Lawyer Destroys Arguments for Game Piracy

[the clockmaker]

"CD Projekt's DRM-less Witcher 2 being pirated more than it was purchased"

What does that tell you, boys and girls?

It tells us that when faced with a choice between PAYING to have malware installed on your PC, or taking a free copy someone ran through the virus-checker, people will take the one that doesn't have malware.

DRM encourages Piracy.

I'm pretty sure that you read that statement wrong.

If DRM encourages piracy and
The witcher 2 had no DRM ie is DRM less therefore
The witcher 2 should not have been as pirated as DRM heavy titles

The Witcher 2 was heavily pirated which leads us, boys and girls back to the point that while DRM does suck, it is just another in the long long long line of flimsy defences that pirates throw up to justify their receiving a product/service without paying for it.

A self entitled consumer base encourages piracy.

only that it has been debunked as a myth that witcher2 would have been pirated that often. it turned out they counted connections in torrent networks as downloads, not the actual number of finished downloads. due to the structure of p2p networks that number is of course many, many times higher.
the real numbers are pretty much like any AAA title, be it with or without DRM. DRM doesn't stop anyone, it might slow things down for a few days maybe. most downloads come with cracks already packaged into the game nowadays.

To all, sorry, I was going by the post that I was quoting. I still stand by this though

A self entitled consumer base encourages piracy.

 

[chuckman1]

This will get us nowhere.
Don't you all realize there's no black and white only grey?
Piracy has negatives and positives like everything on Earth.
There is no absolute good or absolute evil.
Piracy can cause lost sales, it can also cause a game to become more popular.
Piracy is not truly good or evil, just in the middle.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

Someone call the fire department...

[image/]http://www.funnyforumpics.com/forums/flame-insults/1/Belittle-Flame_Thrower.jpg[/IMG]

 

[Luigicheater]

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.

Here's the part of the pro-piracy argument that has the least logic, to me. What entitles you to even a single second of their game, let alone a whole two or three hours? Companies spend millions of dollars and months of development on producing games. You are, by no damnable stretch of the imagination, entitled to their product. I understand that this is a hard concept to understand, so let me give you a metaphor.

I propose to you the following situation: You are at a restaurant. You ask to have a steak (video game) and it is brought out to you. You take a bite (play it for any length of time... At all), but decide that after one bite it is simply not up to your standards of what a "steak" is ("This game sucks"). For the sake of the argument, we will even say that you spit the half-eaten morsel of steak back out onto the plate as a measure of good will (You remove it from your hard-drive). You then get up and try to leave the restaurant without paying. The problem is, in the real world of monetary compensation for products and services, you have to pay for something whether or not you found it to be "satisfactory". If the steak was somehow not cooked to the specifications you asked for (assuming you even specified how you wanted it cooked) or they brought you out a slab of ribs instead of a steak, you would have some a legitimate case for receiving a refund, but you received the steak just as you asked for it. You owe the restaurant money regardless of whether or not you think they deserve your money.

But of course, it is to be assumed that this metaphor is "completely off" and "does not represent the situation at all". I'm sorry that the metaphor isn't good enough for you. The point of a metaphor is to explain a situation in a more understandable context.

I could easily point out that pirating music is bad, but I'm sure that will fall upon deaf ears as well. I find the pro-piracy argument that games are "too expensive" to be hilarious, considering that people make the same argument for pirating $1 songs on iTunes.

The "DRM" argument is the only one that holds any real water, because it is a case of a manufacturer putting limits on what their products can do by default, but even this is flimsy at best because you have the right to not buy their products. No where in any form of government is there a right for you to steal somebody's property.

If you want to steal products from people, fine. Do it. Just don't justify it as "not theft". Understand that you are taking something that you did not pay for. I don't care what your excuse is and I don't care if you care or not, but the least you can do for me is acknowledge that it is illegal.

 

[ResonanceSD]

At present, I'm just toeing the company line, as loudly as I can. As you might have noticed. And as I said. directly. In the post you quoted.

I apologize, just seemed quite ambiguous. Guess your stuck between a rock and a hard stone with the looks of things. Sadly I'm unable to do anything about the bill, being a Brit I can't veto against it (least I don't think so) and while it won't change our laws in Briton, it will still drastically affect us along with the rest of the world.

It will have a direct impact on the British legal system due to the fact that international "test cases" as a basis for law in other countries is getting bigger. Spain just launched something that's being touted as a trial run of SOPA.

Well its good to know that one Country can change the laws of others at their will. I'll sleep pleasantly tonight knowing that fact. Would have thought fair use rights would have made this bill forfeit. Guess its time to say good buy to the internet soon enough. Though last I checked its been delayed for a while so I guess we can enjoy our short period of internet freedom while it lasts.

Well, no they can't. They just open up possibilities of other jurisdictions adopting similar laws under the "it worked for so it'll work here" principle.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

The notion that piracy does not equate to lost sales is just as erroneous.

No, it's not. Someone who pirates a game was not definitely going to buy it if they could not pirate it. So if you stop all piracy, it does not mean that all those pirated copies would turn into sales on a 1:1 ratio. This is hardly rocket science, but some people try very hard to ignore common sense.

How is this article titled 'Lawyer Destroys Arguments for Game Piracy', when he does not even discuss any pro piracy arguments. The only things he is talks about are evidential short comings of enforcement and the industries wrong assumptions about how much piracy is costing them.

Why does he have to talk about the pro piracy arguments when there shouldn't be any pro piracy arguments in the first place.

It is like talking about convenience store robberies and then somebody telling people that their discussions on how to stop such robberies are invalid because they didn't look at the pros of convenience store robberies.

It doesn't matter if what is being stolen is physical or digital or that there is an infinite supply.

Theft isn't just depriving somebody of something, it is also people taking things that don't belong to them.

In no way is there an argument for that. Even if the people can't get the game in their country, that is just too bad, that is life and it can be unfair. They don't have to play the game, they don't have a right to play the game.

There is no counter point to an argument against piracy, because piracy is illegal. There never will be until somehow people stealing a product that doesn't belong to them isn't illegal. Stealing will always be illegal.

 

[ResonanceSD]

Snip

Snip^2

Here's a link to what I was talking about. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/how-the-us-convinced-spain-to-adopt-internet-censorship.ars

From Ars Technica.

 

[Frostbite3789]

No matter what one thinks of piracy, the notion that the notion that piracy does not equate to lost sales is erroneous is erroneous. I might download hundreds of games, none of which I would ever play (let alone buy). Yet they argue that these hundreds of downloads would equal hundreds of lost sales. Almost certainly there are some sales lost due to piracy, but how many has not been investigated, and there are positive effects of piracy as well. I doubt they're big enough to compensate for sales lost but there is no way anyone can be sure of that without doing proper research. Both sides should stop pretending to know for certainwhat the effects of piracy are.

I wouldn't have eaten that candy bar if I couldn't have stolen it and had to buy it.

Herp derp.

 

[ResonanceSD]

No matter what one thinks of piracy, the notion that the notion that piracy does not equate to lost sales is erroneous is erroneous. I might download hundreds of games, none of which I would ever play (let alone buy). Yet they argue that these hundreds of downloads would equal hundreds of lost sales. Almost certainly there are some sales lost due to piracy, but how many has not been investigated, and there are positive effects of piracy as well. I doubt they're big enough to compensate for sales lost but there is no way anyone can be sure of that without doing proper research. Both sides should stop pretending to know for certainwhat the effects of piracy are.

Ok, help me out. What's *a* positive effect of piracy?

 

[ResonanceSD]

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?"

No, but it does mean that companies need more evidence than just an IP address to take people to court.

The notion that piracy does not equate to lost sales is just as erroneous.

No, it's not. Someone who pirates a game was not definitely going to buy it if they could not pirate it. So if you stop all piracy, it does not mean that all those pirated copies would turn into sales on a 1:1 ratio. This is hardly rocket science, but some people try very hard to ignore common sense.

How is this article titled 'Lawyer Destroys Arguments for Game Piracy', when he does not even discuss any pro piracy arguments. The only things he is talks about are evidential short comings of enforcement and the industries wrong assumptions about how much piracy is costing them.

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 as I predicted in my comment to the top pirated games article, the figures now are being reported as fact even though they are ESTIMATES based on bad data collection methodology. And the two ESTIMATES don't even tally as if the Witcher 2 Piracy ESTIMATE was right, then the game would have appeared in the top 10 Torrentfreak article.

I don't like games being pirated and buy all of mine, but the reporting / journalism here on this issue, leaves a lot to be desired. All these badly sourced ESTIMATES do is convince developers to add more intrusive DRM schemes which only affect legitimate buyers, like myself.

I'm sorry, you think this is about journalism? This is about propaganda, just like most things. You "borrow" the authority and respect of someone else to legitimize your opinion in the eyes of the audience, and you do this repeatedly and aggressively until it's becoming harder and harder to reject. You coat it all in very powerful and explicit words and attack a faceless opponent who can't defend himself, if he even exists at all. You describe this "foe" with negative attributes and make it clear than these bad things apply to yourself as well if you even slightly share the thoughts of that faceless "bad guy". You put words and arguments in the mouth of this "bad guy", and phrase them in such a way that they become easy and straightforward to debunk and dismantle. You never go deeper into the subject and look into it in a meaningful way, because that's not what you're after. You're not looking to educate anyone, you're looking to persuade them.

And thus, 'opinion'. I work for News Corporation, what you've essentially described, with your own hilarious rhetoric, is ANY OPINION PIECE IN THE WORLD. Well done on deconstructing the genre.

 

[Luigicheater]

To those who claim that piracy is not "theft", I understand your disconnect. You think that the time, efforts, and ideas of others should be free. You feel entitled to the time of other people for free. It is assumed that since there is not a tangible "good" or "product" that it is simply not a real theft, it is merely some form of "right".

By this same definition, therapy is a useless service because people are charging you for something that is, by the previous definition, completely free.

However, time is money. Nothing is free. Why? Because if you're not going to pay people, then they will not do anything for you. If you want a therapist to help you get over a phobia, you have to pay them. If you want a game, you have to pay for it. The only way a pirate leaves for game developers to make money is in-game advertisements, and I'm pretty sure that we're all against those.

If you want games that are only created out of the goodness of the hearts of others, then go play chess. Problem is, you're going to have to buy a chess set to do that. Just because it's harder to steal a chess set doesn't make it any less illegal than stealing games.

 

[w00tage]

While not a pirate myself, I find that its this lawyer's arguments that don't hold up to any logical scrutiny.

1. 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?"

Yes. Yes, an imperfect method of establishing the identity of a suspected criminal specifically does mean you should not be making allegations of criminal activity based solely on it. That's part of the whole "who do we charge" deal in law enforcement, it's a fundamental process and it cannot be put aside for the convenience of the plaintiff. If the method cannot generate sufficient evidence to support the allegation, you need other methods to get the requisite evidence.

2. 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."

The idea that every pirated copy is pure speculation on Mr. Purewal's part. There have been plenty of improved anti-piracy measures taken after software has been made available for piracy, so the owning companies have data on changes in sales due to improved protections. If this data indicates that new anti-piracy measures boost sales by reducing piracy, let's see it please, because that's the only thing that can transform Mr. Purewal's speculation into a factual statement.

It's my personal belief that software piracy is a direct response to and result of the bought-and-paid-for-in-Congress abrogation of consumer protection laws in favor of "license agreements" that have allowed software companies to lie to, cheat and steal from consumers for over a decade now. The irony is that said release from the consumer protection laws was done to protect companies from (drum roll please) - piracy via disk copy. Bring back consumer protection laws for software sales, clean up the lying, cheating and stealing on the part of software companies, and I'll wager that software piracy shows a massive decline in popularity. All of the people who are currently using it as a "try before you buy" system won't have any reason to do so if they can trust what they're reading on the advertisements and have the right to return the product if it doesn't work for them.

And yes, we can completely do this using our current digital distribution platforms, like Steam. Those systems can already tell how many hours we have spent playing a game, so it's not much of a stretch for them to determine how much of the game has been played, so that a standard for whether a return is a reasonable solution to a reported problem can be set and understood by all sides.

 

[ph0b0s123]

The notion that piracy does not equate to lost sales is just as erroneous.

No, it's not. Someone who pirates a game was not definitely going to buy it if they could not pirate it. So if you stop all piracy, it does not mean that all those pirated copies would turn into sales on a 1:1 ratio. This is hardly rocket science, but some people try very hard to ignore common sense.

How is this article titled 'Lawyer Destroys Arguments for Game Piracy', when he does not even discuss any pro piracy arguments. The only things he is talks about are evidential short comings of enforcement and the industries wrong assumptions about how much piracy is costing them.

Why does he have to talk about the pro piracy arguments when there shouldn't be any pro piracy arguments in the first place.

Because that's what the title of the story said he talked about, i.e 'Lawyer Destroys Arguments for Game Piracy'.

This was a comment about the sensational and actually inaccurate title of the story. Not specifically a critique of what he actually said.

It is like talking about convenience store robberies and then somebody telling people that their discussions on how to stop such robberies are invalid because they didn't look at the pros of convenience store robberies.

It doesn't matter if what is being stolen is physical or digital or that there is an infinite supply.

Theft isn't just depriving somebody of something, it is also people taking things that don't belong to them.

In no way is there an argument for that. Even if the people can't get the game in their country, that is just too bad, that is life and it can be unfair. They don't have to play the game, they don't have a right to play the game.

There is no counter point to an argument against piracy, because piracy is illegal. There never will be until somehow people stealing a product that doesn't belong to them isn't illegal. Stealing will always be illegal.

The whole is piracy the same as theft is easily answered by looking at how the two crimes are treated differently in the justice system. The fact is law makers have classed the act as piracy rather than theft and kept it as a civil crime requiring companies to sue, rather than a criminal act which would mean you get arrested and send to criminal court and then prison. That seems like an end of that argument if even law makers are not convinced that they are the same thing and should be treated the same in the justice system.

 

[peruvianskys]

The whole is piracy the same as theft is easily answered by looking at how the two crimes are treated differently in the justice system. The fact is law makers have classed the act as piracy rather than theft and kept it as a civil crime requiring companies to sue, rather than a criminal act which would mean you get arrested and send to criminal court and then prison. That seems like an end of that argument if even law makers are not convinced that they are the same thing and should be treated the same in the justice system.

Just because there are substantial differences in the way the products are marketed and distributed to the point where their illegal obtaining cannot be prosecuted in the same way does not mean that philosophically or ethically they are any different.

I think killing an animal is morally the same as killing a human but I understand that there are qualitative differences in the act as to warrant different legal responses. There are millions of different situations where legal nuances lead to different approaching in litigation. That doesn't mean that the acts can't be morally considered equally.

 

[ph0b0s123]

The whole is piracy the same as theft is easily answered by looking at how the two crimes are treated differently in the justice system. The fact is law makers have classed the act as piracy rather than theft and kept it as a civil crime requiring companies to sue, rather than a criminal act which would mean you get arrested and send to criminal court and then prison. That seems like an end of that argument if even law makers are not convinced that they are the same thing and should be treated the same in the justice system.

Just because there are substantial differences in the way the products are marketed and distributed to the point where their illegal obtaining cannot be prosecuted in the same way does not mean that philosophically or ethically they are any different.

That is exactly what is means. There is no reason that piracy could not be prosecuted in the same way as theft if that was what law makers wanted.

It would be interesting of they did prosecute it the same as theft, as a criminal conviction requires a higher burden of proof. So companies would not be able to use the same extortion tactics they do at the moment, just off the back of an IP address. Just an IP address would never stand up in a criminal case.

It would also send a stronger anti-piracy message. The message they are sending at the moment is that piracy is not as bad as theft and I for one am hearing it.

 

[Toy Master Typhus]

The whole is piracy the same as theft is easily answered by looking at how the two crimes are treated differently in the justice system. The fact is law makers have classed the act as piracy rather than theft and kept it as a civil crime requiring companies to sue, rather than a criminal act which would mean you get arrested and send to criminal court and then prison. That seems like an end of that argument if even law makers are not convinced that they are the same thing and should be treated the same in the justice system.

Just because there are substantial differences in the way the products are marketed and distributed to the point where their illegal obtaining cannot be prosecuted in the same way does not mean that philosophically or ethically they are any different.

That is exactly what is means. There is no reason that piracy could not be prosecuted in the same way as theft if that was what law makers wanted.

It would be interesting of they did prosecute it the same as theft, as a criminal conviction requires a higher burden of proof. So companies would not be able to use the same extortion tactics they do at the moment, just off the back of an IP address. Just an IP address would never stand up in a criminal case.

It would also send a stronger anti-piracy message. The message they are sending at the moment is that piracy is not as bad as theft and I for one am hearing it.

However there is still a flaw in that, the burden of proof.

An IP Address at times isn't even enough to get the problem looked into. It is almost similiar to how we use bait traps to catch online predators. And I think the current message is just as bad because people almost always have to live their life from then on barely legal wages. The problem is not enough people are scared enough of the consequences because not enough people get caught. Let's face it if at least 50% of all people who pirate things were caught, we would see the amount of people who pirate drop quicker then a dive bomber.

I kinda see this as a cause and effect. If people keep living like they are entitled to the sweat of those who work the internet will be a lot more totalitarian society.

 

[ResonanceSD]

snip

Dude, if you want news, go to Kotaku, Ars Technica, Engadget, Eurogamer or a million other sites which built themselves up around "gaming news" rather than "gaming discussion". You know, the sites from which THIS site gets the news from.

EDIT: especially when the title is "Lawyer Destroys Arguments for Game Piracy"

 

[F4LL3N]

Titles wrong. Lawyer doesn't destroy arguments for game piracy. A pirated game is NOT a lost sale. If it's digital, than there's no financial loss.

Any money loss can be attributed to them making shitty games. Publishers/developers lose more money from straight up boycotts than they do people playing their games without paying for them.

I rarely buy new games anymore because I've wasted so much money on shitty games. If gamers could actually trust that their money is going to something worthwhile, they would be willing to spend more.

Good games sell more and make more. There's a reason why the whole issue of piracy has taken a 180* turn, specifically on this site. Most people finally realize the truth. It's the developer/publishers fault, not ours. They've fucked themselves over by punishing their customers and making shitty games. There's always going to be some that pirate regardless of whether they like the game or not. But now honest people don't even care about piracy. These days you'll be lucky to even get a warning for admitting to it.

Pirates are doing us a favour. Assuming SOPA doesn't pass, developers will have to one day realize their errors and actually start making decent games or continue to "lose" money.

 

[ResonanceSD]

People finally realize the truth. It's the developer/publishers fault, not ours. They've fucked themselves over by punishing their customers and making shitty games.

So people still want to consume content, and not pay for it. If the content is so bad, why would people still want to play it?

And you're seriously blaming the industry? You, yes, you there, are the reason that SOPA is even being considered.

 

[Gindil]

All your example proves is that some people are beyond any sort of respect. Pirating a free game? Pirating, of all things, THE HUMBLE INDIE BUNDLE? They can't even make the excuse of "it was a big corporation naaaah". Indie developers this time. You know, the ones we like.

That's not a coherent argument. Might want to try again.

-snip

How can downloading a game that has the option of being given away for free be theft? If the Humble Indie Bundle shows anything, piracy gives a chance to make money even if some people don't buy the game.

I'm not sure what you mean...if a game is given away for free by the devs/publishers, with the option of donating to support it, that's clearly not piracy; you're paying the set price of $0.00. Now, if you pay $0.00 for a game (by pirating, or other less-than-legal methods), when the set price is $49.99, you've just stolen. You've acquired a service/product by not paying for it. That's called theft, at least in most countries I know of.

When the first HIB came out, they complained about people torrenting the game and still they made $1 million. They learned how to make the pack of games more enticing without having to use copyright enforcement.

Also, it's not stealing. Infringement and theft continue to be two separate things. Nothing is lost from downloading. No potential income is exchanged. And by all reports, when piracy increases so does the income of musicians, artists, and movies since more people have access to the material.

Copyright enforcement through PIPA would cost $47 million [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/08/protect-ip-act-would-cost-taxpayers-47-million-private-sector-much-more.ars] annually for less than perfect protection. You can't stop piracy, nor control it. And obviously, if the government needs to protect a business from the free market and the choices of millions of people, they don't deserve to be in business.