Jimquisition: Piracy Episode One - Copyright

008Zulu_v1legacy

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Nurb said:
What might start changing things, is that independent developers form some sort of agreement not to sell their IP to a publisher without retaining rights or regaining rights after a length of time.

They make this known through the industry, and encourage new and growing developers to join in their agreement, basically creating a pool of new ideas and content as time passes that the corporate publisher fucks can't have access to unless they agree to contracts that allow creators to retain rights.

Obviously this would only work if developers maintain the agreement and gain enough numbers and support that the publishers won't be as quick to pass over because they can't own everything forever and can't snatch up new ideas as easily.

It'd be a long shot, but it's just a thought since solidarity among smaller developers could eventually stand up against big publisher owning copyrights to others' stuff.
Works in theory, until the publisher steals the indie's idea, changes a few details provided by their ample supply of lawyers, and sell the game to undercut the original.

Of course, it would also help if indie developers didn't get in to developing just to sell out their idea to a company for a six figure sum.
 

Jelly ^.^

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"If you disagree with that, fuck off, ya fuckin' thief. Worse than OJ Simpson. That's what you are, worse than OJ Simpson."

You are now worse than OJ Simpson, Jim.
 

ACman

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Kwil said:
He actually made a million dollars in 27 years and one week. And in that 27 years he's been performing stand up

Now, if you make a name for yourself without a publisher, than you've managed essentially to win the lottery.
So the fact that he can do without publishers isn't significant? Surely that's gotta make them nervous. What if every name they have suddenly decides to go down this route? Doesn't that significantly reduce the publisher talent pool/revenue?

Isn't the fact that you can go directly to the public bypassing the publishers significant? What if start selling one album or single to publishers and then go online with the rest of their music?

Isn't the fact that the lowered barriers

Quite often getting published is simply winning the lottery. The lowered bar of entry means that you can get yourself an audience through other means simply by releasing stuff on the when until someone, (anyone now it doesn't have to be a publisher) takes notice.

I'm not saying that there isn't a place for marketing but the old publisher model for music and books is done. All you need to put music into the world is a room with decent accoutics and a computer, a youtube and a MySpace account. All you need to publish a novel is computer and an Amazon digital publishing account. Suddenly the actual service a "publishing company" is offering you isn't publish at all; it's marketing (A different business model).
 

Pebkio

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Nov 9, 2009
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Sober Thal said:
Wasn't that guy that is being extradited to the states in the same boat? He had multiple orders against him to to stop what he was doing, but the dumb kid decided to say fuck all, and now has to be made an example out of? He snuffed his nose at the states, and now they are going to make him realize his folly, eh?

When you profit from piracy, I vote for the trial by fire/punishment by fire method. These kids aren't going to learn otherwise.

People don't seem to realize that creators of a product have the right to decide how their IP is distributed.

double sigh
I take umbrage with what you've said. I've taken umbrage with a lot of what you've said, but this especially. America is not the world police or authority. That kid's country didn't have laws against posting links. What you've just called is imperialist fascism that's based on out-dated laws that are ill-equipped to handle the abilities of modern technology.
I'm going to ask you to stop, because you're representing America in a horrible light. Go do something else, please?

And you!
Jelly ^.^ said:
"If you disagree with that, fuck off, ya fuckin' thief. Worse than OJ Simpson. That's what you are, worse than OJ Simpson."

You are now worse than OJ Simpson, Jim.
Oh yes, acting factitious in a web video... is as bad as murder (alleged, I guess), blackmail, drug-trafficking, and resisting arrest. What an obviously trollish thing to say. You seriously need to go outside... get some perspective.
 

UbarElite

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Part of me does in fact wonder how much richer companies would be if they spent nothing on DRM (which doesn't work anyway) and bribing politicians, or lobbying, if you prefer. That is a lot of money that is currently not getting you anywhere...
 

Jelly ^.^

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Pebkio said:
And you!
Jelly ^.^ said:
"If you disagree with that, fuck off, ya fuckin' thief. Worse than OJ Simpson. That's what you are, worse than OJ Simpson."

You are now worse than OJ Simpson, Jim.
Oh yes, acting factitious in a web video... is as bad as murder (alleged, I guess), blackmail, drug-trafficking, and resisting arrest. What an obviously trollish thing to say. You seriously need to go outside... get some perspective.
Pardon? Jim's own words, not mine sir.


By backflipping and now disagreeing with what he said, he is now what he described as 'as bad as OJ Simpson'.

I think you should look to try and understand the context of a comment before projecting your own onto it.
 

SonOfVoorhees

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Saying its ok to pirate a game by a major publisher and not if its an independent is a bit retarded dont you think? Also it is sales that ensure whether a game gets a sequel or not, legal sales. As a game reviewer you should no that. If every one pirated a game and few bought it legally then it wont get a sequel. They dont look at the illegal download count and go "wow it was pirated 3 million times, lets make a sequel." An yes the system is great, the law may need to be changed and maybe it is a dick move to keep an IP that they are not using. But, in the end, they own it and can what they want with it.....its there property.

You know what Jim, i hope you create a game and i hope it gets pirated by everyone so that every legal copy rots on shop shelves. An we shall see what your thoughts are. People who pirate games are not noble preachers of free speech or internet freedom, they are people that dont want to pay for there entertainment. This has been proving when that company released a game in which you could pay what you wanted....1p or £10. Even then people pirated it for nothing.
 

PingoBlack

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Aug 6, 2011
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Good one, Jim. Good one.

Will be looking for future installments on this topic as well.
 

Pebkio

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Nov 9, 2009
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Jelly ^.^ said:
Pardon? Jim's own words, not mine sir.

5:00 onwards.

By backflipping and now disagreeing with what he said, he is now what he described as 'as bad as OJ Simpson'.

I think you should look to try and understand the context of a comment before projecting your own onto it.
1) I don't remember seeing that Jim said he was going to start pirating... only that if he did start, he wouldn't be able to see why it's wrong do to so, right now and with that game (Metal Arms). In fact, I'd be a bit on the surprised side if Jim did start pirating all of a sudden.

2) Seeing as how that wasn't on the escapist, nor was it quoted in the video we're commenting on, I don't see how your comment could've been taken anyway else. You could've maybe just posted that link first.

3) I don't remember you quoting "You are now worse than OJ Simpson, Jim." in your post. Let me check... nope, you were, indeed, calling him worse than OJ. In fact, I'm going to reinforce my "trollish" accusation because you seem to have been quick with "correcting" anyone who called you out for a poorly explained post... with a better explanation.
 

Cureacao

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ACman said:
Kwil said:
He actually made a million dollars in 27 years and one week. And in that 27 years he's been performing stand up
So the fact that he can do without publishers isn't significant? Surely that's gotta make them nervous. What if every name they have suddenly decides to go down this route? Doesn't that significantly reduce the publisher talent pool/revenue?
No one ever said publishers/agents are the only way to go, just that you either don't give them enough credit or think marketing/legal issues is a lot easier and less time and money consuming than it is.

Not everyone would go down the self-producing road because they realise how hard it is. If you want to get to the same place as Louis CK you have to work your ass off. As in we're talking drop everything and devote your life to this; You make no income as everything you earn goes towards promoting yourself. You have no time as you're constantly working to find gigs and preform them, you're constantly trying to make connections. You're constantly trying to find a way to live as you have no income. All the other time you have is going into refining your act, eating and sleeping (well maybe things are different in the stand up biz, but if we were to take this situation and put it instead into music production, this is true). Until you get big, you're stuck in this cycle with constant stress and worry.

ACman said:
Isn't the fact that you can go directly to the public bypassing the publishers significant? What if start selling one album or single to publishers and then go online with the rest of their music?

Isn't the fact that the lowered barriers

Quite often getting published is simply winning the lottery. The lowered bar of entry means that you can get yourself an audience through other means simply by releasing stuff on the when until someone, (anyone now it doesn't have to be a publisher) takes notice.
If you allow a recording company to produce your album than you're almost definitely in a contract. Record labels aren't stupid, they realise that bands might use them for one album and then drop them and they contract to combat this.

Sorry, but getting published is literally nothing like winning the lottery. For one the lottery is all chance and for two people who write great books/music will almost always get a publishing deal (assuming their great works gather them a fanbase). I agree with you that the lower bar is great but in a way it's a double edged sword. An easier way in leads to more crap, although more awesome as well in smaller doses: but that's me getting off-topic.

ACman said:
I'm not saying that there isn't a place for marketing but the old publisher model for music and books is done.
The old publisher model has it's merits but now days is completely done, which is why it's already been adapted to deal with the internet/today's market and has been for a long time. Also I'm completely guessing as to what the old publisher model is.

ACman said:
All you need to put music into the world is a room with decent accoutics and a computer, a youtube and a MySpace account. All you need to publish a novel is computer and an Amazon digital publishing account. Suddenly the actual service a "publishing company" is offering you isn't publish at all; it's marketing (A different business model).
And microphones. But that's if you want to get a crappy demo out that no one cares about. If you want to get a decent quality song you either need do pay someone to record and master you (roughly $1200 a song depending on where you go and what quality you're getting) or get your own stuff: A professionally built room that takes into account the correct acoustics (I swear there's either a word for it or a way to shorten it but I just can't think of it...), a solid mixer, about 10 different mics and decent music mixing and mastering programmes (A very rough estimate is $10,000, but to be honest I don't really know at all). A publisher will not only give you use of their studio/s but actually pay you to use it in a sense.

Now lets say I've written a book, there is really only one way I can go with this. Get like 10 copies using my own know how and money, seeking out somewhere that could print it, or get an agent which will find me a publisher which has the capacity to mass produce my book so I can actually get it into a decent book store where people will see it. I suppose I could always go to the internet but I don't know anyone who has paid for a book online that they haven't intended to download to their kindle or ipad. There is only a very small market of people that would prefer to read their screen than a tangible book. Point is book publishers are DAMN important. Well at least I'm pretty sure, I haven't done any first hand research into it so I could very well be wrong.

My last point is kind of an analogy. Lets take the Extra Credits shall we? Extra Credits started out on youtube, talking about games in depth and gaming as a culture. Literally nothing has changed. They started off small, growing a small but generally committed fanbase that would watch each video. They soon became popular enough to gain the attention of the escapist, -publisher-, where they would produce videos and in turn the escapist would pay them and give them more of an audience. From there they exploded and gained many more fans. And then a whole lot of crap happened that we like to repress (well I do anyway). That's one of the great benefits of a publisher, ONE. This isn't a perfect analogy, but I'm pretty happy with it.

Publishers do sometimes screw their clients though which is terribly terrible.

Also sorry for the butt-load of text, I tend to get carried away.
 

Lord_Gremlin

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Hm. Interesting. Problem is, Jim is not fundamental enough. His first statement about pirates was fundamentally right. They are thieves.
Point is, Activision are also thieves. And some other publishers too. It all fits into fundamental idea of stealing someone's IP. For example, MW3 is stolen by Activision.
 

ACman

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Cureacao said:
If you allow a recording company to produce your album than you're almost definitely in a contract. Record labels aren't stupid, they realise that bands might use them for one album and then drop them and they contract to combat this.
Sounds like a good reason to avoid that contract and find someone who is just going to market you instead of insisting on rights and outmoded methods of distibution. With viral marketing you can get an amazing amount of coverage. All you need to do is chuck you track up on soundcloud and hit the music blogs and reddit\music.

People who write great books/music will almost always get a publishing deal.
No. People who write commercially viable music and books will always get publishing deals. I can think of quite a few of my favorite authors who spend years getting that first deal. And most of my favorite music wasn't touched by big companies until they had success in the independent field. Now that you aren't reliant on big publishers for distribution all they can really offer is marketing.

And microphones.
Most serious bands will have good mikes.

, a solid mixer, about 10 different mics and decent music mixing and mastering programmes
You'd be surprised at what a computer can achieve here.

There is only a very small market of people that would prefer to read their screen than a tangible book.
I'm actually specifically talking about digital books. Digital book signifcantly lower the barrier to entry for publishing and remember we're not just talking about novels here but all written media. All my text-books and reference books are on my netbook and it getting to the point where I'm looking at an iPad for reading them as well as digital novels. I'm probably going to be carrying all the books I have ever read.

I agree that real books are nice but there really are an indulgent luxury when you have sites like this.

http://www.digitalbookindex.org/about.htm

Or this

http://www.ecampus.com/etextbooks.asp?referrer=adwords&s_kwcid=TC|7413|digital%20books||S|e|8171688415&gclid=CLbA8Ljx6K0CFYaGDgodt3F16

And Amazon used to be really cheap for big publisher stuff but unfortunately big publishers have colluded with Apple to prevent discounting (Price Fixing >:[). But still If you check this:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=

The most popular stuff on Amazon is the cheap digital stuff and two of the top ten are self published.

The barriers to entry into the print and music industries have been demolished. Without the need for physical copies and the new ability to market your self to niche websites ( escapist/extra credits is an example of this) big traditional publishers aren't particularly necessary.
 

FlitterFilms

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I am enjoying the debate on this thread but I won't get involved. I just had to say that I had been somewhat on the fence regarding the Jimquisition but this was a brilliant episode and I am all for the Jimquisition revolution!