The last game i paid for that wasn’t an MMO was Sins of a solar empire. Another game with absolutely zero DRM, that actually had a pirated version posted online by an employee of the DRM companies and managed to sell incredibly well in despite of all this. I’ve never heard of world of goo, if i was interested in playing it i would have very gladly paid full price for it and recomended it to all my friends if i enjoyed it. I don’t have to justify anyone elses actions, only my own.
No, but you can still use Amazon, or another online retailer, to purchase legal CD’s and have them shipped to you, on the off-chance you live somewhere with no record store. I’m still not seeing the problem in procuring legal music. (And iTunes works outside the US.)
I’ve a quick question for those who are anti-piracy. I’m a huge fan of Showtime’s ‘Dexter’. Dexter is currently running series 3 in America, but it’ll probably be a couple of years before that series comes to the UK. I’m keeping up with the series by watching episodes other people put on YouTube or Megavideo. When it comes to the UK I’ll probably buy the DVD set as I have for the first series (2nd series isn’t out on DVD in England yet). I’m not distributing or downloading the content but I am, in my own very small way, contributing to the success of websites which inadvertently play host to copyright material (sites like YouTube and MegaVideo are so large they’re impossible to police effectively. While copyrighted content is removed when discovered, it usually takes a day or two), nor am I reporting this copyrighted material after having viewed it. Would my behaviour be classed as ‘piracy’, in the context of this discussion?
Well, quite. I can read a heartbreaking work of staggering genius (or even A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius) for the monetary equivalent of mere minutes of my time. For the value I got out of, say, The Satanic Verses, I consider it essentially free at £7 in paperback. I can listen to outstanding music without direct payment through any number of legal means that nonetheless provide a revenue stream back to the creator. I don’t understand this attitude of entitlement that says our need for music and software is so great that we should get to dictate how it is provided, and decide how much we should pay for it after the fact (if we pay anything at all).
I do get annoyed that there is a demand for legal, unrestricted music that goes largely unsatisfied. I refuse to pay for something that is tied to a specific vendor; you’d have to be some kind of idiot to buy a large iTunes collection, for example. I agree with people who say that there’s a great case to be made that modern copyright terms have gone through ludicrous, out the other side, and are knocking on the door of batshit insane. But this would only be a justification for most modern piracy if most modern piracy involved middle-aged works. It does not. Most piracy involves either just-released, or unreleased works.
Is this a trick question? Don’t buy another EA game, obviously. I assume you meant to say reviews told you it was great, rather than crap; well, find a better reviewer - find someone whose taste in games you genuinely trust. And there’s no accounting for taste; consumer power doesn’t mean being able to guarantee that you love everything you buy. It’s about having the ability to make as informed a decision as you can beforehand, and spending money accordingly.
If you can demonstrate to me that the game was misrepresented by the publishers, or that they fraudulently garnered rave reviews with naughty inducements, then fine, you’d have a beef with that particular game. What you wouldn’t have would be a justification for habitual piracy. An entrepeneurial system simply can’t rely on just giving people stuff, and hoping they deign to pay for it. Most people, as demonstrated by the World of Goo figures, are cunts who will take what they want and screw everyone else.
Regarding the World of Goo figures, 2dboy put up a more detailed justification on their own site. As they point out, while dynamic IPs would inflate the perceived piracy rate, NAT routers and gateways would deflate it, so there are balancing factors. And neither effect is of sufficient magnitude to contradict the basic point, which is that most people chose to take for free something made by a small publisher, and provided with no restrictions for a bargain price. This is beyond argument. Most people saw a labour of love that cost at most a couple of hours’ work, and decided that they’d rather steal it. No sticking it to the man, no social activism for the down-trodden artist - just plain, simple greed.
I only want a few tracks from the CD.
Shipping cost is crazy from Amazon to Asia. I bought a book that is just USD 5.50 (an old book). Add shipping to it? It’s a whooping USD 29!
PS. Yes, for the record, I still place the order for the book, in case some think that I am doing the “Shipping is so expensive so I am going to pirate it!” trick
Yes to all of this.
I was at a small conference recently, organized and populated largely by libertarians. These are folks who believe in the free market, and who believe that everyone has a right to profit from his or her own talent and labor in the marketplace. They are people who oppose theft and other forms of coercion.
And just about every single one of them was absolutely committed to the idea of reforming copyright laws so that they still protect the intellectual property producers, but also serve the purpose they were originally designed for. The gutting of fair use and the outrageously long duration of copyright under current US law is a travesty that really needs to be addressed.
The whole attitude regarding copyright has also led to a culture of “mine, mine, mine” even in regard to works that are in the public domain. How often have you been to a website where some jackass will post a copy of some sixteenth-century artwork or nineteenth-century photograph and plaster a big © all over the image, and issue dire warnings not to steal it? And this is not just slackjawed yokels on their MySpace or Yahoo pages; it’s often libraries, museums, corporations, and others who should know better.
:rolleyes: All rightly. Metacritic gives it a good score. Gamespot gives it a good score. Gamespy gives it a good score. PC Gamer gives it a good score. So who else?
EA owes numerous studios. There are some games which fall under the EA umbrella which I enjoy and have no beef with. What you are suggesting is just gross extremism which doesn’t solve any problem. Games which I have enjoyed under EA includes Demonstone, Lord of the Rings and etc. Seriously, I am not one of those rabid fanboy or anti-fanboy. I would like to judge each game by its own merit, thank you very much.
:rolleyes: Read what I have written. I never said that’s a justification for piracy. I am saying that developers and publishers have a responsible for adhering to a minimum quality and build consumer confidence, instead of taking a turtle approach to piracy. Personally, I think I have the right to go through a game thoroughly, even if it involves borrowing a copy and see how it plays, before buying it.
But is he making a profit?
That addresses well the problem from my standpoint, which I will now proceed to outline.
First, I will reveal my biases. I have, in the past, benefitted from the music industry indirectly by providing services for music publishers, audio, and film recordings. However, my consumer and hacker background makes it impossible for me to support stances like the one taken by the RIAA.
I love to collect music. Lots of music, different kinds of music – I love to find the same tune recorded by widely varying artists and see how they made different sounds from the same original song. Years ago, before digital, before Napster, this was difficult. Even if I haunted the used record stores for old releases, subscribed to trade mags for new ones, since my primary interest was a song, not an album, it was hard to find songs, and even if I found one, I had to buy the entire album just to get it.
As a side note, when I was actively involved in the biz, many, many songs came across my desk, dozens per week. 99% of them were total crap, and of the 1% that wasn’t, only 1% of them became hits. But in my mind, many of the ones rejected by the marketplace were pretty decent songs – it wasn’t the quality that made them sink out of sight, it was the marketing, executive choice, and a lot of bad luck or random chance. The best songs aren’t necessarily the ones you and & know about.
So I saved audio copies of many of the songs that I liked. I have even performed some in my own one-man concerts for friends. Some of the recordings were only demos, some were finished products, but most of them are unobtainable anywhere else today.
I’m confident that others would enjoy some of this collection, too. But I would be violating copyright by distributing them, or even posting them online. Sure, I could try to track down the copyright owners, which, even at the easiest end of the difficulty spectrum, would be time-consuming, and while the artists might be happy with my posting them (as Janis Ian proposed [sup]*[/sup]), publishers tend to take a blanket policy attitude toward such things, as their control of their material is removed from their grubby little fingers.
When Napster arrived, I was a big fan and user. Suddenly I could find songs by title and see what artists had recorded them, even out-of-print records. I downloaded as many songs as my abysmal dialup connection allowed, and these were all ones that were unobtainable thru commercial channels, so you cannot argue that I was depriving anyone of revenue.
So to me, copyright law is an obstacle to dissemination of information and entertainment, and incompatible with modern distribution tools such as the Internet.
A related story: As a college music composition student, I was interested in scores for commercial films, but our library had only classical scores. Mancini, Herriman, Newman’s works were not available (music conservatories tended to dismiss “commercial” or “Hollywood” works as unworthy of study).
Later, when I entered commercial music in Hollywood, I often was given the task of making (xerox) copies of complete film scores from such works as Star Wars and Alien for their publishers to distribute to their international divisions for office archive and/or copyright purposes. I instantly saw the potential – why not make a few extra copies for music school libraries, even sell them at a modest profit?
Running this idea thru 20th Century-Fox’s legal department, I proposed to bear the cost of printing, advertising, mailing offers to music schools, etc. and pay 20th a fee for each set sold. (My profit would come from the printing and the personal satisfaction of helping students; I wasn’t expecting to make a killing.) But the legal eagles vetoed the idea, saying that the legal costs to draw up such an agreement would be more than the potential profit, and helping students wasn’t in their corporate plan, anyway.
[sup]*[/sup]Janis Ian, knowing that many artists like herself had old catalog material that was earning no money at all and merely gathering dust, once proposed that all record companies open up ALL their old songs to digital downloads without restrictions, and charge 5 to 25 cents each, no more. She felt that that would be small enough that no one would think twice about it, yet bring in income where there was none. Now there’s a voice that makes sense.
Indeed not - but this thread is about defending piracy in general. What always amazes me is how almost everyone who comes out of the woodwork in these threads has a wonderful narrative about how their piracy is fine; how their reason for taking others’ original works is sound, and moral. We get laundry lists of things that artists/publishers need to do to avoid piracy. It usually comes down to convenience, allowing consumers the ability to try before they buy, and a load of shit about how publishers are parasites and don’t deserve money. The World of Goo example illustrates how all of those arguments are, in the round, a crock of shit.
You may very well be the one ethical pirate on the planet. I don’t know you from Adam, so who knows? But what I do know is that one independent publisher ticked all the boxes; he developed something in a small team, published it himself, didn’t include DRM, provided consumers with all the opportunity to try his game they could ever want, and he still had his game widely ripped off. So when piracy threads are inundated with people who tell me they’re somehow fighting for the little guy, it causes my eyebrows to head skywards. You can’t all be following the principles you espouse. In fact, experience would suggest that almost none of you are.
What a crock of shit. Artists need labels. Even artists who’ve gained a following from back-room recordings and internet word of mouth sign record deals. Why would they do this if labels were as parasitic as you make out? Take the Arctic Monkeys; they got a big reputation through MySpace, but what did they do right off the bat? Signed a record deal. Why? Because record labels do provide value to artists. They have the resources to distribute and promote, and can provide the up-front investment that is required for a new band. Your writing this off as worthless is utterly mendacious, and your contention that only the labels are harmed by piracy is just stupid. If publishing becomes less profitable for labels, do you really think as many bands will get deals? If they can’t get deals, how do they get their music out there? If it really were as easy as you make out, why do all these bands sign deals in the first place?
Labels don’t have a “stranglehold” on marketing and distribution - they’re just good at it, for the most part. Yeah, the internet has lowered some of the barriers to entry, but not all. Pretending you’re striking a blow for justice by pirating is self-serving bullshit. If you think you know a better business model for the entire music industry, stop sitting with your thumb up your ass, and set yourself up as an agent. You’ll make a killing, surely. So come on, off you go…
Borrowing would be fine, to my mind - I don’t see the problem as long as a copy is not made, and only one person has use of the game at a time. But if you think you have the right to trample upon all property laws to guarantee that everything you purchase is precisely to your liking, then you’re utterly deluded. Caveat emptor - buyer beware. You’re quite right, lots of people liked Red Alert 3 (although the reviews were no more than solid). Like I said, there’s no accounting for taste. Maybe you’re a devout miserablist who hates everything, in which case I recommend Yahtzee’s Zero Punctuation - his reviews should be right up your alley. Doesn’t mean you should be given free shit, though. You pays yer money, you takes yer choice, just like everyone else.
I don’t know. Why is that relevant? Is it up to you to decide how much profit it’s appropriate for him to make? I thought the point was that you try his game and decide whether you like it enough to pay the price he’s set. How do his personal finances figure into this calculation?
The point of all business is to make a profit, despite piracy. Piracy is an abhorrent fact. IMHO, instead of losing money to fight it, one should try to maximize the profit through other ways. Some other tactics could include brand royalty, customer-developer relationship and etc.
The second point is because for the Stardock example, they didn’t claim “no or low piracy”. They are claiming “despite no DRM, they made a profit”. That’s my yardstick if I am a developer, seeing that piracy cannot be stopped anyway.
ETA: My sentence structure isn’t too sound, so I revise it.
ETA 2: Of course, this in no way suggests that one should ignore piracy. My stance is still that developers and publishers should try to fight piracy by good old customer loyalty practices - delivering good products, stop the corporate white-wash, support, community, patches, content and etc, instead of treating a game development as an assembly line. Of course, this is incredibly idealist and naive, I grant you.
No, most people have said they simply do not care. Like it or not both the music and gaming industries have turned themselves into the “enemy” on most peoples eyes so hurting them is either not a problem for them or a fringe benefit. People make judgements on which laws to obey all the time, not just pirates, it usually comes down to the likelyhood of being caught and ones own moral qualms about hurting the victim. When neither of those is an issue most people will find no objections to breaking the laws to benefit themselves. It happens with speeding, it happens with pot smoking, and it happens with piracy. Very low chance of being caught + utter disregard for the “victim” makes it a very easy choice.
(Bolding mine)
You do realize that from an artist’s point of view, the distinction you made is meaningless, right? That seems like a justification of theft. As an artist, what do I care if books are tossed out or recycled? Besides, it’s not as simple as that. For one thing, it’s becoming increasingly common for books to be shared while a copy is made. You’re thinking of traditional books, but you can email 6,000 copies of an ebook out and never lose your own copy (the same is true for audio books). And since people view books as something that can be shared or passed on without problem, then they don’t think twice about emailing ebooks. Secondly, if you purchase something I’ve created and then shared it with three or four friends because you think they’d really like it, you’ve just deprived me of royalties on three or four books and I absolutely need it to live. You may think there’s some great distinction between that and burning CDs, but from the artist’s POV, there is not. So either you argue from a place where you respect an artist’s right to make money, or you drop that argument all together and focus on another area.
Here’s the thing though–I don’t mind if people pass out my books. Hell, I don’t even mind that my books are available for free download. Would I rather everybody who acquires my books through the secondhand market, or through illegal downloads, buy the damned things? Yes. I’m trying to make a living here, and I’ve chosen an area where it’s really, really fucking hard. But there’s something else at play here. Something that benefits me as an artist. You see, people, in general, will happily buy from artists that are a known quantity. They’re more hesitant to shell out money on a book, a CD, a movie, or a game that they don’t know they will like. That works against me, especially since book promo is difficult and there’s no type that is really effective. (Sure I can buy an ad somewhere for multiple hundreds of dollars, but when was the last time you bought a book based on an ad?). So…people pick up one of my books from a friend or from a website, they read it and…fingers crossed…they like it. They’re more inclined to tell their friends or post favorable things on their blogs. That gets my name out there. They might be more inclined to purchase my next release. They might be more inclined to seek out books I’ve written under other names. This is infinitely better than buying ads. I still lose out on money, but I gain something valuable in return.
And this logic isn’t just a product of my fevered dreams. Cory Doctorow releases his books online for free, and he’s still doing just fine. Every week, if you have a Kindle, you can get a free ebook from Samhain Publishing (a romance publisher), and their authors are doing just fine. It doesn’t just apply to books, either. Wilco had the entirety of A Ghost is Born and Sky Blue Sky on their website for free, and they regularly encourage people to record and distribute their concerts. They have a very liberal policy when it comes to sharing their music. In fact, I fell in love with Wilco precisely because A Ghost is Born was free. Both albums have sold quite well (I myself own 3 (legal) copies of Sky Blue Sky and of course, my beloved A Ghost is Born). Now, I don’t want to get into an argument of “An artist has a right to distribute their work for free. It’s different from piracy.” I want to point out why writers and musicians view this as a good form of promo, and why people who do make a living from creative content don’t necessarily always lose out from piracy, free downloads, book swapping, and the second hand market.
I’m not saying that all artists have the same view of this that I do. Please, don’t respond with a list of artists who sued pirates. I’m simply trying to look at the situation from both sides of the fence. I think the situation is a little more complicated and nuanced than “Piracy is immoral” vs “Fuck publishers that charge me money.” There, now you can say you know one person the board who can “justify theft” who not only does make a living off of creative content, but also does not receive an allowance from her mother.
Well, I disagree - I think the vast majority of people who show up in these threads try to make bullshit points about how they’re genuinely justified in what they do. Only Uvula Donor seems to have been honest enough to say that he/she just doesn’t give a fuck. But anyway:
Certainly so, but the effort goes into arguing that there’s no victim. Speeders are rightly excoriated; drink drivers even more so. Their actions endanger everyone. Casual drug takers are largely tolerated, because their actions hurt no-one but themselves, and probably not even that. But a common theme in this thread is that piracy doesn’t really hurt anyone (or at least, no-one who matters; only big companies, and we all know they’re evil, right?). We’re seeing it all over the place; carping ninnies claiming to be all concerned for the humble artist, ruthlessly exploited by the nasty Man. If you’re going to say that you just don’t give a shit; fine. I’ll at least respect your honesty. But the simple facts suggest that all these people claiming to be interested in information freedom and revolutionising the music industry’s business model are really just out for number one.
Fine, but this is an argument about whether it makes sense for developers to include DRM; an argument that is necessary solely because of selfish tossers who think it’s absolutely fine to take someone else’s work without paying. And I entirely agree - it makes no sense to include DRM; all it does is piss off the paying customer. But this has nothing to do with whether it’s ethical for individuals to pirate original works, be they DRM’d or not. You don’t get to decide what the right amount of profit for someone is. As a consumer, your choice is merely whether the product is worth the price. That’s more than enough consumer power for anyone. You vote with your wallet by not paying; you don’t do it by stealing what you secretly want.
You’re attempting to argue that because publishers make just as much money from DRM’d work as unprotected work, that it’s okay for you to pirate it. This is utter, unmitigated crap. Your personal ethical equation depends only on your actions. You either decide something is worth your money and pay for it, or you don’t use it. That’s really all there is to it.
WTF 
I didn’t SAY that at all. Fucking read my posts, you idiot. I am saying that those DRM measures and lack of minimal quality increase piracy and publishers/developers should try to combat on winning the consumers over, not screwing them. Never once did I say that people are justified to pirate games - but this does not meant that developers/publishers are clean as snow either.
As for your ass-shit assumition that I can have the whole fact before spending my money, it is the typical “us vs. you” mindset which is not going to solve any problems. I can do all the research I could and the game is faulty, and it’s my fault? In which other industry is it done this way? Are you saying that developers and publishers have no responsibility whatsoever? I buy a game and it is full of bugs and unplayable on my machine, and the developers/publishers have no fucking responsbility? Of course, it is not ethical to pirate that game either, but it is making piracy a worst issue. Sheesh.
You are putting words into my mouth. I wish the fury of a thousand burning suns to descend upon you. So far some of us are trying to examine issues from both side of the fence and you are the pharisee here flinging shit at everywhere. Shove it down some of your throat and FUCKING GO AWAY.
ETA: The Stardock example is SIMPLY about the effectiveness of DRM. No conclusions about whether it is ethical or moral for piracy is to be drawn from it. Go ahead, though, and find criminals in every bush.
ETA 2: So you are saying once I bought a game, I am not entitled to support? Not entitled to patches? Decent customer relationship?
No wonder people are pirating games left and right. Not that I think it’s right (I have to keep saying that all the time, do I?), but it is just making the situation worse, which is my fucking point, fucktard. Get off your high horse already.
I apologise if all you’re doing is arguing that companies ought to take different approaches to customers; if that’s the case, I fully agree. However, I posted the World of Goo point as an example of how an entirely customer-friendly approach makes absolutely no difference piracy-wise. I’ve been clear from the start that it proves DRM is pointless and anti-genuine-customer. When you took issue with it in a “defence of piracy” thread, I rather naturally concluded that you were defending piracy. Your Red Alert 3 example also seemed rather plainly an endorsement of piracy-to-try. If this is not the case, then again, I’m sorry.
Apologies accepted, and I offer mine too.
My stance, however is that, piracy cannot be stopped. People who will want to pirate will pirate. The thing is to get more people to buy it rather than stopping the diehard pirates, which I believe is more constructive.
And this is where I decide to agree to disagree. Yes, die-hard pirates should be educated to stop pirating. Yes, laws should exist to discourage it. But IMHO, that’s unlikely to work; you might as well try to get more ‘converts’ than preaching to the choir.
No, I actually agree that there’s little point worrying about the pirates from a business point of view*; the really important metric for World of Goo should be whether he’s attracted buyers who wouldn’t have bought or pirated the game. I’m actually one such - I don’t play many games on my PC (largely because it’s too old and shitty), but I bought World of Goo because I thought it deserved support. It’s certainly disappointing to me that this effect appears to be insignificant compared to piracy rates, but I hope the effect is somehow measurable. I’m not sure how it could be, though.
*Which I think means that I disagree to agree to disagree. 
I’m afraid I honestly don’t understand.
I think that someone who sends out 6,000 copies of one of your published e-books, without your permission, is stealing money from you, a known professional artist, that you could use.
The point is whether or not there is an copy or a transfer. And electronic transfer doesn’t change anything - if say I downloaded one of your e-books and sent it to someone, and deleted my copy, that would be a transfer akin to a lending IRL. I wouldn’t have the copy any more, but someone else would. Now, you may ask, why does this make a difference, when they can send it to 100 other people? The difference is in the timing and dilution - if only a single copy is transferred, then the copy can only move at the speed of reading. If it takes a week to read one of your e-books (and IRL, it may, with work and other demands) then at most one person could loan the work to 51 other targeted people in a year. If they put it on a site and say “hey dudes, Pepper Espinoza has a real hot thing here!” maybe 20,000 download it at once.
If the person transfers via mail, rather than copying, they are acting akin to an IRL case of lending - something that’s been done for millenia. If they just send out copies to everyone, then they’re stealing money from you. I think you deserve to get paid for that, but also recognize that the IRL process of utilizing circulating libraries and lending between friends and contemporaries is a long-standing tradition that is part and even a foundation of our common, shared literary heritage.
You know Haley, one of our very first debates on this message board, from back in 2000, dealt with this very subject. Isn’t that funny? Now 8 years later you’re an author with dozens of published works in e-form and hardcopy…
Here, as I did back in 2000, I say the difference lies in control. You, the creator, must have control of your works. You must be the one in charge. In your example, you are the one deciding that you don’t mind if some of your works get copied so your ever-growing reputation increases faster. However, the downloader does not have the legal nor the moral authority to unilaterally decide what you want to do with your works. It makes me upset that someone could be stealing food from your mouth, so to speak, without you having anything to say about it.
Read my responses above, Haley, and see if we’re closer on this than perhaps you first thought. Or I should give you a call later on today; we’re overdue for a chat.
When the software provider insists on ridiculous protections of their copywritten product, I’m going to consider “piracy.”
The computer I had before my current one suffered a hard drive failure. I had back ups for most of the stuff on the drive, and while it would have been a nuisance to replace the harddrive, and rebuild, it would have been possible. Until I got around to checking into my product key for my legal copy of WinXP.
While I was pricing replacement hard drives, I found that a common problem with the product keys built into Microsoft products is that they are so specific, in terms of hardware, that replacing a hard drive will sometimes cause the software key to fail. When I called Microsoft to ask what I could do, I was told that buying a replacement hard drive for my computer would be, in their eyes, functionally the same thing as buying a new computer, and I would have to buy a new, full, undiscounted license to make sure my computer would work.
In the end, the costs of replacing both the OS and the hard drive was judged uneconomic for a two year old bottom line machine. But I was sorely tempted to pirate the software I already owned, and had bought for that computer.
Microsoft, and any other copyright owner, has the privilege of setting their license fees anywhere they wish to set them. They also have the right to expect compensation for their development and support costs. But, it seems to me to be a natural law that when such compensation starts to appear to be a monopoly charge without any actual value attached to it - such as expecting people to pay full licensing fees for software they already own, on what would appear to most people to be the same computer, some people are going to rebel and choose to acquire their software in other than legal means.
Similarly, if the costs, not simply in monetary terms, but time and hassle for DRM scheme become onerous for the user, many users will work to defeat those schemes. And become technical pirates for software they’ve already bought.