Jimquisition: Piracy Episode One - Copyright

[Revnak_v1legacy]

I generally cannot agree with most kinds of piracy. However, it is an issue that is not so much just gray, but rather a white and gray. Clearly buying the game is always right, but pirating a game is not the worst thing in the world. In some cases I suppose it is better that someone pirates something than never play the game at all. Still, I cannot support piracy, only tollerate it.

Copyright law is pretty fucked up though. I think that you could be onto something with your loaning out copyrights idea Jim. It seems your limitless wisdom has yet again brought brought glorious revelation to my unworthy mind.

 

[Jimothy Sterling]

Fun fact. The artists and developers own 100% of their IP. They then decide to sell the rights away for money and more resources. Duh.

That's what happens when the rights-buyers have rigged the game in their favor before the artists create their art. Duh.

Creators have a choice to sign these contracts. Are we implying that these people who make games don't know how to read?

It is a Hobson's choice. Especially before digital distribution became much more widespread. Sure, they could "choose" not to go through a publisher, but in an industry run by the publishers, what choice is that?

The deck is stacked in the favor of publishers. For the longest time, they've owned the deck, dealt the cards, owned the cards, and bought anybody holding the cards. Some of us don't think that should continue.

 

[Xifel]

On the other hand, these big publishers didn't seize the rights away from creators at gunpoint. They walked up and waved a bag of cash in front of them. It seemed like a good deal at the time, and I have a hard time feeling sympathy for anyone who sold their soul, or IP, to EA.*

Then on the third hand, you get stuff like a band posting videos they created themselves of their own music on Youtube and getting takedown orders from their record company because they don't have the rights to promote themselves in any way that might interfere with the company's profits. Yeah, screw that.




*I know EA wasn't actually involved in the example in the video, but I wanted to draw a selling your soul to the devil analogy, and EA just fit so well.

It is true that the creators has been paid for the rights. However I do not believe there are any buisness model that allow the creator to keep their rights. I believe it is "Give us your stuff and we get it out, or stay in the dark".

What we need is a company that can help creators get their product out, without taking the rights for the product. This would be a very big change from the current model, but it would be amazing. I think something like the indie market on XboxLive but waaaay bigger.

 

[Aureliano]

Excellent show, Jim. Really one of the best in a while. Hopefully you'll also mention the insane length of copyrights (which are now owned by these companies in many cases): around 130 years or 70 years after the death of the original artist if I remember correctly. All so the lumbering, undead behemoth that is Disney can keep its mascot under copyright until the end of eternity, long after the death of its original creator.

When those rich men make their money off anything they themselves have made aside from more money or a business structure, then we'll talk about who's ripping off who.

 

[Wintermoot]

I totally agree with this.
in some cases piracy is the only way to get older movies/games/songs and if the rent-a-license plan where to get implemented it would make the internet a better place.

 

[newdarkcloud]

Fun fact. The artists and developers own 100% of their IP. They then decide to sell the rights away for money and more resources. Duh.

That's what happens when the rights-buyers have rigged the game in their favor before the artists create their art. Duh.

Creators have a choice to sign these contracts. Are we implying that these people who make games don't know how to read?

Publishers won't even look at a developer if the developer wants to keep the majority share of the rights to the IP. The only exception is when the developer has already become well known enough to have publishers compete for them.

 

[Seneschal]

The most problematic aspect of this attitude, while it deservedly takes out one's frustrations on the obsolete publishing system, is that the content creators have to rely on charity. Unless we have an alternate system of intellectual property, creators of digital content (which is a post-scarcity good, cannot be evaluated objectively and can hardly fit in the classical supply/demand economy) must rely on the good will of their customers to support them (much like a street performer does) even though their creations can be acquired freely, everywhere, at any time, in unlimited amounts. We'll soon be forced to face this problem with new views on intellectual property, because the old ones are almost impossible to maintain and enforce. For example, smaller content (like music) is more and more commonly just freely distributed (which acts as marketing to the creator) and the creator then earns from live appearances. Of course, this doesn't apply to videogames, so people smarter than me will have to figure out how the medium will sustain itself in the future. Maybe on-demand cloud gaming? Maybe ubiquitous, approachable, freely-given, tiny games that you can donate to, or that have microtransactions of some sort?

But in the meantime, these companies are artificially creating scarcity by trying to censor and control the means of distribution. If free and unlimited web access is rare, then access to games is restricted and special and therefore worth more! BRILLIANT! So of course they'll step over human rights to achieve it, it would be the Philosopher's Stone for media companies!

 

[Mahha]

Did you know that copyright law was not meant to create huge profits?
The original law was meant as a protection of intellectual property for a period of max 28 years, as to prevent stealing of new ideas and after that period ANYONE was permitted to change alter and publish new stories based on the works without permission. It's a pretty awesome idea at the core, smart and creative people get incentive to make new shit and after 28 year (lets face it if you haven't been working on new ip or updated your old ip it's very unlikely that a sudden bolt of creativity will hit your brain and you'll start expanding on your 28 old year book or whatever) fans can start tangents and new stories based on you work. This was so that no one person could live a whole life with just one contribution to society.
Now for sake of an example let's look at the creations of Walt Disney. Do you even remember when was the last time a good Mickey Mouse cartoon, book etc. came out? Well I don't and I fucking love Mickey Mouse. The thing is that by extending copyright ad infinitum you prevent eager and capable people bringing new life to old creations.

here's a nice video that explains it:

I don't know how this would relate to more modern problems such as piracy, but I'm sure if the 28 years rule was still in effect things would be a lot different.

 

[razing32]

The Metal Arms thing reminded me of how Piranha Bites lost the rights to the Gothic universe.
The new developers butchered the series starting with Gothic 4 and the series is now a mediocre-bad action rpg with zero innovation. However they do get to cash in on the earlier Gothics.

Thankfully , the Piranhas have brought us Risen and a sequel is on the horizon. But I still hate the fact that their franchise was hijacked by a publisher and ultimately taken to the slaughtering table.

It's like taking someone's race horse to turn it into sausage. FFS !

 

[Louzerman102]

Fun fact. The artists and developers own 100% of their IP. They then decide to sell the rights away for money and more resources. Duh.

That's what happens when the rights-buyers have rigged the game in their favor before the artists create their art. Duh.

Creators have a choice to sign these contracts. Are we implying that these people who make games don't know how to read?

It is a Hobson's choice. Especially before digital distribution became much more widespread. Sure, they could "choose" not to go through a publisher, but in an industry run by the publishers, what choice is that?

The deck is stacked in the favor of publishers. For the longest time, they've owned the deck, dealt the cards, owned the cards, and bought anybody holding the cards. Some of us don't think that should continue.

Hobson's choice, eh? Damn right! It's their money! You want their money, you agree to what they offer. If Valve is such an evil entity (publisher) why do people bend over backwards to praise them?

The 'artists' need to wise up if this is as bad for them as people seem to be saying.

You're confusing what steam does. Microsoft owns the halo IP. EA owns the dead space IP. Tell me how Steam owns Space Pirates and Zombies, Solar 2, Dungeons of Dredmor, or any other indie Game. Jim's statements were never against valve.

 

[SmokePants]

Sterling, for every point you raise in these videos, there are about 5 that completely fly over your head.

In your perfect world where rights go to the creators, nothing original will ever be made again. If the greedy old men can't own it, then they won't fund its production. They will simply find something else to do with their money.

It is not required that you empathize with faceless corporate entities, but it would be nice if you understood that this stuff represents GDP and that software and content will make up a larger and larger percent of the wealth of many developed nations (not just the US). They are going to protect that wealth (eventually), regardless of lobbyists or kickbacks. We just have to prevent that corporate influence from fast-tracking ill-considered, unworkable, narrow-view, and destructive bills like SOPA and PIPA. The sooner we get to a well-rounded, big picture solution, the better it will be for everyone. Otherwise, these types of legislative scares are going to keep happening until one of them passes.

 

[TheCakeisALie87]

Great episode, I have to say I was a critic of your early episodes on the escapist since I couldn't really figure out if you were serious or not, but now I look forward to it every week. Also everyone should check out CPG Grey's video on copyright on his youtube channel. He goes into the basis of copyright law and how it has been seriously f****d up. For example, want to make a Harry Potter movie? Think you'll do it within your lifetime...probably not, it is public domain material in...2116! Link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk862BbjWx4&feature=g-user-u

 

[Diana Kingston-Gabai]

What's wrong with that? Are publishers just supposed to gamble away money on possible crap product?

Why not? We (the customers) do...

 

[mjc0961]

You weren't wrong the first time. They are. What happens in another area does not change the nature of an individual's actions.
Your example, if taken to extremes, would give a partial justification for Swinging Ape to engage in piracy - not the sideline sitting parasites who actually do so. Another bad guy in the room does not preclude you from being one, too.

I have to agree with this. That bit about how Copyright law is messed up with the Metal Arms example, that certainly gave me something new to think about. But I'm not about to let the pirates off the hook. They aren't helping anything. Illegally downloading games, music, and whatever else doesn't fix copyright law. It only gets publishers and other groups to try and make it worse with crap like PIPA and SOPA. It gets DRM and other nonsense put into our games. Obviously publishers are not without blame for inflicting such crap on paying customers and leaving them to suffer while pirates get around it again and get a better product, but pirates are also to blame. No, I still won't buy into any of their bullshit justifications either. I don't care if you wouldn't have bought it anyway. I don't care if you think you're sticking it to the publisher. I don't even care if you bought the game but want the non-DRM version pirates made. You're still inflating those piracy numbers that publishers look at and say "Oh crap, guess we'd better try even harder to stop it next time. And we need stiffer copyright law and things like SOPA and PIPA too!".

I just see two groups of bad guys rather than one now. Publishers and pirates are fighting each other, and no matter what happens between them in that fight, it's the paying customers who lose. And I'm not about to let either side off the hook for it. Publishers, stop being shit. Pirates, stop being shit!

Anyway, Metal Arms. I remember seeing that game on the Xbox Live Marketplace years ago. Looking again, it's still there for $15. I almost bought it because I looked up some info and it seemed kind of like Ratchet and Clank. I don't know why I didn't though. I'm not going to get it now either, as my backlog is already huge enough, but I'll make a note of it for later so I don't forget about this game's existence again.