Piracy

[Malcador]

She doesn't deserve vitriol and harsh language. More like removed permanently from society. Probably something involving padded walls.

 

I work in the software industry and consider myself blessed working with stuff that only fits a particular purpose. Usually tied very closely to corporate business processes and no two businesses are the same. Nobody pirates my stuff. That doesn't mean I can't relate to the sentiments of my colleagues who works with "shrink wrapped" products. They work long hour and holidays too, but get screwed over by pirates and in addition have to suffer mocking, juvenile insults and cajoling for the crime of trying to make a living by creating something. Why exactly those who seems to enjoy monkey style poo flinging should be excempt from contempt I don't understand.

 

Well, can't put her away with forum posts, heh. Who said exempt from contempt, though ? I just find it funny to read in posts. Guess I can't generate the anger. I'd wager most of the mocking and "poo flinging" comes from their legitimate customers rather than they do from those evil, subhuman people downloading stuff over torrents, Usenet, etc. or the groups making the releases, though.

 

As an aside, similar situation with my company's product. Wouldn't work to pirate it anyway, although there is a joke about our clients being institutional crooks in the first place, heh.

[Calax]

Gotta agree with Volourn on this one.

 

If I don't like DRM, as a consumer I don't have to buy the product. Easy peasy.

 

If I don't like piracy, as a developer/publisher, what are my options?

 

 

I think, however, the issue is this

 

As a consumer, I want the game... ONLY THE GAME.

 

Pirates offer this, Publishers offer the game with 6 metric tons of yellow tape, a program that will never be removed from my computer, and a very finniky system that may just declare you a pirate for simply having a cd burner's drivers on your computer.

 

If we were to move, say, from video games, to audio books. You'd probably be surprised to find just how many e-books are pirated. The reason for that piracy is entirely reasonable and justified... the blind buy an e-book, and try to use a text-to-speech program to allow them to hear the story being told to them by microsoft sam (or whoever). The E-Book DRM however, 90% of the time doesn't work with the text-to-speech program, citing it as piracy. Therefore, a LEGITIMATE CUSTOMER who is JUST trying to read a book in the only cost effective manner possible (if they get it in braile(?) it's 12 times the size and costs 12 times as much), end up and pirating a copy of the book.

 

THAT is what volo is seemingly unable to understand (for at least some of this, the other is just him doing his personal dance in a circle), Legit customers should not have the entire enjoyment of the product (which they want to read/play because the actual product itself is quite good) killed because some numbskull in a suit wanted their product locked down. They Legit own a copy, but are unable to use that product because of idiocy, thus they pirate... and to volo, because they pirate they are automatically the scum of the earth.

 

 

Personally, I think one of the major issues right now is that the people who are creating the DRM are the publishers, not the devs. Publisher (like Ubi) makes a stupid DRM, the dev suffers badly for it while the publisher gets a lot of publicity and money from those like volo. Publishers can take that hit, Dev's often can't.

 

How to curb it? Well the guy from GoG understands what's going on, and the point was mentioned earlier that if you're going to compete with the pirates, you have to provide things that the pirates won't, but also provide things more easily than figuring out the technical tomfoolery of a Torrent system. If you DON'T provide this, you're asking for ridicule and for failure. Right now the media companies are taking a brute force approach to it, sue any idiot dumb enough to get caught pirating for absolutely LUDICROUS amounts of money to try to scare the other pirates into their hidey holes. GoG and Steam are probably the start of a new trend (that we see continuing with Origin) where each company will create it's own browser/service that you work with (or will partner with another company in their browser). I don't think this will work as well as EA is hoping because people don't want to wait 5 minutes for their computers to boot up each and every single publishers personal box to kick in and flood their monitor with windows saying "buy me".

[Volourn]

More tehft defense! Scummy theif defenders are hilarious.

 

If you don't provide me with your car to rive to work I'm going to steal it for my convience. Your logic is stupid. And,d efense of theft is scummy evil.

 

Scumbags gonna defend scumbags, I guess.

[Calax]

More tehft defense! Scummy theif defenders are hilarious.

 

If you don't provide me with your car to rive to work I'm going to steal it for my convience. Your logic is stupid. And,d efense of theft is scummy evil.

 

Scumbags gonna defend scumbags, I guess.

No you idiot, it's

 

"If you don't give me a way to deactivate your ignition interrupt on MY car so I can get to work in the morning, I'm going to rip it out"

 

WHICH (I remind you) Is entirely legal.

Edited December 9, 2011 by Calax

[HoonDing]

What all pirates deserve in their pirated games, is the

[trulez]

Scumbags gonna defend scumbags, I guess.

This forums seems like a friendly place to have an open discussion about issues regarding piracy.

[Orchomene]

Well, see above. That and, if you're going to post internet vitriol about people, might as well save it for truly scummy people - e.g. lady who scalded her baby to death then went shopping, etc.

She doesn't deserve vitriol and harsh language. More like removed permanently from society. Probably something involving padded walls.

 

I work in the software industry and consider myself blessed working with stuff that only fits a particular purpose. Usually tied very closely to corporate business processes and no two businesses are the same. Nobody pirates my stuff. That doesn't mean I can't relate to the sentiments of my colleagues who works with "shrink wrapped" products. They work long hour and holidays too, but get screwed over by pirates and in addition have to suffer mocking, juvenile insults and cajoling for the crime of trying to make a living by creating something. Why exactly those who seems to enjoy monkey style poo flinging should be excempt from contempt I don't understand.

 

I'm working in a computer research center and find many teams of researchers/developers suffering from theft by software companies : since the research center need to find money, they have to mount collaborations with companies so that european research agencies give them money. So, during algorythm development/prototyping and development itslef, many teams have seen the companies they work with put engineers in development in parallel (using what the research centers discovered) and put a licence on a colaboration product at their only name. Research centers can do nothing since companies have armies of lawyers and research centers are by essence poor (in Europe).

Of course, it's not in entertainment business, it's in professional software business where a software is much more expensive to buy.

 

Just to moderate the idea that companies are good and the only one suffering from piracy.

[Hell Kitty]

To those who see the pirates as competitors rather than thieves, if I create a product and offer copies for $50 dollars and a pirate gives away that same product for nothing (not a similar rival product, but a stolen copy of my work), how do I compete with that? How do I compete with free? What the hell is wrong with people that they think I should have to?

 

If Ubisoft offered all of their PC games without DRM, piracy would still be an issue, it's just people would instead use the usual excuses like they weren't going to buy it anyway or after testing it for 20 hours they decided it sucked.

[pmp10]

How do I compete with free?

The GoG people would tell you to provide additional value for legitimate customers.

How do you profit on it is another issue.

[Nepenthe]

Drop the "pirates are scum" bull**** (I'm looking at you Gorth). It's a load of rubbish.

That would be Volourn, I just consider them pathetic losers with self entitlement issues.

[Malcador]

Steam's done pretty well in Russia, from Newell anyway, so I guess DRM that people don't really notice as DRM can work.

 

This forums seems like a friendly place to have an open discussion about issues regarding piracy.

 

Well, it's expected.

Edited December 9, 2011 by Malcador

[Rosbjerg]

If Ubisoft offered all of their PC games without DRM, piracy would still be an issue

 

Well why have drm then, if it's still and issue with or without? Especially as a large majority of your paying customers find it annoying.

 

If piracy is always going to be an issue then you need to figure out how to get people to buy the product rather than prevent pirates - create loyal customers and regular and good updates that are downloaded easily through the game - that way pirates have to separately download and install all the juice while it's just easy sailing for the paying crowd.. You are not gonna combat piracy by alienating yourself from the people providing your income.

[Tale]

If Ubisoft offered all of their PC games without DRM, piracy would still be an issue

 

Well why have drm then, if it's still and issue with or without? Especially as a large majority of your paying customers find it annoying.

I'm skeptical of the idea that it's binary. Can they pirate your product? If yes, your efforts were in vain. It's not a logic I really see people applying to any other crime. Can people break into your house if they want to? If yes, don't buy locks.

 

I can understand, appreciate, and sympathize with the idea that it's annoying to customers, however. And that's a good argument against DRM. But the argument that DRM isn't perfect, therefore it does nothing, strikes me as suspect.

[Rosbjerg]

I'm skeptical of the idea that it's binary. Can they pirate your product? If yes, your efforts were in vain. It's not a logic I really see people applying to any other crime. Can people break into your house if they want to? If yes, don't buy locks.

 

Your example doesn't work, drm is not there to prevent me from stealing your game - if we use cars as an example, it's more like a carlock installed on all cars, that in some cases prevents legitimate buyers from using the car, because the manufacturer has a problem with people breaking in at the factory.

[Tale]

I'm skeptical of the idea that it's binary. Can they pirate your product? If yes, your efforts were in vain. It's not a logic I really see people applying to any other crime. Can people break into your house if they want to? If yes, don't buy locks.

 

Your example doesn't work, drm is not there to prevent me from stealing your game - it's more like a carlock installed on all cars, that in some cases prevents legitimate buyers from using the car, because the manufacturer has a problem with people breaking in at the factory.

It definitely does seem to work. DRM is there to prevent you from stealing my game. As long as you recognize that I could be a content producer, not just another user. And I still have rights. Look at it similarly to any lease system. Or a bank. Locks on doors aren't strictly about you. They have their own thing to protect and they lock it for that end.

 

Key locks can and have prevented use of what they lock by legitimate users. Lose your keys and you're locked out. Your key gets damaged and you're locked out. The key is manufactured improperly and you're locked out.

[Malcador]

I suppose if you can lengthen the time to it takes break it, you might get really impatient people that'd buy rather than wait for the release. Not sure how large a segment that is though, but it is something DRM can do. Outside of cases like Drive or AC:R, heh.

[Rosbjerg]

It definitely does seem to work. DRM is there to prevent you from stealing my game. As long as you recognize that I could be a content producer, not just another user. And I still have rights. Look at it similarly to any lease system. Or a bank. Locks on doors aren't strictly about you. They have their own thing to protect and they lock it for that end.

 

Key locks can and have prevented use of what they lock by legitimate users. Lose your keys and you're locked out. Your key gets damaged and you're locked out. The key is manufactured improperly and you're locked out.

 

It's always a sign that you need to agree on definition when you end up discussing the analogy rather than the issue.. so, for me piracy is producer problem that only affects the end user in the second degree, in that it takes away revenue and thus inflates prices etc - it's never a a direct problem, ie theft from the consumer.. Now my problem with DRM is that it's an attempt to address a producer problem by enforcing regulation on the consumer, which to me is the wrong approach.

 

I don't know if that makes sense, I find it difficult to express this in English right now

[Hell Kitty]

you need to figure out how to get people to buy the product rather than prevent pirates

No, because the pathetic losers with entitlement issues as Gorth calls them will exist as long as there is a free version of the game available. The only way to stop them is to remove the free (pirate) version from the equation. People still pirate games offered by GoG and STEAM afterall.

 

You need to find a form of security that works, not give up on it altogether.

 

You are not gonna combat piracy by alienating yourself from the people providing your income.

Using DRM doesn't equal alienating your customers. Go back a few posts and you'll folks in this thread saying good things about Steam.

[Rosbjerg]

Using DRM doesn't equal alienating your customers. Go back a few posts and you'll folks in this thread saying good things about Steam.

 

My bad, I should have been more precise - the kind of drm I talked about here was more like SecuROM, limited activations etc. While Steam is technically a piece of drm it has become so much more.

 

Steam is a good example of creating value rather than restrictions - I'm totally onboard with Steam because I can see what my friends are buying, it's easy to join their games, it can be very cheap and it gives me the option to manage my games much more efficiently than having them on a shelf.. It's an example of the producer attacking pirates without hurting their customers.

 

I bought Assassins Creed from Ubisoft and the game couldn't run until they released a patch .. why? because I had virtual disc. Now that's a clear example of bad business strategy. Luckily for them the game was good enough for me to buy the second game - but the second game wasn't good enough for me to buy the next 2.. so they effectively lost a customer because of their strategy.

 

See, if you make customers annoyed your games have to be that much better for them to stay around and as soon as the quality drops, your customers go away too - while if you add value to your game, by supporting modders or making it nice and easy to update etc etc then people feel respected and stay around after a bad game.

[Maria Caliban]

If we were to move, say, from video games, to audio books. You'd probably be surprised to find just how many e-books are pirated. The reason for that piracy is entirely reasonable and justified... the blind buy an e-book, and try to use a text-to-speech program to allow them to hear the story being told to them by microsoft sam (or whoever). The E-Book DRM however, 90% of the time doesn't work with the text-to-speech program, citing it as piracy. Therefore, a LEGITIMATE CUSTOMER who is JUST trying to read a book in the only cost effective manner possible (if they get it in braile(?) it's 12 times the size and costs 12 times as much), end up and pirating a copy of the book.

Or they can remove the book from your reader at any time or lock you out of your account. It sucks to pay almost $1,000 for books you're not allowed access to. And, naturally, moving a book from one's Kindle to one's PC to convert it to a different format is against the EULA.

Edited December 9, 2011 by Maria Caliban

[Calax]

If we were to move, say, from video games, to audio books. You'd probably be surprised to find just how many e-books are pirated. The reason for that piracy is entirely reasonable and justified... the blind buy an e-book, and try to use a text-to-speech program to allow them to hear the story being told to them by microsoft sam (or whoever). The E-Book DRM however, 90% of the time doesn't work with the text-to-speech program, citing it as piracy. Therefore, a LEGITIMATE CUSTOMER who is JUST trying to read a book in the only cost effective manner possible (if they get it in braile(?) it's 12 times the size and costs 12 times as much), end up and pirating a copy of the book.

Or they can remove the book from your reader at any time or lock you out of your account. It sucks to pay almost $1,000 for books you're not allowed access to. And, naturally, moving a book from one's Kindle to one's PC to convert it to a different format is against the EULA.

This was from before there were Kindles and Ipads. They'd take an ebook and dl-it onto the computer before it on their desktop to try to get it to work and it'd fail.

 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...oryId=102330373

[Hell Kitty]

Luckily for them the game was good enough for me to buy the second game - but the second game wasn't good enough for me to buy the next 2.. so they effectively lost a customer because of their strategy.

I'm confused here, you didn't buy AC:B and AC:R because you didn't think AC2 was good enough, but what does this have to do with DRM? You're the only person I've ever seen claim the original was better that the sequel which is generally considered by fans and critics alike to be a huge improvement on the original.

 

Honestly, this is just a mark against the whole "you need to figure out how to get people to buy the product rather than prevent pirates" thing. It is a fools errand due to the subjective nature of how "good" a product is. For the pathetic losers with entitlement issues nothing will ever be good enough, they will always find a way to justify their piracy.

 

See, if you make customers annoyed your games have to be that much better for them to stay around and as soon as the quality drops, your customers go away too - while if you add value to your game, by supporting modders or making it nice and easy to update etc etc then people feel respected and stay around after a bad game.

People often say this but I'm not sure how true it really is. Gamers have been putting up with buggy releases for a long time after all. The difference there is that while piracy gives people a way to avoid DRM systems (not to mention spending any money), there is no way to avoid bugs as the pirated copies will be just as buggy as the legit versions. People will put up with annoying **** if they don't have any other option.

[Maria Caliban]

Notice that in 2009, e-books made up 1% of book sales. They now make up 40%.

 

The interesting thing is that book *publishers* aren't in charge of modern e-book DRM, book *distributors* are, and publishers are oblivious to the problems this is creating and will create.

[Calax]

Luckily for them the game was good enough for me to buy the second game - but the second game wasn't good enough for me to buy the next 2.. so they effectively lost a customer because of their strategy.

I'm confused here, you didn't buy AC:B and AC:R because you didn't think AC2 was good enough, but what does this have to do with DRM? You're the only person I've ever seen claim the original was better that the sequel which is generally considered by fans and critics alike to be a huge improvement on the original.

I think his point was that he was willing to purchase AC2 because the quality of AC was good enough that it overcame his distaste for the DRM. He didn't like AC2 nearly as much, and thus wasn't willing to deal with the DRM for Brotherhood/revelations because he wasn't sure if he'd like it that much.

[Rosbjerg]

Thank you Calax, exactly..

 

People will put up with annoying **** if they don't have any other option.

 

Wait.. so developers shouldn't combat piracy with offering better service for paying customers.. everyone should instead just accept annoying crap?.