ResonanceSD said:
The problem isn't piracy. The problem is the movie/music industry's failure to adapt to new technology and capitalize on it. Something that is entirely their fault. Piracy in some form or another is rampant in one way or another in all forms of commerce. Retail stores call it shrinkage. Credit card companies call it fraud. But none of them need to go whining to the government to try and get restrictive legislation past to solve these problems. History has shown that time and market forces sooner or later provide a balance in balancing interests, whether the new technology is a video recorder, a computer, an MP3 player or now the internet. What the movie/music insdustries should be doing is using all that money they're throwing at congress to adapt to the changing market. Instead of trying to force it to stay the same.
For games, they really should be trying to do what Valve is doing, which is offering a better service than pirates. Currently none of them are doing it (with the possible exception of EA and their Origin platform, but they've got a LONG way to go), even though quite a bit seem keen on pushing "games as a service". Piracy isn't a price/quality issue (though those things may factor into it), it's mainly a service issue. And Valve has proven that offering a better service results in more profit. With SOPA, there's nothing to suggest it'll work. If anything, there's more evidence to suggest it'll fail. China has similar internet censorship laws, and that hasn't done shit to stop piracy over there. Pushing a law that has more evidence to suggest it'll fail then succeed, while ignoring other courses of action that point to profit, is either incredibly stupid, or a case of using piracy as a scapegoat to further some other goal.
The original pirates were removed from the caribbean when the British realised the effects that they had on shipping were huge. The solution then was to hire pirates to go and get the other pirates. In a digital sense, that won't work. Also yes, theft isn't copyright infringement, etc. Let's get to the real point.
[br]
[br]
Now, how many game companies do you know of have the resources of Valve, and a similar ownership structure? I.e, a billion dollar private company? valve is a wonderful, unique case, in that they're a company with massive, massive amounts of revenue and no external oversight (pesky investors asking questions)
The reason that companies and studios pump out games is not primarily "because i want to share love and my games with the world", some guys woke up and said, I like designing games. I want to get paid doing this. Plenty of companies
who sell their games through steam, origin, impulse, D2D are still seeing piracy. Even though the service is there which beats the traditional approach, no more dealing with idiots running a game store not having a clue about the industry they technically work in. So a game company, or in my company's case, a media corporation, sits back and goes "well we've shifted our model away from bricks and mortar and the problem is still there". I'm fairly certain that since the addition of netflix and pay per view services, movie piracy still exists, and the media industry is pissed off that they aren't getting the revenue that they're legally entitled to, even though they've gone to pretty big lengths in a relatively short time (for a massive industry) to combat piracy.
And then consumers turn around and say "YOU STILL CANT BEAT THE SERVICE AND PRICE THAT PIRATES PROVIDE, LLOLOLOL"
Which as you might understand, confuses the industry. They can't release games, movies or music for free. Somewhere down the line, people need to eat. Even that machine that restores your health in Chrono-Trigger still leaves you feeling hungry. [sub] lol [/sub]
At a certain point the industry says "enough of this, if we have to compete with illegality through legal mechanisms, we'll lose anyway".
[br] and so you have SOPA. A legal mechanism, which will 1) ruin the internet 2) not put a dent in the pirates that actually represent significant lost opportunities for revenue. [br] I'm going to interrupt the guy who jumps in here and says "NOT EVERY PIRATE REPRESENTS A LOSS OF A SALE"
Enough do to matter. And all of the other apologists for piracy, that it's too expensive, DRM is offensive, there isn't a demo, can also shut right up. These products are not now, and never have been, a right. They are all luxuries. A privilege. Anyone using any of the above excuses to justify their copyright infringement is "an entitled twerp" to use the in-house definition. If you're going to pirate, be honest and just say "i can't be arsed paying for this because I don't feel I have to". (@Irridium, I'm getting back on point right after this)
Back to the companies who are trying to enact laws rather than compete. The industry has made it's attempt to catch up to the digital age. The company I work for has more websites than I can count which put out information, media and related content over more markets than you can shake a stick at. However, people appropriate that information and pass it off as their own, word for word, like a shit uni student copying an essay, bypassing the methods we've enacted to prevent freeloading. So in my mind, we've caught up. And yet, despite our efforts, Pirates gonna pirate, 'yo.
TL
R: The industry has had enough of apologists who aren't willing to see/understand how the world/business/economics/legal systems work. SOPA (unfortunately) has a lot of congressional support. We'll all be up shit creek without a boat soon, due to the fact that there are some market segments who will never stop illegally obtaining content. To those people, I thank you. My company is in full support of SOPA, I however am not. SOPA might however, increase our revenues like a boss. However, at the cost of the internet, the greatest invention of the last century, so I'll still have a job next year (21/12/12 be damned), however, it's entirely likely that sites like this will not exist.
