it doesn't then explain why the 3DS will have a auto update feature). You say piracy is bad(and stealing the game is a bad thing if you have no thought in buying it), but does anyone have the figures to back up that claim. Is the games publishers complaining about that is being pirated so bad a bad game or a popular one?
Look at every popular game series to come out this year and look at how many they sold(Call of Duty, any EA Sports game, Halo, Rock Band, Guitar Hero for example). I don't hear them complaining, now look at all the under the radar games(how many of you heard of Zettai Hero Project:Absolute Unlosing Ranger vs. Dark Death Evil Man or the Knights in Nightmare remake with a free copy of Yggdra Union for first shipment buys) I don't think they sold as many as Black Ops but I don't see Atlus(and all the companies whose games they port to the US and Europe) or Nippon Ichi Software freaking out at their low sales figures. A huge reasons games sale is hype, and a lot of games that don't sale and end up with the "well piracy is what ruined us" didn't get much hype to begin with.
http://www.maxconsole.net/content.php?42950-Incredible!-Black-Ops-makes-360m-in-ONE-day-from-TWO-countries
I don't see Activision complaining about the lost sales from piracy here. And the Nintendo DS does gets hit with heavy piracy but still sales like hot cakes and with all it's games(and to anyone who says no it doesn't then explain why the 3DS will have a auto update feature). You say piracy is bad(and stealing the game is a bad thing if you have no thought in buying it), but does anyone have the figures to back up that claim. Is the games publishers complaining about that is being pirated so bad a bad game or a popular one?
Look at every popular game series to come out this year and look at how many they sold(Call of Duty, any EA Sports game, Halo, Rock Band, Guitar Hero for example). I don't hear them complaining, now look at all the under the radar games(how many of you heard of Zettai Hero Project:Absolute Unlosing Ranger vs. Dark Death Evil Man or the Knights in Nightmare remake with a free copy of Yggdra Union for first shipment buys) I don't think they sold as many as Black Ops but I don't see Atlus(and all the companies whose games they port to the US and Europe) or Nippon Ichi Software freaking out at their low sales figures. A huge reasons games sale is hype, and a lot of games that don't sale and end up with the "well piracy is what ruined us" didn't get much hype to begin with.
Just because you read an article made by someone who talked to someone doesn't mean any of you have a clue as to whats going on. I don't need to read an article to know about a community I've been a part of. And yes the internet has sped up the spread of virus ridden, misnamed pirated games out there. Its actually fairly rare to find a pirated triple A title that won't damage your system or steal your information these days. Its also fairly likely that the inital release point of that file will be the company that made the game, doing its best to bait people. The large majority of the old pirate houses, are married with children now. There are very few still in operation. Almost none that can be trusted anymore because many started gathering information for the companies because it was good money.thebighead01 said:
We can harp on details from all sides until both of us die. Either way the problem will never go away because software can always be modified. The companies making the software should be intelligent enough to realize this as they are software writers. But so much for Darwin. And I'll quote whomever I like thank you. You've answered my inital question.
Let me make this clear, big companies are wasting their time making DRM, no matter how much pirates under-cut them, they will still be making a profit, as I've said before piracy is more dangerous to the smaller developers who aren't turning much of a profit.
I've heard this defense thrown up by a friend of mine who pirates but you have to remember that DRM is there for a reason (usually because people have been pirating the game).JourneyThroughHell said:
Picture this, if everyone who ever pirated in the world suddenly stopped, I can guarentee you that you'd see DRM and other such measures disappearing pretty quickly (it just simply wouldn't be nessercary, why waste time, money and effort on something that will never be used). If we suddenly saw a disappearance of DRM, however, I doubt that pirates would suddenly have a revalation and go legitimate.
This is a proverbial arms race between attackers (pirates) and defenders (DRM and anti-piracy measures), if your concern is really about getting rid of these silly and unessercary security measures then start showing that you can be trusted (trying to 'beat the system' rarely works).
1. Malware can't be stopped as people will always create new forms, does that mean we should stop trying to stop it?Soraryuu said:
2. Don't really have anything to say here
3. The One cent Indie Bundle got pirated and I somehow doubt people were unwilling/unable to pay for that.
4. For that analogy to work the passengers would consist of about 48 "sneaks" and two actual paying passengers (who would probably be mocked to their face by at least a few of the "sneaks" for being "stupid enough to pay")
5. I've actually yet to see ANY game where the DRM hindered me in any way (and this is coming from somebody who owns Spore, which supposedly has the most evil DRM ever.)
EDIT: I just want to add that the argument of "Piracy doesn't hinder the experience of conumers like DRM (supposedly, see 5) does." is pretty shaky ground since piracy can cause developers to increase the price,add more DRM or simply cease making games altogether, all three of which affect us.
"Piracy" was a bigger problem 10 years ago, (What a stupid f-ing word to use) when it was pretty much 'normal' to lend games out, and in a circle of about 10 friends, it was extremely rare if there were 2 copies of the same game. This was especially true for PC games, because DRM didn't really exist, and cd-keys were just a means to make sure you had a legitimate copy, not necessarily a proper 'activation'.
Now, it's "normal" that every friend has the same game, and lending isn't so popular.
This has nothing to do with preventing 'piracy', and all to do with implementing a new monopoly system for the companies doing it. This is only the beginning really. Don't be surprised when you need activation for consoles, (because piracy is so rampant on consoles, right? right??) and things like system locks if you try to activate your friend's game.
Companies altogether spend millions and millions (I'd even wager billions when considering lobbyist groups like the MPAA and RIAA) on advertising their draconian policies. This should be the red flag to anyone capable of critical thought. It's a movement, not crime prevention. "Anti-Piracy" is now a mega-business where people can actually profit off of flubbing piracy stats, imagine that. Reminds me of the US prison systems that are now literally for-profit.
Now, it's "normal" that every friend has the same game, and lending isn't so popular.
This has nothing to do with preventing 'piracy', and all to do with implementing a new monopoly system for the companies doing it. This is only the beginning really. Don't be surprised when you need activation for consoles, (because piracy is so rampant on consoles, right? right??) and things like system locks if you try to activate your friend's game.
Companies altogether spend millions and millions (I'd even wager billions when considering lobbyist groups like the MPAA and RIAA) on advertising their draconian policies. This should be the red flag to anyone capable of critical thought. It's a movement, not crime prevention. "Anti-Piracy" is now a mega-business where people can actually profit off of flubbing piracy stats, imagine that. Reminds me of the US prison systems that are now literally for-profit.
until you buy the product and it doesn't work cause of stupid DRMCryo84R said:
watch this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt4BpnfAN-o
Yeah that's so worth paying for.
It's no defense. Piracy is, and has always been, something I dislike.Iron Mal said:
However, I say that the DRM measure does very little to actually stop pirates.
Ding ding ding!SyphonX said:
The biggest clue is in the name - Digital Rights Management. Nice and ambiguous when these 'digital rights' are left without definition... of course, if they did define them then publishers would have to stop fucking around and changing their stance on whether games are a product or a service to their favour depending on the situation.
While touted as 'anti piracy' measures DRM can, and almost certainly will within time, be used to interfere with any activity or situation publishers dislike.
It's not meant to stop them. Anti-copying schemes serve two purposes; the first is to prevent casual copying (as in copying that requires no more effort than dropping some blank media in your burner) and the second, and more import, purpose is to try and maximise the length of time between a game's release and it's inevitable cracking and the following widespread unauthorised reproduction and distribution (the theory being the longer it takes for a cracked version to surface the more people will 'give in' and pony up cash for a game).JourneyThroughHell said:
---
Also, if the industry wants to combat 0-day cracks, then they need to clean house. Cracking groups don't do break and enters to get these games before release day, they're supplied from on the inside.
See above comments in italic.Aeshi said:
I stand by the opinion that anything past CD-keys that doesn't involve bonuses(such as Steam, I freaking love it) is unnecessary and bad.
Now, to the ACTUAL QUESTION the OP posted: I'll have to answer that from a few different angles. For the developer/publisher, it's 50/50, seeing as it doesn't improve sales to make up for the effort of making the DRM(or? I don't know how much time, money and work making the DRM takes). For the consumer, it's DRM, since it only makes it worse for them.
(and a note: apparently I wrote 2) badly. Like, I go back and read it and go "WTF is this?". What I meant to say is that few pirates would want to buy the game if they couldn't pirate it.)
