Is piracy a serious issue for game developers?

[Psionicist]

That’s why I have argued before that the only effective way to stop pirates is a clear and absolute threat of getting caught and punished.

Ah, terrorism. That probably works.


terrorism

n : the calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimindation or coercion or instilling fear

 

[Rykion]

Ah, terrorism. That probably works.


terrorism

n : the calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimindation or coercion or instilling fear

Has Bloodstone Press ever called for violence against people that pirate copyrighted material? The threat of legal punishment and violence are two very different things.

 

[Storm Raven]

Has Bloodstone Press ever called for violence against people that pirate copyrighted material? The threat of legal punishment and violence are two very different things.

Ah, but now he's going to state that legal punishment requires violence or the threat of violence to be enforced, and hence all law is backed by terrorism.

 

[Bloodstone Press]

Ah, terrorism. That probably works.


terrorism

n : the calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimindation or coercion or instilling fear

Would you stop, please.

With that logic all law enforcement is terrorism (and I might actually agree, but that's not the point).

Getting fined or imprisoned is not “terrorism.” As you are trying to couch it. Fear of legal punishment and fear of violent death are two very different things.

as i have said in this thread and others, psychological research shows that nothing elicits obedience from people like the clear and present threat of getting caught and punished. Shall I reiterate some more?

I wish it wasn't like that. I wish we could live in a world where people did the right thing with out looking over their shoulder, but we don't.

People come up with all sorts of distorted ideas like:
"I'm not really 'taking' anything."
and
'I'm not really hurting anyone."
and
"I'm actually helping to spread information, which IMO should be free."

All of which is crap.

Obtaining information that has a price tag on it without paying for it is wrong. Or, if you prefer, obtaining the fruits of someone's labor without paying for it is wrong.

Would you like see me say it again?

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

Ah, terrorism. That probably works.


terrorism

n : the calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimindation or coercion or instilling fear

Accusing someone of fostering or promoting terrorism isn't going to get you far here. I'd advise to cut it out now, before it's decided that your membership could be done without.



Anyway, before a charged debate like this is further derailed, and more accusations of politics are tossed off...

Awhile ago I did an experiment (Some of you may remember it) regarding Limewire, which is hooked into all the P2P networks.

I took the free downloads of various products, inflated the PDF size, added a small EULA when it was opened that basically had tucked in it (The User Agrees that upon opening this product they have consented to take part in a poll and data gathering experiment) that made the small "crippled" virus installed in it active.

Each time the thing was opened, it was nice enough to "ping" a site, showing me how many times it was opened, if it was a new IP or a return IP, and would reping every 30 minutes.

I found out that while people pirate them, the majority of them open it once or twice (but they may have figured out what was going on or deleted it because it was only the demo) and then not again.

BUT...

ON the average, your big name designers, or stuff made for the larger lines (Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, core books, Shattered Lands, Ravenloft, etc) were downloaded QUITE a bit, and those artificial PDF's saw a lot of circulation.

(Go ahead and complain and yell at me about inserting a crippled IP tracker in the document, frankly, I don't care, it was legal)

Does it hurt the big boys? Doubtful. Ever tried to use one of those crappy scans to do anything but claim you have it? The smaller guys, who do PDF's? Probably.

As for the PDF "locking" done by DTRPG awhile back, that was cracked about 30 seconds after Adobe had that function hit the web.

Piracy is out there, it does some damage, but it's not the machinegun into the crowd that some people claim.

 

[The Persian]

Please do, it seems to be the majority of what you contribute on this thread.

 

[Speaks With Stone]

Arguing that the information has no value is clearly just an attempt at justifying an illegal activity. If the information had no value to the pirate, then the pirate would not download an illegal copy. Who takes on risk for no gain except for the thrill seeker? Even in the case of the thrillskeeker, the value of the information is only the fact that it is protected by copyright and therefore offers the thrill of piracy.

I don't believe that most piracy has to do with thrill seeking.

Defending piracy by saying that you would never pay for the pdf so no money is lost is a rationalization only. If you sneak into a theatre to watch a movie, it is no defense to say you wouldn't have paid for a ticket. You received a benefit that you did not pay for. What about stealing Cable? Is that justified because the Cable company has no idea and is not harmed?

I don't see any difference in the behavior. It's easy to do, but that doesn't make it right.

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

Isn't there a threat of getting caught right now? I mean, if some service like Kazaa sees someone downloading copyrighted material, don't they just trace it back to the users computer and report them? I just find it hard to believe that folks with gigs of data downloaded do not actually get caught.

Hehhehehehehee That's so cute.

Naw, just messing with you buddy.

They aren't going to report jack. I have yet to hear of KaZaA or LImewire turning in someone who was passing off Revenge of the Sith the day BEFORE it came out in theaters.



You know, I put forward this arguement awhile back, and nobody bothered with it except for me. The funny thing is, I put it forward to music companies and several movie companies, and now it's all over the place.



Music: Take 3-4 minutes of high pitched screeching, label it as your hottest, newest song, and let it hit the network.

Movies: Take the RAW, uncompressed footage of your movie's TRAILER, make it around 700-900 MB, and let it hit the networks. Have someone watch for when they change the name/details, and match it. Works like a charm.

I've inflated the demo copy with the words: "I'M TOO CHEAP AND WORTHLESS TO BUY THE REAL THING!" splashed across each page, and hit it onto the networks.

It works. It's harder and harder to find the real product nowdays.

But sadly, nobody in the PDF business listened to me.

//shrug//



Now, as to "information is valueless, dude, and should be shared by all!!!" crowd.

Corporate espionage is BIG BUSINESS! Everything from hard extraction of data and prototypes to hacking mainframes. Corporations are ruthless about it. Do you think for ONE minute if you were to snag Beoing's plans for thier latest fighter jet that they wouldn't slit your throat and dump your charred body in a ditch somewhere?

Information is power and wealth in that arena.

And who are you to decide whether or not something that was worked on for hundreds of man hours is valueless and should be free? Do you think that the information just appears out of thin air and everyone's just grabbing it and racing to PDF it first? Writers, editors, proofreaders, artists, layout copyist, producers, distributers, R&D dwonks, all don't deserve to get paid, because they should do this for love and free?

Puh-lease. Nobody researches or creates new information just out of love. Calling all information worthless is rather ludricious, when you consider that the core code of Windows Alpha is just information.

 

[The Persian]

Unfortunately, that hardly works on newer P2P programs, as users can now leave comments in files (warning, fake or low quality, etc), or you can even have multiple names for the same file -> right click on said file and check "details". A good deal of users put "fake" in the title of the file to inform others that they aren't real. The true files flourish (more sources) and the fake ones die out (1 to no sources)

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

Unfortunately, that hardly works on newer P2P programs, as users can now leave comments in files (warning, fake or low quality, etc), or you can even have multiple names for the same file -> right click on said file and check "details". A good deal of users put "fake" in the title of the file to inform others that they aren't real. The true files flourish (more sources) and the fake ones die out (1 to no sources)

LOL Puhlease.

You watch the copies, and quickly adjust yours. And a lot of the larger downloaders NEVER look at the data, merely host it.

If you toss enough copies out, and persist at it for a bit of time, pretty soon it gets muddled enough that the casual/oppotunistic downloader just gives up.