Piracy staying legal in Switzerland - "Pirates still contribute"

[LiquidSolstice]

If you can't fight it, adapt to it. Because piracy can't be stopped.

So if an army of rapists came to your country and overwhelmed the population, you'd work around them, right? That's basically what you're saying. Yeah, it's an exaggeration, but no, just because there's many pirates out there doesn't mean you have to succumb and adapt to it.

 

[jedizero]

This is how I view it. Everytime an 'uncrackable' DRM scheme has come out, its been cracked. Usually within the first week. At this point stating that you have DRM out the ass is just saying "Hey Pirates, here's a challenge."

Several companies have started looking at piracy, the ability to get games on demand without having to pay an (admittedly) outrageous sum of money all at once, and adjusted accordingly. Onlive, for instance allows you to pay a monthly sum of 9.99 and lets you play a TON of games, all on demand.

I could see the same thing happening on iTunes or something. Pay a monthly fee. Pick out the music you want. Download.

Sadly, the music industry has thrown its money at RIAA and has ensured they can't backpedal on this, as they've sunk too much money into bankrupting soccer moms who downloaded ten songs, by suing them for $120,000 per song.

And there are some piracy things that I think is reasonable. Say you want to play an *old* game...but you've looked around, and you can't find it. You aren't interested in 'collecting it', but you want to play it. Maybe its one of those games that helped define a genre. (Clock Tower on the SNES) Maybe its an old classic that you played as a child. (Rocket Knight Adventures! Who else thought that game was awesome?) Maybe it was never released in your area. (Sweet Home on the Famicom, a game that practically invented the survival horror genre.)

But these games are not available.

System Shock 2, for instance. You cannot purchase it. Its not on GOG, its not on steam, its not being sold anywhere. The only place you can get it 'legit', is on eBay, and frankly, that's not paying the makers anyway. But it is a classic that everyone should play.

So you pirate it...Not because you don't want to pay for it, but because you *CAN'T* pay for it. If you could give the people who made it money, and buy the game, you would. But if you can't, then your only other option is to pirate it. Download it. Emulate it.

How is that wrong?

 

[jedizero]

So if an army of rapists came to your country and overwhelmed the population, you'd work around them, right? That's basically what you're saying. Yeah, it's an exaggeration, but no, just because there's many pirates out there doesn't mean you have to succumb and adapt to it.

Strawman argument is made of straw.

Rape and Piracy are not the same thing, they are entirely different things, and one is not comparable to another.

lrn 2 dbate.

 

[LiquidSolstice]

So if an army of rapists came to your country and overwhelmed the population, you'd work around them, right? That's basically what you're saying. Yeah, it's an exaggeration, but no, just because there's many pirates out there doesn't mean you have to succumb and adapt to it.

Strawman argument is made of straw.

Rape and Piracy are not the same thing, they are entirely different things, and one is not comparable to another.

lrn 2 dbate.

Out-of-context-reply is out of context.

"If you can't fight it, adapt to it. Because piracy can't be stopped."

Yes, because that's some sort of universal rule that just because the number of pirates is going up, we must adapt to them. I also like how you've chosen to ignore the part where I said "yes, it's an exaggeration". Tunnel vision makes "dbating" very easy, doesn't it?

Learn to read the whole post before trying to come up with a smartass comment, kthx.

 

[omega 616]

This seems a most interesting way to go about it.

Realistically any information available on the internet is almost costless to copy, from a physical point of view. The cost itself of moving the electrons is miniscule once the infrastructure is in place, which it is. Unlike buying a car where resources must be allocated to replicate the device and the company must be reimbursed for that allocation in creating the device, the digital media does not have the requirement for additional resources for replication. This does mean that the model upon which the industry operates, based upon traditional material, is incorrect. Tantamount to theft in some respects.

If a game sells its physical copy for x amount, how often do you see the digital copy selling for x minus the cost of the physical medium, transport ect on launch? That in itself would be justifiable. The current model is not.

Value of physical objects is related to how rare it is or how hard it is to make. Gold is worth more than granite, and a watch is worth more then an equal amount of material in its raw form. The internet, as a purely digital manifestation alters that totally. By the known method, any resource that is almost limitless and which requires little effort to make, should be almost free. Most companies now are fighting that to maintain profits in this area of the market because the rest of our technology has yet to bring the other resources to this level. It is, for now, greed. Lusting for the old ways, despite the old ways no longer applying. I very much like the swiss governments approach, adapt to changes in your environment or fail. The environment wont be artificially modeled to allow you to survive.

The problem being is that it takes millions to make a game or movie, so that cost is spread out and put to customers ... in the world you just described, it is ok for a movie or game to be bought once then pirated 30 million times, so the people who made it get nothing back.

You are just copying 1's and 0's, so it's not stealing but don't the people who worked on it deserve more than the £60 it cost to make the game?

I don't think there is a way to win this "war".

 

[NightHawk21]

...Not only will downloading for personal use stay completely legal, but the copyright holders won?t suffer because of it, since people eventually spend the money saved on entertainment products."

...It's tantamount to free advertising; the building of a fan-base who will spend cash on the medium when they can.

Neither one of those statements make any sense at all. If someone can get something for free with absolutely no consequences, what the hell would be the incentive to go spend money on that same something?

Because in the case of music which I feel I can say no one is completely innocent of, if you download a bands album and like them you're more likely to go see them in concert or maybe even buy they're CDs just to support them.

 

[Rude as HECK]

You do realize they're saying the money will be spent in other areas of the economy, right?
They're the government. They aren't supposed to act as a crony for one industry just because you guys happen to like it.

Furthermore, intellectual property is meant to act as a matter of public policy. It's not a moral concept, despite the arguments of shitty philosophers (eg, Nozick and Rand). If greater public utility comes about as a result of looking the other way on copyright infringement, then ignore copyright law we must.

 

[Frankster]

so, what they are saying is that it's ok to steal things if you can't afford it?

Only if you later buy the same things. Or something.

More like "people who pirate have more money to spend on other things, including legit games".

I agree with this. I bought 2 games this month full price. If I had pirated them instead, I'd have the money to buy 2 more new games, therefore playing 4 games that month! :O

I dunno wtf i bother being an honest joe, seriously.

 

[jedizero]

Out-of-context-reply is out of context.

"If you can't fight it, adapt to it. Because piracy can't be stopped."

Yes, because that's some sort of universal rule that just because the number of pirates is going up, we must adapt to them. I also like how you've chosen to ignore the part where I said "yes, it's an exaggeration". Tunnel vision makes "dbating" very easy, doesn't it?

Learn to read the whole post before trying to come up with a smartass comment, kthx.

You forgot bai.

Exaggeration or not, its still a strawman argument, therefore the entire argument is flawed. It is not an intelligent discourse, its simply trying to imply that 'Rape' and 'Piracy' are on the same level, somehow.

The thing is, you truly *can't* fight piracy. Its going to happen, whether you like it or not. You can come down as hard as you can on people, but its not. going. to. stop. Do I personally agree with piracy? No.

Am I going to throw money and time away trying to combat it when all its going to do is waste everyone's time, and ruin the lives of people like that mother of three who downloaded 10 songs and got sued to the point of bankruptcy? No, I am not. Because that is stupid. Ridiculous.

Your best bet to deal with piracy? Its just like what the Extra Credits guy said. Give better services.

 

[Darkmantle]

The problem is that the figures just don't match up with this interpretation. Most people who pirate will not go on to buy the game legitmately, otherwise that figure the Witcher 2 released last week of 1 in 5 copies being pirated would have ended 'but then we sold another 4 million anyway.' Did it? No, because most people who had pirated the game then didn't go on to buy it.

But the inverse is also true.
If you completely remove the possibility to pirate something, a pirate who would otherwise get the game through piracy would still not buy it. In fact, you'd probably sell fewer copies due to decreased interest.

Advertisement is a powerful force. Why do people pay tens of thousands of dollars to advertise their product or service next to highways? Do all people who see the ad purchase the product or service? Do most people? In fact, only a small fraction of people who see it go on to pay for it. It is still worth it for the one who invested in the ad, since that small fraction still makes up a lot of people. A pirated game works in a similar way. It's free self-perpetuating advertisement. Again, only a small number of people will actually buy it, but some will, and that's a increase in sales for no investment. Couple that with word of mouth, and there's a significant amount of extra sales.

Again, word of mouth and advertisement is an incredibly powerful commercial force.
Piracy is both of those, for all its ills.

The facts do not reflect this viewpoint.

Since downloading became a thing, legitimate sales of music have dropped by half

http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/02/news/companies/napster_music_industry/

and PC game sales crashed at exactly the same time.

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/PC_gaming

This cannot be explained by saying 'people wouldn't have bought the game anyway' because the evidence is that they would have. This generation has somehow been brought up with the idea that Entertainment has no monetary value. Somehow creative content is becoming basically worthless, and it's not being helped by people like Randal Monroe going on about Creative Commons Distribution, but that is an entirely separate issue.

And do you know what gets really hurt? The games industry. Because they are industries that ned to turn a profit, and you can't turn a profit on a system with a game that is going to pirated no matter how cheap you make it. Remember the Humble Indie Bundle or whatever it was? All you had to pay was as little as a penny to receive it, and people still pirated it, which in my book is near conclusive proof that people are assholes.

So what do game companies do when they can't trust that the game they're making it going to make profit? Whoever is making the Witcher games will probably not be able to justify making the next game, since they've only shifted a million copies, which will convince the executives that it isn't earning the sorts of profits it should. And then they'll look at games which are making profits, and what's making the biggest profit right now because despite the millions of illegal copies it's still shifting enough legally to make profit?

Modern Warfare 3.

So, in Executive 'we need to make profit' logic, they will tell the game designers to stop working on the Witcher 3 because it only sold a million copies, and start working on Modern Battlefield, since that will be guaranteed to sell.

Next time anyone who pirates complains about games become all homogenised and shit, you are exactly the reason why they are becoming homogenised. This is of course now becoming a vicious circle, because a lot of pirates will deliberately pirate to try and hurt the companies and get them to stop making modern FPSs, but modern FPSs will thus become more desirable.

I'm personally hoping for another 1983 crash caused entirely by piracy.

maybe I'm missing something, but those websites don't entirely back up your argument.

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/PC_gaming
"It's important to keep in mind, however, that this NPD data concerns retail data only and does not include sales of digitally downloaded games, micro-transactions, online subscriptions
"

so as more and more sales are through, say, steam, that number will keep going down until the NDP decide to start looking at sales through ALL mediums and not just retail. seriously, I bet that chart would have showed a steady increase id digital sales were included.

 

[Epona]

Maybe this will serve to put a stop to DRM. Yeah yeah, I hear you laughing and my apologies for the Pepsi on your monitor but won't this mean that pirates will now be legally offering a better product than the publishers? Won't it mean that the publishers are in competition with the pirates?

It's absurd that corporations should have to compete with pirates, I see that but after that way publishers have treated their own customers I can't have any sympathy for them.

 

[Scars Unseen]

...Not only will downloading for personal use stay completely legal, but the copyright holders won?t suffer because of it, since people eventually spend the money saved on entertainment products."

...It's tantamount to free advertising; the building of a fan-base who will spend cash on the medium when they can.

Neither one of those statements make any sense at all. If someone can get something for free with absolutely no consequences, what the hell would be the incentive to go spend money on that same something?

Sometimes you get more when you pay:

 

[Rude as HECK]

Maybe this will serve to put a stop to DRM. Yeah yeah, I hear you laughing and my apologies for the Pepsi on your monitor but won't this mean that pirates will now be legally offering a better product than the publishers? Won't it mean that the publishers are in competition with the pirates?

It's absurd that corporations should have to compete with pirates, I see that but after that way publishers have treated their own customers I can't have any sympathy for them.

They've been offering a superior product in the music download sector since it began. No DRM! Can be turned into every format! Suck on that, early iTunes! Music services, of course, have largely realized their mistakes, and often come in a number of formats with no DRM.

It's not exactly unimaginable that a similar thing can happen with games.

 

[SovietSecrets]

"since people eventually spend the money saved on entertainment products."

Umm.......that's a pretty flawed statement.

I mean come on, there's absolutely NOTHING stopping them from merely stealing music, films, games and not paying. Piracy is weird.

Actually I bought a lot of the things I pirated since the games were so good that the developers deserved my cash. It might be flawed, but some people do go out and buy the product after downloading it for free.

 

[SovietSecrets]

Bleh double post.

 

[Rude as HECK]

"since people eventually spend the money saved on entertainment products."

Umm.......that's a pretty flawed statement.

I mean come on, there's absolutely NOTHING stopping them from merely stealing music, films, games and not paying. Piracy is weird.

Actually I bought a lot of the things I pirated since the games were so good that the developers deserved my cash. It might be flawed, but some people do go out and buy the product after downloading it for free.

Again, they are not claiming people spend the money of entertainment products; merely that they spend it.

There are other sectors to the economy.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Out-of-context-reply is out of context.

"If you can't fight it, adapt to it. Because piracy can't be stopped."

Yes, because that's some sort of universal rule that just because the number of pirates is going up, we must adapt to them. I also like how you've chosen to ignore the part where I said "yes, it's an exaggeration". Tunnel vision makes "dbating" very easy, doesn't it?

Learn to read the whole post before trying to come up with a smartass comment, kthx.

You forgot bai.

Exaggeration or not, its still a strawman argument, therefore the entire argument is flawed. It is not an intelligent discourse, its simply trying to imply that 'Rape' and 'Piracy' are on the same level, somehow.

The thing is, you truly *can't* fight piracy. Its going to happen, whether you like it or not. You can come down as hard as you can on people, but its not. going. to. stop. Do I personally agree with piracy? No.

Am I going to throw money and time away trying to combat it when all its going to do is waste everyone's time, and ruin the lives of people like that mother of three who downloaded 10 songs and got sued to the point of bankruptcy? No, I am not. Because that is stupid. Ridiculous.

Your best bet to deal with piracy? Its just like what the Extra Credits guy said. Give better services.

Can't beat free. But also, here.

Let's equal piracy with the law. Will people ignore laws/DRM? Sure. Can laws/DRM ever truly be all-encompassing? 'Course not, 'cause both are reactive. Are laws/DRM worth the time/money spent into developing/enforcing them? Not really. Don't know about DRM, but each prisoner costs about $45,000 a year until age 55, at which point that number jumps to $100,000+ in the US. Should government/publishers stop enforcing laws/DRM just because there are people who will ignore and/or get around it?

Government/Publishers have a right to protect their citizens/investment, and so they shall.

 

[TheDooD]

This seems a most interesting way to go about it.

Realistically any information available on the internet is almost costless to copy, from a physical point of view. The cost itself of moving the electrons is miniscule once the infrastructure is in place, which it is. Unlike buying a car where resources must be allocated to replicate the device and the company must be reimbursed for that allocation in creating the device, the digital media does not have the requirement for additional resources for replication. This does mean that the model upon which the industry operates, based upon traditional material, is incorrect. Tantamount to theft in some respects.

If a game sells its physical copy for x amount, how often do you see the digital copy selling for x minus the cost of the physical medium, transport ect on launch? That in itself would be justifiable. The current model is not.

Value of physical objects is related to how rare it is or how hard it is to make. Gold is worth more than granite, and a watch is worth more then an equal amount of material in its raw form. The internet, as a purely digital manifestation alters that totally. By the known method, any resource that is almost limitless and which requires little effort to make, should be almost free. Most companies now are fighting that to maintain profits in this area of the market because the rest of our technology has yet to bring the other resources to this level. It is, for now, greed. Lusting for the old ways, despite the old ways no longer applying. I very much like the swiss governments approach, adapt to changes in your environment or fail. The environment wont be artificially modeled to allow you to survive.

I like your few upon this and its true they want us basically back in the informational "dark ages". Just so they're able to pull a swerve and toss out lower quality products that we'll only know the quality of it if a friend or family member has used it. They can't 100% pull that shit now when there's leaks, trailers upon trailers, streams, forums, etc. I also know quite a few people that have been involved in piracy yet it was mainly for classic games like SNES, Genesis, 90's Arcade games and so on.

Basically my stance on Piracy is this IF you can't buy it in a store and or the price is a bit crazy online. Also if said company / artist / whatever hasn't made money off of it nor really cares about it. It's fine to pirate it if it's basically abandon / vaporware

 

[Wicky_42]

Your best bet to deal with piracy? Its just like what the Extra Credits guy said. Give better services.

This. Like it or not, all creative industries are in competition with pirates and always have been. Cheap Chinese knock-offs sold en-mass from markets, fake designer brand watches peddled on street corners, dodgy cam-corder copies of films traded to on the back-streets, taping radio and TV, peer-to-peer file sharing - it's always been possible to get something you'd quite like at a knock-down price if you really want to. With material goods and DIY copying one of the sacrifices has been quality; with digital sharing the quality of the file *can* be as good as the original blu ray or loss-less format.

How do you compete with that? Fundamentally, with services that offer more to the customer.

Allow access to your library anywhere, ideally without requiring an installed client; offer sales, discounts and deals to encourage people to remain with you and to entice new customers; remove restrictions on the use of your files - better someone gives a few albums to their friends and gets them interested in your service than to turn potential customers away by criminalising them for opening an account with you; research into what people want from an interface to make it easier and more convenient for them to find what they are after and to guide them towards stuff that might interest them - but take care to avoid becoming too 'Big Brother'-y as you'll get a bucket of bad press if people see you as infringing on their privacy or too extensively profiling; if you want to subsidise your service with adverts, make completely unintrusive.

Maybe there are services that already do that, but the point is not to act as if piracy is a threat but to take it as a challenge to offer something that is superior to just getting an MP3, to not be defensive and belligerent but to be expansive and welcoming. If someone is using your service, they're not pirating. Take that as a given and relax about the customers you have.

 

[Feylynn]

...Not only will downloading for personal use stay completely legal, but the copyright holders won?t suffer because of it, since people eventually spend the money saved on entertainment products."

...It's tantamount to free advertising; the building of a fan-base who will spend cash on the medium when they can.

Neither one of those statements make any sense at all. If someone can get something for free with absolutely no consequences, what the hell would be the incentive to go spend money on that same something?

The reason people pirate anything is typically one of two reasons:
1) Because they aren't willing to take a chance on something they haven't tried.
Or
2) Because they feel actively antagonized by the company selling.

The first means that if they like the game, they often pay for it, or at minimum remember the dev's name and look out for their future games through legitimate channels.
Example: Tim doesn't know much about Mass Effect, Tim doesn't spend money on something he doesn't care about. Tim pirates Mass Effect and finds that he likes it a lot. Tim then goes on to legitimately buy Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, and all of their DLC missions.
Pircay has made this company a LOT of money when you start assuming Tim isn't the only one on the planet that happens to do this.

The second means that the only reason they aren't giving Dev's money is because they would make the consumer suffer through a worse game inflicted with long downloads, perpetual internet disconnects, and invasive DRM for doing so.

So if you make a good game and don't make terribly short sighted anti-piracy efforts then most people will give you money for it.

Ask Notch, ask Valve, ask Team Meat. Whatever.

Piracy obviously does have the straight out bad sides, people that "take without giving back"
What this article is saying is that they found those people to be a minority.