Is piracy a serious issue for game developers?

[Sammael]

Oh please. Governments can't advance technology a tenth as fast as the private sector can.

Please consider that the vast majority of technology we're using today was originally developed by (or for) the U.S. military and/or NASA. Both are government-funded organizations, and government funds an enormous amount of research. Usually, the private sector only improves upon government research, once the government is done with it.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

30 gigs hmm best buy has an 80 gig hard drive for 79.99 so call it $80. That free information costs you $30. It occupies 38% of your hard drive are you tell me your hard drive is not an object?

Hard Drive costs the same empty, though. Didn't cost anything to acquire the information that fills it.

Korimyr the Rat … I know that you can't own information and that there is nothing wrong with copying it for others…..can I have your real name, address, and mom’s maiden name. After it just some information I will copy and share with my friends.

Cecil T. Sims
505 Williams St Lot 90
Cheyenne WY 82007

My mother's maiden name is "Cindy Sue Gehrig".

Now legally I could do a lot illegal things with this information. But since this time I agree with your morals I have no problem using this information to my advantage after all it is just another copy of information.

Actually, you can't legally do anything illegal.

Anything you can actually do with that information that I'd actually care about would be both illegal and immoral-- since most of it would involve stealing money from me or fraudulently acquiring credit in my name. In that case, you would be stealing from anyone you paid using your false credit, as well as stealing from me any amount of money I couldn't have expunged from my debt record.

If you use this information for any of those purposes, I will press charges, as well as announce it publically here.

Please note that I have not, at any point in this conversation, admitted to doing anything illegal-- I've merely advocated such.

Sorry Psionicist while I know this is international site, I also know most international posters know that if their laws make them immune to charge the word (thief or illegal) does not apply to them.

I do not think, for an instant, that any of the people in this thread crying "thief!" are excluding, consciously or not, people whose laws do not forbid them from downloading copyrighted material.

 

[S'mon]

Since 1975, the growth in the U.S. happens for the sole benefit of the top 20% of the households (source: CIA World Factbook) and is accompanied by much more severe poverty (see same source or list of gini coefficients on Wikipedia). There are obviously different ways to look at this, so it's better to refrain from any further political side blows against European economies ..

I'm currently reading The Bell Curve, looking at the graphs I was amazed to see how poverty declined rapidly in the USA until 1969, then remained static or increased up to the date of publication (1994). Many other indicators like crime rates and education rates ceased improving (education) or started getting worse (crime) from the mid-60s onwards. It looked like the US had suffered some kind of huge disaster in the '60s, losing a major war or something. Uncanny how every indicator started declining within a few years of each other.

 

[S'mon]

I found a wallet once - complete with credit cards, a driving license, a house key (!) and about 1500 SEK ($200 USD). I spent a good hour or so to track the owner down and give it back to her.

When I've found a wallet with ID I've gone to considerable effort to return it. OTOH if I find money with no ID I'm certainly going to keep it rather than give it to the government or whoever.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I don't disagree. My feeling about copyright is that public good trumps individual rights.

So its a public good that someone is not justly compensated for their efforts?

The trick is too make laws that work best for the most people not Corporations

In addition to other people's points...Corporations are also a wonderful way for Joe Nobody to be involved in the ownership of business. The corprorate form of organizing a business means that ANYBODY can own a piece of Sony or Microsoft without having to be a family member or personal friend of the company founder.

Are there laws that exist that are too pro-business? Yes. But lets not have corporation/business bashing- it isn't the fault of the form of business, its that some have been seduced by money into legislative obsequiousness.

True. They are also self-interested organizations with very focused goals--maximizing return for their shareholders--which do not necessarily coincide with the interests of society at large.

When have the interests of "society at large" or "maximizing return" ever been the test of whether an IP holder deserves compensation? Individual IP creators may also have interests contra to the interests of society at large, and many times, wish to maximize their returns (a rational view, IMHO).

There is an Aussie who invented a firearm system he calls Metalstorm, all in his little backyard toolshed. Its quite impressive, and he now has a US Gov't grant exploring his system in depth. Did the world really need a better gun? Probably not, but there you go. He'll make millions from it. Does the fact that he is not a corporation make him somhow more deserving of recompense? Personally, I don't see how.

Cost of entry is cash and set up time only in my book .

So you place even less value on the input of the worker than even capitalists have been accused of.

Training is one of the biggest costs out there- for an individual, business or government- and when you need someone with training, you're going to have to pay. That is "salary"...the cost of labor.

Since 1975, the growth in the U.S. happens for the sole benefit of the top 20% of the households (source: CIA World Factbook) and is accompanied by much more severe poverty (see same source or list of gini coefficients on Wikipedia).

OTOH, some economists have claimed that in order for everyone in the world to have the same standard of living as we do in America (at each level of society), we would need more resources than Earth can provide.

Sure, we still have our greedy capitalists, but even our poor are doing better than the poor of the rest of the world (in some, if not all, regards).

I'm currently reading The Bell Curve...

Big secret- our public primary school system generally sucks! If I had kids and I didn't live in one of the few regions that actually have good public schools, I'd put them in private schools. We don't pay teachers enough to attract good ones, and the ones we get are seldom well-trained enough to pick up that some kids need more attention than others.

How bad is it here? There was a textbook approved here in TX that actually claimed that the Korean War was ended by dropping the atomic bomb. Fortunately, that one only got used for a couple of years, but PLEASE!

And if you educate your children poorly...

 

[Turjan]

Sure, we still have our greedy capitalists, but even our poor are doing better than the poor of the rest of the world (in some, if not all, regards).

You truly believe that? You have never been to Europe, have you? Just go to a city like Berlin and spend your day in the poorest district .

 

[Falkus]

The point is that a large section of the computer game market is simply improving upon last years' game-- which is accomplished automatically by upgrades and revisions of Open Source games.

What are you talking about? The only relation this years computer games have to last years is that some of them are built using a licensed engine.

I don't know where you're getting your numbers or your misguided notions of freeware. As someone else pointed out, the majority of the Internet's software structure is built on Open Source freeware.

And there's a large number of programs that aren't open source.

There are also numerous freeware products that are simply better than their retail competitors-- such as the web browser I'm using right now. Or my p2p client.

Look at you. You're setting up a strawman argument. You're acting like I said all open source is inferior to the stuff you pay for when I said of the sort.

I can't make unlimited copies of other products without expending my own resources. This is a very basic, fundamental difference.

That's because all the resources were spent before the product was produced.

[/QUOTE]Your argument makes the implied assumption that greed is bad-- when your argument is as much motivated by monetary consideration as mine. Invoking greed is therefore pointless and foolish.

My argument operates under the assumption that humans are greedy, which would explain your motivation. I do not believe that when you download some software or file, you are doing it for the express purpose of increasing the amount of information in existence.

Also, morality is not determined by national bounda

Morality is subjective, and therefore, worthless for setting up the laws. Societal good is the only thing we should look at when setting laws, and I can't imagine how it benefits society in any way to say that it's okay to take intellectual property without compensating the creators.

and based on the principle that secrecy is wrong-

And here we find the source of your flawed beliefs. The idea that secrecy is wrong is not only idiotic, but insulting as well. Are you trying to imply that the paratroopers's in my grandfather's regiment were in the wrong when they secretly deployed behind German lines via parachute on D-Day? Are you trying to imply that the allied spies who risked their lives to help bring down the third reich were in the wrong? Secrecy is not wrong like you claim it is, and you are truly being insulting by saying it is.

Do you care to demonstrate this? I can think of quite a few cases where governments have developed technologies that private industry would have never bothered with-- or would have taken decades longer.

What is it with you and absolutes? Why are you so insistent that they exist?

You're rather stubborn in this notion that money is the only reason to do anything. Since I'm engaged in several activities that don't hold any monetary compensation for me-- including this argument-- I'm forced to conclude that there are other reasons to do things, even unpleasant things.

Why exactly would anybody spend millions, even billions, of dollars to develop any piece of technology if they couldn't that amount back when it was sold?

 

[ThoughtBubble]

On a somewhat random note: It's very hard to make a large scale video game in an open-source manner. Most games are pre-paid for by the publisher, who then needs to make sales on individual units to make back the costs of developing the game.

A game can be made by individuals doing it out of a passion and joy for what they're doing. But it's more likely to simply fall apart. When it's a job to work on this content, it's something that a person is going to do, regardless of their feelings that day.

So, more skilled people are needed to bring games about. Thus, the need to intice people to work on a single project under someone else's vision. Paying helps, particularly as the demand for high-graphic, content heavy games keeps going up.

The best independant games tend to be simple things made by groups of very talented people. They're also more content light, focusing on multiplayer, or self-differentiating expierences. But the chances of seeing a square-syle RPG out of that arena are pretty rare.

 

[S'mon]

Big secret- our public primary school system generally sucks! If I had kids and I didn't live in one of the few regions that actually have good public schools, I'd put them in private schools. We don't pay teachers enough to attract good ones, and the ones we get are seldom well-trained enough to pick up that some kids need more attention than others.

How bad is it here? There was a textbook approved here in TX that actually claimed that the Korean War was ended by dropping the atomic bomb. Fortunately, that one only got used for a couple of years, but PLEASE!

And if you educate your children poorly...

Did it suddenly start sucking in the '60s? That's kind-of what the Bell Curve says (standards declined), but it seems odd that poverty stopped decreasing in 1969 when educational standards & SAT scores had only been declining for a few years. And crime rates started skyrocketing even earlier.

 

[S'mon]

You truly believe that? You have never been to Europe, have you? Just go to a city like Berlin and spend your day in the poorest district .

Yeah, certainly our European poor have much better access to health care etc. European poor are generally much 'comfier', whether that's a good thing or not would be political.