If you take offense over the fact that I called people who steal things thieves, then perhaps the issue lies not in what I said but in your conscious.
Hmm.. nope, that's not it. My concious is clean as a whistle. White as a sheet. I've stolen nothing of which you can put a price on.
I couldn't have said that better myself kryo... Pirates and people who use pirated software are thieves - no matter how they try to justify it.
I am no thief and I resent being called one before proven guilty.
I have seen several computer systems go bust because of rampant piracy. Amiga and comidore 64 to name a few, I always bought the software but for the most part everyone I knew used pirated sotware (in Germany).
Wait, what? Did you just claim that Amiga and Commandore 64 went belly-up because of piracy? In an age where the medium was hardly appreciated and 'piracy' was the only legitimate way to aquire programs and games for many, many people, you claim that systems that was eliminated through (more or less) natural selection and technological evolution died because of piracy?
You are a truly ignorant man and I pity a state of Germany that hasn't already institutionalized you.
If the people who steal console games and pc games ever start to outnumber the legitimate users the way it was with those two sytems that will be a sad day indeed. I dislike invasive copy protection like starforce and using steam is often a huge pain in the butt to get something registered updated and running offline. If thats something I have to do so the people who worked so hard on the games I enjoy can stay in business I will. I own alot of stardock software and think they have the right idea with their copy protection. Besides I love the fact that once registered all I need to install or play a game is log in and download it again or just click the icon and play - no digging around for disks. Keep up the great work guys!
While I'm not perfectly happy with the way Stardock Central works (one day, I won't have Galactic Civilizations 2, which means that I'll have lost my investment) I can only see invasive copy protection as another argument for the piracy scene - many cracks and rips completely (or partially) remove invasive copy-protection.
When my choice is between pirating a clean game that won't punch holes in my computer or pay for a copy that's essentially broken (Bioshock comes to mind, which I bought), the choice is pretty simple.
Piracy is the best way on Earth to ensure that people stop making things you enjoy. That's really all there is to it, support what you like or people will stop making things you like.
Doesn't this go both ways? I've NEVER bought a Microsoft product, and they STILL continue to produce utter and complete
crap that's necessary (through monopoly) for me to run less crappy things.
When you buy a game, you generally don't know anything about it besides the hype. I regret, for example, buying Bioshock. Because I paid for this, they will probably produce a Bioshock 2 based around the same yawnish action model and in the end contribution to "game crap proliferation".
I'm proud of my purchases from stardock (GC1 Series+Expansions) + (GC2 Series + Expansions) several hundred dollars worth of stuff but worth it I mean, time goes by and you get your moneys worth quite a few times over.
I couldn't agree more.
I think piracy also appeals to an infantile ego. "Hey, look what I got 4 free - I'm so clever". Most mature people share the idea that you pay for goods and services - that's the basis of an economy and what drives innovation.
That's true for.. about 2 years. If you're, like.. 12. Then you realize that there's no "ha-ha" factor in the whole thing. You'll just get point and laughed at.
The fact that peer DRM hasn't been seriously implemented already implies that at some level, publishers don't consider piracy THAT big of an issue. Because if it were, then you'd have peer DRM already.
Oh please. While this "peer DRM" that you people describe is an intriguing thought, it's just pure fantasy. At least at this point. And at this point, if it's "invisible" (which there's really no way to do, at least not on current platforms), why care. Now. Here. If it's not intrusive or invasive, it's not going to scare off any pirates; ideologically motivated, rationalizing ones or pure criminal ones.
"Oooh, watch out. Stop copying games, or this magic anti-piracy ghost will come shut down your machine. You'll never see it, because it's invisible to the naked eye."I'm not actively trying to sound condescending here, but that's really the impression you guys are giving me right now.
Basically, piracy is about people who don't really know how to live in an economy. The economy needs people on board with it in order to function correctly. Not paying for goods and services is a one-way ticket to a damaged economy. Buying things pays people's salaries.
You're confusing the legal economy with the overall economy. Huge sums are never on the books, be they mob money, top secret gov't budgets, or Aunt Tilly's profits from the flea market. But that money still "gets people paid," albeit often under horrific working conditions.There never has been and likely never will be a single, "proper" economy. Remember that pirates are a valid competitor for World's Oldest Profession, and the other main contenders for that title are considered illegal, and in demand, almost everywhere. In an economy, things such as legal penalties are just one risk factor among many for an economic actor.That's a longish, backwards way of getting to a copyright critique that often appeals to me: It belongs on the trash heap of laws whose enforcement costs outweigh their benefits to the average citizen.
Once again, couldn't possibly agree more. On a slightly related subject, I'd like to argue that piracy has overall done a huge favour for, not exclusively but at least in the majority, the gaming industry. It helped popularize games in an age where gaming as a market was almost nonexistant. This conundrum of piracy being "the next big satan" is a -very- new phenomenon.
As if this until-recently budding market got there all by itself, through sweat, blood and tears.
DRM isn't going to win, because piracy will drive gaming to the consoles before that happens. Besides, you're employing a false dichtomy when you're saying it's the people who "do stuff" against the people who "don't do stuff". Pirates are extremely well motivated to keep DOING what they're doing - i.e. getting free stuff without paying by circumventing all attempts at preventing them. There's a very simple reason why DRM cannot work and it's almost identical to Raph Koster's law of MMO game design: "Never trust the client. The client is in the hands of the enemy. Never ever ever forget this".
Which brings up yet another issue. They say that pirates "don't do" stuff. That they're not motivated. In fact, they are extremely motivated, since the scene works like an informal industry. But it practices a form of inverse production scheme - instead of trying to make money, it attempts to create a surplus of already aquired money.
Like an informal hive, "the Scene", they all chip in for the final product in one fashion or another. 1000 people working 8 hours a day can achieve great things. 8000 people working 1 hour a day trying to undo (or recreate) the work of the aformentioned people could arguably do more.
(of course, that's no exact science or even sound maths, but I hope my point gets across.)
Whether piracy is theft or not is irrelevant since it's just a matter of semantics. I would say it's certainly immoral regardless of how one wants to define it.
I disagree. While arguing wheter or not it is theft is just semantics, that is true. But it's certainly not amoral by default. While a bad example (since games |= food) it's akin to stealing to feed your young. Theft? Illegal? Certainly. But not necessarily amoral. On a related topic, we all know that politicans are more or less corrupt, but did you know that here in Sweden we actually have a "Piracy Party" (http://www.piratpartiet.se/)? Knowledge, talent and culture should never have the opportunity to be monopolized.
People who don't make stuff tealways have the upper hand. Even now, piracy is driving some genres of games off the PC and onto consoles which are DRM'd already pretty thoroughly.
Never understood that either. I've seen it come up time and again, but I've yet to see an un-pirate-able console. And what genres would that be? FPS? RPG? 4x4/6x6? RTS? Adventure? I don't see it. There are certainly certain games that are better suited for consoles and those that are more suited for PC (Oblivion comes to mind, that was first released for Xbox and then had a horrible porting to PC).
Stardock's perspective has always been that the focus of the industry should be on people who PAY for stuff. I get weary of listening to game developers complain about piracy as they crank out yet another first person shooter.
Here's some news: Did you know Stardock dond to find ways to rationalize piracy. But the people who do make stuff will esn't focus on making games for China? I know, it's shocking. There's a huge number of gamers in China and yet we don't make games for that. Now, let's say we decided to spend millions making a game specifically for the Chinese market and we lost our shirts. How much sympathy do you think we'd get?
Yet the game industry keeps spending millions on PC games that target gamers who don't buy games and are then shocked, SHOCKED that they don't buy their games.
How racist you are.
Shocking! SHOCKING! Are you saying that the chinese are more likely to pirate? In Sweden, that could get you a sentence to prison for up to four years.
What you just said: Amoral, or simply Criminal?
