Lawyer Destroys Arguments for Game Piracy

[XDravond]

I'm in the "what argument did he destroy" camp..
Agreed pirating is morally wrong.

Everything else is up for debate until a proper study (10k+ minimum participants, more like the whole community to get proper results..) that is either sponsored by both sides or someone completely impartial. And also by entirely unbiased researchers... Anything else might just be truth for a part of the pirates and gamers.

For example if you use only American "specimens" it's only really sure to be true for Americans...
What he puts up is just same old arguments we all heard before. (Unless your new to the Internet, then welcome to terrifying world of Internet where most people lie.)


But this study will never happen, both sides have valid arguments, neither side is entirely right.

 

[MrTub]

Good to know that Escapist doesnt show any bias in their news.



Sometimes escapist is even worse then Fox news with headlines and "information" in article.

 

[TheMadJack]

I currently own almost 200 games on Steam (plus uncounted boxed games, both old and new titles) and I'll admit I have pirated games.

Why have I done it? Titles that look fun but have a dubious feel to it; I usually end up testing for a couple of hours (more or less) then make a decision if I want to acquire it or not based on fun-factor.

Bulletstorm is the lastest I have gotten (Not long after release and I was both horrified and relieved). Horrified at the dullness of it. Relieved that I hadn't spent 40, 50$ bucks for it.

Now, understand that if there were demo versions of those dubious games in the first place I wouldn't even have to download all that data. I would be happy to download a smaller set of the game itself, test it out; the mechanics, the fun I'm having and replayability potential, to finally be able to make a decision based on personal values I find important in a game.

In the last two years I might have downloaded 5-6 games and bought NONE of them. But you know what, I didn't even finish any either. I played a couple of hours, didn't like my experience then uninstalled/deleted the whole thing.

I do not, again, DO NOT, get pirated games because I'm a cheap ass customer. I do it because I want to have fun for the money I'm spending. Nothing else. Sadly, that doesn't represent the state of mind of most "pirates".

 

[XMark]

There really weren't any good arguments for piracy to begin with. It's bad to illegally copy games and one who does that doesn't have any moral high ground to stand on unless the game wasn't available for release in their country or the original game makers were out of business or something like that.

One real issue, though, is that DRM frequently penalizes legitimate buyers more than the pirates.

 

[Grospoliner]

Not many people are willing to dump 60 dollars on a game that they may not find fun or may only last them a couple of hours. I know I'm not, I purchase games almost exclusively on sale simply because I am no longer willing to pay exorbitant prices for them, much in the same way that I will not pay 10-12 dollars to see a movie in the theater (I go to the weekend morning matinees for 5.50).

The irony here of course is that by the logic that a pirated game is an automatic lost sale, the same applies for me buying a steeply discounted game. Because I did not purchase the game at release, the company "lost" money by me not doing so. The fact that I purchased it later at a different price doesn't even enter into the equation. Non-sequitur much?

The real joke here though, is the concept that a company that gives away its product will make no money off of that product. I'm fairly certain this concept has be grossly disproved thanks to the release of hundreds of free-to-play MMOs. Did SOE not just release a press statement saying that their sales went up by 700% during the few weeks after releasing DCUO as free-to-play?

There's also the subject of returns. No software is eligible for return or resale except for console games (and thanks to the bullshit the industry is pulling with cd-keys that is slowly evaporating). Say a game releases with significant launch problems, or say there is a specific problem which prevents your hardware from running that game. Congratulations, you now own a 60 dollar paper weight (that wont even do that). Instead of the company incurring financial loss due to shoddy product design, the end consumer now has to foot that loss.

While I'm on the subject of consumer returns, why don't game publishers offer buy back programs? Do we not have such a highly effective mail network in this day and age that we can ship an object for a few dollars halfway across the globe in three to five business days? Why can't a publisher buy and sell new and used games straight from their website and then mail them direct to door? This would effectively allow the publisher to control the used game market and cut out middle men like Gamestop, giving them a huge profit when it comes to resell of used games (since they're making exactly nothing on used games currently).

If the publishers want to cry about lost sales, then they need to stop funneling money into sleazy profiteers like Gamestop. Wake up pubs! This is the digital age. You don't have to go through Steam, or EA, or Direct 2 Drive, you can host your own digital distribution AND physical distribution services which will net you both increased revenue and allow you to control content.

Don't just stop there though, allow owners of digital copies to TRADE OR RESELL THOSE DIGITAL COPIES. Don't devalue digital versions of games when all we end users are buying anyway are CD-Keys (and don't even try to convince anyone that the physical copy is worth more because its physical, when you have to activate it on steam anyway.

 

[cobra_ky]

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.

This guy gets it. Legally pursing pirates works about as well as it does for illegal immigrants or drug users. it gets a lot of people in trouble but doesn't really remove any of the incentives for bad behavior.

 

[oldtaku]

We've heard all those arguments a thousand times before - and expressed better. I mostly agree with him, but that's certainly not going to change anyone's mind.

 

[DEAD34345]

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?

Actually, that's exactly what it means. If you can't find a method to reliably catch and punish pirates, and only pirates, then you should do nothing. No matter how many criminals you catch, punishing an innocent is still wrong, and completely inexcusable if it's done in the process of punishing a crime as petty as piracy.

Also, by "not perfect", I assume he actually means "only harmful to legitimate customers" if he's referring to DRM, or "completely indiscriminate and abusable" if he's referring to something like SOPA.

 

[viranimus]

Except the Atty is wrong. The Atty is basing arguments in speculation and conjecture. Seriously the guy is in essence proposing that just because we cant prove the "owner" of an IP address was the person downloading a game, we shouldnt stop trying to prosecute them?!?! WTF Cause yanno, Just because we dont have any actual evidence to suggest Obama is a Kenyan Socialistic muslim nazi, doesnt mean we should not put him on trial for his crimes. Im glad this guy really has a solid understanding of the way the internet works, and completely understands how easy it is to create a zombie node army spoofing/hijacking IP addresses or any of the various other ways that an IP address is not a validation of identity. /facepalm.

Seriously if your an atty and first argument is not only wrong but in essence illegal, then there is no reason to take anything else you have to say seriously. So theres no reason to bother with pointing out there is no evidence that a pirated copy = a lost sale or any of the other piracy arguments.


No what I find to be an extremely disturbing trend is the levels of agenda pushing yellow journalism as of late. I do understand the point of having no tolerance toward promoting piracy. It absolutely makes sense. But there is a massive difference between refusing to allow a community become a cesspool of piracy, and blatantly using falsehoods guilt and fear mongering in order to promote and force personal opinions based on specious reason on the audience.

 

[Aggieknight]

Can we update the title of the story? There is no way his arguments "destroyed" anything. His comments, particularly the IP Address and the lost sales, are poor counterpoints at best.

 

[MrTub]

I currently own almost 200 games on Steam (plus uncounted boxed games, both old and new titles) and I'll admit I have pirated games.

Why have I done it? Titles that look fun but have a dubious feel to it; I usually end up testing for a couple of hours (more or less) then make a decision if I want to acquire it or not based on fun-factor.

Bulletstorm is the lastest I have gotten (Not long after release and I was both horrified and relieved). Horrified at the dullness of it. Relieved that I hadn't spent 40, 50$ bucks for it.

Now, understand that if there were demo versions of those dubious games in the first place I wouldn't even have to download all that data. I would be happy to download a smaller set of the game itself, test it out; the mechanics, the fun I'm having and replayability potential, to finally be able to make a decision based on personal values I find important in a game.

In the last two years I might have downloaded 5-6 games and bought NONE of them. But you know what, I didn't even finish any either. I played a couple of hours, didn't like my experience then uninstalled/deleted the whole thing.

I do not, again, DO NOT, get pirated games because I'm a cheap ass customer. I do it because I want to have fun for the money I'm spending. Nothing else. Sadly, that doesn't represent the state of mind of most "pirates".

You do it because you're a lazy-ass gamer, who puts your own immediate needs ahead of those who actually did the work to make the game.

Case in point: http://www.joystiq.com/2011/04/04/bulletstorm-pc-demo-now-out-on-steam-and-gfwl/

There ARE demo versions, you were just too damned lazy/impatient to bother finding them.

yep proof of one demo shows that every game has demo. Of course.

 

[thethingthatlurks]

I content that both pro- and anti-piracy arguments are flawed, but the "piracy=lost profit" annoys me the most. No, it doesn't. A sale would be made if I were to buy something, a sale is not made if I do not buy something. A "lost" sale would be me deciding against buying something over a competitor's product, while said sale would never have taken place while pirating. It's a subtle but important distinction: no money would have exchanged hands, and no loss of product was accrued. Some may then go on to buy the game, while others will not.

But on to something else: if piracy were indeed responsible for lost sales (which it bloody isn't!), would it be alright if I were to pirate decade old games that are not found in retail anymore, and their potential sale hence cannot possibly affect anybody's bottom line? Because that's what I'm getting from this imbecilic argument.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

Why is this newsworthy?
Piracy = bad... whoa!

And by way of the mouth of a nobody who delivers a so-so standard argument without citing any actual facts and figures to back it up, that really adds to it! So... "destroying" the counterarguments is really quite an overstatement to say the least.

Slow news day much?

 

[DEAD34345]

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?

Actually, that's exactly what it means. If you can't find a method to reliably catch and punish pirates, and only pirates, then you should do nothing. No matter how many criminals you catch, punishing an innocent is still wrong, and completely inexcusable if it's done in the process of punishing a crime as petty as piracy.

Also, by "not perfect", I assume he actually means "only harmful to legitimate customers" if he's referring to DRM, or "completely indiscriminate and abusable" if he's referring to something like SOPA.

You do realize what the trial system is about right?
Or are you saying we should only ever have a trial if we definitely know the person is guilty before we start?

There'll be no trial before websites are censored by SOPA (in fact there's practically no confirmation needed at all, that's one of the main reasons people are against it), and I've certainly never been to a trial before being punished by bad DRM for the actions of pirates (who don't have to deal with said DRM at all).

Besides which, yes, you should be fairly certain that you've got the right person before you go to a trial at all.

 

[Zachery Gaskins]

While piracy may not equate to lost sales, if I spent time and effort detailing your car's exterior and then you gave me counterfeit money to pay for it, I HAVE LOST COMPENSATION FOR THE TIME AND EFFORT I SPENT. Piracy is basically enjoying the fruits of the developers' labor and then paying them with money that doesn't exist - pretending to spend financial equity in giving it to the provider of said services, and then refusing to do so (usually without the provider knowing). That's the definition of counterfeiting.

Piracy ain't theft, and that's 100% correct: IT'S FRAUD.

 

[M.C.Dillinger]

I don't see how anyone with a brain can seriously hold the belief that a pirated game leads to a sale later. The whole point of pirating a game is to obtain it without paying. Once you have obtained it, why pay money for something you already own? Some may decide to buy the game out of respect for the developer and their work, but how often does that seriously happen? I bet it's far more common that it does not. And after you work out that you can easily get games without paying for them, that becomes a very hard habit to break. There's no undeniable reason why someone would not at least be tempted to commit piracy again and again after they see they can do it easily and without immediate negative consequence.

Thank you for posting this. you may be the one person on this form with insight.

The ?no lost sale? argument is a cornerstone of piracy of apologetics. This argument can only make sense if you know nothing about business or you are naïve and think everyone is altruistic. You, Scrustle, explain what I mean with my first point for my second I need only to remind you what happened with the recent Humble Indie Game Bundle. The abuse of their offer of a Steam version of each game in the trading oriented holiday sale was truly inexcusable greed. You can call companies greedy, but they exist to make money and few of them seek to take advantage of a charity.

Also, it is no ones fault but your own if you are a spendthrift. If you have suspicions about a games quality, stability, longevity or its ability to scale to low-end hardware they should wait a few days and ask on a form. When LA noir was on sale a few days ago I immediately went twisting forms to confirm the quality of its PC port. I found a thread of someone asking the exact same question followed by warnings that it was even more of a hack job then Grand Theft Auto IV. I saved money without having to steal anything.

I used to believe that true art was created only for its own sake. That almost all famous works from the Mona Lisa to super Mario Brothers 3 releasing proteins it by interesting self gain. Recent events have challenge this belief of mine they no longer think that this is the case. To achieve competence in a craft, let alone a mastery, and then to creating gearing work is a monumental task. One that is life consuming for most. There is the occasional Cave Story and the Bizard of Ozz, works created with nothing to lose and for thar own sake. But Bizard of Ozz was also a springboard to launch Odyssey solo career after leaving Black Sabbath and Cave Story could've been made four times as quickly if Daisuke Amaya was working on it full time.

This is all I will say for now since unlikely running up against a character limit. This sounds awfully rude but I'm really not expecting a intelligent rebuttal or for anyone reading this to understand what I'm saying.Although I do have more my mind regarding this issue.

 

[Voltano]

I know developers and publishers do put a lot of work in these games (even the crappy ones), but calling piracy equal to 'theft' makes me question back with 'how?' To me, theft is taking an object in a person's property so they no longer own it. If I took someone's $20 bill, they won't have that bill anymore. But in this case its a person getting a *copy* of the product in question, while the original person still owns the same software. "Half Life 2" was leaked onto the Internet a year before its launch--which pissed off a lot of fans and lead to the birth of Steam--but Valve still owned the game and sold it with great success.

That 'how' part seems to imply the software developers/publishers are not earning the income they would like from the game they sold on the market. Its like a bread baker saying he is being 'stolen from' by other bread bakers because he isn't making any money in the market since he isn't reaching his expected income with the sale of his bread.

To put it another way, John Funk [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/view-from-the-road/7690-View-from-the-Road-When-I-Was-a-Pirate] had an article where games in China (and from what I heard, Russia as well) were too expensive for the gamers in that country that they could only resort to piracy. Games like "Mother 3" (GBA) or "Seiken Densetsu 3" (SNES) never got sold in North America, yet are downloaded, translated, and loved by English fans. "How" is Nintendo (Mother 3) or Square-Enix (Seiken Densetsu 3, formerly known as 'Square Soft') losing income off these pirated games when they have no intention of selling their game in North America in the first place?

 

[Zachery Gaskins]

I know developers and publishers do put a lot of work in these games (even the crappy ones), but calling piracy equal to 'theft' makes me question back with 'how?' To me, theft is taking an object in a person's property so they no longer own it. If I took someone's $20 bill, they won't have that bill anymore. But in this case its a person getting a *copy* of the product in question, while the original person still owns the same software. "Half Life 2" was leaked onto the Internet a year before its launch--which pissed off a lot of fans and lead to the birth of Steam--but Valve still owned the game and sold it with great success.

That argument works fine if individual copies computer games were singular items, each of which requiring separate time and effort to fabricate.

Software development is a service, not a good, and therefore there's nothing for me to "give" that I will no longer possess once it's purchased. It's my time and effort. Once I've served you with my game, I can't very well take back that time and effort and do something more worthwhile with it if you haven't paid me.

No other service industry has this level of consumer-entitlement-based cognitive dissonance.

 

[Royas]

The arguments for game piracy seem a bit flimsy in response to stories like CD Projekt's DRM-less Witcher 2 being pirated more than it was purchased or this abominable list of pirated games from TorrentFreak [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115003-TorrentFreak-Reveals-Top-Pirated-Games-of-2011]. The games industry can't just ignore these thefts, and no amount of backwards logic can argue the impact of piracy away.

And now we are treated to the sounds of:

"It's not a lost sale, because they were never going to buy it anyway." (unverifiable ex-post-facto justification)

"Stop calling it theft. The publisher is not denied access or deprived of any property." (a "no true Scotsman" regarding the definition of "theft")

"Well the publishers need to stop being greedy, and maybe people will support them." (a deflection and complete change of topic. could be called "the Robin Hood defense.")

"If they made better games, maybe people wouldn't pirate." (logically inside-out, since any improvement to the game itself would equally improve the pirated copy. No disincentive is established.)

"People only pirate because of DRM." (reversal of the actual state of cause-effect, since DRM measures were created as a reaction to piracy, and DRM-less games are still frequently pirated)

So, now that we've got that out of the way, good article and I'm glad to hear lawyers weighing in on it.

Actually, I want people to stop calling it "theft" because theft has a specific definition. Game piracy is actually a violation of intellectual property law, not theft. People as smart as many gamers are should know and understand the difference.

The cause/effect relationship between DRM and piracy is actually much muddier than you would think. I don't pirate games, but it is possible that I may have downloaded some games, not to play but to make a point. (It is equally possible that none resided on my hard drive beyond the time it took to DL them). Purely as a reaction to what I saw as unreasonable and unconscionable DRM. So, to say people ONLY pirate as a result of DRM is incorrect. To say that people NEVER pirate as a result of DRM is equally incorrect. It's not something that can be argued in absolutes. That said, people who pirate DRMless games are real jerks who need to be taken out into the street and beaten with sticks.

The lack of lost sales is, in fact, accurate, but is not a good justification. Yes, most of those pirated games would not have been sales had there been no piracy at all (the only real experiment on this resulted in a .1% conversion rate). However, that doesn't make pirating the game right or proper. It's still an IP violation, and it is (and damned well should be!) illegal.

The other arguments never held water, in my opinion.

 

[Zachery Gaskins]

I know developers and publishers do put a lot of work in these games (even the crappy ones), but calling piracy equal to 'theft' makes me question back with 'how?' To me, theft is taking an object in a person's property so they no longer own it. If I took someone's $20 bill, they won't have that bill anymore. But in this case its a person getting a *copy* of the product in question, while the original person still owns the same software. "Half Life 2" was leaked onto the Internet a year before its launch--which pissed off a lot of fans and lead to the birth of Steam--but Valve still owned the game and sold it with great success.

That argument works fine if individual copies computer games were singular items, each of which requiring separate time and effort to fabricate.

Software development is a service, not a good, and therefore there's nothing for me to "give" that I will no longer possess once it's purchased. It's my time and effort. Once I've served you with my game, I can't very well take back that time and effort and do something more worthwhile with it if you haven't paid me.

No other service industry has this level of consumer-entitlement-based cognitive dissonance.

So then do you consider dvds, books, and music cds products, or services as well?

Yes I do, and I disapprove of piracy of them as well. Any type of purchaseable media which is "develop once, duplicate many" must be considered a service because what a Music CD is intended to be is a BEARER LICENSE to listen to the content. It is not consumed like food or clothing is. Goods are things that are absorbed or destroyed in the act of assmilating their worth.