Lawyer Destroys Arguments for Game Piracy

[DYin01]

I've pirated quite a few games, I won't deny that. However, since I've gotten on Steam I've started buying my games a lot more. I still have to download them with the same slow internet, but I am putting down money for it. Why? Because the prices on Steam are a lot more reasonable. I refuse to put down 60 bucks for a game, unless I know it's incredibly good and I'll love it for hours upon hours.

 

[targren]

"Destroys?" What a joke. He didn't even mention any real specifics, much less counter them with the complete crushing logic that would be "destroying" them. Journalism's looking a little jaundiced there, Escapist...

 

[targren]

The Neil Gaiman defense.

I rest my case.

(If you don't know what I'm talking about, look up Neil talking about piracy. It's brilliant.)

Got a link? Most of what I find when I do that is posts mentioning the "Neil Gaiman defense" but not the defense itself. <_<

 

[Dastardly]

snip

Instead of faffing around with dictionaries to define a legal term, why don't you actually look at the LEGAL definition of theft (you know, the definition that the courts actually give a shit about)? Then you would see that there is no theft without deprivation and that copying a game is not theft. Hell, I even posted a direct quote from the leading UK criminal law practitioners text that specifically states as much.

And don't try and say "oh, I mean it in a colloquial sense". Rubbish, you're using a legal term and accusing people of a crime, so use the legal definition.

Avoid telling people what they are or are not saying, what they do or don't mean, particularly when the person is here and able to address any of your misunderstandings. There's no need for you to assume, you can just ask me -- certainly better than telling me what I'm saying.

I'm not arguing the legal definition here, because (as mentioned in an earlier reply to someone else, if you'd like to find it) the law needs to more tightly categorize crimes. They categorize them not based solely on the offense, but on the means and circumstances. That's why "larceny" and "robbery" are different crimes, though both are STEALING.

You've surely argued with many others about this, and I'm sure several of them argued this from a legal standpoint. I'm not those people, and I'm not arguing that.

 

[saregos]

Let c be the value of a hypothetical 'lost sale' with d being the number of pirated copies.

The lost sale argument would state the cost would be cd.

On the other hand, there 'there is no loss' argument, would instead state the loss is 0, and thus the cost would be 0d, or zero.

We know, however, the truth is somewhere in the middle, therefore the actual cost per unit, x follows this:

0<x<c

We can all agree this is correct yes?

Oh hey, x is greater than zero... turns out piracy has a cost!

You're missing a bit, though.

Let t be the value of a sale. t>c, and quite possibly much greater.

Let y be the number of consumers who are convinced to buy the game by being exposed (either directly or indirectly) to a pirated copy.

Based on this, we can see that the "cost" of piracy would be xd-ty. This cost is negative (i.e. is actually profit) iff y>xd/t. Since x<<t, this implies that y can be << d and still fulfill this requirement.

Oh, hey, it's entirely possible for this to happen! Turns out piracy might actually help you turn a profit!

Well, if you make a game good enough people actually want to own it after being exposed to it, at least...

See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qkyt1wXNlI for a discussion on the relative dangers of obscurity vs. piracy. In the current market of thousands of games being available, it's obscurity that's the real threat.

 

[grigjd3]

I'm against piracy and against DRM. It seems, however, that either side has this misconceived notion that one is the solution to the other. What really bothers me, however, is the time and effort given over to law enforcement and DRM when they do NOT solve the problem. I often feel like a game's publisher is spending as much money insuring I can't play what I legally bought from them as they are in developing the game. You can attempt to shock me with numbers all you want but the really bothersome number to me is the number of times I had to call into a DRM company to get them to turn my copy of BioShock back on. That's unforgivable and it doesn't affect pirates in any way shape or form. Until SecuROM sends me a check compensating me for my time, effort, energy and stress of dealing with their horrifying system, then as far as I am concerned, they're the worst of the criminals.

 

[saregos]

The Neil Gaiman defense.

I rest my case.

(If you don't know what I'm talking about, look up Neil talking about piracy. It's brilliant.)

Got a link? Most of what I find when I do that is posts mentioning the "Neil Gaiman defense" but not the defense itself. <_<

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qkyt1wXNlI

 

[Asehujiko]

Lawyer Destroys Arguments for Game Piracy

A self-described game lawyer explains why arguments in favor of piracy are bunk.

Whenever the prosecution of game piracy is mentioned [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/105521-CD-Projekt-Plans-to-Make-Witcher-2-Pirates-Sorry], the pirates (or, at least, apologists) come out of the woodwork to defend the crime. There's no sure-fire way to go after IP addresses that have downloaded games illegally, they say, because the hackers can just mask their IP address. Or just because a game was downloaded doesn't mean that the computer's owner was the pirate. Worse, pirates say that any prosecution is just a way to scare people or that most of the time pirates become real customers of the game. Jas Purewal is a lawyer based in London and he pointed out today that most of those arguments don't hold up to any real logical scrutiny.

Purewal says there is really no evidence that most pirates have the desire or technical chops to effectively mask their IP address, and even if some did, that's hardly a reason to stop going after pirates. "There's no empirical evidence so far to support how often IP spoofing is done," he said. "In reality, I suspect fairly few pirates actually go to the trouble of disguising themselves. Besides which, just because the method is not perfect, doesn't mean we should throw our hands up in the air and do nothing, does it?"

The notion that piracy does not equate to lost sales is just as erroneous. "Piracy might result in an eventual purchase of a game, but in the meantime it means a financial loss for the developer," Purewal said. "Sadly developers are not gamer banks, willing to effectively loan gamers money until we decide we like them enough to pay them."

Even though Purewal is a lawyer and should therefor be on board for litigation solving all problems, he's also a gamer. The solution to piracy should come from publishers offering better ways for customers to enjoy their games, not suing willy-nilly. "If we can reduce piracy through the means of technology and via the market, then that's got to be better than getting lawyers involved," he said. He applauds platforms like Steam that are a form of DRM which don't slap paying customers in the face.

The arguments for game piracy seem a bit flimsy in response to stories like abominable list of pirated games from TorrentFreak [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114429-The-Witcher-2-Pirated-Roughly-4-5-Million-Times-Says-Dev]. The games industry can't just ignore these thefts, and no amount of backwards logic can argue the impact of piracy away.

Source: NextGen [http://www.next-gen.biz/opinion/those-who-defend-game-pirates]


Permalink

I like the fact that this guy's logic has bigger holes then anything he speaks out against and actually renders his own opinion invalid and you try to reinforce his position by linking two articles with mutually exclusive statistics.

Lost sales are impossible to measure and therefor the wost possible result is true
AND
IP masking is impossible to measure and therefor it doesn't exist
can not co-exist

Witcher 2 was pirated 4.5 million time
AND
Crysis 2 was the most pirated game at 3.9 million times
can not co-exist

For who's benefit are you posting this? Nobody who pirates games is going to stop because an angry man on the internet condescendingly told them they're evil if you flat out contradict your own argument doing so, people ambivalent on the issue aren't going to see your side in a more positive light after this sensationalist faux newspost that doesn't make any sense internally if they weren't already driven away by the aggressive polarizing tone and people who agree with you can only get disillusioned, not "leveled up" in how much they support you by false rhetoric like this.

 

[Dastardly]

You don't understand what a no true scotsman fallacy is.

I certainly am. If you feel that it has been misrepresented, a better approach would be to say, "Could you clarify, because to me it sounds like you're saying..." as opposed to simply telling someone else what they do or do not understand. I'll assume you're requesting clarification and proceed from there -- the above is just sort of a friendly tip for civil discussion.

It isn't a case of two different debaters having a different fundamental understanding of what is meant by a given axiomatic term, it's a case where one debater redefines an axiomatic term ad hoc:

I would argue that the latter results from the former. One debater redefines a term mid-stride because they realize they have a different understanding than the other debater. What turns it from "clarification" into a "fallacy" is when the clarification contains simply arbitrary details.

To use your example:

A: Piracy isn't theft
B: Yes it is, it is taking without paying
A: Piracy isn't true theft

That is basically what's happening here, clumsy though it may be. The clarification they make first isn't that it's a legal definition thing. It's that "In order to be theft, the other person has to now be missing that property." That's not a requirement of the definition of "stealing." It's being arbitrarily added in order to narrow the working definition and exclude my point after-the-fact -- rather than using the axiomatic definition, they are using a more strict definition that is idiomatic to the piracy community of the time (or maybe just "self-serving").

Another example is appending, "It's not stealing unless it's physical property." Another arbitrary adjustment to the definition to avoid adjusting the position.

However, I can understand where your grievance with my use of NTS may lie:

This is different from someone saying, "Piracy is not stealing in the eyes of the law, and citing, for instance, Downling vs. United States (1985) (cited earlier). At this point, it became clear that myself and the other participant were working from definitions that come from two different arenas -- myself, from the colloquial understanding, the other from the more strict legal understanding.

At that point, the debate changed focus to account for the two of us approaching from different frames of reference. No fallacy involved, just a lack of clarity that was soon corrected.

A: "Piracy is not stealing."
B: "Piracy fits the Oxford definition of stealing, in addition to the general public understanding of the term -- obtaining something that ain't yours."
A: "Ah, I see. Piracy is not stealing in the eyes of the law, and is treated as a separate crime (copyright infringement)."
B: "Ah, I see as well. I'm speaking in the general sense, not the strict legal sense. I disagree with the current legal stance (from 1985) on ideological grounds."

Again, there's no redefinition of terms in that debate -- there was simply a failure to define the terms of discussion beforehand. Happens all the time on the internet, and it's no biggie to go back and set the right stage.

Hopefully this cleared up what I'm saying is (and isn't) a No True Scotsman argument here.

 

[saregos]

Intellectual property is still a relatively new concept in the eyes of the law. It hasn't been around as long as money has, in its various forms. Given enough time, as the world becomes more and more information-focused, we'll begin to see intellectual property gain ground as the same kind of concept that is behind our most basic ideas of "ownership" and "monetary value."

It sure as hell shouldn't. This crap idea that you can "own" an idea or implementation is what drives patent trolls, the patent thicket surrounding smartphones, software patents (ugh), and many other things that actively harm innovation.

As for copyright - No. Just... no. Without expirations and limitations on copyright (as one-sided and vile has those have become, they still matter) you wouldn't have:
Pretty much any movie ever made.
Pretty much any video game ever made.
Pretty much any song ever made.

Everything is a re-mix. The ownership culture that has sprung up surrounding copyright and patents is one of the most vile and disgusting cases of the government actively working against the public's best interests that has ever existed.

 

[ProjectTrinity]

*Listens patiently*

or that most of the time pirates become real customers of the game.

Lolnoooooooo.

The ironic thing about pirates is that they think they can make up generalizations but the opposing team can't. Frankly, human nature tells me that if they were pirate enough to pirate a game, there's a *minority* that will turn noble and buy it. Seeing that humans are capable of justifying worse without being checked (just check your history books, loves) should tell you that the quote is naively optimistic at best.

Of course, if I'm wrong, perhaps I should place one more card down for humanity.

 

[Lord Kloo]

Ah pirates, they'll always be one step ahead of the authorities, its their job to be so..

Pirates will never go, even when sites get taken down it goes back up within hours of someone re-pasting it online (big technical words went out of the window here, replaced by sloppy understanding of the web), we might as well get rid of DRM as its useless and indiscriminate in its approach, not that I have much problem personally but seem people seem to have beef with DRM..

On another note I don't remember the days when the British Navy pulled over every ship on the high seas to inspect that the ship wasn't being run by pirates.. that would have gone out of the window very quickly..

Also this isn't technically true theft as instead of stealing a item that concerns mass (ie a cd version of a game) and thus produces a negative cost for the developer who has lost mass these pirates are effectively copying that mass and redistributing the extra copies by torrent sites or other dodgy places..
Therefore it would be equivalent to going into a jewelry shop, cloning some fancy piece of overpriced diamond and then walking out with the copy you created, that is assuming you never intended to buy the overpriced jewelery in the first place for various reasons..

 

[DarthFennec]

Purewal says there is really no evidence that most pirates have the desire or technical chops to effectively mask their IP address, and even if some did, that's hardly a reason to stop going after pirates. "There's no empirical evidence so far to support how often IP spoofing is done," he said. "In reality, I suspect fairly few pirates actually go to the trouble of disguising themselves. Besides which, just because the method is not perfect, doesn't mean we should throw our hands up in the air and do nothing, does it?"

I'm pretty sure I've never heard this particular argument in favor of piracy before, and if people actually use it it's an incredibly stupid one. Just because some people want to make it harder to track themselves doesn't have anything to do with whether we should prosecute them or not. And yeah, most people don't go through the trouble of masking their ip. Why? It could be because they lack expertise, like the lawyer said. It also could be because a lot of good ip masking techniques (proxy networks and such) make the piracy itself happen incredibly slowly, which kind of defeats half the purpose I would imagine. But it also could be because they don't feel that they should have to hide. Why should someone obscure their identity when they don't feel as if they're doing anything wrong? Going out in public and getting yourself prosecuted for things you don't think you should be prosecuted for is a perfectly viable form of protest.

The notion that piracy does not equate to lost sales is just as erroneous. "Piracy might result in an eventual purchase of a game, but in the meantime it means a financial loss for the developer," Purewal said. "Sadly developers are not gamer banks, willing to effectively loan gamers money until we decide we like them enough to pay them."

It's not really a loss ... the developer hasn't lost anything. If a pirate breaks into a developer's bank account and steals sixty dollars, only then can you say that they have suffered a financial loss at the hand of the pirate. Or if they go to the store and steal the disk, because that's physical property (although that would be more stealing from the store rather than the developer). And it is true (at least according to most of the pirates I've talked to) that for the most part, if one really enjoys a game, they will buy it later for the express purpose of supporting the developer. Although, I gather this seems to happen much more often with music and movies than with games.

But honestly I don't think it matters what the developers are `willing to let' their gamers do, because gamers are doing this whether the devs like it or not. But honestly, which waiting game is better for the developer? Stealing a game, realizing you like it, and then giving support to the dev, or sitting around and waiting for a game to be cheap used at GameStop so you can buy it for a low price, which doesn't support the dev at all? Personally I think the latter is worse, but that's the one we don't prosecute. And I honestly think there's something wrong with that. The fact that developers are not `willing to loan gamers money', yet they're fine with gamers obtaining their products without paying them at all just seems ridiculous.

But getting back to the point, it really isn't a loss for the developer. For the most part, if pirates didn't pirate a game, they won't buy the game either. Games are expensive, and, as with any expensive thing, you want to make sure you're getting your money's worth before you make the purchase. If you've already played through the game a few times and you still love it, you know that it's worth your money, so you buy it. If you haven't played the game before, you don't go blow sixty bucks on it. Now, I don't pirate games (or anything for that matter), but I do go on youtube and watch let's plays of games before I buy them, for that very reason. To know if a game is worth my sixty dollars, I need to be exposed to it first, and reviews and demos just don't cut it. And from what I hear, this is the mentality of pirates as well. So no, devs aren't losing anything when people pirate. They just aren't necessarily gaining anything either.

Even though Purewal is a lawyer and should therefor be on board for litigation solving all problems, he's also a gamer. The solution to piracy should come from publishers offering better ways for customers to enjoy their games, not suing willy-nilly. "If we can reduce piracy through the means of technology and via the market, then that's got to be better than getting lawyers involved," he said. He applauds platforms like Steam that are a form of DRM which don't slap paying customers in the face.

Steam can also be applauded for selling games for a very low price. I just bought Portal and Portal 2 from Steam for less than nine dollars, total. If I were to buy them from Best Buy it would have cost me sixty dollars. I bought Cthulhu Saves the World for three dollars today, but it turns out that .net games like CSTW and Terraria don't work in WINE and I therefore can't play them, but frankly I'm fine with that. If I had bought a game for sixty dollars only to realize it was impossible to play, I'd be pissed right the fuck off. But three dollars is a completely different story. My point is exactly what I said before: If you pay a high price for something, you want to be sure you get your money's worth. If you pay five dollars for something then getting your money's worth isn't as important. It's okay if your five dollar game sucks, because you only wasted five dollars. That's definitely a big part of the success of Steam, is that they have low prices.

Of course the other thing is DRM. That's the whole reason games like Spore have such high piracy rates, because of their horrifying DRM. But the DRM in Steam games or games like Minecraft are built to help the paying customer, as well as hinder the pirate. If game companies want to eliminate piracy, they have to have better service than the pirates do. That's all there is to it.

 

[EtherealBeaver]

I find the headline for the thread quite misleading. He approached some of the arguments but by no means all of them.

The main argument I see for pirating games is that it is not fair to expect customers to pay 60$ for a game they have no idea how is other than the general genre and a few screenshots. Since anti pirates like to use stealing cars as a valid example, would you ever buy a car you didn't try? I expect not and neither would I buy a game I hadn't tried the demo of, tried at a PC cafe or at a friends house.

As far as I see from friends who pirate games, 90% of all games they enjoy are bought. I am not defending the remaining 10% which they enjoy and do not buy - but I am definitely defending the hundreds of games they tried and found to be nothing but shoddy development disguised by fancy retouched screen shots of "ingame footage" or pre-manufactured hype.

None of the top 5 games pirated (according to the cited TorrentFreak article) have demos - coincidence? I doubt it.

Even so, many demos are so poorly made and do not really show what the game is about or what kind of pace it has going for it, that they are worthless as a platform for seeing if it is a game you would like or not. Most of the demo's I try are pretty bland or outright uninteresting and it is not until later when I watch a "Lets Play" video or see it being played at a friends house that I see how interesting the game really is.

And no I am not defending all piracy but I am defending the right to see what a product is about before you buy it. We do this with houses, cars, boardgames, household appliances, clothes and more or less every single other thing we buy so why should video games be exempt from this?

 

[ResonanceSD]

On another note I don't remember the days when the British Navy pulled over every ship on the high seas to inspect that the ship wasn't being run by pirates.. that would have gone out of the window very quickly..

Ok, so you're either being wilfully ignorant, or you don't understand the modern version of the word "pirate".

Also, you know what Britain did do to get rid of pirates? Hired other pirates to sail around killing pirates not on the payroll. Those that the Brits didn't kill themselves, that is.

 

[Asehujiko]

as opposed to simply telling someone else what they do or do not understand.

Like the whole article you are defending is doing?

 

[ResonanceSD]

1. Make games 30?/£/$ whatever new, money is hard to come by to play an hobby.

2. Provide valid motivation to not pirate (free DLC, good online service)

3. Use cartridges with flash memory.

The whole point about hobbies is that they are luxuries. If you can afford a game console, you can probably afford a game to play on it. If not, there are plenty of ways to play games for free. There's an excellent Extra Credits video on Piracy which you should probably check out.