Lawyer Destroys Arguments for Game Piracy
- Thread starter Greg Tito
- Start date
The point this lawyer is trying to make is this: all of the popular excuses for piracy either a) apply to very small (read: statistically insignificant) segments of the pirating population or b) make no logical sense.
"You can't try to bust people because you can't prove who pirated the game!" Except there aren't a million people in this country who know how to mask their IP, so why should they all get away with stealing Gears of War 3?
"You don't know a pirate would have bought the game so it's not a lost sale!" Except the number of sales lost to piracy is certainly greater than zero, and the developer is still entitled to even that minute amount of money.
Let's just put aside any of the traditional arguments and look at this from a closed system perspective. I pay for my games. The majority of gamers I know personally do not. My money allows for the development of future games, which these people then steal. I'm subsidizing their gaming with my income. That's fucking bullshit any way you slice it. I don't care if the publishers are evil or the games suck or you weren't going to buy it anyways. The bottomline is that games can only be made because I'm actually buying them, and it's definitely not my fucking responsibility to keep the industry afloat while pirating assholes enjoy everything for free.
"You can't try to bust people because you can't prove who pirated the game!" Except there aren't a million people in this country who know how to mask their IP, so why should they all get away with stealing Gears of War 3?
"You don't know a pirate would have bought the game so it's not a lost sale!" Except the number of sales lost to piracy is certainly greater than zero, and the developer is still entitled to even that minute amount of money.
Let's just put aside any of the traditional arguments and look at this from a closed system perspective. I pay for my games. The majority of gamers I know personally do not. My money allows for the development of future games, which these people then steal. I'm subsidizing their gaming with my income. That's fucking bullshit any way you slice it. I don't care if the publishers are evil or the games suck or you weren't going to buy it anyways. The bottomline is that games can only be made because I'm actually buying them, and it's definitely not my fucking responsibility to keep the industry afloat while pirating assholes enjoy everything for free.
Glad to see I'm not the only person disturbed by the content of this "news" post. It's almost drowning under the weight of all the opinion crammed into it. Fox News would be proud.
Also, the title is horrendously misleading. What is the world is this supposed lawyer "destroying"? He's provided pretty much zero content to his arguments; he's just making simplistic assertions, nothing more. If this were the extent of arguments against game piracy, that'd just be sad.
I guess this is why I don't usually bother with the Escapist's news section. It's disappointing nevertheless.
Also, the title is horrendously misleading. What is the world is this supposed lawyer "destroying"? He's provided pretty much zero content to his arguments; he's just making simplistic assertions, nothing more. If this were the extent of arguments against game piracy, that'd just be sad.
I guess this is why I don't usually bother with the Escapist's news section. It's disappointing nevertheless.
Screw the morality of the issue, morality is subjective. What we can argue is wheter or not there's a substantial economical issue. Which there is.
Screw pirating, I like boxes, I like CD's and I like customer support. The only way pirating is okay in my mind, is if you are UNABLE to buy the game (I'm not talking about money here). If you somehow cannot give the company your money even though you can afford the game, then go ahead imo. It's when you justify pirating with "I can't afford it" that you're a scumbag. You wouldn't go into a store, take a snickers bar and walk out of there while telling the cashier "I have no money so I'll just take this, k?".
Screw pirating, I like boxes, I like CD's and I like customer support. The only way pirating is okay in my mind, is if you are UNABLE to buy the game (I'm not talking about money here). If you somehow cannot give the company your money even though you can afford the game, then go ahead imo. It's when you justify pirating with "I can't afford it" that you're a scumbag. You wouldn't go into a store, take a snickers bar and walk out of there while telling the cashier "I have no money so I'll just take this, k?".
If I could make a perfect duplicate of the snickers bar and leave the original untouched...Substitute Troll said:
Not arguing for piracy. But as long as all these idiotic extremes (all pirated copies are lost sales! no pirated copies are lost sales! piracy is exactly the same as theft! piracy doesn't harm anyone!) keep getting thrown around we'll never get anywhere.
I see your point.Sentox6 said:
A guy walks into a store and uses an alien-super-duplicator to make a perfect duplicate of a snickers bar and leaves the original untouched. He then heads towards the door going right past the cashier, the cashier turns his head and says "What the fuck man? I make my living by selling those!". The guy turns towards the cashier, only responding with a typical trollface-grin while walking out of the store. Outside the store, there are millions of people with alien duplicators about to do the exact same thing.
Happy? It's not the exact same thing as taking the original copy, but it is quite similar in terms of how much damage is done.
Oh I'd think you'd be surprised just how many pirates there are on this site that just leave the issue alone out of fear of being banned as The Escapist won't allow the issue to be discussed openly and fairly. I'd actually wager the people that pirate (any amount in some fashion) vastly outnumber the people who are innocent of piracy. Mostly I think there are a vocal number of holier than thou folk who truth be told probably shouldn't be casting stones at anyone but can't turn down a soapbox.Andreson said:
Ok what do you say to people that fish, hunt, or grow their own gardens? Does the grocery and food industry have a grievance against those people? Those people that are catching/killing/growing their own food those are certainly causing the food/grocery industry to lose sales.Substitute Troll said:
Hell I have a pressure cooker and can make a pretty solid replica of KFC chicken should KFC be able to file suit against me because I'm making my own fried chicken at home? I know for sure if I wasn't cooking it myself I'd certainly be buying it from them so I can say with utmost certainty that KFC is losing a sale every time I make my own chicken at home.
I detect a straw man... PULL OUT THE FLAME THROWERS!keiskay said:
People, please stop equating digital goods with physical scenarios. The fact is that there are other factors that you are not looking at when making these oversimplifications.
e.g:
One is composed of data and is infinite, and the other is composed of physical materials and is finite. The difference is that one can only be used once and or by one person at a time, while the other is not confined by such constraints, and any concept of physical property that is perceived is only an artificial restriction.
No, it doesn't.ezaviel said:
What you say assumes that the current model of everything has to be worth a arbirtary amount of a practically worthless amount of cotton paper.
I'm saying that things should be worth money based on the NESSECIATY of that thing. But, as I mentioned, our soctioty does not work in such a way that what I suggested would be possible.
Well to be fair, that would make money irrelevant. Money is a form of regulator for scarce resources. If you could do that with physical matter then there would be no need for the monetary system at all.Substitute Troll said:
Now that's a concept to ponder on... Is money an old outdated tool that we have just become accustomed to? Is it that we are franticly trying to stubbornly hold on to it because we don't know, or want, to know anything else? After all, the core that drives the system is scarcity, and when you look at the rate that technology is growing, that is a problem that we are starting to get (and in some cases already have) a solution to.
What you said sounded like it had nothing to do with necessity, you said a digital objects should have no value. I pointed out that if a digital object intrinsically had no value, then peoples skill at making digital items (and time spent doing so) was rendered worthless as they could not sell their products.Jabberwock xeno said:
Assuming you meant what you said you meant, from a necessity point of view, making video games would be rendered even more worthless, as there is nothing necessary about video games at all. They are a luxury item, pure and simple. This would leave making video games on the same economic level as buskers.
Though I would be very curious to hear how the Humble Bundle developers get by. They have a business model very similar to what you suggest. I would love to know how well it actually works for them.
But physical resources are actually finite. I mean, yes, if we could duplicate everything for free using techno-magic, then sure, money does become pretty useless. But we are not even close to that.Ad-Man-Gamer said:
I mean, there is an actual physical limit to the ammount of any given substance in the world at one time. We cannot create matter.
I am not sure what resources you think we have no physical limit on? Even with renewable resources we have a hard limit equal to the rate at which we can renew that resource.
One thing that I would criticize about money is that it puts restrictions on technology from becoming widely used. Especially in impoverished countries.ezaviel said:
E.G: If you stacked farms in a vertical building rather than a horizontal landscape. Then you would have 10x more acres of land to play with (assuming that it is a ten story building). Now all you need to do is use hydroponics in order to grow plants and wala! you have the capability to amp up food production by 100% per a floor. The above analogy wood have a production rate of 1000% compared to their just being one field, and this does not take into account that plants can grow faster in this environment dew to rich oxygen and mineral solutions that they feed all the plants.
This is not rocket science. It just makes sense. We have the resources to build such things, and moving this technology to Africa would greatly improve their food supply.
Another example is the fact that we know how to cure and prevent malaria. Yet, millions die because of it. It is not posed as a question of if we have the resources to help them, it is posed as a question that asks if it would be profitable to help them.
That's not what I mean either.ezaviel said:
I suppose a better way to convey it would be like this:
An individual disk containing any type of non physical data is only worth the amount of the physical disk itself. However, a game, program, movie, whatever, IS worth something, as many people's time and effort went in to it.
The issue with our society is that we put values on things. I'm no expert in economics or history or whatever, but i'm fairly certain that the entire foundation of currency was developed because different objects or substances had a practical use. Like in africa, gold wasn't worth nearly as much as salt, as salt had a much more practical purpose.
Somewhere along the line, a few things happened: We started to assign value based on other factors:
- Scarity/limited-ness: The loss of a amount of these deprived the owner of that use. Or, in other words, the gain of something requires the loss of that thing from other places. Like with a math problem that has stuff on both sides of the = sign. You can't add stuff to one side without subtracting it from the other.
Therefore, things that were harder to obtain became more valuable.
- Entertainment/pleasure:/demand by a person's subjective "worth" of it. Entertainment, pleasure, etc are all subjective things we experience that have no direct physical impact on the world.
- Time/effort: Also, because we don't like spending a lot of effort and time, only to have it not mean anything in the end, some amount of value was placed on time and effort as well. Likewise, things that reduced the amount of effort or time became more valuable.
---------------------------------
Remember the thing I said about the math equations? Well, with digital things, that's not true. You can make an infinite amount of a thing without causing the loss of it in the first place. But you can't just say it's worthless, as the thing was still the result of time and effort.
That's goes directly against of current model of a things worth.
So, with Video games:
- They serve no practical purpose; Worthless in this aspect.
- They have no limited aspect or "scarcity"; ENTIRELY Worthless in this aspect.
- They ARE a major source of entertainment, and are worth a LOT in this aspect.
- A LOT of time and effort goes into making a game, so it's worth a lot here.
-----------------------------
So, what do then?
Well, we know that as you can make an infinite number of these things, you shouldn't be paying for them on a indivual basis, "disc by disc" (I put it in quotes because I don't actually mean discs, as that is worth something by itself, I just can't thing of a equilvent statement for a purely digital purchase.)
Practicality has no bearing on any idea to pay for these, except in case of digital price vs. retail price: digital purchases should cost less, because you aren't paying for a box and a disc.
A price SHOULD be determined by enjoyment, and by time and effort.
As I stated, one way to do this would be to have all profits be made totally by donation. This way, a person wouldn't be paying for the scarcity/practicality of the thing, but they would be paying based on the subjective pleasure they get out of it.
Sadly, it's likely that not enough people would pay enough to make it "profitable" enough in the aspect of time and effort. So, this model really is not any better, and arguably worse than the current.
Another way to do it would be to make the games free, but since the consumers now have more money because they don't pay for games, the CONSUMERS pay the devolpers to MAKE the games, not to buy a already made one.
This also has issues, tough, of course
Well actually, this modal has proven to work. If you're getting into the realm of pay by charity, then places like bandcamp.com, the open source world, and a free movie called "Sita Sings the Blues" is worth a look into for case studys and the likes. The artists back story on Sita Sings the Blues is actually quite interesting. It goes into her struggle with copyright laws with her movie, that contained songs that were created in the dam 20's. creative works are meant to come into the public domain after 60 years, (As a note, it used to be 30 years, and before that it was 10) but apparently company's can now keep them indefinitely. Any who, copyright laws need a serious overhaul, because in my opinion, it seems to be currently conflicting with human nature it self.Jabberwock xeno said: