Mamoulian War

At least you live in more "civilised" part of EU where you still get some of the high quality shows few years later... In my country no television has even heard about stuff like Big Bang Theory, IT Crowd, Red Dwarf etc etc... Star Trek and Babylon 5 was last aired like 10 years ago with no chance of rebroadcasting... They started to air first episodes of Dexter this year for example... Only thing we get fresh is CSI and Bones, but they are broadcasting first series for 10th time :/ I can continue with more and more examples... None of these shows are shipped on DVDs to my country as well due to "regional copyright restrictions"... Your only chance is to buy on e-bay so you still can end with a counterfeit product this way...

Interesting read on Forbes about Game of Thrones piracy http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/05/09/hbo-has-only-itself-to-blame-for-record-game-of-thrones-piracy/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/05/10/international-audiences-have-few-choices-to-legally-watch-hbos-game-of-thrones/ This pretty much sums, what me and greylord have said here...

Finished Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2, had lot of fun, 35 hours well spent

Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2, an awesome parody on game piracy :D At least some people are taking it not so seriously :D

I hope after reading your own post, you notice how it is ridiculous, that a song from 1935, which might not be an original song after all, is still protected by copyright... But I would not be surprised that some asshat lobbyist will try to for some or another reason to force another extension of copyright and we will not see this song in public domain before 2150...

TBH, what I would like to see, if someone would actually try to experiment with offering a game with DRM for normal price and offer the same product DRM free for double the price, and then give us the numbers. But as I see this, I would without hassle bet 50 bucks that in the end some other publishers seeing that the game could be sold for more would end up charging double price for their crippled versions...

Halfwit. Do you really,*honestly* believe drivel like 'the suits' FFS? Trust me, whatever happens 'the suits' will turn a dime. The people you and people like you are *really* screwing are the likes of Avellone and Sawyer and Ferg and the guy who designs the cover art or manufactures jewel cases or drives the delivery truck or designs the architecture for the website that delivers the digital version... Piracy robs people of their jobs. Period. The ****ing adolescent squealing of the pro-piracy lobby (or, 'thieves' as we call them in the real world) actually turns my stomach. Srsy, grow the **** up. Because you sound like a tard. Sorry to burst your elite bubble, but SEGAs DRM was the reason why good folks of Obsidian were robbed out of my money, and same Bethsoft DRM have robbed good folks of Obsidian out of my money as well. And you will be totally surprised, but I have to this day not played (a.k.a. pirated) Alpha Protocol nor New Vegas... With Alpha Protocol I will sooner or later change it though, because they have removed DRM long time ago, but the damage was still done because I spent my money on another games which offered me less hassle while playing them...

I would rather pay double the price for DRM free product, than to have to trouble myself with that kind of ****...

It's downright immoral to withhold pay for service rendered, but if the product really was detrimentally inferior to what was promised, then I have to say the blame rests with the developer as well, who took the job knowing they might not deliver. You forget, that there is still a chance that this comment was made by a person paid by LA to write comments like these. I am not siding with any side of the story, but I am more prone to agree with Tigranes in here...

An interesting article about open-science and the need of moving to the new era of "nextgen" business models for publishers of science works http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/05/uk-to-science-publishers-dont-follow-recording-industry-down-the-tubes.ars Most interesting is the quote at the end of the article by David Willetts, the UK's Minister of State for Universities and Science.

The problem with this argument is that you want to judge whether any value was lost. Or to put it another way: If someone doesn't use their car is it okay to steal it? Surly it was going to rust no value loss will occur. Actually there are laws that allow that sort of thing. Here in the US. Adverse possession in the case of citizens taking something that isn't theirs and eminent domain for the government. Except this regards land and is instituted by law. I don't see why the same should apply to intellectual property. We make exceptions to our laws in extraordinary situations but greater good will not be served by allowing people to torrent the latest video game. As far I understand, he did not talk about newest games, he did talk about IPs which were abandoned long time ago and the owner is unknown...

Yes yes, and everytime someone equates copyright infringement with theft they're murdering logic, raping and pillaging reason, and cannabalising reality. They aren't the same, it's entirely an Appeal to Emotion. Copyright infringement does not involve depriving the owner of the use of and possession of something, ie the legal and actual definition of theft. If you steal a car or wallet the owner no longer has them in their possession and cannot use them. If they were duplicated the owner would still have use of them. It's also not a criminal matter (except in unusual circumstances), but a civil one, unlike theft. Ultimately you are of course free to consider piracy as theft, barratry, arson, libel, murder, DUI, terrorism, fraud or whatever but it'll only ever be copyright infringement. I also find it rather difficult to muster any outrage whatsoever that multiple years ago someone may have duplicated an infinitely reproducible virtual good that was not available for purchase at the time- I see little point to whiteknighting corporates at the best of times (frankly, corporates don't give a asterisks beyond what benefits them, so hey! reciprocal right back at 'em) and a situation where a product is arbitrarily unavailable due to geography is hardly the best of times- it's simply not anyone else's business but the copyright holder's and the infringers. So it would be more akin to counterfeit goods rather than theft. Yes...

Then you should check out Darkfall, imo that is MMO you are looking for

Many people are looking at it this way. If I am in European Union, I have same duties and must obey same common laws as inhabitants of UK, Germany, Sweden. I want to have same privileges than them. If the company does treat me as a lower human being compared to other less "backwater" countries, I will treat the company same way... I am not telling that it is right/wrong, but I hope you get the point, what is in a mind of less responsible youths... All EU inhabitants are the same in the eyes of the EU laws, but still they are not...

This is interesting... Apparently US courts have now jurisdiction over Europe... /sigh actually banning the stuff in Germany is little bit over the top, but ignoring German court, because US court said so is ridiculous as well...

The problem with buying games in Austria was, that they had law, that the manuals and most of the games had to be translated to German language, and knowledge of German language is in my country problem even now in 2012, so the only possibility to buy a game outside of Ocean, Domark and Gremlin titles would be travelling to United Kingdom, Netherlands or some Scandinavian countries, because no business bothered to ship games to my country at that time... So then it is just logical, that most of the gamers here just got the games from shady sources. You either bought shady game for 30EUR or you travelled to UK and bought the game there which cost you in total more than 1000EUR... People here had at that time top-notch PCs, and there was realy big demand here for "Western" entertainment at that time. The credit cards, which are issued in my country do have problem with acceptance. I still cannot legally buy anything, which is under IP category (books, movies, games, music...), from Amazon as an example (I have VISA classic which gets accepted anywhere in the world, even in some like gfted1 said "backwater" countries like Ukraine, Turkey, Hungary)... The only way how to buy some stuff for me is to check often e-bay and hope that I do not get shafted... And thankfully there are few companies which accepts my country of origin, and they earned a pretty loyal customer that way.

The same situation is now happening in Brasil, India etc etc, these are the games with biggest piracy atm, the piracy in modern world is a just a small fraction, and instead of trying to find a way how to get successful market share in these countries many companies rather start to punish legal customer in NA and EU, just to squeeze more of the money out of them... In short term it may bring some net gain, but imo in long term they gonna suffer from this... It started with Limited activations, continues with online only singleplayer, removing LAN play, turning off servers and end up with destroying second had market... At some point they will piss off most of their current customers...

I don't understand why "I want to play some awesome games but there's no legal mean to purchase" automatically resolves to "I should illegally acquire the game". Not trying to make a value judgement here, but I don't see how one justifies the other. Because there was for very long time no legal way how to obtain ANY game in my country... Lot of people had money for good computers, but no one offered them any possible way how to actualy buy a game or music... If you were fan of Iron Maiden, which were not actualy available to buy legaly in our country as an example for a very long time, you would be retarded to switch to New Kids on the Block, just because it was possible to but it legaly in 1990 here... So it was with the game before 1995 only Ocean, Domark and Gremlin had sold games here legaly, if you were fan of Mortal Kombat, you would actualy not buy yourself A-Train, would you??? You would find a way of how to obtain the Mortal Kombat, and many people with CD burners did see this potentials and supplied whole country with burned copies of the games. And at this time in my, it was legal to buy counterfeit goods, it was only illegal to sell them... Crooks just supplied games for the big demand, buyers did not break any law, everyone was happy, of course not the publishers, but it was their problem of not trying to care for new emerging market... People here just wanted to experience the entertainment on the same level, like people in neighbour Austria. I know it is hard for many of you to understand this, because you never actualy experienced anything like this in your country... It's the same, like with prohibition in US. There was no legal way how to obtain booze, but people were still buying it from shady sources, and they did not feel guilty for this, they just wanted to experience the same thing like people in neighbour Canada.

When I started PC gaming in 1994, TES Arena was not for sale in my country. A few years later, the gaming business started to grow in here as well and it was possible to actually buy the games, so I purchased Daggerfall and started to buy another RPGs, like Baldur s Gate etc, etc etc... Unfortunately, at some point the business again went downward, and at some point it was impossible here to buy Neverwinter Nights for expample, but 2 or 3 years later, finally Paypal started to accept Credit Cards issued in my country as well, and first thing I have done with my new Paypal account, was to import Neverwinter Nights Platinum Edition from USA. Stories like this introduce many young people in piracy in the first place, they want to play some awesome game which they read about on the internet, but there is absolutely no legal mean of how to purchase it in my country... We still do not have XBox Live nor PSN, despite being members of EU for very very long time, even the stupid iStore was unavailable here until Apple finally started it here last year...

Finished my second playthrough of Hyperdimension Neptunia :D Weird anime old school japanese style dungeon crawler in not so modern graphics and one of the few games that are trying to be comedies, and it made me laugh on many occasions And now little bit of e-peen waving - I tried to get all the trophies this time and I succeeded My 4th platinum after God of War III, Final Fantasy XIII and White Knight Chronicles, looks like even old farts like me can have enough time for this kind of stuff

This is not about piracy, this is about censorship... Just read the link https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-boosts-sharing-is-caring-into-the-music-charts-120427/ They cut Dan Bull and other people like him from promoting their music in UK... What does this have to do with piracy?

Finished Suikoden I and started Suikoden II, very good time spent Enjoyed it immersely!!!

Sigh, my original post has been lost while I have tried to edit it, so here we go again... I would love to see again some spiritual successor to Infinity Engine games (thad means 2D isometric games with handmade HD backgrounds), which are still one of my most favourites game I have ever played. In order of preference, my dream wish would be: Sequel or game based in the Planescape: Torment universe - IMO the biggest jewel ever created in gaming industry. A game with such huge quality would be for sure hard to make, but anything with the half quality of the original would beat most of the shovelware we get from big publishers nowaday. Van Buren - I want finaly to play this game I hear so much about Icewind Dale 3 - but in AD&D 2nd Edition Rules again Arcanum 2 Lionheart 2 - Original had an awesome idea and very inspiring setting, but unfortunately, the game have looked to me after leaving Barcelona, very rushed and unpollished. Realy big shame, I had realy big hopes for this game when I started to play it. I know it would be very hard to get the rights to all these jewels, but one can never stop dreaming, right? So, if getting the rights for all these games would be impossible to get for you, just start your own IP, with the quality as close as possible to original Infinity Engine games, and I bet, you make lot of 30+ years old gamers, which have grown up with SSI, original Bioware and Black Isle games, very happy Thank you for reading this.

Oh man, how could I forgot about this jewel!!! Announcement of Septerra Core 2 would definately make my pants wet...

Yeah, good mix of JRPG an WRPG is realy what could spice up little bit the RPG market... TBH the only two games who have ever tried to accomplish something like this is Anachronox and Septerra Core... (I do not know if FFXIII should be counted as well, but i think the game tried to hard to appease western audience, that in the end the result of the mix was not right)... Although I liked the game and had fun playing it, not as much like FFIX or X, but I played worse FF games