True views on piracy

[doobiwan]

Sorry W1z, I don't mean it as a personal attack, it's my "generic pirate" hate speech. If you're not pirating, then it's not directed at you

On the genome issue - The US patent office dropped prerequisite certification a number of years ago. It basically gave up trying to decide which was bull and which wasn't. It will issue a patent for anything and leave it up the the courts to decide whether it's enforcible or not. That's the same issue with a lot of Software patents, just because a company has one doesn't mean it's valid. Patent's still expire after 14 years, GIF's became public domain this year. Copyright is a slightly different issue because it's meant to reward an artist or group for a unique work of their own.

Copyright was introduce to allow an artist to reap the rewards of the popularity of their own works, thereby inspiring them to create more, extending the level of their art. It's the artists choice, not the consumer as to how they want to distribute THEIR work. If you chose to distribute your work for free, then kudo's to you. My codes c@rp, people wouldn't pay me for it anyway

Copyright law hits a bump with digital distribution, but hopefully we'll get over it. We should all be entitled to fair use of that which we've paid for a license, but that's not to be confused with taking something without paying for it.

Is it okay for me to steal a R100 note, well, because the reserve bank can just print more?

 

[w1z4rd]

Is it okay for me to steal a R100 note, well, because the reserve bank can just print more?

Is it okay to turn people into criminals for singing Happy Birthday in a public park?

 

[AntiThesis]

And again the comparison cannot be made between physically removing an object from someone's possession to creating a copy of said thing. You're more than welcome to photocopy as many R100 bills as you want. The reserve bank won't care as long as you don't try to use them as legal tender.

A copied game has no intrinsic value to the person who copies it (many people at least) and could not be resold.

Think of it this way:

Stealing - I sneak into your driveway and put a key into your car and drive it away, therefore depriving you of the use of your car and gaining financially.

Pirating - I sneak into your driveway and photocopy your car. I then walk away. I have not deprived you of your car and nor have I gained anything I can sell. I just have a bloody great big piece of paper with a car on it.

No analogy will ever be complete but it's an idea.

 

[flarkit]

Think of it this way:

Stealing - I sneak into your driveway and put a key into your car and drive it away, therefore depriving you of the use of your car and gaining financially.

Pirating - I sneak into your driveway and photocopy your car. I then walk away. I have not deprived you of your car and nor have I gained anything I can sell. I just have a bloody great big piece of paper with a car on it.

No analogy will ever be complete but it's an idea.

Poor analogy. If I design an entirely original-looking car and make a living from selling photos of the car, then you'd be robbing me of potential income.

 

[doobiwan]

As I said, Copyright struggles in a digital age, but it's intent is clear. It was introduced in order for the artist to benefit from those who wish to 'consume' their works. You are not "entitled" to anything by virtue of the fact that you're duplicating the work yourself.

The issue is this, yes 7 out of 10 pirates may very well not have bought it but 3 may very well have. That's just on copying friend to friend. If you buy pirated games that's a hole heap naughtiness . . .

The car example: I design a funky car, a real beaut. The value is in it's uniqueness and design. You come and copy my design exactly but produce it in Chinese sweatshops with cr@ppy parts at half the price, but people buy it because it looks like the one I designed. you're benefiting from my work without any compensation to the person that did the work.

 

[w1z4rd]

As I said, Copyright struggles in a digital age, but it's intent is clear. It was introduced in order for the artist to benefit from those who wish to 'consume' their works. You are not "entitled" to anything by virtue of the fact that you're duplicating the work yourself.

The issue is this, yes 7 out of 10 pirates may very well not have bought it but 3 may very well have. That's just on copying friend to friend. If you buy pirated games that's a hole heap naughtiness . . .

The car example: I design a funky car, a real beaut. The value is in it's uniqueness and design. You come and copy my design exactly but produce it in Chinese sweatshops with cr@ppy parts at half the price, but people buy it because it looks like the one I designed. you're benefiting from my work without any compensation to the person that did the work.

A study by RIAA and MPAA showed that people who downloaded pirated music and games were more likely to purchase the original than people who did not download the games. So by that study you can reach the conclusion that piracy actually helps the artist (even if its just in exposure).

Another example of how the law is really stupid is the recent incident whereby RIAA forced YouTube to remove all those funny movies of the Japs singing along to popular songs and playing the fool. You can not tell me that an artist is loosing money because of that! Those japs were funny, but I would not download one of their movie clips just to get access to a song.

Or how about the night club owner who did his own karaoke in Japan? He got arrested for singing popular songs by the Beatles. Are the surviving members of the Beatles so insistent on getting more money that they are willing to destroy a mans life by sending him to jail because the oke was so impressed by their music, he could not help singing it in his own bar?

While I agree in a limited copyright for artists to be able to reap their rewards, I do not see the need for an extensive copyright that exists often after the original artist is dead, and is used to shove the little man around for the big record labels.

 

[doobiwan]

I don't disagree with you, I think a lot of the copyright enforcement going on is ridiculous, as much as people should respect an artists works, the Record companies need to respect consumers rights to fair use.

I do view music piracy somewhat differently to software piracy, as often the musicians are getting shafted by the publishers as well. But the law has to change, and all that piracy effort should be going into class action against the recording companies rather than into piracy. In music we need to cut out the middle men, if we paid artists directly and tripled what they currently get, we'd still only be paying around $5 an album. R150-R180 for a CD that took 5 drunk fratboys a weekend partying in a studio to produce is just stupid.

If you couldn't pirate you would fight because you have no option.

 

[Maestr0]

Ag *** nie al weer nie. This time I'm not saying anything. Check my location and you will have the answer to my views on piracy. Enjoy your little fight.

 

[AntiThesis]

We're fighting? Didn't think so.

Yah it's a tricky issue. In my ideal world there'd be no money and everything would be free ^_^ Chances in hell...

 

[w1z4rd]

I don't disagree with you, I think a lot of the copyright enforcement going on is ridiculous, as much as people should respect an artists works, the Record companies need to respect consumers rights to fair use.

I do view music piracy somewhat differently to software piracy, as often the musicians are getting shafted by the publishers as well. But the law has to change, and all that piracy effort should be going into class action against the recording companies rather than into piracy. In music we need to cut out the middle men, if we paid artists directly and tripled what they currently get, we'd still only be paying around $5 an album. R150-R180 for a CD that took 5 drunk fratboys a weekend partying in a studio to produce is just stupid.

... in a perfect world with no shareholders...

I agree with you on this take on how the music industry should be handled. But its not handled like this. In reality the artist money is used to make shareholders nice and rich, so that they can buy more artists, and destroy any competition or threat to their money. They do not care about the song, they care only for the money it makes them.

So they in turn bribe public officials with nice campaign donations (with the artists money) to pass more laws so they can get more control of the song, and the artist and your involvement with either.

 

[doobiwan]

but breaking the law doesn't help any.

What we need are things like http://www.last.fm/ to succeed. Which is (conspiracy theory) where I think the Zune is actually heading, I saw they're sponsoring an unsigned bands competition on MP3.com. Believe it or not, Microsoft may be the company to break the RIAA . . .

 

[AntiThesis]

Now that would be impressive. But I doubt it'll be with the Zune. I pray those are words I come to take back but doesn't look like it at the moment.

 

[doobiwan]

Well think about it.

The Zune's primary feature against the iPod is the Music sharing bit. They put WiFi in the thing, they could've gone for straight to device downloads, but they prioritized the social aspect.

They have to have support of the majors to get the thing going, but what if Apple started promoting unsigned bands on iTunes over RIAA bands?
Think about digg.com?
Put the two together and what do you get?

 

[Nexorsist]

Just a quick point I'd like to make and you can draw your own conclusion from that. According to many people R300 is pretty cheap for a game.

Please take this into consideration before you think that:

This is just an example of 1 game. Each battlefield has sold way over a million copies (haven't checked the stats for 2142 yet though), now even if the developers charge only $2 for that game and if they sold say 2million copies, then they make $4,000,000 dollars (only in the US), with the current exchange that gives you roughly R28.8 MILLION. Now are you telling me we are the greedy ones? Now replace that with the current $40-50 that they are charging on a game and work out how much they make.

They are by no means making anywhere near a loss. I am not saying that piracy is right or fair in any way, I'm just saying why it doesn't really affect the developer in any way. In my honest opinion if I was a developer of a game like Battlefield, I would love for them to pirate my game. That way the popularity of the game increases and people who want to play online will have to go buy it. A lot of people that baught the game wouldn't have baught it otherwise, without testing it first. The groups that create the pirated versions of the game, almost never crack the cd-key system for authentication because they support the fact that the game should be baught if you want to play online.

Thats just my 2cents.

Thanks
Nexorsist

 

[kronoSX]

Just a quick point I'd like to make and you can draw your own conclusion from that. According to many people R300 is pretty cheap for a game.

Please take this into consideration before you think that:

This is just an example of 1 game. Each battlefield has sold way over a million copies (haven't checked the stats for 2142 yet though), now even if the developers charge only $2 for that game and if they sold say 2million copies, then they make $4,000,000 dollars (only in the US), with the current exchange that gives you roughly R28.8 MILLION. Now are you telling me we are the greedy ones? Now replace that with the current $40-50 that they are charging on a game and work out how much they make.

They are by no means making anywhere near a loss. I am not saying that piracy is right or fair in any way, I'm just saying why it doesn't really affect the developer in any way. In my honest opinion if I was a developer of a game like Battlefield, I would love for them to pirate my game. That way the popularity of the game increases and people who want to play online will have to go buy it. A lot of people that baught the game wouldn't have baught it otherwise, without testing it first. The groups that create the pirated versions of the game, almost never crack the cd-key system for authentication because they support the fact that the game should be baught if you want to play online.

Thats just my 2cents.

Thanks
Nexorsist

You are totally correct there,that is a wise statment you made,and you backed it up nicely,with fact,I agree totally with you there

 

[w1z4rd]

Just a quick point I'd like to make and you can draw your own conclusion from that. According to many people R300 is pretty cheap for a game.

Please take this into consideration before you think that:

This is just an example of 1 game. Each battlefield has sold way over a million copies (haven't checked the stats for 2142 yet though), now even if the developers charge only $2 for that game and if they sold say 2million copies, then they make $4,000,000 dollars (only in the US), with the current exchange that gives you roughly R28.8 MILLION. Now are you telling me we are the greedy ones? Now replace that with the current $40-50 that they are charging on a game and work out how much they make.

They are by no means making anywhere near a loss. I am not saying that piracy is right or fair in any way, I'm just saying why it doesn't really affect the developer in any way. In my honest opinion if I was a developer of a game like Battlefield, I would love for them to pirate my game. That way the popularity of the game increases and people who want to play online will have to go buy it. A lot of people that baught the game wouldn't have baught it otherwise, without testing it first. The groups that create the pirated versions of the game, almost never crack the cd-key system for authentication because they support the fact that the game should be baught if you want to play online.

Thats just my 2cents.

Thanks
Nexorsist

Yup, they make great profits thanks to cheap exploitable labour in poor third world countries.

 

[kilps]

The problem with the music industry firstly is that often an artist doesn't get much money and rather the label does.

I a supporter of the Pirate Party model (http://www2.piratpartiet.se/international/english) - I seriously think that it is a way to reform copyright laws to benefit everyone - who needs rich record labels?

 

[Macguyver1]

And again the comparison cannot be made between physically removing an object from someone's possession to creating a copy of said thing. You're more than welcome to photocopy as many R100 bills as you want. The reserve bank won't care as long as you don't try to use them as legal tender.

A copied game has no intrinsic value to the person who copies it (many people at least) and could not be resold.

Think of it this way:

Stealing - I sneak into your driveway and put a key into your car and drive it away, therefore depriving you of the use of your car and gaining financially.

Pirating - I sneak into your driveway and photocopy your car. I then walk away. I have not deprived you of your car and nor have I gained anything I can sell. I just have a bloody great big piece of paper with a car on it.

No analogy will ever be complete but it's an idea.

This makes no sense, after pirating a game I am sure most people use the game, this would then be the same as using the R100 note that you made a copy of.

 

[Macguyver1]

Just a quick point I'd like to make and you can draw your own conclusion from that. According to many people R300 is pretty cheap for a game.

Please take this into consideration before you think that:

This is just an example of 1 game. Each battlefield has sold way over a million copies (haven't checked the stats for 2142 yet though), now even if the developers charge only $2 for that game and if they sold say 2million copies, then they make $4,000,000 dollars (only in the US), with the current exchange that gives you roughly R28.8 MILLION. Now are you telling me we are the greedy ones? Now replace that with the current $40-50 that they are charging on a game and work out how much they make.

They are by no means making anywhere near a loss. I am not saying that piracy is right or fair in any way, I'm just saying why it doesn't really affect the developer in any way. In my honest opinion if I was a developer of a game like Battlefield, I would love for them to pirate my game. That way the popularity of the game increases and people who want to play online will have to go buy it. A lot of people that baught the game wouldn't have baught it otherwise, without testing it first. The groups that create the pirated versions of the game, almost never crack the cd-key system for authentication because they support the fact that the game should be baught if you want to play online.

Thats just my 2cents.

Thanks
Nexorsist

This is utter rubbish, if you designed a product and people were buying your product and this in turn made you rich, would that make it ok for people to start stealing your product, or copying your idea's and selling them?

There is a massive list of PC titles that were moved to console because developers would rather maximise on profit then deal with the losses of piracy.

Also maybe you should look into what it actually costs to make a game, and how many years it takes before you assume that piracy has no effect on these organisations.

 

[oober]

Moving the games over to consoles will not solve the piracy issue, when consoles ARE games pirating will get just as bad as it is with the current pc games.

They should rather spend their time and money and try to find a model that works better.

I also think that no one can say for sure that piracy is causing losses for everyone(Maybe in some instances). They would have to do an intensive study on this subject for many years involving thousands of games to get behind the truth of this.