Is piracy a serious issue for game developers?

[The Persian]

It wasn't mentioned off-handedly. It was put forward quite strongly.

And nothing has shown that"it's tactics come close, or parallel it in some aspects", at least not in this instance.

And, labelling legal enforcement "terrorism" essentially ignores all the nuances of government that differentiate civilization from barbarism.

I feel it would be better for you to defer this statement to the one who put the idea forth- I was simply illustrating another angle of this. I'm thankful government in some regards has seperated us from barbarism, but it does have it's faults as well, and some take it into their hands in ways they see fit. Wether that's "right or wrong" is up to you, of course.

 

[Storm Raven]

I never said law enforcement is terrorism. I said trying to get rid of piracy by instilling fear (of say lawsuits) to the public is terrorism, instead of working out a solution together.

Should we eliminate embezzlement by working out a solution together?

How about burglary?

How about trespass?

I think that the idea of "working out a solution" has been exposed as the silly idea that it is. But in any event, it is also mostly unworkable, since the "online community" has shown absolutely no interest in "working out a solution", whenever something is thought up, it is almost immdiately circumvented.

And the idea that "fear of lawsuits" is terrorism is one of the most derision-worthy ideas I've seen in a while.

 

[Henry]

Ralts is not a moderator, but he did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

ME, I'm the real thing.

Let's please cut personal insults and bickering. Let's also cut the parts where users suggest they know what other users are thinking, please, because that leads to more bickering, and less actual discussion.

I don't want to see ENWorld having to ban all discussions of copyright the same way religion and political discussion is banned, but we may have to if no one can rationally discuss it without getting snide, patronizing, or insulting.

Thank you, all.

 

[Psionicist]

Heh, appears the round has been reset.

Why don't we offer a few posts and discuss whether or not a pirated copy is better or worse than the original?

I know for movies, the pirated copy is usually better than the legit one you buy in a store. The original DVD has ads in it, and region codes, and are not available in the whole world at the same time. Compare this with the pirated copy that doesn't has ads in it, no region coding and it's available in the whole world _before_ it's released in stores. It's the same thing with TV-series. No ads, you can watch it whenever you want and you can watch it in weird countries where it's not shown at all. For movies and TV-series, the pirated version is superior the original.

How about RPG books? I don't really know, because of unfortunate time-relating problems I've not been able to play for a while. In this case, is the pirated copy better or worse than the original? PDF's are probably better for creating characters but the printed version is of course better during actual play. This is good for the RPG industry, because the pirated version is not obviously better.

If the pirated copy is better than the original, how can this be changed? I know many pirates, and none of them pirate books (as in novels) because it's annoying to read those on your computer. This is why novels are rarely pirated. Books with technical contents (such as RPG rulebooks with prestige classes and feats) will probably be pirated because these are used for character creation, which most people do on computers anyway. How do you change that? One idea is to write less crunch and more fluff usable in-game. Hmm.

What do you think?

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I know for movies, the pirated copy is usually better than the legit one you buy in a store.

I suppose if you're not looking too closely at quality of picture, that's true. I doubt the pirated ones are HD - most pirated movies I've seen bits of are shot off of screens, or are screeners sent out to reviewers at best - which still are not the highest quality. Occasionally you'll get a high-quality pirated version, but even then, it's not the optimized bit rate of a final, unpirated DVD.

 

[Psionicist]

I suppose if you're not looking too closely at quality of picture, that's true. I doubt the pirated ones are HD - most pirated movies I've seen bits of are shot off of screens, or are screeners sent out to reviewers at best - which still are not the highest quality. Occasionally you'll get a high-quality pirated version, but even then, it's not the optimized bit rate of a final, unpirated DVD.

There are many different versions of the same movie. Some have really crappy quality, but there are versions with quality identical to DVD:s (they take longer to download though). Wikipedia have details as usual: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warez#Movie_piracy

 

[DreadPirateMurphy]

I disagree with your simplification.

Artists create art for art's sake. Writers will write because they feel a drive to write, just like painters will paint because they love it and photographers will carry a camera whenever possible. Look at www.fanfiction.net and www.deviantart.com and all over the internet. Those people give away their work, as you define it. If profit was a person's primary goal there are so many better lines of work than the creative arts.

Professional writers are paid. Professional means you make a living at it. Work you publish yourself gets you NO credit in the professional field, because anybody can do it. Having somebody pay you means that your work is valuable enough to merit consideration. I have tried to write, and that is the way it is.

Copywrite laws were designed to encourage artists to release their works into the public domain for the betterment of society and the general public good. They were an alternative to the patronage system, where only the rich patrons benefited from the creative works. The purpose is to support creators by giving them limited control over their works for a limited time to allow them to gain compensation for their efforts.

Copyright recognizes that people need that compensation. You say so yourself. If I write something, my control is hardly limited. I have a whole host of rights that I can auction off if it is good enough -- domestic publication, international publication, serialization, movie rights, etc. Eventually, the work passes into the public domain for the good of all, but not before I get compensation for the hard work involved.

Each time this subject comes up I think back to past time the technology advanced past the current laws and busniness models. The movie studios being emotional over VCRs, the record labels getting furious at radio, the sheet music companies becoming hysterical over player pianos. There was a lot of shouting and when it was over people had adapted to the new technology and the creative types keep going on just fine. I can't help but see this as the same thing.

Industry reaction to new technologies is prone to hysteria and hyperbole. That is because they make their money from controlling the rights to these properties, and they frequently do not understand the new technologies or how those rights are effected. That is unfortuante, and frequently irritating, but it is not entirely irrational.

People are never willing to wait, they want to enjoy the benefits of the new technology NOW. Are digital distribution has so *many* benefits. Except that PDFs are clumsy, eBooks suck, the pricing structures are crazy, and the official lines of distribution are lacking. So people do what they have to, to use the new technology. Sooner or later digital books will find their iPod to meet the demand. The more the potential customer base is attacked, insulted, and demonized the later it will be.

By definition, somebody who pirates property is not a "potential customer." That is like calling a shoplifter a potential customer under the theory that if they like what they stole, they may come back and buy some. The phrase, "I want it," is NEVER a good reason. Nobody cares what people who say this want, because it is almost always self-serving and acquired at the expense of others.

 

[The Persian]

I suppose if you're not looking too closely at quality of picture, that's true. I doubt the pirated ones are HD - most pirated movies I've seen bits of are shot off of screens, or are screeners sent out to reviewers at best - which still are not the highest quality. Occasionally you'll get a high-quality pirated version, but even then, it's not the optimized bit rate of a final, unpirated DVD.

*screeners* are garbage for those way too impatient.

DVD-rips and DVDRs are indistinguishable in quality

 

[Wayside]

Occasionally you'll get a high-quality pirated version, but even then, it's not the optimized bit rate of a final, unpirated DVD.

Actually, full-quality DVD rips are probably the second most common format after DivX-compressed ones (and even those sport a loss of quality invisible to most TVs).

 

[Sundragon2012]

Those are excellent points, and perhaps the only worthwhile way to reduce piracy. Note that there is no way to actually stop piracy, but I believe it can be significantly reduced by using the measure recommended above.

If I were an independent PDF publisher, I'd create 6-10 PDFs filled with garbage, identical (or very similar) in size to my own PDF, and post them on the p2p networks several days before my real product hits the online stores. I believe that WotC is currently doing the very same thing with their books. I'm pretty sure that, after downloading 2-3 fakes, most people on p2p networks give up. Some actually don't bother to delete the fake stuff, which adds to the confusion.

Sounds like a damn good model to me. Record companies have been doing this for a while and it pisses people off to have downloaded junk over and over again. Many game books are large and the time and energy of stumbling aroung looking for the right 120MB file after downloading it a few times is going to be offputting to any but the most hard core pirates.

I think a good idea is to send out an initial dummy copy and the after there are some who notice the fake, release another one of a slightly different size and do so until the P2Ps are glutted with garbage masquerading as your materials. Will this stop eveyone? No, but it will slow the pirates down and really screw with the networks as there is greater and greater confusion regarding which is the good file.....if there even is one. The ultimate anti-pirate virus.

Actually advertise multiple files as the good file in the title and really mess with their heads. I know for a fact that the hoarders ie. the majority of file downloaders, won't even attempt to open the file for a little while being merely satisfied to have it in their collection. By the time the dummy files are opened a couple folks may already have the dummy file.


Chris