DoPo: And I never once claimed that DRM is undesirable.
Right. Just like I never claimed you claimed that. Semantics aside
It was the way you phrased it. What I said was that overusing DRM was bad. However, you spent a significant portion of text to elaborate on what I already agreed with - DRM isn't bad by itself, overusing it is bad.
jboking: I'm actually using the Ubisoft example in my final report, as it is a primary example of why the gaming community is opposed to most anything described as DRM. If something's main appeal isn't that it is DRM(Or where media coverage doesn't focus on the fact that it is DRM), but rather that it is a service(steam), it is usually well accepted by the community.
This is a relatively new problem in the field. People didn't use to dislike DRM until it broke what it had to do. CD copy protection and such had been around for quite but didn't really impact gamers much, so they weren't "accepted" they were pretty much overlooked. This is the best DRM you can have - almost transparent.
But I recall when it started becoming an issue. I distinctly remember that while waiting for Heroes 5 and Ubisoft had announced the game would be using StarForce protection. At that time, StarForce had a very bad reputation in the gaming community for hampering gameplay, acting as spyware and downright breaking your computer (there were reports of CD drives that stopped working. I don't remember if they were urban legends or actually legitimate). It got more bad rap than Origin, and that's saying something. Anyway, the fans protested and Ubisoft dumped StarForce in favour of SecuROM.
A bit later, Spore came out and the copy protection was so bad that it actively stopped legitimate customers from playing their game. From limiting installations to only 5, to sometimes flat out refusing to install the game at all. Customers were angry (to put it mildly). It didn't help at all that the pirated version 1. Existed despite the copy protection 2. Had none of the problems. Eventually, the copy protection was stripped down to a more basic level. Ironically, the protection used was SecuROM.
Bottom line is - once the security is not transparent, it means it's bad. And that's part of why people perceive DRM as bad - it's only noticeable when it's bad.
jboking: I don't know how I feel about the Lock analogy, but it is close to being the best explanation.
The lock is pretty much the explanation of DRM. It can protect your house but anybody determined to get in, will find a way to bypass it. As with DRM. You can try to make your front door a castle like moat and a bridge and that would inconvenience you any time you enter exit. A determined person would still find a way to bypass it. There is a balance between security and comfort that must be found. DRM is tends to take a hit on comfort the most with not as significant rise in security.
In fact, security is never flawless. It is a known problem in the computing world - the more security you throw at something, you're only warding against low level intruders. Higher security attracts high profile crackers. Possibly people who know more than you about security (and going around it). Or just people who are damn good at finding flaws. The bottom line is, that security should never be considered infallible.
jboking: The type of Piracy we are worried about is online piracy because of how many people it can reach and the minimal collective effort it takes to get the copyrighted material (instead of someone having to crack it for just a few friends, one person can crack it and share it for anyone with an internet connection).
This changes things...however, online piracy is unlikely to be stopped, either. There have and always have been ways to get illegal stuff online. Ways that are hard to monitor or reliably shut down. Shut down a website and it will just get mirrored the following day. Find a way to outlaw websites and people may go back to IRC. Decentralised networks are still, by and large, out there. There are always ways.
It is very hard to root out internet piracy. What is easier, though, is making it less accessible. IRC, for example, would need slightly more technical knowledge than is needed right now to find an illegal copy of the latest popular game or a movie. Right now, people can even stumble upon an illegal copy when they didn't intend to. Raising the bar to be a pirate, would mean that "accidental" pirates (as in "well, it's just easier to do this than buy it") would be removed. And again, that's towards making buying the product more appealing. If it's easier to go to the store, then more people would go to the store. If going to the store is more of a hassle and actually impacts your experience playing, then more people will pirate (again, the Oatmeal comic I linked to illustrates this perfectly).
And SOPA is so utterly stupid that it will not have a huge impact on piracy.
And this, we disagree on. If the case of the music industry has shown us anything, it's that companies are willing to chase down people taking their products even if the chase is a futile one. Now, imagine they had the ability to take down a website hosting said materials until a court trial (which could take several months to reach) could be had on the issue. They left enforcement to corporations, and corporations will do anything for a perceived 'profit'.
The fact that the music industry goes after pirates, does not mean that pirating music decreased significantly. What decreased it is making music more convenient to buy. People did voice their concerns and suggestions on the matter a lot but the music industry kept clinging to it's old ways. For a long, long time. People wanted a better way to get their music - if they wanted two songs from band X they didn't want to buy a whole album or even two. Piracy allowed them that (well, also for free) but the introduction of convenient way to shop for music. You do not tackle a problem by closing your ears singing "Tra-la-la" while kicking everybody you don't like. Which is what the music industry essentially did. They avoided the MP3 like the plague for a while. And another while. And a while after it had turned into the dominant and most convenient way to listen to music.
Embracing change and going with it has proven useful. More useful than suing people for six digit numbers (I think it was a six digit number) on account of downloading an album illegaly. Or trying to sue people who don't own computers at all. Or trying to sue people who have been dead for years. All of which has happened. And no, it didn't make piracy vanish in a puff of smoke.
So, yes, SOPA wouldn't have worked. And as I said above - there are always ways around it. Shut down a website - mirrors. Also decentralised networks. By their nature they cannot be shut down. SOPA would have only had benefit as far as showing actual results. And those results would have been wrong. Ever had ants or other insects in your home? I had some time back. You could see them marching on the wall in a line. You can break their path and force them to not go there any more, but that doesn't mean there are no more ants in your home. SOPA is the same way. It would only work for toddlers intelligence "I don't see it so it doesn't exist". Going for visible targets would be doing just that.
jboking: What we're really looking for is reducing piracy to the point of insignificance
Which is the point of "some people will just pirate". If they want to, they would.
Incorrect. The high piracy rates of Portal 2 suggest that even if price flexibility (Portal 2 was discounted in price so fast that people who bought on release felt short changed), developer care (the arg, taking in fan complaints with portal), and DRM (steam) were all there, it still wouldn't make the "some people will just pirate" bunch insignificant. You can also consider the hefty number of people who pirate humble bundles for this consideration. The number is not insignificant. We have to find a way to either turn "Will just pirate" people into people who have a reason for pirating that can be addressed or people stopped by the law.
Yes, you are correct. I was looking at it from the wrong angle. I still maintain that there are people who given a choice between paying money for a product and taking a possible equal or bigger inconvenience (compared to the price) to pirate the same product, would pirate it. But there are some who do need and would accept correction. There has to be action that discourages piracy as a whole.
The Humble Bundles again, I do not think that there were a large portion of people who went "Oh, I could pay a cent for these games but I'd better not pay a cent". Some of them are people who didn't even know they had the option of paying a cent. They found the HIB illegally, liked it and downloaded it. They didn't say "Har har, you're not taking my cent from me". Lots of them could be converted to legitimate customers given the right incentive.
But unfortunately, there are "hardcore" pirates who would really go "Har har, you won't take my cent from me". These are the people I talk about. They just may be irredeemable. But they shouldn't be the primary target of action against piracy. Once illegal downloading is reduced, they are going to be the core of the remaining issue. Maybe only then should they be targeted, however it is way too early to talk about that.
jboking: I honestly don't think it was an entirely stupid way to tackle piracy, and I believe it could have limited the amount of pirated content available to US citizens greatly given a year or two to work (my reasoning on this has already been addressed). However, I feel the negative implications of SOPA (the internet has no free speech, public domain exists their only on the good graces of large corporations, etc) outweigh the ability to reduce piracy
And I already said why it wouldn't work really. But I highlighted another thing. The US isn't a huge offender for piracy. Or at least hasn't been last I checked (few years ago). I can't find enough recent statistics to make a judgement.
Anyway, reducing piracy in one country (assuming it worked), doesn't do anything. Targeting piracy on a case by case basis is not a way to stop it. If anything, the warez scene has proven itself incredibly flexible and able to adapt with a rapid pace. Going at the issue slowly will just force it to evolve into something else. Case in point - a certain European website which recently got sued for hosting torrents. The owners were found guilty and so the issue (website) should have gone, right? Except the website is absolutely still working and is now hosting magnetic links which are like the son of torrents. Not only did this reduce the size of the database (in disk space) to barely a fraction of it before, but also puts the website outside the reach of the law. BAM - instant change for the better for the warez scene, while legally the issue still remains and has taken a turn for the worse as the previous methods would no longer work.
Going after piracy in such a limited fashion makes no sense. Thus, again, the market needs to adapt as well as the law. The law should help not isolate the issues.
It reminded me of this material called Piracy Examined. A very good read as well, although it's slightly dated now. But I noticed there have been updates. Even without them, it's really relevant
poiumty: You do realise that videogames started out as 100% independently developed projects, right? Sierra was 2 guys in a basement. EA and Activision were similar.
Big publishers only consolidate video games as a giant industry. They do not keep video games alive.
OT: not much to add here. You counter piracy by making stuff free to play. Pretty much any other method is an impediment to consumers more than a way to gain sales.
You do realise this is not twenty years ago right? The industry is very very different today then it was then. The way things are today big publishers are the gaming industry.
You do realise this is not twenty years ago right? The industry is very very different today then it was then. The way things are today big publishers are the gaming industry.
That's quite a claim to make, seeing as the indie scene is progressing very nicely and one particular indie game sold like warm bread recently.
AAA titles aren't required for gaming to survive, like they weren't required in the past.
When we start seeing finished, profitable products consistently emerging from Kickstarter projects, we can start talking about the death of the publisher system. The fact of the matter is that publishers currently perform a vital role in the current market. Many people tend to disregard the fact that video game publishers, in addition to actual publishing, are also partially or mainly responsible for financing the development of games. That's how most triple A games get their obscenely huge budgets: because a publisher decides to pump money into the project until more spews out. And regardless of what we think of triple A games, most of them couldn't be made by a small indie team with current technology. But people- a load of people- still buy these games, enough to make them a profitable product as a whole.
Now I'm not saying the current conglomerate of publishers is never going to befall any sort of financial misfortune, or that they will be totally unaffected by things like digital distribution, advances in technology, or anything else. And it certainly wouldn't be unheard of for a major publisher to mismanage itself into the ground (Anybody else remember Interplay?). If that's what you meant by "major publishers crashing into the ground", then I can agree with you; I can think of one or two that can expect major shifts within 2-5 years. But publishers as a whole perform a role that indie development cannot meet, and Kickstarter development has yet to be proven to be able to meet. So long as AAA games remain profitable, publishers will probably still be around in one form or another.
I should have been clearer about this in my first post: I dont think kickstarter projects are going to put publishers out of business entirely, I just think its a sign of things to come. The role of a publisher is shifting in all genres of entertainment, although games are lagging behind somewhat.
Publishers are probably here to stay, but they will have to adapt.
poiumty: That's quite a claim to make, seeing as the indie scene is progressing very nicely and one particular indie game sold like warm bread recently.
AAA titles aren't required for gaming to survive, like they weren't required in the past.
Do you even know why titles like that sell so much? Its because they get free advertising from sites/conventions that are supported by big publishers. The market IS supported by those big publishers. How well do you think that indy game would do when nobody knows about it?
poiumty: That's quite a claim to make, seeing as the indie scene is progressing very nicely and one particular indie game sold like warm bread recently.
AAA titles aren't required for gaming to survive, like they weren't required in the past.
Do you even know why titles like that sell so much? Its because they get free advertising from sites/conventions that are supported by big publishers. The market IS supported by those big publishers. How well do you think that indy game would do when nobody knows about it?
How many people do you think bought Minecraft because they saw the advertisment on a major site? How many people bought (edit: riot points in) League of Legends for the same reason? Did the Humble Indie Bundle get over 1 million in sales because of publishers?
In the hypothetical situation that publishers will go down (which won't happen), gaming will still survive. Times have changed, but thinking we still make all our sales decisions based on advertising is a very unconvincing argument.
poiumty: How many people do you think bought Minecraft because they saw the advertisment on a major site? How many people bought (edit: riot points in) League of Legends for the same reason? Did the Humble Indie Bundle get over 1 million in sales because of publishers?
In the hypothetical situation that publishers will go down (which won't happen), gaming will still survive. Times have changed, but thinking we still make all our sales decisions based on advertising is a very unconvincing argument.
Go on tell me where did you find out about minecraft or the humble indie bundle? The odds are it was from a video game website. A website that either directly or indirectly relies on those publishers to stay in business. Even the escapist is reliant on them. Now think of how many people found out about those two NOT from a gaming website and NOT from somebody who heard about it through a gaming website. Odds are not very many.
Its not that decisions are based on advertising its that that advertising money is being used to run websites and other venues where we learn about the vast majority of games.
Go on tell me where did you find out about minecraft or the humble indie bundle?
Youtube. Twitch. Steam.
With or without big publishers, conventions will exist. People WANT to find games, and saying that no one will ever hear about game A without publisher-funded websites is... you know what, I'm done with the "bold statement" formula. I'm just going to go ahead and say you're narrow-minded.
Go on tell me where did you find out about minecraft or the humble indie bundle?
Youtube. Twitch. Steam.
With or without big publishers, conventions will exist. People WANT to find games, and saying that no one will ever hear about game A without publisher-funded websites is... you know what, I'm done with the "bold statement" formula. I'm just going to go ahead and say you're narrow-minded.
I think your the one being narrow minded. You are vastly underestimating how much support publishers give to the industry. You also seem to be denying that websites such as the escapist are indirectly funded by publishers and could not exist without them. Tell me do you think the escapist could exist with 99% less news articles?
I guess in just comes down to you not knowing anything about how business works.
Das Boot: You are vastly underestimating how much support publishers give to the industry.
Support, yes. You're making the case that big publishers are the one and only thing that makes people develop videogames. Support doesn't mean lifeline.
You also seem to be denying that websites such as the escapist are indirectly funded by publishers and could not exist without them. Tell me do you think the escapist could exist with 99% less news articles?
Escapist? Maybe, maybe not. Sites like Penny Arcade and Giant Bomb? Don't see why not. News articles don't exist to advertise or endorse big businesses. AAA titles can still exist without publishers (you know, Valve is technically an independent developer - as is Ubisoft).
But please, tell me more about how business works. Let me guess, a market isn't driven by supply and demand, but rather internet advertising and million-dollar publishing. Amirite.
poiumty: Escapist? Maybe, maybe not. Sites like Penny Arcade and Giant Bomb? Don't see why not. News articles don't exist to advertise or endorse big businesses. AAA titles can still exist without publishers (you know, Valve is technically an independent developer - as is Ubisoft).
But please, tell me more about how business works. Let me guess, a market isn't driven by supply and demand, but rather internet advertising and million-dollar publishing. Amirite.
Your right new articles dont exist to advertise or endorse big businesses but the people who write them are paid by those businesses.
Yea the market is driven by supply and demand but its not that simple. Both supply and demand themselves are driven by a large number of varying factors. One is knowledge that a product exists.
The exact same logic can be applied here that was used when the governments decided to bail out the auto industry. The ripple effect of them collapsing is something you are not looking at.
Your right new articles dont exist to advertise or endorse big businesses but the people who write them are paid by those businesses.
Yea the market is driven by supply and demand but its not that simple. Both supply and demand themselves are driven by a large number of varying factors. One is knowledge that a product exists.
The exact same logic can be applied here that was used when the governments decided to bail out the auto industry. The ripple effect of them collapsing is something you are not looking at.
Must be why people don't drive cars anymore.
Let's just chalk it up to differing opinions and move on. We're getting nowhere fast here.
I'm very much against piracy, but I feel very strongly that consumers are being thought of as potential pirates rather than a potential sale.
This. This RIGHT here is the problem.
I'm going to tell you a story of two gamers, Ben and Mal. Both have been waiting with bated breath for the imminent release of the latest installment in their favorite game series ever: Call of Fantasy: Battlefield XXIII. And it's going to be great. They know it because the publisher, Twirling Mustache, Inc, has taken every opportunity to make sure they know it.
The long awaited day comes: The first payday after release!
Ben calls his wife and tells her he'll be home a bit late, because he's stopping at Video Emporium to pick up his new game. He walks into the store, Explorer card in hand, sets it down on the counter, and says "A copy of the new Call of Fantasy, my good man!"
Mal's bittorrent download of Call of Fantasy had started a day earlier, and was just finishing up when he walked in from work. Both gamers sit down at exactly the same moment and begin installing the game.
Some minutes later, a demonic servant of Twirling Mustache, Inc appears in one of the gamer's rooms, grabs him by the collar, and pulls him out of his chair. "You filthy, thieving scumbag!" the twisted beast shouts. "How DARE you consider playing our game without our express, written consent? As punishment for your transgressions, we're going to turn off your access. You'll NEVER run that game again!" Then, the demon kicks the gamer in the crotch, and disappears.
The other gamer, ten minutes after sitting through the fully rendered, half-hour long unskippable introductory cutscene, uninstalls the game because it's an unplayable, bug-ridden mess.
It was the way you phrased it. What I said was that overusing DRM was bad. However, you spent a significant portion of text to elaborate on what I already agreed with - DRM isn't bad by itself, overusing it is bad.
I didn't argue that DRM was good. I was responding to you saying that DRM is handled poorly. I simply showed an example of how DRM is being handled well. That's all.
jboking: The type of Piracy we are worried about is online piracy because of how many people it can reach and the minimal collective effort it takes to get the copyrighted material (instead of someone having to crack it for just a few friends, one person can crack it and share it for anyone with an internet connection).
This changes things...however, online piracy is unlikely to be stopped, either. There have and always have been ways to get illegal stuff online. Ways that are hard to monitor or reliably shut down. Shut down a website and it will just get mirrored the following day. Find a way to outlaw websites and people may go back to IRC. Decentralised networks are still, by and large, out there. There are always ways.
It is very hard to root out internet piracy. What is easier, though, is making it less accessible. IRC, for example, would need slightly more technical knowledge than is needed right now to find an illegal copy of the latest popular game or a movie. Right now, people can even stumble upon an illegal copy when they didn't intend to. Raising the bar to be a pirate, would mean that "accidental" pirates (as in "well, it's just easier to do this than buy it") would be removed. And again, that's towards making buying the product more appealing. If it's easier to go to the store, then more people would go to the store. If going to the store is more of a hassle and actually impacts your experience playing, then more people will pirate (again, the Oatmeal comic I linked to illustrates this perfectly).
Increasing the skill requirement to being a pirate would potentially present a method of reducing piracy to insignificance. Given, in a number of years, they'll have to find yet another method to make it more difficult to pirate, but it constantly keeps piracy at the point of insignificance. So yes, we can outlaw certain types of websites and Pirates can move to IRC once more, but if it makes them insignificant, that's okay.
The fact that the music industry goes after pirates, does not mean that pirating music decreased significantly.
I wasn't suggesting they actually stopped piracy. Not in the least, actually. I was suggesting that they were willing to fight people pirating even though it was a completely futile activity at the time, which you seem to agree with. I was simply displaying that companies will fight over a perceived loss, even if the fight itself is pointless.
What decreased it is making music more convenient to buy. People did voice their concerns and suggestions on the matter a lot but the music industry kept clinging to it's old ways. For a long, long time. People wanted a better way to get their music - if they wanted two songs from band X they didn't want to buy a whole album or even two. Piracy allowed them that (well, also for free) but the introduction of convenient way to shop for music. You do not tackle a problem by closing your ears singing "Tra-la-la" while kicking everybody you don't like. Which is what the music industry essentially did. They avoided the MP3 like the plague for a while. And another while. And a while after it had turned into the dominant and most convenient way to listen to music.
There is actually a lot of suggestion that piracy in the music industry hasn't slowed down too much. What has changed is that the music industry got the memo that as piracy increased (thus decreasing record sales), performance income increased. The boost of free exposure, essentially free advertisement, that they got from piracy lead to people being more informed about certain bands and made them more willing to go to said shows. The music industry is one of those rare cases where piracy was actually useful.
Embracing change and going with it has proven useful. More useful than suing people for six digit numbers (I think it was a six digit number) on account of downloading an album illegaly. Or trying to sue people who don't own computers at all. Or trying to sue people who have been dead for years. All of which has happened. And no, it didn't make piracy vanish in a puff of smoke.
You're right, it doesn't. This is because the litigation focused on individual people, rather than other websites.
So, yes, SOPA wouldn't have worked. And as I said above - there are always ways around it. Shut down a website - mirrors. Also decentralised networks. By their nature they cannot be shut down. SOPA would have only had benefit as far as showing actual results. And those results would have been wrong. Ever had ants or other insects in your home? I had some time back. You could see them marching on the wall in a line. You can break their path and force them to not go there any more, but that doesn't mean there are no more ants in your home. SOPA is the same way. It would only work for toddlers intelligence "I don't see it so it doesn't exist". Going for visible targets would be doing just that.
You say a lot about how SOPA wouldn't have worked without addressing what SOPA's text suggested it do at all. I believe that the methods of SOPA could have drastically decreased piracy online by force. It wouldn't have been permanent, but it would have set a precedent of being able to blame full websites and even charge search engines if they direct people to sites with copyright material on them. It would have allowed things like the stop online child pornographers(that's roughly the name of the legislation), which allowed for ISP's to track and report any suspicious activity (including suspected deepweb activity) and then end contracts and deny internet access to individuals associated with the account. SOPA may not have totally stopped piracy by itself, but it would have set the background for more draconian laws that potentially could.
Yes, you are correct. I was looking at it from the wrong angle. I still maintain that there are people who given a choice between paying money for a product and taking a possible equal or bigger inconvenience (compared to the price) to pirate the same product, would pirate it. But there are some who do need and would accept correction. There has to be action that discourages piracy as a whole.
The Humble Bundles again, I do not think that there were a large portion of people who went "Oh, I could pay a cent for these games but I'd better not pay a cent". Some of them are people who didn't even know they had the option of paying a cent. They found the HIB illegally, liked it and downloaded it. They didn't say "Har har, you're not taking my cent from me". Lots of them could be converted to legitimate customers given the right incentive.
This is incorrect. If you look at the link in my OP, they have that 25 percent of the people who downloaded the bundle from the site it was hosted on used an exploit that had tutorials for it showered across the internet. This wasn't a "people accidentally found it." This was a "people intentionally tried to avoid paying even a cent." I won't deny that given good incentive, these people could become legitimate customers, though.
But unfortunately, there are "hardcore" pirates who would really go "Har har, you won't take my cent from me". These are the people I talk about. They just may be irredeemable. But they shouldn't be the primary target of action against piracy. Once illegal downloading is reduced, they are going to be the core of the remaining issue. Maybe only then should they be targeted, however it is way too early to talk about that.
The approach we are using now is suggesting unobtrusive DRM, ala steam, open communication between developers and consumers, and price flexibility on the part of the developers. My research partners and I believe that the market suggests that games that are high profile and also break the traditional $60 price tag sell better and experience lower piracy rates (Left 4 Dead 1 and the Orange Box were two of the games that suggested this - we examined discount activity and the effect of quick price dropping). Some time after that, we feel that those that can be turned into paying customers will
And I already said why it wouldn't work really. But I highlighted another thing. The US isn't a huge offender for piracy. Or at least hasn't been last I checked (few years ago). I can't find enough recent statistics to make a judgement.
What is true is that, as of right now, US hosted websites are not large offenders of piracy, but it is suggested that citizens within the US are. P.s. for the law portion of this we are looking to more international approaches with multi and bi lateral agreements, as the only other standing option is the UN....which tends to be ineffective.[/quote]
Anyway, reducing piracy in one country (assuming it worked), doesn't do anything. Targeting piracy on a case by case basis is not a way to stop it. If anything, the warez scene has proven itself incredibly flexible and able to adapt with a rapid pace. Going at the issue slowly will just force it to evolve into something else. Case in point - a certain European website which recently got sued for hosting torrents. The owners were found guilty and so the issue (website) should have gone, right? Except the website is absolutely still working and is now hosting magnetic links which are like the son of torrents. Not only did this reduce the size of the database (in disk space) to barely a fraction of it before, but also puts the website outside the reach of the law. BAM - instant change for the better for the warez scene, while legally the issue still remains and has taken a turn for the worse as the previous methods would no longer work. [/quote] International laws would be a better approach, no? Also, to confirm, are you talking about PirateBay? I don't think their name is illegal here. In fact, I think the only thing you can't do on this website without mod wrath is admit to piracy.[quote]
I like your analysis, but I have a number of problems. First, while it is difficult to tract the total amount of times any given product was pirated, it is not difficult to tract portions of that piracy. For example, requesting information from bittorrent trackers is one commonly used method of discovering how many times the material the tracker was linked to was accessed. This can give you a piracy rate for a product, albeit, one that only includes bittorrent. However, bittorrent numbers are usually very high and, while adding more would increase the perceived impact of piracy, it is rarely necessary to prove that there is an impact. Also, while we cannot call each torrent a 'lost sale' with certainty, we can view it as a time that material was accessed (and likely used) illegally. No matter whether the person would have bought it or not, by using the product, they are taking something that had a price. Therefore, the only instances of piracy that could be said to not relate to money lost is from individuals who are using it to back up a product they already own and people that are using it to access something that is otherwise unavailable to them (a game that is not sold in a certain country, for example). This, for legal purposes anyway, is why that $200 billion statistic is still often sited. $200 billion is a huge stretch, however, and I'm uncertain of the methods by which they accessed this material. The research some of my partners have dug up suggest that piracy, at most, could account for about 1.7 billion a year in the games industry (which is about a 27 billion dollar industry). Aside from that, I had one other issue.
So, legitimate copies should offer a higher utility than pirated copies by including DRM which is somewhat annoying to pirates (if only because it makes it more difficult to update to the latest patch because the right crack is unavailable or difficult to find) and unobtrusive to customers, include no DRM, or include very bad DRM which hurts pirates even more than paying customers, if and only if the loss of sales to legitimate customers put off by the draconian DRM if offset by the increase in sales from pirates who don't want to put up with the even worse problems they face if they try to get their pirated copy to work. The last option is fairly unlikely IMO and would be difficult to measure.
While I agree that it is difficult to track the sales gained from those that would have otherwise pirated the material, I disagree that there will be many pirates who are hurt by 'very bad DRM.' When thinking of this we have to look at practical examples of this occurring. Currently, Ubisofts Always-on DRM is one of the most obtrusive DRM's in the industry. However, it is circumvented, rather easily, by pirates. Then, Ubisoft experienced a backlash from the poor DRM, which lead to fewer PC customers and a sustained number of pirates. Very Bad DRM is bad for all.
I lied, there is one more thing I want to talk about
There is one more option, of course, which is suing pirates. The effect of this is unambiguous: lawsuits cost money (lots of it) and might decrease the social or ethical cost of piracy (because people think the company suing individuals are immoral bastards), though it might also scare pirates (however, this may not actually result in actual sales if the substitution rate is zero, or in very few extra sales if the substitution rate is very low). However, lawsuits don't seem to scare away pirates (piracy, as measured by torrents, didn't go down after such cases AFAIK).
Suing individual pirates is one approach, but the one the US seems to be approaching now is suing full websites, such as megaupload. These sites are often viewed as just as 'faceless' as the corporations. This leads to a less loss of face on the part of the company and gets them what they want (typically). It's true that these lawsuits don't scare pirates, which is why hosting sites are what is being attacked now. Instead of attack the downloading/uploading pirates, attack the hosts. Essentially, they are attempting to cutoff the supply.
One more thing
Of course, the government could do something about piracy as well. In the grand scheme of things, however, piracy is unlikely to be a problem. If consumers don't spend their money on a game they spend it on something else, so other sectors profit at the expense of the entertainment industry. Plus, piracy increases welfare. And there are severe privacy implications for most measures. The result is a trade off, which depends mostly on one's preferences (besides the effectiveness of such measures).
This mindset does not consider those companies that experience the negative effects of piracy. Example: Say a new IP is being created. It receives minimal sales and experiences a large amount of piracy. The company creating the new IP is now likely to either go under or cut spending (which leads to layoffs). The tangible effects of mass piracy can be seen in unemployment rates. This is a serious problem, as the video game industry is one of the largest entertainment industries today and fuels many domestic companies. Not only that, but you forget people who would instead save the money, which is more common in times of economic downturn.
Finally, that's all I have for you. I liked your analysis.
jboking: There is actually a lot of suggestion that piracy in the music industry hasn't slowed down too much. What has changed is that the music industry got the memo that as piracy increased (thus decreasing record sales), performance income increased. The boost of free exposure, essentially free advertisement, that they got from piracy lead to people being more informed about certain bands and made them more willing to go to said shows. The music industry is one of those rare cases where piracy was actually useful.
I must admit, I haven't seen any hard recent evidence of music piracy reducing. It was mostly based on speculation both others' and my own. And music is really weird when it comes to it. At the very least, I'm pretty sure they get less potential lost sales now than some years ago while they still regarded MP3 as the spawn of Satan.
jboking: So, yes, SOPA wouldn't have worked. And as I said above - there are always ways around it. Shut down a website - mirrors. Also decentralised networks. By their nature they cannot be shut down. SOPA would have only had benefit as far as showing actual results. And those results would have been wrong. Ever had ants or other insects in your home? I had some time back. You could see them marching on the wall in a line. You can break their path and force them to not go there any more, but that doesn't mean there are no more ants in your home. SOPA is the same way. It would only work for toddlers intelligence "I don't see it so it doesn't exist". Going for visible targets would be doing just that.
You say a lot about how SOPA wouldn't have worked without addressing what SOPA's text suggested it do at all. I believe that the methods of SOPA could have drastically decreased piracy online by force. It wouldn't have been permanent, but it would have set a precedent of being able to blame full websites and even charge search engines if they direct people to sites with copyright material on them. It would have allowed things like the stop online child pornographers(that's roughly the name of the legislation), which allowed for ISP's to track and report any suspicious activity (including suspected deepweb activity) and then end contracts and deny internet access to individuals associated with the account. SOPA may not have totally stopped piracy by itself, but it would have set the background for more draconian laws that potentially could. [/quote]
It's really impossible to keep out the fact that were it really enforced it would be bad for pretty much everybody. You either go all the way and make a lot of people victims, restrict the very foundation of the Internet, and generally make the world a worse place, or, alternatively, you let some leeway which means that piracy will have a time to adapt while the world is still a worse place. There are just too many drawbacks for...well, for everybody, really. And those drawbacks make enforcing SOPA undesirable for anybody affected by them.
Now, as I said, if people with actual understanding of the issue put some thought and intelligence into making a law, then I would be more favourable towards it.
Yes, you are correct. I was looking at it from the wrong angle. I still maintain that there are people who given a choice between paying money for a product and taking a possible equal or bigger inconvenience (compared to the price) to pirate the same product, would pirate it. But there are some who do need and would accept correction. There has to be action that discourages piracy as a whole.
The Humble Bundles again, I do not think that there were a large portion of people who went "Oh, I could pay a cent for these games but I'd better not pay a cent". Some of them are people who didn't even know they had the option of paying a cent. They found the HIB illegally, liked it and downloaded it. They didn't say "Har har, you're not taking my cent from me". Lots of them could be converted to legitimate customers given the right incentive.
This is incorrect. If you look at the link in my OP, they have that 25 percent of the people who downloaded the bundle from the site it was hosted on used an exploit that had tutorials for it showered across the internet. This wasn't a "people accidentally found it." This was a "people intentionally tried to avoid paying even a cent." I won't deny that given good incentive, these people could become legitimate customers, though.
I totally missed that - I took the OP to mean something along the lines of 25% weren't torrent downloads... Fuck. And now I feel bad.
But unfortunately, there are "hardcore" pirates who would really go "Har har, you won't take my cent from me". These are the people I talk about. They just may be irredeemable. But they shouldn't be the primary target of action against piracy. Once illegal downloading is reduced, they are going to be the core of the remaining issue. Maybe only then should they be targeted, however it is way too early to talk about that.
The approach we are using now is suggesting unobtrusive DRM, ala steam, open communication between developers and consumers, and price flexibility on the part of the developers. My research partners and I believe that the market suggests that games that are high profile and also break the traditional $60 price tag sell better and experience lower piracy rates (Left 4 Dead 1 and the Orange Box were two of the games that suggested this - we examined discount activity and the effect of quick price dropping). Some time after that, we feel that those that can be turned into paying customers will
That's actually interesting. I haven't seen any more precise measurements of piracy (partly because it's really fricking hard to have some. But general tendency can be observed just doesn't happen often enough) than roughly the numbers per year/industry/country/really general stuff.
But, yes, my words are confirmed - DRM is good when it's not felt or seen by users. And open communication is really good, yes. It allows adequate action from the devs/gaming companies - so they can address an issue, say DRM running amok. And also adequate action from users - they should turn to the devs instead of piracy.
And I already said why it wouldn't work really. But I highlighted another thing. The US isn't a huge offender for piracy. Or at least hasn't been last I checked (few years ago). I can't find enough recent statistics to make a judgement.
What is true is that, as of right now, US hosted websites are not large offenders of piracy, but it is suggested that citizens within the US are. P.s. for the law portion of this we are looking to more international approaches with multi and bi lateral agreements, as the only other standing option is the UN....which tends to be ineffective.
Hmm, then the numbers I've seen are really old probably the tendency has shifted. I was under the assumption that the US piracy, as in using pirated products, wasn't high in the list of countries. Last somewhat reliable data I've seen was from somewhere in 2006-2008. Which is more than five years away. And now that I think about it, it may have been looking just at a specific thing, say operating systems.
Out of curiosity, why would the UN be ineffective? I really don't know, I'm not suggesting that the would be.
jboking: International laws would be a better approach, no? Also, to confirm, are you talking about PirateBay? I don't think their name is illegal here. In fact, I think the only thing you can't do on this website without mod wrath is admit to piracy.
Yes, I'm talking about that. I wasn't sure if it was allowed and I was sure you would be able to guess it.
As for international laws - yes, some sort of internationally enforceable law would be a better option. I am in no way well versed in legal stuff, so I am not sure how feasible that is, however, it seems to me that it can be done.
I'm not sure how I feel about a law that is enforced by one party only, say, the US. I'm looking at the Richard O'Dwyer's case. I haven't looked into it seriously but extradition seems wrong (also I have no idea if that was approved or not yet). I think it's better if it's possible that the offenders would be prosecuted on home ground, so to say.
Wow, and I agree with you. I'll just want to elaborate a bit by throwing a few more sentences
First - tracking the piracy. Yes, it's not possible but it can be guessed. And since it can be reasonably assumed that piracy is roughly proportional across different sources (torrents, FTP, HTTP) and we can observe one of them (torrents have the statistics easily accessible). So yes, we can't get a precise number but we can get a precise enough estimation on the scale.
Second - lost sales. The numbers the industry throws at you are overblown. But each download is at least a partial lost sale. For example, for every 10 downloads one could have been a proper sale. The fact that somebody downloaded something, shows that they place at least some value on it. Sure, there are the odd people who are virtually no lost sales as they don't use the product but for each one of them there are dozens, if not hundreds, who do place however small value on it.
Now - very bad DRM and pirates. Pretty much by definition, pirated copies bypass DRM. Very, very often only legitimate customers suffer from it. I already mentioned the lock explanation (stop people from very easily pirating a product) but I forgot to mention the other major reason for the existence - prevent zero day releases. Not stop illegal releases but ideally slow them down. If it tries to do much more than that, people who haven't bypassed the DRM (i.e., legal customers) have to put up with it.
Digital Distribution is too laced with greed to be the future in the current form. It's what the industry wants right now because of how rife for exploitation it is. The industry wants to get it established before the goverment can catch up with properly regulating it... but that is another point entirely.
The issue with piracy is that it's not taken seriously, like many other crimes the penelties wind up being fairly mild in a practical sense, with the current state of prisons nobody wants to say toss some dude in prison for life (and pay for it) because he stole games. It's like drug use, it's such a slap on the wrist/revolving door crime despite all talks of getting tough, that nobody cares. The risks simply aren't anywhere near equal to the payoff.
Likewise it comes down to the international mess that is IP laws, with major powers like China pretty much refusing to acknowlege this. This means pirates have places that they can operate out of with imputiny. Some dude pirating games out of a country like China has no incentive to stop because China doesn't acknowlege the issue as being a crime. With that kind of thing being allowed, it really doesn't matter what kind of policies countries like the US put into force.
While games are a tiny tip of the iceberg, I think IPs and patents are going to be a big part of what leads to World War III, but that's an entirely differant discussion that goes in a LOT of differant directions. The bottom line is that your not going to make a major inroad against piracy unless nations are willing to force other nations to comply, and/or seize/abduct citizens from countries without extradition treaties. This applies to a wide array of issues, many far more important than gaming, it's just that gaming is one of the minor things influanced by the current state of the world and this unpleasant reality. Being unable to deal with other nations protecting pirates and other IP/Patent/Copyright criminals without the direct application of overwhelming force (leading to massive wars) is one of the reasons why very little is done.
Simply on the domestic front, there is the issue of the law as a deterrant. Right now you not only need a strong penelty, but one that is actually enforcable. Increasingly people don't take threats of say "20 years in prison for piracy" that seriously because the odds of any state enforcing that sentence are miminal, the simple cost means that if they ever actually do jail time, they are probably going to be outed due to overcrowding in favor of more dangerous criminals. A penelty nobody is afraid of or believes will ever really be applied is not much of a deterrant.
Incidently prison overcrowding is one of the reasons I'm such a "psycho" when it comes to prison overcrowding. I believe in the rapid (no appeals or delays) enforcement of the death penelty, as well as applying it to a much wider range of crimes. Perhaps even going so far as to control overcrowding by simply executing the more heinous criminals on the spot when prisons get too full even if not actually given the death penelty before that.
See in our effort to be "nice" and "humane" we have basically created a museum of the worst humanity has to offer. Rapists, killers, pedophilles, and corperate exploiters who have ruined thousands or even millions of lives (which I place in the same catagory). In keeping all of these people alive to be "humane" we have overcrowded our system and made it so we increasingly can't deal with lesser criminals at all. What's more the system is so broken that people are more afraid of the people they will be put into prison with, than the prison sentence itself (which is another issue entirely).
Basically I feel that if we say ordered the DoC (all the differant ones) nationwide to lock down the cell blocks, and then go cell to cell with squads of guys with shotguns cleaning out the majority of these scumbags, followed by an increase of the death penelty, we'd actually have room to start enforcing prison sentences on lesser criminals where it can act as a deterrant.
I know many people disagree with me, but I think being unable to deal with a lot of these problems comes from our morality, and too much concern over the "human rights" of a seriel rapist or whatever. To an extent all those liberals who have done things like ban the death penelty, or created all these hoops and appeals for it to be applied, and insisted "death" not be added to many crimes, have created the whole problem we have of not being able to enforce laws and discapline in the population and stop things like piracy and similar "low impact" crimes due to the sheer number of prisoners.
I know many people will disagree with me here, but that's my thoughts.
It was the way you phrased it. What I said was that overusing DRM was bad. However, you spent a significant portion of text to elaborate on what I already agreed with - DRM isn't bad by itself, overusing it is bad.
This is a relatively new problem in the field. People didn't use to dislike DRM until it broke what it had to do. CD copy protection and such had been around for quite but didn't really impact gamers much, so they weren't "accepted" they were pretty much overlooked. This is the best DRM you can have - almost transparent.
But I recall when it started becoming an issue. I distinctly remember that while waiting for Heroes 5 and Ubisoft had announced the game would be using StarForce protection. At that time, StarForce had a very bad reputation in the gaming community for hampering gameplay, acting as spyware and downright breaking your computer (there were reports of CD drives that stopped working. I don't remember if they were urban legends or actually legitimate). It got more bad rap than Origin, and that's saying something. Anyway, the fans protested and Ubisoft dumped StarForce in favour of SecuROM.
A bit later, Spore came out and the copy protection was so bad that it actively stopped legitimate customers from playing their game. From limiting installations to only 5, to sometimes flat out refusing to install the game at all. Customers were angry (to put it mildly). It didn't help at all that the pirated version 1. Existed despite the copy protection 2. Had none of the problems. Eventually, the copy protection was stripped down to a more basic level. Ironically, the protection used was SecuROM.
Bottom line is - once the security is not transparent, it means it's bad. And that's part of why people perceive DRM as bad - it's only noticeable when it's bad.
The lock is pretty much the explanation of DRM. It can protect your house but anybody determined to get in, will find a way to bypass it. As with DRM. You can try to make your front door a castle like moat and a bridge and that would inconvenience you any time you enter exit. A determined person would still find a way to bypass it. There is a balance between security and comfort that must be found. DRM is tends to take a hit on comfort the most with not as significant rise in security.
In fact, security is never flawless. It is a known problem in the computing world - the more security you throw at something, you're only warding against low level intruders. Higher security attracts high profile crackers. Possibly people who know more than you about security (and going around it). Or just people who are damn good at finding flaws. The bottom line is, that security should never be considered infallible.
This changes things...however, online piracy is unlikely to be stopped, either. There have and always have been ways to get illegal stuff online. Ways that are hard to monitor or reliably shut down. Shut down a website and it will just get mirrored the following day. Find a way to outlaw websites and people may go back to IRC. Decentralised networks are still, by and large, out there. There are always ways.
It is very hard to root out internet piracy. What is easier, though, is making it less accessible. IRC, for example, would need slightly more technical knowledge than is needed right now to find an illegal copy of the latest popular game or a movie. Right now, people can even stumble upon an illegal copy when they didn't intend to. Raising the bar to be a pirate, would mean that "accidental" pirates (as in "well, it's just easier to do this than buy it") would be removed. And again, that's towards making buying the product more appealing. If it's easier to go to the store, then more people would go to the store. If going to the store is more of a hassle and actually impacts your experience playing, then more people will pirate (again, the Oatmeal comic I linked to illustrates this perfectly).
The fact that the music industry goes after pirates, does not mean that pirating music decreased significantly. What decreased it is making music more convenient to buy. People did voice their concerns and suggestions on the matter a lot but the music industry kept clinging to it's old ways. For a long, long time. People wanted a better way to get their music - if they wanted two songs from band X they didn't want to buy a whole album or even two. Piracy allowed them that (well, also for free) but the introduction of convenient way to shop for music. You do not tackle a problem by closing your ears singing "Tra-la-la" while kicking everybody you don't like. Which is what the music industry essentially did. They avoided the MP3 like the plague for a while. And another while. And a while after it had turned into the dominant and most convenient way to listen to music.
Embracing change and going with it has proven useful. More useful than suing people for six digit numbers (I think it was a six digit number) on account of downloading an album illegaly. Or trying to sue people who don't own computers at all. Or trying to sue people who have been dead for years. All of which has happened. And no, it didn't make piracy vanish in a puff of smoke.
So, yes, SOPA wouldn't have worked. And as I said above - there are always ways around it. Shut down a website - mirrors. Also decentralised networks. By their nature they cannot be shut down. SOPA would have only had benefit as far as showing actual results. And those results would have been wrong. Ever had ants or other insects in your home? I had some time back. You could see them marching on the wall in a line. You can break their path and force them to not go there any more, but that doesn't mean there are no more ants in your home. SOPA is the same way. It would only work for toddlers intelligence "I don't see it so it doesn't exist". Going for visible targets would be doing just that.
Yes, you are correct. I was looking at it from the wrong angle. I still maintain that there are people who given a choice between paying money for a product and taking a possible equal or bigger inconvenience (compared to the price) to pirate the same product, would pirate it. But there are some who do need and would accept correction. There has to be action that discourages piracy as a whole.
The Humble Bundles again, I do not think that there were a large portion of people who went "Oh, I could pay a cent for these games but I'd better not pay a cent". Some of them are people who didn't even know they had the option of paying a cent. They found the HIB illegally, liked it and downloaded it. They didn't say "Har har, you're not taking my cent from me". Lots of them could be converted to legitimate customers given the right incentive.
But unfortunately, there are "hardcore" pirates who would really go "Har har, you won't take my cent from me". These are the people I talk about. They just may be irredeemable. But they shouldn't be the primary target of action against piracy. Once illegal downloading is reduced, they are going to be the core of the remaining issue. Maybe only then should they be targeted, however it is way too early to talk about that.
And I already said why it wouldn't work really. But I highlighted another thing. The US isn't a huge offender for piracy. Or at least hasn't been last I checked (few years ago). I can't find enough recent statistics to make a judgement.
Anyway, reducing piracy in one country (assuming it worked), doesn't do anything. Targeting piracy on a case by case basis is not a way to stop it. If anything, the warez scene has proven itself incredibly flexible and able to adapt with a rapid pace. Going at the issue slowly will just force it to evolve into something else. Case in point - a certain European website which recently got sued for hosting torrents. The owners were found guilty and so the issue (website) should have gone, right? Except the website is absolutely still working and is now hosting magnetic links which are like the son of torrents. Not only did this reduce the size of the database (in disk space) to barely a fraction of it before, but also puts the website outside the reach of the law. BAM - instant change for the better for the warez scene, while legally the issue still remains and has taken a turn for the worse as the previous methods would no longer work.
Going after piracy in such a limited fashion makes no sense. Thus, again, the market needs to adapt as well as the law. The law should help not isolate the issues.
I enjoyed reading that. Thank you for your input.
It reminded me of this material called Piracy Examined. A very good read as well, although it's slightly dated now. But I noticed there have been updates. Even without them, it's really relevant