Oskamunda said:
lots of words and I think you called me a thief
I'd just like to go on the record and state that I have never pirated a game, movie, or music (you know that old saying about when you assume it makes an ass of you and me; I already knew I was an ass, but now I know you are probably one as well. I don't care if I do get banned for that remark I don't like being accused of theft). I object simply because of the principle involved. I own it, so I will do whatever I like with it. And that would be sir, if you please.
As far as piracy goes, as more and more people become computer savvy piracy will inevitably increase; we are at the edge of the age of pure digital distribution. You said "the movie industry isn't that affected by piracy" (good use of affect, btw), and I only disagree in that you need a "yet" at the end of that sentence. It's only natural that we see increases in piracy, especially in youth culture where tech is the new religion; there is little cash and companies make lots of high priced video games each quarter. As a kid, why spend sixty dollars for one game when you can have two over bit-torrent in a couple of days on a mediocre connection? I don't need to deal in $5 bootlegs when I can fire up my internet connection and have all of man's digitized works at my fingertips. The industry is simply having trouble adjusting to this new age and there's going to be lots of problems going forward as companies try to adapt an established model to a completely new and alien landscape.
As far as Sony disabling the feature after it was cracked, well, why didn't they just fix it? Even if they said they were just temporarily disabling it while they fixed the issue would have earned considerably less ire from the community as a whole, but no, they didn't like it so they just broke it so we couldn't play with it anymore. As far as needing a new disc to make the ps3 work, it's an extreme example of the kind of forced obsolescence we already see in computer hardware (iPods are the most guilty of this with parts not made to last); it's just that your example would be commercial suicide if a company were to try it. Although, I suspect it might actually work if they did.
Not everyone that complains about DRM and region encoding are pirates. I've imported movies and had to sacrifice dvd drives to hardwired commercial control. I've lost the use of games due to system upgrades, reformats, and moving. So don't tell me that I am the only person out here who would complain that isn't a pirate. Yes, there are lots of pirates out there and they are only hurting themselves in the long run, but there are legimate reasons to complain when people try to control what you do with the things you buy. Oddly enough, this is a huge issue I have with the cell phone industry right now, but that's a whole different discussion.
Piracy isn't the only thing making games mediocre and bland big business is the main reason for that. As game development costs more, companies are simply less willing to take risks on anything new, especially in this economy. The game industry is following the development cycle of the film industry now that it's gotten mainstream. They even had the same piracy issues with vcr's back in the 80's. Big studios push crap, indie ones produce the occasional gem but mostly crap, and we all suffer because the bar keeps getting lower as committees and research groups design what we buy. It's just that the internet makes piracy far more widespread and gamers just don't realize they are eating their own tails.
The PS3 may be region free, but how long do you think that will last? The Wii was region free, too. Even then, the games are the only thing that you could import for a PS3, you still have to deal with region encoding on movies.
Big picture here: we are moving towards an age where information will have no boundaries; the biggest goal of any corporate or government group will be to control that as early on, because at that point information will be the most valuable thing in the world. That's the view I take whenever I approach an issue such as this, so if I seem to be blowing this out of proportion it's because I don't want the world my children grow up in to be one full of artificial boundaries built on profit margins. I overstated the matter because if you give up the little freedoms the big ones fall soon after. People don't listen to slippery slope advisories, but they turn if you tell them there's a cliff.
So hey, there's a cliff.
