There can be taken steps to change things and fix this. It is a matter of political will on how to approach things and I would say this means that it is eventually a matter of time - the question or problematic being how much time.
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Piracy
- Thread starter Nightson
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There can be taken steps to change things and fix this. It is a matter of political will on how to approach things and I would say this means that it is eventually a matter of time - the question or problematic being how much time.
Do you believe that piracy hurt your gaming store business? I believe there was a practice to pirate audio tapes, yet audio tape selling music stores did not generally go out of business back in the day because of it. If I am right here, this tells me, that the problem with gaming stores has been the possibilities of online trade: legal and illegal. I am in favor of gaming stores because I believe gaming stores are very important in promoting games but unless there is some kind of investment towards this -beyond the one of the store owner opening shop and running it- I find it really hard to viably compete with the internet.
I believe that if there was a possibility for gaming stores to let all the people interested to check the products at will and see by themselves what they like to have or not, people would still buy the same number of books -if not even less- that they would have bought if piracy did not exist. The thing with money is that you have to spend it -for them to have any value you have to show people that you spend it and how. Money resting have zero value. It is not that piracy allows people to spend less money. One could argue that it allows them to spend it differently such as booze and what not, but if the people we are talking about are gamers they will want to spend it on games. And this is why gaming stores are important.
Until the law and the governments catches up.
You seem to think P2P file sharing will go on without interference, but there's a lot you look over.
1) The same technology that allows encryption, anonymization, etc., can be countered. For hackers we have anti-spyware, anti-virus, etc. For those who say "you can't stop piracy", would you take the same attitude and say you can't stop viruses and hacking, so why bother with a firewall or a protection suite of software?
YouTube was able to setup filters to keep out porn and to disable copyright violations. That type of tech will only get better. All that has to happen is for the detection and prevention algorithms to get good enough so it becomes very hard for the average person to pirate. Then this becomes like locks--locks can be broken, but they are there to keep the honest people honest.
2) The Internet still has limits. China has a huge firewall, for instance. You are dependent on both the limited number of ISPs, as well as the major backbones. Laws that require the ISPs to monitor and filter can be put in place. And the ISPs know who you are.
3) They are regulated by the governments. There's a lot of fights to keep the Internet unregulated, but I think we'll see more restrictions. They'll probably remove the state tax-exceptions on e-commerce for major retailers. Even if they don't react to piracy, they will react to so-called "real theft", that is, embezzlement and hacking into credit and bank agencies. I'm just waiting for a "9/11" style event, on the Internet--either some prank that takes down half the Internet traffic, or some big theft or massive viral infection, with the results bringing more restrictions.
10 years from now I could see a more restrictive sub-net of the Internet, where you'd have to be registered and protocols enabled so they can have "very secure" transactions, and if you don't agree you can't use those features.
That;s a possibility, and I think even a probable scenario. I think the people who engage in piracy might help bring that about faster.
I'm not so sure about major shifts or doomsday scenarios, but this scenario is easy and in my opinion likely: technological change and altered international relations and treaties (no more getting all of your pirated stuff off chinese servers once china modernizes enough to want to get along with the international IP system instead of loot it) makes it harder for casual internet users to engage in meaningful amounts of piracy. For them, piracy becomes something more like speeding, something everyone does, but not too much and everyone kind of understands the unwritten limits on what you can get away with before getting dinged with a ticket. For the pros and the big pirates, the drop out of the amateurs shrinks their population and makes it easier to target them with individualized legal action.
Piracy isn't going away, nor are we heading for some DRM dystopia. But there's plenty of room for things to shift in either direction.
Piracy isn't going away, nor are we heading for some DRM dystopia. But there's plenty of room for things to shift in either direction.
Regarding youtube. Is it because of video filters or people reporting violations?
This is not to counter your points here, I mostly agree but I am curious about the specific example.
El Mahdi
Muad'Dib of the Anauroch
State or public controlled media?
Don't forget PBS and the BBC, or if you live in Korea, KBS.
...
Oh wait...
Those ones actually work and produce quality material.
There's also AAFES for US military personnel, but they're mostly a distributor, and well, you could argue they're not as good as they could be. But that's mostly because they never seem to have the newer stuff...
Off topic for clarification purposes.
I believe you mean AFRTS (Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, usually pronounced as A-Farts) and their AFN affiliates (Armed Forces Networks - such as AFN Europe or AFN Korea).
AAFES is Army and Air Force Exchange Service, the brother of NEX or Naval Exchange Service, which is basically a tax free department store service for military personel.
Personally, after 11 straight years overseas (6 in England and then 5 in Korea) I thought AFN did a pretty good job of getting new shows to us. Granted, with the plethora of channels and programming available today, there's no way you can show it all on 1 to 4 AFN channels (depending on your region) but I thought they did pretty good anyways. I never missed a Super Bowl, Stanley Cup, NASCAR Race, or any episodes of Star Trek, Buffy, and Zena, so I don't think they were all bad.
(Not to mention almost continuous access to CNN.)
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grickherder
First Post
I know piracy has certainly helped my local gaming store. Seeing those PDFs of the core books on the net got me running D&D again. I also got my old gaming group to reactivate and we all bought the core books, many D&D miniatures boosters, dungeon tiles sets, dice sets, etc.,. Me getting back into D&D has added 6 pre-orders for PHB2 as well.
rgard
Adventurer
baphomet68
First Post
I took advantage of the leaked core books, and was pleasantly surprised-thought I wouldnt like it. I changed over to 4e, and brought my group with me. While I admit that the prerelease-download of an not-owned book is infringement on copyright, I do not care. Every pirated PDF I DL'd led to a purchase, or was deleted as junk. I think my behavior benefited the producer of the product, though my motivation was to fully evaluate the game before paying for it. Our group uses 10 of these 4e D&D books, and each of my players owns most of the selection we use(they skipped the FRCS and DMG 1&2).
If I preview a book, then purchase it, I keep the PDf I previewed, and consider that fair use - as I could have made the PDF myself for my own use. My willingness to explore a PDF torrent is not substantially different from browsing a bookstore, and is damaging only to a flawed or poor product. I see this opportunity to preview a potential purchase through a pirated PDF as a way to offset a system that usually holds consumers by the short hairs. Of course the companies dont like it - they are used to having it all their way.
As for technology someday changing the amount of piracy, and how common it is for the general public, I think that they will keep pace with each other. Tech advances seldom close a security hole without opening another one (or more). I got online in the early 90's, and I do not recall a time when the availability of pirated material was notably interfered with for more than a few weeks. As soon as technology allows the blocking of an established file distribution process, the motivated parties shift to another workable process, and the game goes on.
If I preview a book, then purchase it, I keep the PDf I previewed, and consider that fair use - as I could have made the PDF myself for my own use. My willingness to explore a PDF torrent is not substantially different from browsing a bookstore, and is damaging only to a flawed or poor product. I see this opportunity to preview a potential purchase through a pirated PDF as a way to offset a system that usually holds consumers by the short hairs. Of course the companies dont like it - they are used to having it all their way.
As for technology someday changing the amount of piracy, and how common it is for the general public, I think that they will keep pace with each other. Tech advances seldom close a security hole without opening another one (or more). I got online in the early 90's, and I do not recall a time when the availability of pirated material was notably interfered with for more than a few weeks. As soon as technology allows the blocking of an established file distribution process, the motivated parties shift to another workable process, and the game goes on.
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