Lawyer Destroys Arguments for Game Piracy

[Ad-Man-Gamer]

Oh, and music companies already remove the audio tracks from YouTube videos which infringe on copyrights. Just an fyi.

Diegetic sound means sound that is from the source of recording. For example, if a track was playing in the background, perhaps from a radio or cd player at the time. There is no way of removing the music without the audio sounding off or clunky. Removing the hole sound from the video would remove the baby's laughter and the mother talking to the baby. In a legal case, it would be considered that the video would not take attention away from the original track in question, And would not be prosecuted for several reasons.

1. The hole track was not in the video.
2. The track was of low quality and was quite distant.
3. The sound was obviously from an external source, and was not intentionally included.
4. The track was not the main focus of the video, and at no point attention was drawn.

The video in question was removed completely, using the DMCA act.

Also. Clarify in one post what you do and do not agree with about SOPA. My stance is piracy is a gray issue, and giving such power to anyone on sticky topics like this is always going to end in disaster.

 

[Xanthious]

How do you get more money if SOPA passes?

Here is the best way to make extra money assuming SOPA passes. First you go and get yourself a net, a big one. A net like you see in gladiator movies would probably be best. You want to make sure it's made out of good strong rope so it won't go breaking easily. Then once you have your net you get yourself a big piece of pipe made out of a strong metal and shape it in a big loop. You are going to want a pretty big loop, one that could fit over a really fat person easily.

Once you have your loop and your net you are going to want to take another straight piece of metal, a good 4' piece of really sturdy pipe will work best, and weld one end of it to the loop. Once you have your loop on a stick you are going to want to attach your net you got at the beginning to your loop. Think butterfly net. Again make sure it's on there securely that will be VERY important.

So now that you have yourself what amounts to a giant butterfly net you want to go buy a massive bag of corn. You probably want to go to someplace that sells livestock supplies for the size of bag you are going to need. I'd recommend at least 50 pounds but you wouldn't go wrong doubling that and getting a 100 pounds if you can afford it. Don't worry the corn will pay for it's self at the end of all this.

Ok time to put your net and corn to work. To do this you want to make your way to a large open space away from people. If you can find a few open acres of clear field out in the country that will be perfect. Once you pick your field you are going to want to spread that corn you bought all over the ground liberally. Make sure you get enough of it down because in this case you'd rather have too much on the ground than too little. Ideally you'd like to easily spot the corn on the ground from a good 100 yards in the air or so.

Alright so now you are in a big open field with your net and corn littering the ground. What you want to do now is wait for a flying pigs to come soaring overhead and spot the corn. Don't worry there should be a very minimal wait. Seeing as SOPA passed the skies will be lousy with the smelly flying bastards. Once they see the corn they should land, and when they do that's when you trap em in your net!

Congratulations you now have yourself a pig! It's time to get to making that money. The quickest and easiest way to make money will be to simply sell them to a local slaughter house in bulk and let them worry about the dirty work. However, if you are willing to put in a bit of work yourself you could probably make much better money killing and butchering them yourself then turning around and selling the individual meats.

Doing everything "in house" works best if you have another person working with you that way you can have on person catching the pigs and another processing them and selling the meat. If you are working alone it's probably best to simply sell them for a fair price to someone better suited to handle it.

There you go. I hope this answers your question about how people will make more money if SOPA passes.

 

[Gindil]

-snip-

I don't see your point. Piracy is still a kind of theft, in that money owed for a product is not ever paid. Companies that put out goods and services are entitled only to the money that paid to them in exchange for their good or service. I agree with Gaben's idea, though; peacefully outdoing them is probably for the best.

You still seem to be not reading my replies, so I'll put this in boldface and capital letters, as well as italicise it: I DO NOT SUPPORT PIPA OR SOPA. I repeat: I DO NOT SUPPORT PIPA OR SOPA. There needs to be a less authoritarian, oppressive way to stop these criminals.

While that terrible excuse for a human being is wrong in supporting SOPA, he had a point in the reply I read to you: pirates pirated from ethical independent developers that they claim to support because of their ethics. He's still (more than likely) right by going with the thought process of, "Those pirates are cheap bastards." And that's the reason that all my friends who pirate have given for their piracy; they're cheap. There's no ethical or moral crusade, as you and so many others make it out to be...it's simply so they don't have to spend money. Then there's me: I'd pirate from an unethical company, but I don't, because I hope they'll solve the issue on their own; in the meantime, I'll boycott them. That's how you really stick it to a company.

Here's the problem: The entire structure of SOPA/PIPA is built on the false premise that piracy is something you can legislate away. There doesn't need to be a legislative answer to all of the laws that have been passed in the last 20 years to piracy. ALL of them have failed. We had the PROIP Act which instilled the IP Czar Victoria Espinel. We've passed the ACTA, The NET Act, and the Sonny Bono Extension act. There is NO public domain at all and people aren't upset at how copyright is all about supporting the middlemen (record labels, movie industry, etc) who buy politicians and make massive returns on their income.

And again, let's put this in bold and emphasize: Not every last person you consider a pirate is doing it because of some moral high ground. Gabe Newell changed and entire country into a paying consumer market by giving the people what they wanted in that country. The complaints out of Russia was that the voice acting sucked, the prices (made by copyright law) were too high, and release dates were six months after the release of a game in the US or another part of the Eurozone.

The same thing happened to Fox [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110726/19530115274/fox-decides-to-drive-fans-to-piracy-rather-than-giving-legitimate-options.shtml] when they decided to put an 8 day hold on watching movies. And the piles of information about how to compete with infringement [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111201/03191216939/yet-another-study-shows-that-hollywoods-own-bad-decisions-are-increasing-amount-infringement.shtml] are far better for all than the stories about enforcement [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120106/11034317305/ninjavideo-admin-phara-gets-22-months-jail-500-hours-community-service-has-to-pay-mpaa-210k.shtml] where everyone loses.

Also, I don't see it as an ethical or moral issue. I see it entirely as an economic one. The pirates offer a better service, they get more money. Either step up your own game and outcompete them or sit back and say your profits are siphoned off by pirates (the better competitors).

The game market is becoming smaller and more vibrant despite copyright claims. I've never seen piracy as a form of theft. It makes no sense to say the Mugen engine destroyed sales of X-Men vs Street Fighter by allowing 5 different versions of Ken in the same game. Likewise, the truly independent games such as Cave Story continue to make money by adapting the story on different consoles. And people can still get it for free on the PC. So if people are supposedly thieves for getting better service with pirates than the original developers, then whose fault is that?

And no, I don't have to pirate. I just see it as inevitable.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

but in the meantime it means a financial loss for the developer

NO, it does not. That logic is incredibly erroneous.

Bullshit. If a thousand people download a pirated game, the developers lose the income that would have come from the payment for those thousand. It's a financially negative impact on the industry, and whatever faults you have with paying for the game, if it was worth downloading and playing in the first place, then you have no fucking excuse.

Can you prove that every single one of those 1000 would have paid for it if they didn't pirate it? No? Then that is all just speculation.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

Sorry for the double post, I was expecting that in such a busy thread, somebody would have posted in the time I took to write this...

Can you prove that every single one of those 1000 would have paid for it if they didn't pirate it? No? Then that is all just speculation.

Why is the burden of proof on those who are arguing on the side of legality? Shouldn't it be the pirates who have to prove that their illegal acts do NOT result in a loss of revenue for the developers? You can dress up petty selfishness - which, after all, is what piracy is all about - in any manner of noble rhetoric, but at the end of the day, why on earth would you think that you would have ANY right to anything if you hadn't paid the price?

And stop being ridiculous. So unless one can prove that every single pirated copy means a loss, piracy is okay? What a load of rubbish. Now, for example, I myself may or may not have got a not insignificant number of illegally downloaded movies. Would I have bought them ALL on DVD or Blu-Ray, if piracy didn't exist? No. Would I have bought SOME of them? Of course I would have. By the same token, did I legally purchase some of those movies later? Yes. I do own around 500 original movies. There is no black and white here, but to argue that I may or may not be doing ANY damage to the motion picture industry is simply risible.

See, it's about entitlement and selfishness. That is literally the extent of it. I own a huge games library - but to buy 2-3 games every month, I have to make sacrifices. I don't travel much, I do not own a car, and so on. I willingly make those sacrifices because gaming is more important to me than travelling (plus, I've pretty much been everywhere) and I live in a country with great, cheap public transport. The problem I have with piracy is the rather entitled notion that one does not need to make sacrifices of any kind, which is the very definition of petty, childish immaturity.

The person I quoted worded it like a 1,000 pirated copies equaled a 1,000 purchases of lost income. I was simply saying that that was a big assumption.

 

[Xanthious]

It makes me chuckle to see how the anti piracy crowd goes after this issue every single time it comes up. They want to argue the legality and morality of the issue but totally ignore the reality of it all.

They say piracy is wrong because it's illegal. Meanwhile the reality is you are probably more likely to get hit by lightning than you are to face any kind of punishment for pirating something.

They say it's wrong because it deprives the creators of their rightful earnings. Meanwhile the reality is that piracy is largely socially acceptable and your everyday person couldn't be paid to give a shit who is or isn't getting paid.

They like to say games/movies/music are luxuries and if you can't afford them you shouldn't have them. Meanwhile, the reality is that anyone with the slightest amount of computer literacy and an internet connection can, and usually do, get them for free with the click of a mouse.

They seem to think that if they keep parroting that it's illegal and wrong it will go away. Meanwhile the reality is that there is pretty much fuck all that anyone could do that would put any kind of meaningful dent in piracy (yeah that includes SOPA). It's been around a long long time and the pirates are light years ahead of the anti piracy crowd and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.

They say companies shouldn't be forced to compete with the pirates because piracy is wrong and illegal and people shouldn't do it. Meanwhile the reality is that a large percentage of the time the pirates offer a better product for a lower price and that isn't going to stop because what they are doing may be illegal. So no, they don't have to compete with the pirates but by choosing not to they are only hurting themselves.

The bottom line is you can scream about how wrong it is and who it's hurting until your blue in the face but it doesn't change the reality of it all. Piracy is here, it's socially acceptable, it's free of consequences, and it's not going anywhere anytime soon. The sooner the anti piracy zealots, publishers, and developers join the rest of us in reality the sooner we can make progress.

 

[TheDrunkNinja]

but in the meantime it means a financial loss for the developer

NO, it does not. That logic is incredibly erroneous.

Bullshit. If a thousand people download a pirated game, the developers lose the income that would have come from the payment for those thousand. It's a financially negative impact on the industry, and whatever faults you have with paying for the game, if it was worth downloading and playing in the first place, then you have no fucking excuse.

Can you prove that every single one of those 1000 would have paid for it if they didn't pirate it? No? Then that is all just speculation.

I repeat, if the product is worth playing, then the developers deserve to be paid what they earned for their hard work. If the game wasn't worth paying for but it was worth playing, you don't have an excuse since the creators of the IP won't be receiving the payment they earned (based on your evaluation of the product being worthwhile for it's primary function: entertainment). That isn't hard to get, is it?

And if it was still worth playing, then many of those thousand would have paid if downloading wasn't an option. Which, as I stated before, would still be a very negative financial impact on the gaming industry if they didn't.

 

[spectrenihlus]

but in the meantime it means a financial loss for the developer

NO, it does not. That logic is incredibly erroneous.

Bullshit. If a thousand people download a pirated game, the developers lose the income that would have come from the payment for those thousand. It's a financially negative impact on the industry, and whatever faults you have with paying for the game, if it was worth downloading and playing in the first place, then you have no fucking excuse.

Can you prove that every single one of those 1000 would have paid for it if they didn't pirate it? No? Then that is all just speculation.

I repeat, if the product is worth playing, then the developers deserve to be paid what they earned for their hard work. If the game wasn't worth paying for but it was worth playing, you don't have an excuse since the creators of the IP won't be receiving the payment they earned (based on your evaluation of the product being worthwhile for it's primary function: entertainment). That isn't hard to get, is it?

And if it was still worth playing, then many of those thousand would have paid if downloading wasn't an option. Which, as I stated before, would still be a very negative financial impact on the gaming industry if they didn't.

I don't know, yes developers deserve the money from people who pirate their games but if people cant get the game for free, a lot of people aren't going to even bother playing it. For example had I not been able to nab mirror's edge for my iphone for free (because of a daily EA deal I did not pirate it) there would be no way I would have played that game. I don't think that developers will see much of an increase in revenue if this bill passes.

 

[TheDrunkNinja]

Sorry for the double post, I was expecting that in such a busy thread, somebody would have posted in the time I took to write this...

Can you prove that every single one of those 1000 would have paid for it if they didn't pirate it? No? Then that is all just speculation.

Why is the burden of proof on those who are arguing on the side of legality? Shouldn't it be the pirates who have to prove that their illegal acts do NOT result in a loss of revenue for the developers? You can dress up petty selfishness - which, after all, is what piracy is all about - in any manner of noble rhetoric, but at the end of the day, why on earth would you think that you would have ANY right to anything if you hadn't paid the price?

And stop being ridiculous. So unless one can prove that every single pirated copy means a loss, piracy is okay? What a load of rubbish. Now, for example, I myself may or may not have got a not insignificant number of illegally downloaded movies. Would I have bought them ALL on DVD or Blu-Ray, if piracy didn't exist? No. Would I have bought SOME of them? Of course I would have. By the same token, did I legally purchase some of those movies later? Yes. I do own around 500 original movies. There is no black and white here, but to argue that I may or may not be doing ANY damage to the motion picture industry is simply risible.

See, it's about entitlement and selfishness. That is literally the extent of it. I own a huge games library - but to buy 2-3 games every month, I have to make sacrifices. I don't travel much, I do not own a car, and so on. I willingly make those sacrifices because gaming is more important to me than travelling (plus, I've pretty much been everywhere) and I live in a country with great, cheap public transport. The problem I have with piracy is the rather entitled notion that one does not need to make sacrifices of any kind, which is the very definition of petty, childish immaturity.

The person I quoted worded it like a 1,000 pirated copies equaled a 1,000 purchases of lost income. I was simply saying that that was a big assumption.

Don't insult me by generalizing my argument while ignoring the point. Now, try countering everything he said. If you can't, your singling out of my "speculation" was just another baseless justification.

 

[Baresark]

Lol, wow, this thread has exploded. So, to add more fuel to the fire: He has not, by any stretch of the imagination, "destroyed" pro-piracy arguments. I think his opinion is given way too much credence. Any lawyer defending piracy would have come up with as many good arguments as this guy did.

The debate will still rage because both sides of the isle make good points. While a pirated copy of the game is not definitively a lost sale, it is also not a definitive sale. Companies that don't worry about piracy (CD Projekt Red) get how many times their game was pirated thrown in their face. While on the other side, people who love their stance on piracy gobble up their games and use their service. The fact that there is no demo's around for games you are interested in is not a good reason to pirate a copy. But, when everyone is accusing every site of selling reviews, can you really wonder why no one trusts a product without trying it out first? Developers and Publishers have every right to try and reap maximum profit potential from their products, but any market should be based on demand. You can't create your own demand by dumping large amounts of money or manpower into a product that people ultimately are not interested in. That said, it gets harder to get your money back when you dump between $18Million and $28Million into a product. But they are clearly not interested in the law of diminishing returns: Essentially, there comes a point when more money doesn't make a better product.

In conclusion, there is a ridiculous amount of speculation on this subject in this thread and every other thread involving this very heated debate. I don't blame anyone, speculating is fun. It's like a zero sum game. The day ends and no one has given or taken any ground, and people can only eagerly await the end of it. It's like WW1 (pre-US involvement), but with time being the only casualty.

 

[TheDrunkNinja]

I repeat, if the product is worth playing, then the developers deserve to be paid what they earned for their hard work. If the game wasn't worth paying for but it was worth playing, you don't have an excuse since the creators of the IP won't be receiving the payment they earned (based on your evaluation of the product being worthwhile for it's primary function: entertainment). That isn't hard to get, is it?

And if it was still worth playing, then many of those thousand would have paid if downloading wasn't an option. Which, as I stated before, would still be a very negative financial impact on the gaming industry if they didn't.

I don't know, yes developers deserve the money from people who pirate their games but if people cant get the game for free, a lot of people aren't going to even bother playing it. For example had I not been able to nab mirror's edge for my iphone for free (because of a daily EA deal I did not pirate it) there would be no way I would have played that game. I don't think that developers will see much of an increase in revenue if this bill passes.

I'm thinking big picture here. However good your intentions were about downloading the game, you're just one case. Everybody is different about their tendencies and actions. It's those with not-so credulous intentions and their self-justifications that worry me. And there's a lot of them.

 

[Xanthious]

I'm thinking big picture here. However good your intentions were about downloading the game, you're just one case. Everybody is different about their tendencies and actions. It's those with not-so credulous intentions and their self-justifications that worry me. And there's a lot of them.

If piracy is something that worries you then you should be very very worried because as I said a few posts up piracy is by and large socially acceptable, free of consequence, and here to stay for a long long time. The sooner people stop treating it as a legal or moral issue the sooner progress can be made.

As I said up above piracy may very well technically be illegal but your chances of facing any consequences for it are as close to zero to make no difference. Piracy may very well be wrong in a moral sense but most people don't see it as something bad. I would argue most people look at smokers far worse than they look at a game/movie/music pirate.

It's for those reasons that arguing about piracy on moral or legal grounds is totally pointless. You want to make real headway you deal with it as a competing product and offer a better product than the pirates offer. Leading with the stick and giving people disincentive to pirate has universally failed. However, leading with the carrot and giving people a reason to buy the product has found success in many cases.

 

[keiskay]

im just curious to those who are justifying piracy saying that it does not equate to a lost sale since they were never going to buy the game in the first place. why would you spend your time and possible bandwidth limit downloading a game you have no interest in? it would be like buying a game for yourself that you had no interest buying, as in its logically stupid.

 

[JCBFGD]

-snip-(for space, not for censorship...Jesus Christ, I actually have to spell that out??)

I read your reply, and thought, "Hmm, it was 4:30 in the morning...maybe I misread." So I go back and read it. Third and fourth sentence:

I support SOPA. So does the company I work for.

So I know I didn't misread that. Later you say that you think SOPA "needs nerfed," so I suppose that counts as an implication that you don't entirely support it. And now you say you only support the idea behind it? Sounds like you need to make up your mind. But I do apologise for being confused by your stating multiple positions. I still meant what I said about PIPA/SOPA supporters, though.

And if you read what I said closely, you'd notice that I said that he doesn't read what he replies to, either. And apparently, you don't read them all that closely either. So nice try on an insult, but it doesn't really work.

 

[JCBFGD]

-snipped, still just for space-

I'm not gonna deny that all past legislation has failed. It's all been fairly draconian, though. I'm not a lawmaker, but I'm pretty sure there's some legislation that'd take it down. Hell, I'd back the government up if they applied the SOPA idea of blocking websites if they only did it to The Pirate Bay and other popular, illegal torrent sites. That's fine with me. And I think legislation like that could help to solve or lessen the problem. And while I am a proponent of the idea that "politicians are bought and sold," I'm not a proponent of the addendum to that idea which says that "politicians are bought and sold, by and large, by copyright holders." No, they're bought and sold mostly by powerful corporations who want to further their agenda.

Good on Gaben. Maybe legislators should ask for his advice on curtailing piracy. Although I find it rather pathetic that the Russian excuse for pirating was, "It had bad acting and I couldn't wait for it to come out." I mean, what, were they all impatient game critics?

Again, I think a company should be as loose as they can with anti-piracy measures, and if that doesn't work, then turn to the government. I said that already.

If you're giving pirates money, what's the point of pirating? Or are you implying that the price of $0.00 is better than $49.99? I sincerely hope it's the latter, because otherwise, that's incredibly stupid. And anyways, all the pirates I've seen on the internet make it out to be a moral/ethical struggle, and you even implied that earlier.

So what I'm basically reading when you say that pirates provide a better service and should be lauded for doing so, is that if a thief in a shady back alley sells you a stolen deluxe household appliance (which he modified slightly) for cheaper than even the store is selling their regular one, it'd be okay to buy it from him. That's what I'm getting. That's ridiculous. And also illegal. This thief, much like the pirates, makes a living on taking goods, modifying them slightly, and giving them for free or for cheap to people who are too cheap to buy a legitimate one. What in your mind tells you that this is not only okay, but is a great idea?? It's completely illegal, and also very, very stupid!

No one has to pirate. It's not inevitable. It's just sad...and also illegal...and also a form of theft.

 

[TheDrunkNinja]

I'm thinking big picture here. However good your intentions were about downloading the game, you're just one case. Everybody is different about their tendencies and actions. It's those with not-so credulous intentions and their self-justifications that worry me. And there's a lot of them.

If piracy is something that worries you then you should be very very worried because as I said a few posts up piracy is by and large socially acceptable, free of consequence, and here to stay for a long long time. The sooner people stop treating it as a legal or moral issue the sooner progress can be made.

As I said up above piracy may very well technically be illegal but your chances of facing any consequences for it are as close to zero to make no difference. Piracy may very well be wrong in a moral sense but most people don't see it as something bad. I would argue most people look at smokers far worse than they look at a game/movie/music pirate.

It's for those reasons that arguing about piracy on moral or legal grounds is totally pointless. You want to make real headway you deal with it as a competing product and offer a better product than the pirates offer. Leading with the stick and giving people disincentive to pirate has universally failed. However, leading with the carrot and giving people a reason to buy the product has found success in many cases.

I guess I'll be in the minority when that day comes since I'm not one to just give-in to behavior of any kind just because it's socially acceptable.

Though, I completely agree with your third paragraph.

EDIT: Except for the first sentence. You have people fighting tooth-and-nail to morally justify their illegal activities. If you think that will change, okay. I don't see it happening.

 

[Xanthious]

-snip-

This is exactly what I mean by arguing the moral and legal side of piracy while totally ignoring the reality of it. People won't stop pirating because it's illegal because they have little, if any, chance of facing any kind of consequences for. On the same token people won't stop because it's unethical because in the court of public opinion piracy is largely accepted. Most people simply don't look down on pirates as thieves.

As for the idea that pirates are offering a better product, well they are in a good many cases. It's irrelevant that you think it's no different than buying stolen televisions out of the back of a truck most people don't see it that way. Pirates are competing with the developers and publisher regardless of whether they want to admit it or not.

This brings me to ways of combating piracy. As I said above giving people a disincentive to pirate has failed pretty much universally. Leading with a stick simply doesn't work. Neither does trying to fix the problem with legislation. There are countless ways around SOPA as it currently stands and that number will only increase in the off chance SOPA passes. Pirates are simply too far ahead of the curve to be phased by any kind of DRM or legislation.

The one way of combating piracy that has shown success though has been to offer a superior product than the pirates offer. Looking at how Valve tackled gaming in Russia is a prime example. Turning pirates into customers is the only viable way to combat piracy. Saying you shouldn't have to compete with the pirates and refusing to do so is simply throwing your head in the sand because you don't like the reality of things.

The bottom line is people need to stop trying to approach the piracy issue from a legal or moral position. Those types of arguments are largely irrelevant even if they are correct. And they will continue to remain irrelevant as long as piracy is socially acceptable and free of consequence.