Copyright question

[Merkavar]

So i dont have much information on this. maybe its a silly idea but here goes.

So basically there are a bunch of componies making games, movies and music and then paying im assuming alot of money to protect these products with encryption, lawyers, DRM and about 100 other protection and punishment methods.

These methods in my expirence amount to naught. How many times have we heard of a new game with fancy new protection being avalaible to pirate same day or earlier then its release.

So basically what im asking is it worth it. Would it be better for everyone involved to roll back the security measures. They cost money and only ever get in the way of legit consumers. How many games do you play that require internet connection even when your playing offline?

Basically if people want to steal a product they will find a way so why bother trying to stop them.

Maybe instead of punishing pirate maybe reward legit buyers some how. but even then pirates would find a way.

 

[scotth266]

Basically if people want to steal a product they will find a way so why bother trying to stop them.

Some people fancy the idea that the blood, sweat and tears they put into their products shouldn't be magically negated by some douche with a "FUCK THE SYSTEM" mentality and an internet connection, and that they should at least make an attempt to dissuade people from getting their products for free.[footnote]Note that I carefully avoid using the dread term "stealing", which gets piracy supporters to move the goalposts to another planet.[/footnote]

I tend to agree with them.

 

[That Guy Ya Know]

Basically if people want to steal a product they will find a way so why bother trying to stop them.

Some people fancy the idea that the blood, sweat and tears they put into their products shouldn't be magically negated by some douche with a "FUCK THE SYSTEM" mentality and an internet connection, and that they should at least make an attempt to dissuade people from getting their products for free.[footnote]Note that I carefully avoid using the dread term "stealing", which gets piracy supporters to move the goalposts to another planet.[/footnote]

I tend to agree with them.

The problem is they just end up putting money into a system that does nothing.

Anyhow I'm on Valve's side with this, piracy is a service issue. Right now with piracy you tend to get better service for free so of course people are going to go for it. Provide a better service than the pirates and people will pay for it. Sure you wont stop piracy completely but nor will any measure, piracy is inevitable. The trick is to minimise it as much as possible.

 

[Pain Is Inevitable]

Piracy is not in itself a problem. People not buying your products is a problem, and the reasons someone might not buy, say a game, can be myriad. Maybe it is being sold for too high a price for what it is perceived to be worth, maybe the advertisement for the game has been lackluster and the consumer just doesn't feel hyped for it, maybe the consumer has been disappointed by an earlier release by the same developer and simply doesn't trust the purchase to be a good investment of their money...

The fact that piracy is often being solely blamed when certain media companies fail to sell enough of their yearly shovelware quality products basically tells me that these companies are either being run by people cluelessly ignorant about basic principles of doing business and maintaining consumer loyalty, or simply feel better about their own failures by pinning the blame on something elusive like piracy whose exact effect is often hard to quantify because there is no real way of discerning how many pirates end up buying the game after pirating it, how many pirates already own the game legally and are downloading it because they lost the dvd/want to get around obnoxious DRM and how many would have never been willing or able to buy the game anyway if piracy was not an option.

 

[Vegosiux]

Basically if people want to steal a product they will find a way so why bother trying to stop them.

Some people fancy the idea that the blood, sweat and tears they put into their products shouldn't be magically negated by some douche with a "FUCK THE SYSTEM" mentality and an internet connection, and that they should at least make an attempt to dissuade people from getting their products for free.[footnote]Note that I carefully avoid using the dread term "stealing", which gets piracy supporters to move the goalposts to another planet.[/footnote]

I tend to agree with them.

I am not a supporter of piracy, but, piracy is not stealing. There's no shifting of goalposts around that fact, there's just you not knowing thy enemy well enough if you claim otherwise. But, yes, calling piracy theft will of course shoot a hole into your own position, because that's what happens when you say something that's not correct and get called out on it.

As for on topic, the next guy nailed it.

The problem is they just end up putting money into a system that does nothing.

Anyhow I'm on Valve's side with this, piracy is a service issue. Right now with piracy you tend to get better service for free so of course people are going to go for it. Provide a better service than the pirates and people will pay for it. Sure you wont stop piracy completely but nor will any measure, piracy is inevitable. The trick is to minimise it as much as possible.

That's exactly it.

DRM does nothing to stop or dissuade pirates, it only bothers and inconveniences those of us who actually buy our games legitimately. What kind of a fucked up system is that? Why do you and I have to suffer all kinds of retarded shit from some publishers while those flying the jolly roger laugh? How's that even remotely defensible?

Back @OP: And, also, have I mentioned that I do not support or condone piracy? Just making double-sure you don't get on my case about that little footnote.

 

[scotth266]

The problem is they just end up putting money into a system that does nothing.

Can we get the evidence on that? Because, last I checked, some DRM systems manage to last a significant amount of time (Ubisoft's lasted two weeks, for instance) before being hacked - and the time that your DRM isn't hacked is time where people have no choice but to buy or rent the game in some fashion. So saying that the system does "nothing" is just a pretty talking point.

Anyhow I'm on Valve's side with this, piracy is a service issue.

I mostly disagree.

The majority of DRM is completely invisible to the consumer. Some systems of DRM, such as the always-online variety, are a significant problem: but most DRM isn't like that. The notion that you get improved service with pirated copies certainly applies to DRM that negatively impacts the player experience[footnote]Diablo 3 for instance was an absolute nightmare from what I've heard.[/footnote], but obviously Valve isn't talking about ALL DRM: after all, they use it in their games too. They're just smart enough to make sure it doesn't hit the consumer.

If piracy were merely a service problem, then a whole lot of games with better varieties of DRM probably wouldn't have such obnoxious piracy numbers.

I am not a supporter of piracy, but, piracy is not stealing. There's no shifting of goalposts around that fact, there's just you not knowing thy enemy well enough if you claim otherwise. But, yes, calling piracy theft will of course shoot a hole into your own position, because that's what happens when you say something that's not correct and get called out on it.

The notion that "piracy isn't stealing" is a technicality of the highest order. Yeah, it's copyright infringement. This does not magically make the underlying points about why piracy is bad magically go away, but some people will frantically cling to the "misuse" of the term stealing and ignore everything else if it means they win the internet debate.

That's why I was being snarky about it. I know full well that piracy technically isn't stealing - I've had people write epitaphs on the issue and ignore everything else I say.

 

[scotth266]

Sounds unlikely. People who don't want a game because of draconic DRM measures... would simply wait for the security measures to get cracked.

This, accompanied with your example of Red Alert 3, is a fair point: there are some systems of DRM that are abhorrent enough for people to not want to buy the game if they are present, to the point where they're driving people to piracy. However, the middle bit:

and the big financial risk of buying at the high price for games with a no return policy

Strikes me as being a kind of half-baked excuse.

There are many good cheap games, and insanely good sales on not-cheap games that bring them to cheap levels - you simply have to be patient enough to see them come up.

Other expensive items have poor return policies as well, for the simple reason that once they've been used, their inherent value goes down - for example, cars get less value for being returned as time goes on.

This is not exactly analogous to games - a game's quality remains unchanged no matter how many people use it, but this only reinforces the need for game producers to have poor returns - otherwise, the person can play the game and then get most of their money back, negating the point of selling them the game in the first place and leaving the game developer with no few profits. And in an industry where moving units can be the difference between having a job or watching your studio get downsized, the pressure to get people to buy and keep their product is high - every resold copy is money you're not getting (hence the game industry's love-hate relationship with used game retailers - they provide an outlet for pre-orders and buyers, but also indulge in the used game market.)

 

[Zoe Castillo]

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[tstorm823]

I believe that piracy is more a matter of convenience than price most of the time.

I've known a guy to buy the game full price because downloading it was too slow for his taste. And I've been told Adobe products are stolen so much not entirely because it charges rediculous prices, but rather because you only need to copy and paste a couple lines of text in the right place to crack photoshop...

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

Sounds like a copy-protection/piracy issue, not copyright necessarily.

Send it to the Gaming discussion or Off-Topic.

On topic: my experience with piracy tends to fall into two categories:

Lack of legitimate access (justified piracy): In short, getting the product properly is either impossible (lack of localization or is simply not sold locally) or completely impractical (requires importation directly from source country to consumer or was produced for local consumption in such small quantities that procuring a copy requires an extremely high mark-up or is impossible to find).

Not wanting to pay (unjustified piracy): People just don't want to pay for it, despite having ease of access to a legitimate copy.

Generally, only the latter will harm sales, as the former couldn't buy it in the first place.

 

[evilneko]

Steam is not a DRM tool per se, but Steam's done more to curb piracy than all of the Securoms, Starforces, SafeDiscs, and online-only schemes of the world combined.

 

[Agema]

Games you can only install a certain number of times, games that install borderline-spyware on your machine, games that require you to connect to the company's servers, games that require you to install the company's branded bloatware digital store service on your computer in order to play the game; all for the purpose of establishing the paradigm that you do not own the games you purchase, rather you "rent" them, rather they are a "service" which just happen to have all of the qualities of a product, because when you own a product you have rights and they have responsibilities, whereas when you use a service they can set whatever terms they like.

I'm pretty sure the EU courts have recently ruled that a piece of software (whether hard copy or digital), is effectively a product that the holder has rights over. In that particular case it pertained to resale of programs second hand, but the precedent should hopefully apply more widely.