File-Sharing Habits Unhindered by Criminal Crackdown

[T3hSource]

As a young person in Eastern Europe(please assume Russia,because that's the only country the common American knows in that region) I find this thread rather amusing.
In other words,my country is too damn poor to support US content creators the way they want us to.To top it all off,seems like Google can't make good ad revenue from us either xD

 

[Keoul]

They wouldn't have piracy at all if they just had better service than the pirates. Diablo 3 knew they hit the jackpot but still failed to keep the servers up. When you know there's millions of players and that it might crash the server, you make sure that server doesn't crash, too bad they didn't do anything about it and now it's another reason for people to complain about Diablo 3.
All this fear tactics isn't working either, they won't get sympathy from anyone if they're suing people hundreds of thousands of dollars for pirating and sharing 30 songs (which could probably be purchased for 30 dollars, not half a million dollars)

 

[DEAD34345]

That was kinda my point, even though we keep being told piracy is not a victim-less crime we keep doing it. And it's not even universally condemned.

I think that's more because we don't believe the people saying piracy is not a victim-less crime.

OT: The problem with (these specific) copyright laws is that they're clearly only there to benefit the rich media companies who lobbied to have them put there in the first place. They've gone far beyond any sense of rationality or reason, and the punishments for disobeying them are so far out there that they just seem absurd. When it's plain to see that the law is wrong, it's not hard to understand why people don't obey it.

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

You know what game publishers in particular should do? Next time a game dev someone really likes shuts down, point at torrents of their games and say "piracy put these people out of a job". It doesn't matter if it's true. The en masse destruction of hundreds of jobs visibly with a reasonable proposed causation will make people in positions of power take notice. Is it a crap tactic? Undoubtedly. It's dishonest, too. But when Homefront 2 comes out and everyone involved gets fired because it was such an awful game, have the publisher blame piracy and BAM! instant media and government sympathy.

I don't approve, but if I were them it's what I'd do. Either that, or actually make good games people actually want to fucking buy.

 

[Comando96]

Oh what a shock...

Criminalizing something does not decrease it, but merely see's an increase in the number of Balaclava's being purchased... hhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

I thought that law makers had already worked this out but apparently not.

I think that's more because we don't believe the people saying piracy is not a victim-less crime.

Well look at it like this:
Singers are contracted so they get very little money for their songs. The profits from their song is the big faceless corporation...
Game developers have trouble making their games, on limited funds and then sometimes they even go bankrupt before they release their game and forfeit the rights to the content they created to the publisher. Then the Publisher gets the profits... the big... faceless corporation...

Beginning to see a pattern?
I call it, "Fallen off of the back of a truck syndrome".

People think there is nothing wrong with piracy as you're not stealing from people... your stealing from bastard Corporations who you hate the guts of.

Piracy is a problem but there is a difference in Piracy rates of content which is sold by indie productions compared to those of the big faceless Corporations. There is still piracy of indie developed games which is the most worrying thing of all, is that now the line is blurring completely.

I think the main way to combat these problems is simple: Convenience.
When Steam went into Russia, Gabe was told, there is no point, the Russians Pirate everything and you won't sell shit there. Wrong. A year ago it was their fastest growing market. Steams key is convenience. It has a tiny layer of DRM but I've never had a problem and most haven't.
GOG too has no DRM at all and has never had it better.

However at the same time the bad faceless Corporations, EA, Activision and Ubisoft just push for more and more, heavy DRM to try to combat Piracy... but so far no DRM has survived more than a week. This constant connection shit also is a mere added complication which people will and have removed...

If you want to make money then you need to focus on convience. Also lowering the prices to a reasonable level couldn't fucking hurt them (if the game has been released for a year and you price the game at £10, $15 then you'll get extra sales you normally never would have).

Why feel bad about piracy when every single company seems to be run by people with no souls?

My point in a nutshell.

 

[Alterego-X]

You know what game publishers in particular should do? Next time a game dev someone really likes shuts down, point at torrents of their games and say "piracy put these people out of a job". It doesn't matter if it's true. The en masse destruction of hundreds of jobs visibly with a reasonable proposed causation will make people in positions of power take notice. Is it a crap tactic? Undoubtedly. It's dishonest, too. But when Homefront 2 comes out and everyone involved gets fired because it was such an awful game, have the publisher blame piracy and BAM! instant media and government sympathy.

I don't approve, but if I were them it's what I'd do. Either that, or actually make good games people actually want to fucking buy.

Wouldn't work.

There are four kinds of attitudes to piracy:

1. Conformist copyright supporters: Lazy casual audiences who don't want to bother learning how to use torrents, but willing to pay cash for Steam od iTunes.

2. Conformist pirates: ignorant people who didn't ever bother to notice how products make money with their business model, they just want to easily access them.

3. Activist copyright supporters: Fans who understand why paying for cntent is like voting with your wallet, and go out of their way to support everything that they watch/read/play.

4. Activist pirates: people who constantly wave statistics about how piracy doesn't hurt sales, and that it could be legalized and making stuff would still be profitable from willingly paying fans and other business models.

Conformist pirates wouldn't even hear about such a statement, because they don't care about the financial state of the industry to begin with. And activist pirates would just call them out on it, by bring up some statistics about how Homefront 2 was exactly as pirated as Homefront 1, so something else must have went wrong this time.

It would just be an example of preaching to the choir, only convincing those who didn't support piracy to begin with, but the kind of pirates who care about the state of the industry, already have some sort of answer to such accusations anyways.

 

[chadachada123]

This seems a bit like mod bait to me =p

On topic, yeah, it can be a civil matter, but it is NOT theft in any sense of the word. It's impossible to steal knowledge, it's only possible to pass off other people's knowledge as your own (which is not even the case for standard piracy).

And for that reason, you won't hear any complaints from me about piracy until it actually starts to harm someone.

That said, I don't pirate, because I game mostly on 360 (not moddible), and what little PC gaming I do, I do through Steam and their awesome sales, and most of the music I listen to consists of remixes and other things that aren't copyrighted.

 

[grigjd3]

The ideal of copyright protection is to allow creators of content to control the direction that content takes - thus allowing them to profit from their efforts. The results of copyright law are that large corporate interests who don't do the actual creation are intruding further and further into our lives. It's also not necessarily that great for the consumer. I don't believe Shakespeare would have made it through all the legal BS we have today to write his plays and poetry. It seems like we're ok with this though. It's fine to let the next Shakespeare rot under a ton of legal garbage so long as EA is allowed to digitally fondle us for having bought ME3 for the PC.

 

[twiceworn]

i keep reading posts about piracy all over the internet and the general opinion seems to be:

1: Games cost too much

2:Corporations are evil so FUCK THEM!!

3:I wont buy the game anyway so why not

4:It's legal in some places so the law is wrong!!

5:One sale is nothing its a victimless crime!

6RM IS BALLS!! FUCK IT TO THE TORRENTS!!

These are the basic opinions you will get in ANY discussion of piracy

 

[littlerob]

So here's something to consider:

Governments are elected to represent and forward the will and interest of the people on a national and international scale. The head of state is a representative, put forward to advance the best interests of the country and its people.

Those people do not think filesharing is a crime. That much is plain to see.

Those who do see it as a crime are the publishing corporations, who make their money from selling someone else's product.

This is simply a case of the growing privatisation and corporatisation of first-world governments. In an ideal world, crimes would be that which the populace considers a crime. Murder - taking a life is universally agreed to be a Bad Thing. Theft - taking someone else's property is considered poor form at best. No matter the perspective of the publishers, the populace as a whole does not consider intangible ideas and agreements that 'I'm the only one allowed to distribute this for x years' as Things that can be stolen. It's a case of the business world of potential-earnings and profit-forecasts trying to overlap into the everyday world of cash-in-the-wallet and physical items. The vast majority of people simple do not agree with that world.

However, the controllers of the majority of the world's wealth do.

 

[Sporge]

The difference in perceived value of something digital vs something physical is very different, if you steal a physical thing then there is one less of them, if you steal a digital thing then your not really stealing it, your just copying it.

That's like being given excellent service at a restaurant and then not tipping (or accurately, telling the waiter he should be happy he's making $2.75 an hour as it is, since anyone could do his job). Now say that to a game developer.

Remember, it's not theft, it's fraud.

Piracy is telling game developers (and young people wanting to be game developers) that you really don't think their skills/creativity has value. If you continue to treat them like ass, keep expecting games that look and play like ass, and at some point people will stop making games.

"But why do I have to tip the stripper?"

#andimout

Woah slow down there, most piracy I believe is a result of less than excellent service. That said you don't tip your waiter before the meal either, and many other pirates I think act like that. They don't want to waste their money, which they may not have a ton of on something they don't like. So they pirate it, if it is meh they delete it and don't care. If they like it, or even love it, they are more likely to buy it.

Besides if a waiter was horrible, getting your orders wrong, or hardly paid any attention to you would you tip them the same as the one who provided excellent service? It isn't saying that a devs skill or creativity has no value it is that it is in question, and your work has to be quality to get money.

 

[Cody Holden]

This is what I never understood about the existence of copyright law, especially as it pertains to software:

Spoiler

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I?
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Now, most of you will recognize that as Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken." I just copy-pasted it into this field. Now, did I just "pirate" the poem? Did I just infringe on the copyright of whoever owns Robert Frost's works (I'm assuming/pretending they're not public domain, for argument's sake)? Will I recieve a letter from some lawyer telling me that I dun goofed? If I did, I would be extremely surprised, as would most of you. Hell, even though I've put this in a place where the rest of you can easily "pirate" it by copy-pasting it yourself, I doubt there will be legal recompence for the action.

So, how exactly is it different for me to tell my computer to essentially copy-paste a few thousand packets of data, in such a way that they can come together and make a game or piece of software? If I had typed up the binary myself to do the same, or hardwired some movie or song into my damn motherboard, would that be a crime? It doesn't make sense to criminalize digging a ditch just because I didn't contract Ditch Digging Incorporated to do it.

I mean, I understand what the actual "crime" is. I get what the companies are complaining about, even if I don't agree with their premise for doing so. But it doesn't change the fact that copyright law basically criminalizes a basic function that every modern computer has-- the ability to copy files and other data. Which is just silly.

 

[littlerob]

The difference in perceived value of something digital vs something physical is very different, if you steal a physical thing then there is one less of them, if you steal a digital thing then your not really stealing it, your just copying it.

That's like being given excellent service at a restaurant and then not tipping (or accurately, telling the waiter he should be happy he's making $2.75 an hour as it is, since anyone could do his job). Now say that to a game developer.

Remember, it's not theft, it's fraud.

Piracy is telling game developers (and young people wanting to be game developers) that you really don't think their skills/creativity has value. If you continue to treat them like ass, keep expecting games that look and play like ass, and at some point people will stop making games.

"But why do I have to tip the stripper?"

#andimout

Woah slow down there, most piracy I believe is a result of less than excellent service. That said you don't tip your waiter before the meal either, and many other pirates I think act like that. They don't want to waste their money, which they may not have a ton of on something they don't like. So they pirate it, if it is meh they delete it and don't care. If they like it, or even love it, they are more likely to buy it.

Besides if a waiter was horrible, getting your orders wrong, or hardly paid any attention to you would you tip them the same as the one who provided excellent service? It isn't saying that a devs skill or creativity has no value it is that it is in question, and your work has to be quality to get money.

On top of all that, it's only in America where tipping is taken as a matter of course.

Everywhere else in the world, tips are earned, rather than expected. A tip is a reward to the person serving, for above-average service that you think deserves extra recognition. A waiter doing their job (anywhere but the US) gets paid by their employer for doing their job. No more, no less. If they get exemplary service or go out of their way to help, their customers might leave a tip as a personal 'thank you'.

Expecting this as an almost legal requirement is a peculiarly American thing.

 

[Sporge]

On top of all that, it's only in America where tipping is taken as a matter of course.

Everywhere else in the world, tips are earned, rather than expected. A tip is a reward to the person serving, for above-average service that you think deserves extra recognition. A waiter doing their job (anywhere but the US) gets paid by their employer for doing their job. No more, no less. If they get exemplary service or go out of their way to help, their customers might leave a tip as a personal 'thank you'.

Expecting this as an almost legal requirement is a peculiarly American thing.

Having never been anywhere but the US... and slightly Canada, I can't say what it is like elsewhere, but yeah I find myself tipping at least 15 percent even if bad service lol

 

[Callate]

It's difficult to feel a strong sense of moral wrong about the possibility of harming the financial solvency of large companies staffed by people you never meet, most of whom have no interest in hearing from you.

And while legal recourse can make it feel riskier to engage in piracy, it does nothing to increase the feeling of actual wrong-doing (as the article basically says.) I'd argue that it actually may have the opposite effect- I doubt many people started feeling more sympathetic towards the RIAA when they started meting out lawsuits towards eleven-year-olds and grandmothers. You don't rush to find the common humanity of someone who's waving a gun in your face. And if you didn't already feel some sense of resentment towards government and/or law enforcement, large businesses using their political and financial clout to bring them to bear against "you" can't help but feel like a betrayal: the system that's supposed to be about protecting "your" interests, at the beck and call of the "fat cats". (Quotes intended to suggest this is how some perceive the situation, not that it's necessarily a summation of the author's view or one he necessarily sees as universally accurate.)

Things like the backlash against the Star Wars movies and the upheaval about Mass Effect 3's ending can't help but underscore the point that the sense of "ownership" fans feel of beloved properties might help push against some of this societal apathy regarding piracy, but the companies that control the IP are often too afraid to allow fans of a property to feel any sense of control that isn't carefully rationed out and channeled by marketing and legal departments.

 

[Something Amyss]

Harsher speeding laws don't stop speeding or even impact it.

It's the same sort of thing. Even if you think it's wrong, the odds of getting caught are low and it's seen as a "victimless crime." Please don't argue that last point, because whether it's victimless or not, it's still seen that way.

 

[chadachada123]

On top of all that, it's only in America where tipping is taken as a matter of course.

Everywhere else in the world, tips are earned, rather than expected. A tip is a reward to the person serving, for above-average service that you think deserves extra recognition. A waiter doing their job (anywhere but the US) gets paid by their employer for doing their job. No more, no less. If they get exemplary service or go out of their way to help, their customers might leave a tip as a personal 'thank you'.

Expecting this as an almost legal requirement is a peculiarly American thing.

Having never been anywhere but the US... and slightly Canada, I can't say what it is like elsewhere, but yeah I find myself tipping at least 15 percent even if bad service lol

Extending this to games, that's kind of why EA and the like can get away with what they do: Because everyone keeps giving them money for subpar (even horrendous) service.

So, yeah.

In order to get waiters/waitresses to get better, it's best to not tip for bad service, 10% (in the US) for average service, and higher for better service.

In other countries, only tip for exceptional service, since they get better pay to begin with than in the US.

At least, from what I understand.

 

[ryo02]

The number of people who take part in file-sharing on a daily basis has actually risen slightly, from 18 percent in September 2009 to 20 percent in January 2012, and the biggest effect of the criminalization crackdown appears to be a rise in the use of anonymizing services: over the same period, the number of people using virtual private networks to mask their activities has risen by 40 percent.

Laws can change, in other words, but until attitudes fall in line, not much else will.

just a thought but what happens if those stats hit 51%? (I.E. piracy becomes "normal") will that mean that the laws should fall in line to attitudes instead?.

Im not syaing that would be good or bad Im just asking.

(the majority can think racism is bad but what if they also thought murder was good? where do attitudes and law meet and devide?)