I've been ironically both very busy, and very sick recently and am playing catch up with the features here. I haven't had much time for sites or message boards in general. Ironically, it's at a time when it seems like guys like Jim are coming around to things I've been saying for years now. My favorite metaphor ultimatly being that pirates and the game industry going at it are like gang bangers fighting the mafia, there isn't a right side.
As I have also said before, the game industry's very business model isn't even legal, or if it somehow is, it remains that way only because of the system having been subverted. At least in the US (which is the major market) it's illegal to hold monopolies where one person controls something entirely, or for there to be a functional cartel which is when a bunch of people in the same industry get together to coordinate and set prices and regions so they do not have to directly compete with each other, which gets to the same place. An example of cartel behavior that most people are probably familiar with has to do with gas and oil companies who are under constant federal investigation for conspiring to artificially raise prices and avoiding direct competition. There are numerous other example of this, but that's a big one, and it doesn't just apply to things considered to be nessecities.
In the end capitalism and business always lead to a successful business wanting a monopoly which is never good, which is why we have laws to prevent it. The idea in the US at least is to force competition so producers will strive to produce the highest quality products, for the lowest price and continue to innovate in that direction.
What we see right now with the game industry is a case where the industry sets prices, with games retailing for the same amount irregardless of what hey cost to develop. A game that cost 10 million and one that cost 30 million both hit the shelves for $60. What's more release schedules are frequently coordinated to avoid big titles competing with each other so nobody lowers their prices. We've all seen it and talked about it when say a big game like "Modern Warfare part XXXVI" (or whatever they are up to now, I don't follow it) comes out, everyone else pushes their releases up to avoid having to share the market, rather than say lowering their prices and offering incentives to buy their product instead.
Things like DRM are also a sign of this, the industry as a whole has coordinated embracing it, since almost nobody DOESN'T use DRM of some form now, it isn't like consumers are given much of an option.
Now granted there ARE exceptions to everything, there are game companies that have rolled DRM free, but this is how things generally are, and how the big boys are rolling, and why. At the end of the day companies like EA and Activision are as much partners in setting policies and exploiting the comsumer base than they are rivals, and that's what has to stop as much as anything.
Right now I think that the game industry is big, but it isn't big enough to force the goverment into serious investigation or action.... or even making a show of it. Right now there are enough non-gamers voting where a political position can be made out of turning video games into a boogie-man. Big issues like what we're discussing. that can impact media along a wide spectrum, are largely overlooked because this isn't an issue that truely inpacts everyone like say the price of a gallon of gas at the pump. The goverment is pretty much safe in taking industry dollars (ironically at the same time it takes money from those wanting to regulate game content, or make positions out of it) because John Q Public just doesn't quite care yet, and I'd imagine the fat cats are banking on precedent being established before he does.
Now on the flip side, for those who have read this far, I am going to address something from the last Jimquisition. Jim is right about the problem with copyright hoarding, but I don't think he fully understands all the issues here and WHY the system is broken, and why rights holders are so reluctant to give anything up.
Gaming and IPs evolve based on things that have been done before. A company needs to be able to defend itself against accusations that they stole an idea from someone else who might be doing something similar. An established product, even if not especially successful, like "Metal Arms: A Glitch In The System" provides a fairly early example of a third person shooter and now-standard style of gameplay that was not contested. If some third person shooter creator claims that their ideas are being ripped off, that game can be trotted out and say "well our ideas evolved from this, note the similarities". If they sell the rights or they revert back to the creator, they can't really do that. Especially seeing as it could be argued that if they at one time held those rights, the guy who holds them later (or they revert back to) could bring a case against producers for doing something similar.
The way copyrights and precedents work, someone is inevitably going to be an arsehole with those rights. If it's not big companies, it's going to be some past-his-prime developer who might not have done anything for decades demanding a cut to develop in an entire genere because he has a property old enough to defend the position that it was all his idea. Heck we have problems with this kind of thing with patent trolls for actual physical products.
There is a valid reason why a producer wants to have control of everything they have funded so they can defend themselves as their products evolve and pull out a chain of precedent if they are questioned. If a company produces one third person shooter, they don't want to have problems doing another differant one, because of similarities to another game they had rights to but no longer possess. As much as I hate derivitive games, nobody would benefit from constant warfare over the rights to every generic first or third person space-soldier
themed shooter out there based on similarity.... an arguement that would probably end with something like the guy who did "Trantor" (an old bargain basement game for early PCs) buying a manmade island with mountains shaped like his head all over it.
I'm not saying this is good, just that the problem is deeper than most people give it credit for. As corrupt as the industry is, and as much as I gripe about it, you have to understand there are SOME valid positions there and reasons why certain things are done.
In the end this goes beyond piracy, SOPA, or anything else, and the need to simply lob the entire US IP/Copyright system into the trash and redesign it without grandfather clauses. No matter how much we need that though nobody really has the guts to do it because of the fallout it would case both domestically and internationally. One of the disadvantages to our system of goverment (in comparison to all of it's advantages) is that transient politicians always have to worry about being re-elected, and people hate chaos and uncertainy even in the short term when there will be long term benefits. This means we very rarely see big issues addressed because the short term fallout to any major change is going to be enough to get someone booted out of office and replaced by someone running on a platform of re-establishing the old, broken system to end the immediate problems. The US can't really do things that are going to pan out in 10-20 years because no matter what is claimed nobody wants to deal with it or be patient and any hardship that can be tied to any politician's plan that is happening right now can lead to that guy being booted from office..... so basially, like it or not, we're likely to be stuck with what we're dealing with short of something akin to an actual revolution to force change. If you look back at the left wing terrorists of years past that helped build modern liberalism, you can see what it takes to make the goverment change in any radical way. Like it or not those concerned over games, or even copyrights and IPs in general, just don't have the following, or the fire among the followers, to do anything but bellyache and write easily ignored petitions.
)