The Pirate Bay has set sail for Costa Rica

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digit...210-123wn6.html



And only a few hours later it came back now in a server in Costa Rica. This cat and mouse game never ends.

I heard they wanted to host the servers in low orbit satellites:

www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-03/19/pirate-bay-drones

Crafty thieves indeed.

Arrrrrrr, to Costa Rica!

Ah, the Pirate Bay. Providing plausible deniability to middle aged men since it's founding.

"Why, no, I've never bought a Justin Bieber song in my life!"

A little anarchy is good for the soul.

She's listing heavily there, cap'n

Heavy seas...lots of cops and lawyers... Arrrrrgh!

http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-has-not-been-resurrected-yet-141210/

It seems the Costa Rica site is only a mirror and it's not functional without the parent site.

I guess some people on SimHQ work for free...

It could be viewed as simple as that. The argument is there to say "It's stealing and that's all there is to it!" And it's a legitmate argument. But it is not the only argument. Another argument is that there is a helluva lot more going on under the hood than that. This is all part of a changing paradigm. We are living in the Communications Age. To dismiss "universal free access" to media as just stealing, if that is what you are implying, is too simplistic.

Also, why is it: if you sneak into a theater - you get thrown out; if you steal a DVD - you spend an hour in jail; if you download the movie - it's a federal crime with the possibility of fines reaching $250,000 and years in jail? Why and how did the federal government get involved in prosecuting petty theft and imposing penalties that take the word "arbitrary" to the most ludicrous levels of insanity? And why do the people who make the billions and billions and billions in profits from movies and music - yet enjoy public tax dollar subsidies - have the right to have elected politicians try to pass laws that are in egregious violation of people's right to privacy, and are constructed specifically to protect the profits of one industry at the cost of those fundamental rights?

There is a lot of dirt, tons of it, billions of dollars worth of it, in the entertainment industry. And some of that dirt affects - and is trying to further affect - the fundamental tenets of democracy and free expression we enjoy. As I said, there is a helluva lot more going on than what is easily apparent. When you look at it all in detail, the image of corruption feeding on corruption comes to mind.

It's theft of a product, plain and simple. Whether it's enforced properly or effectively is a different matter.

Yes, that argument can be made. And I submit again it is not the only argument.

Hmmm... This is starting to sound pweControversial...

Not at all.

We're being friendly, polite, and rational.

Nothing PWEC about that.

Sure, you can of course make many arguments on how it should be allowed or justified somehow, but you're still literally just flat out stealing other people's work and product so you don't have to pay for it. Everyone that's ever pirated any movie ever pretty much accepts that fact. The idea that it's digital code instead of a can of beans is irrelevant.

No matter how much a rich guy makes, you're not entitled to his legally acquired gains and success. You're also not entitled to a copy of some software because you bought a license specifically for a single device. It's all illegally acquiring things you don't own, it's theft

In a utopia it would be acceptable, but utopias are hardly, well, utopian.

Edit: in an effort to be uncivilized: damn yooooooooooou! *shakes fist*

I see your uncivilization and raise you a "...I hope you're having a nice day."

If we are to look at it as a one-dimensional issue, then yes, it is theft. (Sometimes. For now.) I agree.

But the issue involves, at the very least, uncounted and uncountable people in every connected country in the world, in a paradigm changing scenario. And the old standards, perhaps even the definition of what constitutes theft, will be - indeed is - open to interpretation and change. Just a few years ago it was legal to download music in Canada. Now it isn't. What wasn't theft became theft. So it is rational to assume it can change back to where it is again not theft.

As Dylan said, "The times they are a changin'". This is a more complicated issue than it might appear.

One thing that has always puzzled me in this controversy is the Public Library system. Here is a local government run institution that allows you to check out movies, audio cd's, and books for free. What is in place to stop somebody from checking out a bunch of music CD's and ripping them into their iTunes library? What about the writer that has his/her bestseller available for folks to go down and bring it home and read it free of charge?

That's just sick

@ Force10: I would assume the library works with the publishers, who make their works available for that particular use for some sort of fee. As for what's stopping someone from stealing music, about the same thing that's stopping people from transcribing or photocopying books.

Look at it this way - you often no longer own what you buy. Property rights have gone the way of the Dodo. Read the fine print on media sales and you will see how little control you are allowed to have over things you paid for and paid taxes on.

So when the argument is put forth that you stole something when you downloaded it, it should also be noted that even if you paid for it, you might not actually own it.

Welcome to the future.

You can easily record content off of television and radio broadcasts, or even just copy music and films borrowed from a friend. People were breaking the law recording VHS tapes on their home VCRs, I guess assuming that they weren't because it was quite easy to do, but quite honestly, there's no practical way to catch people doing that. It's the large scale distribution operations that are easier to locate and prosecute, that's why they discern that way, that's why it seems arbitrary. Imagine if you will how it is impossible to catch every jaywalker, but if there was a large crowd in a concerted effort that decided to do it, they can go after that much easier. It's a general rule that the larger and more lucrative your scheme becomes, the more the authorities will take interest and notice.

The only thing I use TPB for is to download ISOs of games I own and have a proof of purchase for, but for one reason or another the retail disc or diskettes are no longer accessible (scratches, cracked disc etc etc.)

That's pretty much the idea behind what I meant when I mentioned software on specific devices. When we buy a game we're not buying the source code or IP, we're buying a license to use the software as stated. We own a lot less than we may think we do!

People developed a lazy way of thinking that because they could record songs off the radio, it was legal to do it. It was the ease which it could be done developed into this way of thinking. The owners of the songs could not really practically find much remedy to locate and sue everyone out there doing it, so by and large it wasn't an issue for that reason.

In the contemporary age, IP holders are now faced with ever more blatant schemes which share content across the Internet- which is traceable, which can turn up large rings involved in piracy. And now law enforcement and IP holders are fighting it- but people's attitudes are still back in the radio days. "It was always ok then, what's the deal." It was never ok insomuch as no one could do anything about it.

I believe that public libraries pay some kind of fee to the copywright holders in order to carry their CD's and DVD's in their collections. It's definitely not free for the libraries.

You are insinuating, somewhat, that it is the ease of doing a thing that makes it illegal. That is an argument that may not stand.

As an example, saving videos and music from youtube is the easiest thing in the world to do. Is that piracy? Youtube hosts megatons of copyrighted stuff and I assume, safely I think, that watching something on youtube will not earn me a legal sanction. Am I allowed to watch it a 1000 times legally, but am in violation of the law if I record it and watch it without their service on the 1001 try?

What vaporous micron-thick line in the sand must we observe and pay heed to in order to avoid fines and jail.

No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying it is the ease of doing an illegal thing which tends to make the attitude that it isn't illegal, or that it should not be illegal. This is generally true of anything, not just where it concerns piracy of movies, games and music. Jaywalking is a good example. Illegal, but people do it often not thinking about it being illegal. It's easy to do and get away with, it tends to cultivate a mindset of its own contrary to the law. Someone gets caught and protests because of the hundreds of others who get away with it, so it must not be a 'real' law. Murder on the other hand- tends not to do that.

I guess it would be interesting to find out how much the fee is that is paid that allows unlimited free usage to the entire public.

Radio stations pay fees to use the songs they play. It's just that it probably is calculated as worthwhile to the song owners because it's a form of promotion, they accept the loss of potential sales to people recording the songs for the exposure and for what little money they can get from licensing fees.

At what point does the ease of doing a thing, the efficacy of which that thing may be done, and the prevalence of the thing being done all conspire to render the notion that the illegal thing should perhaps not be illegal anymore?

If you cannot stop a thing from being done, en masse, every day, rapidly and efficiently and repeatedly, and without observable consequence or breakdown in civil order, at what point do we say... okay, go ahead.

Are we (soon) at the point where the cure is worse than the disease?

I would imagine the second you say downloading movies, games, and all other media is legal you'll see a massive drop in the enthusiasm for future development in those fields. Legal pirate bays would be popping up overnight to streamline the process. Hell, if I had the web development skills I'd be jumping on the bandwagon too.

I can't really answer that, I'm afraid. That's too deep a question. I jaywalk all the time, there are things that I think are too heavy handed or are illegal only for the reasons of inertia or to put money in the coffers of the state and employ people backed up with irrational fears and mindsets completely disdainful of facts- the absurdly immoral and ineffective War on Drugs. But at the same time, I wouldn't say I would necessarily want a game that I wrote being distributed without my royalties due, either.

It's going to happen. It is happening. As Corey Doctorow said, this moment, right now, today, is as hard as it will ever be to copy something. It's only going to get easier and faster.

As it stand now, you can get a decent 720p version of a new movie on a fast connection in minutes. You can get a TV show, literally, in seconds. What happens in five-years?

That was my initial point pages back.

To look at the question of piracy as a one-dimensional issue, as some may want to, is to take the place of the radio personality complaining that TV will kill his employment. Failure is guaranteed.

Couldn't tell you what the future holds, otherwise I'd win the lottery and all SimHQers would be living on my own privately owned banana republic somewhere. I will say if I showed up to work tomorrow as an IT guy and my boss told me "we're hiring you out for free to whoever we want. We probably won't be able to pay you anymore" I'd flip the bird and walk out. Take away any ability to make a profit and an entire industry will die overnight.

I sincerely hope that doesn't happen as I enjoy games and movies, and for that reason I really don't care how bad the fees are when Pirate Bay employees get hit. Considering the lost revenue compared to a grandma swiping a candy bar at a gas station the fees and repercussions are in some way quite justified.

If you have a break-in and your CDs, DVDs and boxed games are taken, who's property has been stolen? The IP holder or yours? How will the police view it?

Yours, they stole your legally purchased licenses and install media

Correct, they store YOUR property.

Well, that's up to the content owners. There's freeware out there, there's songs out there available for free, but that's up to the election of the content owners if they want to promote their works that way. This is a case where I couldn't ask someone to do something that I wouldn't necessarily do. Even if you say you wouldn't mind your works distributed in the public domain, you can't really speak for someone else.

The media is the stolen property, its dollar value (so long as the intent wasn't to copy and distribute the intellectual content, that's a separate crime). If it was breaking and entering just to steal a few dollars worth of movies, the worth of the movies isn't going to be the serious issue the thief is looking at it.

Aaaaarrr!!

Right, but since you never owned the source code in the first place it was never yours, just the licenses to install and/or use the software/music/whatever

The physical disks are still your legally owned property.

"Ownership" of media (music, movies, games) has always been the same, hasn't it? It's no different today than it was 30 years ago, except that today it's popular to accept licensing agreements which allow a provider to shut off purchased media at their discretion. That's all that's really changed (for those that accept it), right?

Exactly!

Why are the fines so ridiculously and insanely out of proportion to the "crime" for what you might do with the DVD in your player? DRM and copyright law is law as written by corporations and enforced and financed by government. This is a manifest breakdown in the system. And it goes to show that there is a huge underlying problem, a paradigm shift, that is afoot. And before the waters descend, those who don't want anything to change, with their fingers in the dykes (Oh my...) will stand fast and stand tough, swearing never to give in, and then... they will be swept away.

The issue with current economic model is we are slowly moving away from a product based economy to a service based economy. The continuing technological development is making it progressively easier to manufacture and duplicate products to the point their commercial value is virtually null.

Film, music, books and software were the first to be hit by this but it is going to start spreading to other fields as 3d printing becomes cheaper and widespread.

The fundamental issue at hand is when someone makes a copy of something without the original creator having authorized it is it stealing?

Well, the act of stealing is more than just to take something without permission. It is the consequences that come from that act that makes it a theft: the original owner of the stolen item loses the right to use it. For example if a car is stolen the owner cannot use it anymore and may never have it back. He lost not only the vehicle but the all the benefits that it gave.

So when someone makes an unauthorized copy of a film/music/book/software what has the original owner lost? He still has the original product as before and he still can benefit from it. Fundamentally he has lost nothing. Therefore the act of unauthorized copying is not theft.

So what it is then? It is an unauthorized copy. That's it.

If it is legal or not that is another issue that is derived from the need to make a profit, but that is a consequence of the product based economic system we live in. And that's why we, the users are legally denied the ownership of the software we use and are forced onto an artificial system of licensing that uses increasingly more draconian methods to enforce it.

Isn't this a strawman argument?

Of course I don't own AutoCAD (I can't claim I developed it and sell it as my own), just a license to use it. I use to agree to Autodesk's perpetual licenses (and still do for the older version I use), but I no longer agree to their current online-connected subscription licenses, which would allow them to cut me off or force upgrades at their discretion.

This is a larger issue with the influence of money on the government is in general. It's similar how an energy lobby establishes energy policy, or how large commercial growers and food producers establish immigration policy. From that standpoint, yeah, the deck is stacked. Ideally however, if Sony BMG released a CD with my music on it, I would likely seek a legal remedy, even if I previously said it were ok to download Sony music. Ideally, the protection should work equally both ways, it should just as readily protect the little guy from his rights being trampled. If it doesn't, that is a problem with the system.

I think we're saying the same thing, you are correct

So to those that think sites like the Pirate Bay are OK for whatever use anyone wants, what would you do? Just say "no harm done" and consider it a white collar crime that should be legalized? I wonder if those in the affected industries feel the same way?

The whole things stinks of a "what's yours is mine" utopian fantasy.

This was deftly illustrated in a Dilbert Cartoon.

I just remember the woman character, who didn't make it as a singer because she only sold ONE copy of her album.
And yet EVERY other character comes up to her and says "Oh you sing that? I love that song! I have your album on my iPod."

And for you slightly frost bitten, tree climbing Northerners*, the moral is that she had to work because she was never able to sell any albums because everyone had already copied/shared her songs.





*Whom I have the utmost respect and admiration for!

I resent that remark!

I think the last album from Vanilla Ice sold one copy and that's without any illegal copying.

There's another consideration for people old enough to have lived through the changes...

How many times are we going to have to buy the same movie?!

Betamax (for those who had one)
VHS
Laser Disc (for those who had one)
DVD
Blu-ray
???

Music too, LP/tape then CD.

Not to mention re-masters and anniversary editions.

I believe too that if you purchase from iTunes (for example), you're automatically eligible for higher bit-rate upgrading as available, is this correct?

Even if I don't (and in some cases can't), I can understand why people do subscription/streaming media today.

Look up "Shameless silver tongued Texan" in the dictionary, and thar be Bill. Arrrrgh!

I hear you, and to a large degree I agree with you.

Here's the problem; I have two kids, 16 and 18, both are great kids. They are both dedicated to their educations, don't smoke cigarettes or dope, and even my 18 year-old at college has about a beer a month if that. But!... they both view "free information", meaning all media, as an inherent right their generation does and should enjoy. They are surrounded by it and immersed in it. It is symbiotic with their lifestyles and with the lifestyles of everyone their age. Add to this that this is the most tech savvy generation ever. Young people have easy and constant access to information and technology you and I couldn't have dreamed of when we were knee deep in LEGO and GI Joes. These kids jailbreak everything, they download everything, they amass advanced technological information by osmosis. They are informed like no generation before them. And their tech-savvy is not an atomized phenomenon but cultural. And what they do is only going to get easier, faster, and more widespread. And odds are, there is nothing anyone can do about it. Because the people who will try to stop them are a generation behind. The new generation will win. The new generation always wins.


This is a genie that is not going back in the bottle. The question that remains is how will the old farts come to terms with it?

Hey, I'm probably a part of your kid's generation too, keep that in mind. Where there's thieves there's cranky young dudes like me working for the feds.

Well, if you look at it this way- in Plato's time, there was no such thing as copyright or individual ownership of ideas. In academia, in school, they didn't cite their sources, what we call plagiarism now was par for the course, if they credited or attributed ideas to others it was more for the practical reason of noting where it may have come from and who they are refuting rather than any legal or ethical reason. Knowledge was communal, but just taught to the elite classes who could receive a formal education- but not owned or protected legally.

As with all things, that regime changed, and may in time change again. But the reasons why it did change from that model I'm sure we can all guess from arguments of investment and labor.

Yes, but you're always one step behind!

True that!

This is a fight authority will lose. History says so.

If a few years, the data flow will be so fast and so huge and so widespread, and it will happen on devices the size of a wrist watch working on public networks and will use every increasing technological sophistication to elude detection.

There's no way to win, only to adapt.

I wonder, do today's children surrounded by technology at birth have such an advantage over us older kids?



Computer Science was fascinating back in the day and you had to have at least some computer literacy to even get and then keep the machine working (today it's taken for granted).

Focus was mainly on one platform, no internet to divide our time, and the purpose was usually to become more productive, not socialize with a couple hundred "friends".

Skill sets have always evolved and always will evolve, but It also depends what your criteria is. Attila the Hun could show you that civilization was a weakening factor, not a strengthening factor. Still, when it works right, civilization is an advantage. But when not...

Pirate bay and the likes have been part of a large political debate over here this year, the PM over here wants everyone to get a naughty letter. That's going to be a lot of letters , i hope they don't break the post office.

i dont understand why they dont just move their server to one of those civil war or guerrilla dominated countries in africa ? i want to see the interpol do a raid there !!!

Fortunately our Supreme Court still works at times. They recently decided, very much to the displeasure of the present government, that if anyone wants any info on your net activities, including the police themselves... get a warrant!

The internet providers, even if they want to, aren't even allowed to hand anything over to the police without the police having a warrant to accept the information.

Damn we're civilized!

The government would already have all of that info anyway. They are allowed to break the law whenever they see fit...it's in our best interests.

Ummmmm

Maybe cause servers don't run on goat dung???

They could always cut Kim Ill Schlongless in on the action and move there....oh wait...there's no action!`

Sure, but that's another matter. The point is that at least some twit wanting to sue John Doe for $50,000 for downloading a movie or a song can't just get his info and start with the lawyers letters and hope to scare/blackmail the guy into a settlement payment. And that has happened.

Get a warrant or the internet provider is forbidden to disclose personal information.

I love those three words. I adore them. I am enthralled by them. "Get... a... warrant."

My take on the piracy issue from a software developer's point of view. Like everybody else in the debate I'm an interested party, most others are on the other side of the fence.


Piracy is a problem, and it's a problem with multiple dimensions. I don't consider copying a song or a game as "theft", and I think that the criminalization of these acts with super-high fines, DCMA regulations, etc. is overreaching. Unfortunately the alternatives aren't very appealing either.

One fundamental question is whether we support the concept of "intellectual property" to begin with. Looking at the history of literature it is pretty obvious that only through the invention of mass reporduction and the creation of copyright law it became feasible for a talented author to devote his entire time to writing texts that other people enjoyed reading. Even though the publishers would still reap most of the profits (but also shouldered most of the financial risk), before there was (enforced) copyright law the authors would get virtually nothing and the publishers would get 100% of the proceeds. Clearly not fair.
So, to me the necessity for the concept of intellectual property is out of the question. Do we have to protect works for more than 40 years after the death of the creator? I don't think so. The current 70 years are the result of intense lobbying particularly by Disney to prevent Steamboat Willie and a lot of the early short cartoons to fall into the public domain. I think it is a mistake, but breaking a law that is imperfect still doesn't make it legal, or legitimate.
Anyway, the problem is that there are some rabid defenders of piracy who call into question the very concept of intellectual property. I think that this is a dangerous ideology. All historic evidence that I know seems to support the view that copyright law does help to protect if not enable a class of professional artists without the necessity to have a personal sugar daddy. I don't want this type of feudalism where you have to appeal to a rich guy to finance your work and travel from court to court (admittedly though, I'm doing exactly that). I want to offer my work to a large public and see if it appeals to enough people that they are willing to pay me for continuing to do my work.


Piracy undermines the concept of "reward for popular effort". A computer game or a song could be immensely popular yet the creator might not even know about it if the popularity was based on illegal copies. My impression is that there are apologists of piracy out there for whom piracy is just another anti-capitalistic vector. What they really want is to see capitalism dead, so they declare piracy as a harmless thing and promote it with words and actions. Again, it's ideology driven, and it seems to me that these people have no concept of the consequences if the majority of people would actually listen to them.

There is a fundamental difference between taping a song from the radio or a film on VHS from the TV. These analog copies incur quality loss, which becomes particularly noticeable with subsequent generations of copies. So there is a technical limitation how far a chain of hobby pirates can reach before the result is mere white noise.
Digital media however can be copied without quality loss, and the internet makes a worldwide distribution easy. So the scale and the threat of piracy is incomparable to the olden days of analog photocopiers where they charged you 50 cents per page in the post office or the library. In fact, piracy falls into two categories - "everyday casual piracy" e.g. by participating in torrent networks, or burning a DVD for a friend. This piracy is death by a billion needle pricks. Yes, the individual prick is harmless, but it must be seen in context of the 999 million other stings. The individual participant doesn't earn money from his actions (which apparently is sufficient for some to declare it "legitimate"), but he's still damaging a business (and noticeably so, even though it may still not be crippling).
And then there is organized cyber crime. These organizations make money from making illegal copies and then to either sell these copies, or to offer the copies on web sites where they earn money with the advertisement there, or to salt the copies with malware so they can add the victims' computers to their bot net zombie horde which in turn is then instrumental to other cyber crime that is making money. These guys are highly professional and they use all the instruments of the internet to hide their identity and to raise the scale of their operations.


Not every illegal download is a lost sale. But illegal downloads devalue the work of the artists nonetheless. They do it because people make less of a selection. If everything is available, the limiting factor is your bandwidth and the available time to consume whatever you just downloaded (and it seems to me that some people don't even consume, they just hoard). It used to be that you saved up before you bought something, and by the time that you actually had the money in your piggy bank you started to think what else you could do with your savings, remembering how hard it was to actually get the money.
It's still hard to earn money. But rather than filling piggy banks we're paying off credit card balances and mortgage loans. It's something that simply disappears from our accounts every month and it seems like we're not getting anywhere. Saving up and then looking at what spilled out of the piggy's guts makes you think twice about the value of your condensed labor there and what you would value so high to spend your money on it. That could be a nice day off with ice cream cones - not an "investment" but still good for the soul - or it could be an evening in the cinema or whatsoever.
Piracy and credit spending eliminate the consciousness of such purchase decisions. We're acting on impulse. The act of CHOICE is marginalized. And I think that's a problem, because making conscious choices is one of the few freedoms that we have.


There's a lot that could be written about the practical aspects of piracy and copy protection. But I think that the philosophical aspect is ultimately more important.

Well, just follow the logical sequence of what must happen.
Now that information is vastly easier to store and transport
than it ever has been, and can only become even easier, the
rules developed when information was hard-welded to its
physical transport medium, which being physical, had all sorts
of inherent limitations, and thus was easy to control,
are no longer able to be applied effectively. And as has been
argued here, bypassing these rules has become easy and will
become far easier yet.

So, what then happens to producers of information content
intended for mass consumption for profit (note that this
is a form of employment which has only existed since the
time it become possible to provide information content
in a medium for mass consumption that was cheap, but
physical and therefore controllable, ie, since the printing
press, and then direct recording devices which expanded the
available variety of content, so roughly half a millennium,
and really only significantly for the last 150 years. The
blink of an eye, really.)

We might expect that the income directed toward these content
producers (and the ancillary enablers, packagers, promoters,
and distributors) will decline as society reroutes around
them. This will reasonably be expected to decrease the motivation
for people to engage in this activity for profit. When it
becomes insufficiently profitable for an information producer
to sustain themselves comfortably on the proceeds of production,
they are most likely going to stop producing, and among those
who are internally driven to continue to produce anyway, the
exigencies of diverting energy to other means of income will
certainly result in a substantial decline in their output, anyway.

So, in a while, the quantity of new content will decline substantially.
Then consumers of this content will say, hey, this is no good,
we want our stuff. And then they will have to conceive of a new way
of ensuring their fix. Perhaps via some sort of kickstarter-like
system, or prepaid subscriptions to content providers who've delivered
favourable goods in the past, or perhaps entirely new and different
schemes will be conceived. This is when things will get interesting,
and we'll see what sort of forms the new regime assembles itself into.
The world, in all its aspects, is what we make it. Nothing is set in
stone, and it's simply a matter of making choices to configure it
the way that provides the most benefit. As always, it comes down to
a systems engineering problem.

Are you a systems engineer?

Now that they are in Costa Rica, doesn't this make them officially Pirates of the Caribbean?

Nope. Too practical for me. If I had a second parallel
life's worth of time, though...

Good point!

I don't believe that most pirates are necessarily the anti-capitalist type. That might be some of them, some of them have attached themselves tangentially to a cause, but I have never met anyone who doesn't practice capitalism on some level, or who stole and pirated everything they own. The majority of people streaming this content will be otherwise law abiding- they don't steal food from the store, or steal clothes from other citizens, or steal a car off the lot. Likewise, many of them will be employed and will trade their labor for a paycheck and in turn trade their wages for goods and services. It's just that when it pertains to movies, games and music ripped from the Internet, that's pretty much the only time they suddenly have this vision that goes against even what they normally practice. My friends and colleagues who copied IBM PC games in the 80s and 90s were never anti-capitalist, and never that ideological, in reality I found that IBM PC owners at that time tended to have more conservative politics, before personal computers became so commonplace.

It's not based on any principle or ideology. It's not really out to change the world for the better, It's just, "I want it now." Everything else just exists to dress that up to make it sound principled. It doesn't make sense when it's even made on behalf of someone else- as if out of concern for artists who are locked in a contract with their publishers. If you're not that particular artist, it doesn't make sense to make the argument for them to download their music as a form of defiance against their publisher. Some artists have indeed said that, have encouraged their fans to illegally acquire their music in order to protest their companies, but, that really is for them to be mad about, not for me.

I think the average pirate would think twice if they had to sit in front of The Rock and tell him "No, f--- you, I ain't paying for sh--, watch me download The Scorpion King. You have enough money, jerk, and so I'm just taking this movie, and anything you might have gotten from residuals from you.

"It ain't much, Dwayne; in fact, it's milk money. Yeah, I'm taking The Rock's milk money. How you like that, nerd!"

Neither do I; I was referring to the (few) loudmouths who in the last ten to fifteen years were quite vocal about evil entertainment industry and how they fought it heroically (and, somehow at the same time, were insignificant, or even helping us misguided artists who just didn't understand who our true friends were). I met them in quite a number of internet debates. They may not represent the majority of users, but they provided ample arguments that seemingly justified piracy, or downplayed its significance.

No, the majority of casual pirates are just thoughtless. They are stabbing with needles and either write it off as "insignificant", or may not even realize that their actions do some damage. The organized cyber criminals however know very well what they are doing, and they do it for a profit.

Saw this a ways back, finally found it again.

Well worth watching and it raises a lot of questions.

There are already mirror Pirate Bay sites up. They don't allow new uploads (for the moment) but the existing downloads from the main site prior to the raid are still there. And apparently a new "official" TPB site could pop back up at any time.

Trying to stop digital copying is like squeezing a handful of Jello. So now, instead of one TPB site, there could be the one main site and dozens of mirrors. The only way to stop it is to shut down the internet.

The cat's out of the bag and it's dancing with the unbottled genie. This is part of the communications revolution and people either adapt or get left behind.

That's only because there are countries that don't play ball, countries in Africa and Asia, Russia, Ukraine, that don't cooperate in the prosecution of pirates, or they are not concerned with it or don't have the means to do it or they view it as a form of economic warfare. They don't have the industries which produce this content, and if they did, they'd exert a lot more effort to combat it, too. That's why the pirates move their servers out of their home countries into places that have little interest or ability to police piracy, because it's easy for the government in the First World to shut them down and force them to defend their lives. This is also why all kinds of criminal high technology schemes originate these kinds of countries, identity theft rings, credit card theft, child prostitution rings.

This whole thing relies on backward countries with a sketchy sense of fair rights and law, that shows you how 'progressive' a philosophy which promotes piracy really is, relying on non-progressive countries to carry out the dream. This sounds like the same kind of argument when robber barons and Social Darwinists and people behind eugenics movements in the 19th Century said it and attempted make it all sound like an ontology; "You'll thank us for it. You'll be better off when we exploit you." Why not also argue that piracy in Somalia is part of the new economy and the way it will evolve?

As far as 'adapt and survive' that's where the perceived heavy handed prosecution comes from. Pirates dare the strong response with a creed like that, then when someone gets hit with penalties, then they say it's not fair, they want it both ways, naturally. They view someone else's property as belonging to them, and there's no compromise there. That is the fundamental belief that in return gets the response that it does- for not just stealing millions and millions of dollars from these industries, they're stealing taxable revenue from the public as well. So it's kind of live by the sword, die by the sword as any pirate should understand. Y'arr.

I have no problem people boycotting the bad art that these industries produce, don't reward them for making all the crap they sell, I don't think stealing it is the answer, in fact that's not a vote against bad art, by stealing it, someone still wants it.

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree. Placing the blame on "the other guy" because he's backwards is passing the buck.

The problem is that to combat piracy requires a fundamental abrogation of peoples' right to privacy. It's like the answer is "Kill of the 4th Amendment and everything will be fine". But when a problem arises, any problem, that requires the removal of long established freedoms in order to alleviate the problem, then the problem has to be looked at more broadly. This is where we get into the idea of a paradigm shift. Information used to be had to get - now information is hard not to get. To bypass that reality is to bypass reality itself.

This is not simply a case of criminal behaviour, something we have to fix with tougher laws - this is part and parcel of a global and societal communications revolution. As I said, people, in one way or another, and in unforeseen ways, are going to have to adapt.

There is not much a person can convince me that people downloading music, movies and games are doing anything but self serving behavior on the cheap. Anything they say is just simply dressing up that motive.

Doctors Without Borders is an example of people doing things for the better good- on behalf of their fellow primates in the name of solidarity, that's good work. People who are working on the Ebola vaccine. It's an insult to people like that to compare piracy to them as somehow noble or something. People like I know who rip Taylor Swift's new album- nope. They are not doing anything for anyone but themselves, plus they have bad taste on top of it. They are consumers who don't want to spend money.

Can someone actually name for me other than themselves, who benefits from it and how?

The industry will have to adapt. And not with drastic DRM or other "anti-piracy-meassures", because they have so far shown a tendency to backfire and hurt the customers a lot more than their intended "targets".

Steam has had some success on pulling a damper on piracy, not due to their service being a DRM itself (that has been circumvented a long time ago), but because of the ease to use, frequent sales, and auto-update. Even pirates are lazy, and like a hassle-free gaming experience. And while many apparently refuse to pay 50 or 60 bucks for a day-one release, they might pay 15 or 20 bucks a couple of months later.

I have read from people that they bought a game that they previously downloaded illegally during a Steam sale.

Also, if game developers would go back to providing demo versions of their games, some might also refrain from pirating games-

And lastly, one should also keep in mind that only the more tech-savvy gamers are even able to pirate software. Joe/Jane Shmoe usually does not know how to do it, does not want to find out, and is usually happy when they are successful installing software without too much trouble.

That industry must adapt to protect itself isn't an argument itself f
or piracy. And what you're seeing with intrusive protection schemes and
user agreements that people despise IS an attempt at adapting. This is what we
all get because piracy exists to an extent (other than data mining for marketing reasons).
It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy when pirates help create the conditions that they
try to work around.

What gave you the impression that I was in any way inclined to provide an argument for piracy?!

Industry only has three options: stop producing content, ignore piracy, or find a way to adapt.

So far their attempts to combat piracy, via legal means and DRM, have failed. Miserably. The content industry right now resembles a fat man trying to catch a train leaving the station.

I am not too concerned about the Activisions, Ubisofts or EAs of this world, because those big publishers can easily compensate for any real or imagined (another sore spot in this debate) loss of revenue due to pirated software, but for the smaller or independent developers who really need every cent to remain in business.

I am looking for pragmatic solutions, and my advice to the industry would be to forget their self-righteous indignation (being morally right obviously does not deter piracy) and instead try to provide viable "positive" alternatives to piracy. Incentives that will make the average downloader buy the product instead of getting it illegally.

I'm not dressing up the motive - I'm defining the reality. Whether the reality pleases a person or not is immaterial. A person may not want the tide to come in, and the person may stand on the beach and decry the tide as the worst thing since unsliced bread. But the tide will come notwithstanding his displeasure and protestations, and if he does not move, he will be swept away.



I can do apples to oranges, but I admit to having trouble with apples to surgery.



That's immaterial.

The point is that something is going on that cannot be stopped short of introducing measures that would be worse than the problem those measures would seek to remedy.

It doesn't matter whether a person likes it or not because it is going to happen. Accepting that, the next step is to understand exactly how it and us will exist together. And there will have to be a new understating about how things work, because the guy who just stands in the corner with his arms folded saying "I don't like it!" will render himself irrelevant in short order. The debate concerning the solution and the solution itself will be made without him.

Again, "Gimme gimme." That's all I see in it. All else the illusion
of some kind of social benefit, how else would pirates earn
any kind of sympathy. It's immaterial whether there is anyone
else who actually benefits- concedes the point right there.
So then people complain about unfair or bursensome industry
practices in response. What did they expect to happen? "Ok, help ypuselves,
enjoy."

Saying that IP holders need to try harder and then complain when they do
is an argument that only comes from piracy. They may as well complain when stores set up surveillance cameras and hire
security.

Yes, of course it's immaterial. An activity does not have to benefit or harm a second person for that activity to deemed beneficial or harmful in and of itself. What you put forward can be the case, but it is not necessarily the case. I think we need to understand our terms, and what constitutes what.

Your argument falls back on the idea that if you don't like a thing, that displeasure should suffice in bringing the thing to an end. But the point is not whether anyone likes it or not - the point is that it's happening, and going to continue to happen, and happen much, much more whether they like it or not. That said, how can/will everything play out in this new future?

Oh, it absolutely does. It's just that people usually don't like the result either:

• "Always on" schemes of server-side license verification
  As an added "bonus", user behavioral monitoring, online advertisement in-game
• Abandoning the PC as the premier gaming platform. Instead, games are developed console first and a more or less cheap port to the PC later (if at all), or at best a multi-platform develoment with the lowest common denominator for the game engine, and a UI tailored for game controllers rather than mouse and keyboard.
• Rental licenses
• Freemium games (pay to skip the boring grind phase, or to win)
• In-game purchases (pay real money for virtual dodads)

PC games aren't dying, but they are regressing to casual gaming or as port of AAA titles. The reason for it is that you generally are much more profitable with console titles who, for what reason ever, have a lower piracy rate.

Nonsense.

The pirates are certainly not the ones complaining, because they get to play the game, usually without problems, sometimes even days ahead of the buying customers.

The customers are complaining when their purchased products do not run due to some badly coded DRM scheme. Disgruntled customers tend not to remain customers, and bang, the ball is back in the publisher's court.

It is completely irrelevant how unfair you and/or the industry seem to think this all is. The facts of life are what they are, unfair or not.

IP holders indeed need to try harder, if they want to reach the revenue goals they have set for themselves. Inventing measures that completely fail to "hit" their intended targets and instead produce significant collateral damage (keeping the metaphor within the military nature of this site) might be "trying hard" in your mind, but nevertheless highly ill-advised when you want to make money. It is making a bad situation worse.

Many of the items on your list are not related to piracy, but to corporate greed. They would have been introduced regardless (like in-game transactions and advertising, always online requirements are also "featured" on consoles).

And still, in most cases, those who illegally downloaded the games are not afflicted by any of these "features". Sim City was simply hacked, removing the "always on"-requirement, for example.

Smaller companies (such as the one you are with) may use USB dongles (as you have done with Steel Beasts).

But as I've mentioned above: you catch more flies with honey (or manure ) than with vinegar. Better pricing and distribution models, providing goodies and bonuses for online registration, smart use of companion apps that actually add real value, demo versions (to get the "try before you buy" crowd); these will not completely remove piracy, but it will nibble at its fringes enough to secure better revenue. And without alienating honest customers.

Piracy will never go away completely, but by providing viable alternatives it might be contained. Just like iTunes and similar services did for the music industry: back in the Napster days, music piracy was rampant; nowadays, it is just much more convenient to buy songs from iTunes, Google or Amazon, where they are sold for reasonable prices that many are willing to pay. Now, while there is still music piracy, it is no longer as rampant as it used to be.

Steam & Co. seem to have a similar effect. Again, frequent Steam sales coupled with the auto-update feature are providing a viable alternative to piracy.

I agree.

No, they work. Not to the benefit of the consumer, but they work. Steel Beasts uses industry grade encryption since 2006 and has never been cracked. Not saying that it's impossible to crack it, but eight years is an eternity when for the cheap copy protection (SecuROM etc) a crack within a week after release (if not even before release day) is the norm. Online license verification works reasonably well. It's just that it shifts the power balance between end-user and publisher substantially away from the end-user. If Valve says that you're a pirate and closes your account, there's no court of appeals. I'm not a console guy so I don't know what exactly the console makers do to curb piracy, but given the fact that console titles are usually orders of magnitude more profitable than their releases on the PC there's a clear shift towards developing the console first, and if not immediately to abandon the PC, to treat it as the red-haired step child.

Oh, thank you.
I'm not a fan of these companies either but your attitude comes across as rather patronizing. Is it really any more legitimate to steal software licenses from large, greedy capitalists than from small, greedy capitalists?

A thief is a thief.

When you steal something that belongs to someone else you ARE a thief.

Add all the drama you want...in the end a thief is a thief.

You like them so much, give em your address and invite them over for cocktails.

A hack to avoid Crappy Protection for software you BOUGHT????..for your personal use?? No freakin problem.

Stealin folks IP, using some kinda twisted "logic"?

You should go to jail.

True.


Probably true as well, so we need better DRM. By "better" I mean both stronger, and more discriminating. Typically that's more costly - rather than in the single-digit cent range it's in the two-digit dollar range. That simply doesn't work for most game developers. So they are evading into server-based license verification and rental schemes like MMOs with a monthly subscription rate. Or freemium, where you can trade your valuable time for some of your money.


That's where I vehemently disagree. Murder is a "fact of life" as well and yet we still enforce laws against it. There's thousands of things that are sanctioned by law, and also combated by technical means. Yet, according to piracy apologists, it's somehow the entertainment industry's onus to just change their business model magically to "somehow" make things work again, typically sprinkled with the cynical advice to "be creative".

What the HELL are you talking about?!

Thievery has two aspects, that the thief gets something for nothing, and that he also deprives the previous owner of access to the same thing. This is not the case with the piracy of electronic media. It's more like sneaking into an audience without paying for admission. By and of itself this isn't hurting anyone.

Still piracy is not a victimless crime either. As I tried to outline on page three, the worst aspect to me is that it subverts the market mechanism by which publishers make their investment decisions, and developers make creative decisions. As such it distorts the market towards game titles and implementations that are profitable despite the piracy issue (for whatever reason). Typically however it is not because some publishers and developers are more creative in inventing incentives that reward law-abiding behavior as is suggested by some.

Pirate Bay. What are you talking about?

I am not AS concerned about those big companies because they have the financial resources to easily cope with it. The smaller publishers do not. I fail to see why this simple observation is patronizing.

It is not more or less legitimate, piracy is piracy, but the large companies can handle it. Just look at their annual revenue. Their profit margins are not shrinking.



@ all: I urge you to read carefully, because I have never made any qualitative remark regarding any legitimacy of piracy. I am trying to explain the reality of the situation, not argue for or against the merits of piracy.

So be absolutely clear: I AM NOT ADVOCATING PIRACY, NOR AM I DEFENDING IT!!! So put your pitchforks away.

You replied to me and made it sound like I was in any way defending or advocating piracy! An allegation I strongly reject.

I wasn't addressing you in particular at all.

I just really, really don't like people that steal other peoples stuff.

It's about the only thing the Arab's have right.....cut off their hand.

If any government would fight violent crime like murder by proactively locking away innocent, law abiding citizens, while the murderer sits at home laughing, would that be a state where you would like to be living in?

Fact is, so far neither legal measures nor drastic DRM have managed to contain software piracy. Fact is also that "positive" measures - incentives to promote "good" behavior - seem to have a better effect. So why not explore that path further? Why cling to methods that cost a lot of money and resources and don't have the desired effect, plus alienate the loyal customer base?

I am not a "piracy apologist", quite the contrary. I used to work as an editor for a games magazine, so I happen to know the games industry and lots of the people who work in it quite well. I have had the opportunity to discuss the issue with several developers, at Gamescom for example. And they all agree that the current models are not really working. Peter Molyneux had some interesting ideas, some of which I already mentioned; I hope he is not under suspicion for being a piracy advocate.

BTW, sharing files via BitTorrent is a criminal offense, that is being prosecuted. It's just not very practical.

The funny thing is, I am actually on YOUR side. But it seems to me you are somehow projecting.

Could you please elaborate on the part that I have highlighted? I am not sure that I understand you correctly.

Are you saying that "positive reinforcement" simply has no effect, or that the industry is not convinced it wouldn't have any effect?

Don't you think that a lot of the recent design decisions have a lot more to do with different marketing models and ways to try to create additional revenue, than with piracy? I ask because many decisions such as micro-transactions, pay to win, in-game advertising have been implemented on all platforms (the latest Ubisoft titles, for example).

...like, which?

Regarding Steel Beasts: don't take this the wrong way, but the realistic tank warfare simulation genre is not exactly mainstream. I would suspect that the effort to try to hack the encryption key would be significantly higher. But I also assume that Steel Beasts encryption is not only there to protect the software from usual piracy (taking into account that your main revenue might not come from civilian/ private customers)?

I can not think of any mainstream, non-MMO game that has not been cracked at some point. Console games also get pirated, but many console users are not tech-savvy enough, or do not own the necessary hardware.

iTunes, Google Play, Amazon, Netflix, Steam. They all seem to do just fine, all of them are expanding.

Ubisoft and EA opened their own online distribution channels.

Many of the tools I use for work are cloud-based subscription models, which can not be pirated, due to my user account being tied to the services I use (making me identifiable).

Ubi also tried to include multiplayer or coop-features into their single-player games (latest Splinter Cell, Watchdogs, Far Cry 4, ACU), which can be quite fun, and are not available offline (which is the only way pirates would be able to play the game).

These are all steps in the right direction.

I'll disagree. A SP game should be SP. Multiplayer games are terrible when it comes to story telling or anything else that makes an SP game experience different. MP games have their place, but they are for different purposes. I play both for different reasons.

I don't want grinding, MP oriented unlocks, horrible mic voices, dealing with people, or unimmersive game mechanics which promote playing together in my SP games.

You don't have to play these multiplayer missions. They are completely optional. But they can also be fun if you have some friends around who also play the game.

Far Cry 4 gives you the option in the start menue to play without any online content, or with "drop in" multiplayer missions. The fortresses for example can be taken on cooperatively, which makes it a little easier to liberate them. Or you can just accomplish the ususal campaign missions that "unlock" the fortresses (they weaken the fortresses to a degree that they can be taken down easier in SP).

ACU provides you with coop missions that can be triggered like any other mission, but where you need other human players to start the mission. These missions do not affect the main story.

The Total War series also features "drop in" battles, where at the start of each battle you could chose to play against the AI or a human opponent.

As long as it's optional and not necessary to complete the main story, I don't have any issue with that.

No one really answers this, which always gives its own indication:

What does piracy do that is condonable in itself?

If you say that it puts something in the hands of consumers by taking away from greedy corporations, think of what it is they are ripping off. Games. Music. Movies. The entertainment industry. Not a vaccine, not something that is vital or something that is in any way something that what we consider a human right.

There is an argument perhaps that stealing is justified if it was taken from them first, or if it were warfare, or, at least if it was stealing bread if someone is starving. They might accept the consequences if caught, but there usually is not some bad argument to go along with it.

Even 20 or 30 years ago, piracy didn't justify anything it did that way. People wanted it, they took it, they bragged about it, what you didn't get was an absurd sermon how it was the right thing to do. I never heard that once.

Now you have to actually entertain the idea that you're supposed to feel sorry for people for ripping off entertainment, because if they didn't do that, something bad is supposed to happen.

I'm not stupid, there is no way that argument is going to work on me. Try again with something better, but I wouldn't bet anyone comes up with one.

I rest my case. There is nothing in there at all other than this: Let them rip off Call of Duty if they want to, that will teach these companies over here the lesson that their property doesn't really belong to them, and besides, it doesn't hurt them. As for these companies over here:



Yeah, I'm not so sure piracy really is concerned to make that distinction. Pirates don't care who needs to stay in business. We know what pirates, are, right? The Pirate Bay is a group that itself calls itself pirates, they wear it as a badge of honor. So there is no mincing words here, no need to parse our definitions, proud to be pirates they are, proud to do what a pirate does. Pirates aren't charities.

So then, I repeat what I said before. It's absurd to say these companies need to adapt (as if out of concern for them, because your statement above shows why that really isn't true), then complain that they are greedy or something when they actually do adapt. Total disconnect there.

For my part, that is immaterial.

The question of morality is simple enough. For the moment piracy is considered bad. That might change, I don't know. Strange things happen.

My point is the inevitability, unstoppability, and scale of what is to come. And will it - can it - remain illegal in the face off that reality.

Piracy would cease to have meaning in that case. If it were just an acceptable thing, it's not piracy, by definition. It wouldn't make sense to carry the Jolly Roger with pride.

Apples and Oranges. You are comparing distribution platforms (entire markets, essentially) with publishers (aggregate content providers) and developers "non-aggregated" content providers). A market can thrive while the individual participants may suffer or starve, provided that there's a steady stream of new merchants coming in.
In fact, that's consumer paradise - enjoying goods whose production is subsidized by the producers going bankrupt in the process. For those who produce the equation is way less favorable.


That's what I wrote, dude.
It also shifts the power balance towards whoever operates the server. It requires an internet connection. It provides the platform for user behavior monitoring. The fact that many people seem to be okay with this concept doesn't change one iota of the fact that it is a massive privacy intrusion with tremendous abuse potential.


Nothing wrong with that as long as it isn't mandatory, or essential to enjoy a game. For some games it may work, for others not so much. The fact remains that if such a construction was essential for games to both properly work and to be profitable, it rules out a class of titles that cannot sustain under conditions of piracy. In other words, piracy itself influences the design of games, platforms, ways how customers and developers interact with each other. The market does adapt for sure. I for one don't like the direction in which it is heading.

You seem to suffer from a massive reading comprehension problem. Or you are one of the most dishonest participants here, because you deliberately create strawman arguments.

I am describing the reality to you. If you don't like it, fine, I don't like it either. But that is the way things are right now. Piracy exists. There are enough people illegally downloading content for the industry to be concerned about it. So far measures created to prevent piracy apparently have not had the desired effect.

I really need to spell it out for you, don't I? Normally I don't feed trolls like you, but I still give you the benefit of the doubt. So, a final attempt:

When I say I don't care as much about the big companies, I am NOT APPROVING for anyone to "rip off Call of Duty"! Reading anything else into what I have actually said is a product of your twisted interpretation, and a lame attempt of deliberately trying to discredit me as being a piracy advocate. Which is slander.

I say that they will not go bankrupt over it. Which is easily verifiable if you look at their balance sheets.

So, again, a more detailed version, which will hopefully make it clear, even to you:

DESPITE piracy, Ubisoft and EA are still making profits, those companies continue to grow. While many Indy developers are STRUGGLINLG, and piracy might be a MORE PRESSING concern to them. So my PRIME CONCERN is with the SMALLER COMPANIES, because they are suffering a lot more! Which is in no way an absolution for pirates to go after the big ones, and in no way Got it now?!

What you are on about with the "over here" part, only you and your imaginative friend (the one you seem to be arguing with..is his name Kontakt5?) know. --> You are arguing strictly with yourself, which is droll, but also a waste of time.

If you were - like me - concerned about finding a solution, you would recognize that it is IRRELEVANT what "piracy is concerned" about, because that scene is very unlikely to change its behavior. And I have no part in that scene, and no sympathy for that scene.

I don't care what pirates care about. That is not the point.

I am not arguing about the merits (or lack of) of piracy; I am trying to point out that the content industry needs to come up with better solutions to protect their intellectual property. Because they are the only ones who can.

One other sim example that hasn't been cracked, non-mainstream either, is RoF. Again here I doupt it would be beyond the pirate's abilities, but rather it's not interesting enough. Since professional online activated stuff like Adobe CS5 gets cracked, there is not much that doesn't if the interest is there.

BTW, big thumbs up for Ssnake who again shows that some developers/publishers are firmly concerned to keep the balance of power even between them and the customer.

If that is the case then we are discussing what to do with the dinosaurs once the meteor hits. The situation will be rendered academic.

And if you look up, you'll see a big flaming object in the sky, getting closer and closer...

I think we are talking past each other.

Anyway, distribution channels are an important part of the marketing mix, and therefore a tool for the publisher to get their products to the end consumer; so I didn't so much compare distribution platforms to publishers, but rather point them out as being a viable sales platform for the latter.

And if sales figures are any indication, those seem to have helped curb piracy. iTunes, Netflix et. al at least got parts of the "too lazy to go out and buy XY product", or the "I don't need all the songs from a CD, just the one" people (valid for music piracy).

Note that I am arguing strictly about how to put a damper on piracy. I do see your point, but that IMO is a different problem, not really related to piracy. The publisher-developer relationship (regarding product distribution) is something both partieshave to figure out themselves. BI Studios or Braben's company, for example, seem to be doing a good job getting their products to the end consumer, without the "middle-man" (publisher).

As an aside: IMO Valve's Steam is not strictly a distribution platform, but some form of publishing-distribution hybrid.




If you say so, dude.

I never disagreed with you about that point. I was merely listing possible scenarios for publishers/developers to make their products less likely to be pirated. For certain applications, making the service cloud-based might be a good idea. Look at the very profitable browser-game industry. Every measure is bound to have its pros and cons.



I wholeheartedly agree with you. Especially with your last sentence. Hence why I wrote all these posts. My whole concern was to start a discussion about possible solutions. Condemning piracy is all fine and dandy, but does not provide a constructive solution to the problem. Pirates will not suddenly stop cracking games because it suddenly dawns on them that their activities might be immoral. Legal measures (even draconian ones like what happened to that idiot Kim Dotcom) so far did not deter piracy. DRM schemes mostly caused resentment with the target audience, while also not preventing software from being hacked.

So far only two games - FIFA 15 and DA:I - who come with a new DRM software apparently have not yet been cracked. But I suspect this will only be a matter of time. At least this may have helped secure more day-one sales, that at least some potential freeloaders may have decided to purchase the game rather than wait. So maybe that's also an answer: at least delay the release of a crack for a month or two?

That's actually the purpose of most DRM solutions - to prevent day one cracks which are particularly harmful to the overall profitability of large volume games that are primarily sold through retailers. Most games have a profitable shelf life of three weeks; digital distribution can extend that period significantly (at about a quarter or a tenth of the regular price).
For those retail blockbuster games, they must have made a profit within three weeks or else they're a write-off case.

The problem is that as a cracker you seem to earn fame by being the first to crack a title. So the back patting in that community is focused on rewarding quick cracks. And that essentially means that your answer, while sound at face value, won't work in real life.



For us and other small simulation developers, the problem is a specific one. Because the market is small and the number of developers in it is even smaller, the actual product life of a simulation game is much, much longer than that of a retail blockbuster game. I mean, the original X-Plane is almost as old as the original Steel Beasts, and we - just like the IL-2 series - are still in this business with continuously rejuvenated / extended versions of the original title. So we need solutions that holds up against piracy much longer or else the entire business model of a continuous innovation/development cycle process with occasional releases of the then current state would be in jeopardy. Maybe it's my lack of imagination, but I fail to see how this business model could be hardened against piracy other than by strong encryption and rights management. I acknowledge that this means that we're losing some customers - but no matter what, you're always losing some. Either the license management is regarded as clumsy or intrusive, the online license verification is a violation of the desire for privacy, or you lose to pirates, or the protected software is regarded too expensive.
Ironically, our "super-expensive" Steel Beasts Pro PE usually goes for about 70 Dollars on eBay; the CodeMeter stick helps to retain more than 60% of the value of the original game when sold as a used copy. Try that with any other solution.

Super expensive compared to a sandwich perhaps. For what we pay in controllers and PCs alone the cost of SB is peanuts

What about a subscription-based model, which I would define as "meaningful DLC"?

In return for user registration and, say, a monthly fee, you get new scenarios, tank models (in the case of SB Pro), and so on? Or would that be too expensive/ too much work for the existing staff to handle?

I am not an opponent of DRM per se, as long as it does not break the game, or make it difficult for customers to use the software. Or is too intrusive, like EA's DRM that wanted to scan your HDDs on installation.

Another good example was UPlay and the frequent registration server crashes whenever they released some AAA title.

I remember when Silent Hunter V came out and I was supposed to write a review. I couldn't, because Ubisoft released AC 2 at the same time. Registration servers were overloaded and that was that.

IIRC later they gave everyone a game to apologize for these problems.

Personally, I like the "dongle" solution, because it is the most honest and straightforward DRM there is. The consumer just needs to make sure not to lose it, and the developer/publisher needs to be able to replace a broken one. The downsides are that online distribution is impossible or highly impratical, and increased production costs means the prize per unit also goes up.

But a dongle also allows re-selling a game; but that issue is a wholly different can of worms.

Another thing that comes to mind is to weigh the cost/benefit ration of including a DRM. But that would mean to gather reliable data on the real loss of revenue from piracy. If a developer/publisher had a relatively accurate projection on how much revenue he might lose due to piracy compared to the additional costs of including a DRM, the decision to include one might be easier to make.

For example, both Bethesda (Skyrim) and CD Project RED (The Witcher 2) forwent including any form of DRM (well, Skyrim was bound to Steam), because they figured the number of sales would be high enough to ignore potential piracy-related loss of revenue

Of course you're describing reality- naturally that is what you're doing. You're describing what happens in reality when you believe what you do.

So I'll explain to you what is either totally naive or dishonest in your reality.

Your idea that companies need to adapt- whatever that means- seems to be not what you have in mind when they actually do adapt. But it doesn't matter, because pirates will take what they want, regardless of whether companies adapt or not.

If companies don't use any sort of protection scheme at all, the pirates will still take what they want, it's just that much easier. If companies do adopt a protection scheme, pirates will still attempt to take what they want. See, that's what makes them pirates- whether companies 'adapt' as you say (again, whatever that means, since you seem to actually reject it when they do adapt), or whether they don't 'adapt,' the pirates are still there. Back in the old DOS and VCR days, there were still pirates even when there wasn't the kinds of protection mechanisms as there are today.

By analogy, pirates on the high seas still seize ships and their cargos whether the ships had some protection or not, but probably would prefer the easier targets. Pirates do this.

Believe you me, you aren't making a case for companies to adapt at all. Rather transparent that you are not. If they do that, for some incoherent reason, you say they aren't adapting. Whatever you mean by adapting seems to be reacting against whatever it is they do. If you say that you are not doing this, you are kind of backtracking a little on your previous remarks about greedy corporations. That is there for all to see- your motivation is rather plain there. Or are you playing both sides of the fence now?

The rest of your troll remarks are just all blah blah.

1. The people doing the cracking are not the same people that are downloading the cracked games. Surely even you can acknowledge that fact. They will continue to do this as long as it is fun for them. The tougher the copy protection is to crack, the more fun they are having. They are not relevant to the point I am making.

2. The people that are downloading the cracked games, on the other hand, might still be "converted" into becoming honest customers by proper incentives. At least some of them. That is up to marketing. And that was the whole point I was making. Of course there will always be "freeloaders", that is just human nature. Everyone knows that, so please stop acting like you have just made an exciting discovery. But clever marketing can do a lot to persuade people, as it proves every single day!

3. Introducing software-protection-schemes that are not working AND alienate (by breaking the game, or due to insufficient server capacity) your honest customer base is the exact opposite of "adapting".

4. Pirates of the high seas might not have been as numerous if they had had been provided with better alternative to becoming pirates in the first place. Many had been "shanghaied" (forced into service), or had been slaves that could escape.

5. I am growing tired of this debate with you. It would be much easier to have a meaningful debate if you would stop building "strawmen": stop projecting imaginary talking points into my post and start responding to what I actually wrote. Otherwise I will simply ignore you. Freud would have a field day with you.

6. I still utterly reject your underlying allegation that I somehow advocate, promote or defend software piracy. It is a) incorrect, b) cowardly, and c) slanderous.

7. I liked you better with your previous nickname

Between the two of us, the name calling is coming from you. Do it all you want, doesn't harm me a bit.

I'm not saying people who pirate and people who benefit from piracy are the same. There are people who simply benefit from what pirates do, but it's true they aren't the pirates who provide the content. That's not a controversial point from me anywhere. I am talking about the pirates and their activities.

But I'm saying it's difficult to sympathize with the argument that 'companies need to adapt' argument as it's being presented. It really has taken on the attitude to blame the victim in some places under the guise that the companies could do something better to help themselves.

You're having it both ways, surely- you've already indicated what you think of greedy companies, so, that's kind of hard to suddenly ignore now.

You are truly misunderstanding my point, because you seem to be on a different meta-level than me.

The disconnect between us is that you seem to think I am blaming the industry for piracy. I don't. Only the pirates are to blame for piracy. That has always been my point from the beginning. I have not changed by position.

My point is merely pragmatic: that it would be prudent for the companies to find ways to deter potential "freeloaders" (to draw a distinction between the providers and consumers of illegal software) from illegally downloading the game, and persuade them to buy it instead. Which is squarely in the realm of marketing 101. That is also what I have been writing from the very first post. And I still maintain that position.

I honestly do not see anyone else who would be able and willing to change the status quo:
- the governments can't
- the pirates themselves won't

So who else is left?

And what is your solution? I would be very interested to see you providing something constructive.



What exactly do I think about "greedy corporations", and please elaborate how exactly are you drawing such a conclusion? Also, I would appreciate if you could provide quotes where I show what I think about "them".

I've never made remarks about "greedy corporations". I am not a social justice warrior, so please don't paint me as being one. I used the term "corporate greed", which is neither to be used synonymously, nor in this context.

I was using it in my reply to Ssnake, that some of the measures "sold" as anti-piracy measures are merely clever ways to increase revenue - measures that would have been introduced irrespectively of the piracy issue. Microtransactions, pay-to-win-schemes, schemes to prevent reselling the software, which - at least in Germany - is still is a consumer right. These measures are being perceived as being controversial, not only by me, but the majority of gamers.

I don't really want to get into the blame game anymore, it gets boring.

Going forward, I have no idea from a technical standpoint what copyright protection should look like. It's not my area, I'm not a software developer or software engineer. Nor can I predict what the future will look like even if I can- I'm just not a visionary. People can argue over the efficacy of one protection scheme versus another, I couldn't tell you what would be better.

What I can say is that the pirates' arguments are baloney. There is nothing in there which is legitimate at all. If they attempt to say something on the order that they are righting a wrong, it should be clear to anyone why it's nonsense. They may as well just brag about being pirates and drop any other pretense. That's how it used to be done- cracked DOS games for instance would have the pirates' handles on the work to take credit for the crack, but you didn't get a script about Spectrum Holobyte or the entertainment industry to go along with it. If they say something like we should blame the companies for intrusive or burdensome EULAs and protection schemes and they are providing the means to help us through those things, again, we shouldn't take their word on that. They are responsible for a lot of it. The rest of us have to put up with what pirates are doing to make things go in that direction.

With this I fully agree.

The pirates are doing it because they can/gain notoriety within their community, not because they want to "stick it to 'the man'".

...or simply time-based licenses that require no upgrade fees, which we introduced as an alternative option with version 3. We only have enough staff in the company to work on the actual simulation side, not on scenarios and similar content:


In our case, impossible. Getting a decent prototype of a new combat vehicle with 3D interior and crew positions ready takes at least one artist and one programmer to work on it over at least nine months (with intermissions of other work; but you need to factor in test cycles as well). If we were to produce a new tank every month we'd need a staff of five programmer/artist teams, and a steady supply of access to such vehicles (which is much easier if it is all about obsolete equipment in museums rather than contemporary weapon systems). Besides, we could only pile up combat vehicles that way when we need breaks to work on the infrastructure of the code base as well (e.g a new terrain engine or whatever).
The work that you don't see as the end user often is a lot more important to a functioning simulation game than what's highly visible. Unfortunately you can motivate people to purchase stuff mostly by promoting the "visible" selling points.

A business model that rewards feature additions to a software must inevitably lead to a "bloat and gloat" type of software monster. I'm not against new features but I think that overall code stability and robustness is just as important, if not more. And it requires even more effort, actually. So if we as a software developer want to make a more or less steady stream of income that we can invest in maturing the code base, this actually IS in the average user's interest, it's just inherently more difficult to market it.

As a consequence we let changes accumulate until we have enough shiny things to make a nice package, and then we're offering that upgrade package for sale. I mean, just look at the Steel Beasts 3.0 release notes. 65 pages with hardly any blank space left covering all the changes over the course of 18 months, of which fourteen pages are nothing but bugfix descriptions (and those list only the bugs that were already present in version 2.654).

Now, there's the real danger that this creates the impression that version 2.654 was an unusable, bug-ridden abomination. Far from it, I think it was the most stable version that we ever released. It's just that we really, really try to kill not only those bugs with a high profile, but more or less all of them. Or that we deliberately seed the code with bugs so we can charge for their removal. I can assure everybody, the least thing that we like in our code are bugs. I can also assure everybody that we actually have quite capable and smart programmers. Bugs are a fact of life, like it or not. At least we try to stomp them out. But it's also an unrealistic expectation that we could do so free of charge for years and years after we stopped making a profit from the initial sales.
In short, we need money to continue our development, so we charge for whatever we have ready every other year and hope that the overall package is attractive to our customers. So far it seems to work.

But the fact remains that the important work on a software base is often more difficult if not impossible to market as a selling point. The end user inevitably gets to look only at the user interface, not what's behind it.


Not necessarily so. Because without adequate protection the honest customer's price incurs an extra margin to compensate for the losses to piracy. In other words, the honest customer subsidizes the downloaders without realizing it.
Anyway, we went for a hybrid system. If people like to have instant access and no USB stick, they can use the time-based licenses. If they would rather "possess" the game in the form of physical items, there's the USB stick with a permanent license and the option for a DVD and a printed manual. In the latter chase we have to charge for upgrades, in the former case a time-based license will always work with the latest version, whether the license is still good for just one more day or for another year.


Unfortunately this is inherently impossible with a globalized economy. You cannot have a test release in a closed market to see what the piracy rate is. Only a publisher might be able to compare the results of different game titles that were released either at different times or even simultaneously, but then you don't know if they are equally attractive to the same customer demographic. So, once that the genie is out of the bottle (in the form of a free crack) you cannot retroactively introduce a copy protection or some other form of license management. The release of a title invariably changes the test subject (the market reaction).

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/12/19/1...-the-pirate-bay



I bet the guys responsible for taking down PirateBay are now thinking that might not have been the best idea they had.

Why, the chances for litigation are expanding exponentially. The lawyers must rub their hands with glee.
It doesn't solve anything, of course.

I really don't care as long as I can download what I want.

Wow, the Lazarus thread.

Look at all three of his posts.

Odd. He likes reviving old threads.

I reported them, I think it's some attempt at making posts to sell stuff.

I have taken preliminary steps.

Will be watching.

Reading through this thread from 6 years ago was quite sobering for me simply for seeing all of the members who are long gone from SimHQ.

Well PM if you pop off NFB will soon catch up in post count only 109k to go ...

LOL No chance. I'm a lifer! I'll be like that 50 year old sergeant major who is still in active service!