Is piracy a serious issue for game developers?

[Psionicist]

When you make child-like statements like

Once you understand that, you will be ready for this conversation.

When you argue like an adult, you will be treated as one.

Enough with your derogatory comments, if anyone here is acting like a stubborn child it's you. After all, it's not Rat here who's name-calling, you are. Your opinions are not worth more than Korimyr the Rats.

 

[Storm Raven]

Enough with your derogatory comments, if anyone here is acting like a stubborn children it's you. After all, it's not Rat here who's name-calling, you are. Your opinions are not worth more than Korimyr the Rats.

Actually, yes, they are. Because mine are grounded in the reality that information is valuable, and valuable things cannot be free, let alone should not be free. If you want to make pollyanna-esque arguments about how everyone should have fluffy bunnies on demand, then your opinions are pretty much without merit. If you want to actually deal with how the scarce resources of the world should be allocated among the many individuals who demand them, then you've actually got something to talk about.

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

By claiming all information should be free, you essentially cause the stagnation of technology.

Electronic microchip schematics are information.
Data format and transmission protocols are information.
State of the art technology schematics and theorums are information.

By stating those should be free, and making it OK to disseminate those, no matter what the wishes of the creator, will make it so nobody will work on any of it. Why should a corporation devote millions, or billions, to developing a new technology, when all of the research data and final data are now free, and anyone can have it. Why should they do thier competitors a favor and create all of this for free.

Scientific discoveries are rarely done by a guy in his garage any more (I can't think of any right off hand in the last 20 years) but instead by large government or corporate labs. Even colleges recieve generous amounts of money from the government and corporations in the hope that thier research will pan out.

By insisting that information should all be free is insisting that nobody should be recompesnenced for the time and effort it took to develope that information.

And your basic humanity did have a cost. A major one. And it still does.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

By stating those should be free, and making it OK to disseminate those, no matter what the wishes of the creator, will make it so nobody will work on any of it.

This is simply not the case-- one need only look at Open Source, publically-funded research, and the natural human desire to create and to learn.

We would lose some of the incentive to research, but I think this would be more than made up for by the advantage gained from the ability to build off of others' research. We'd also gain by the fact that we'd have far fewer people researching cosmetics and synthetic sugar substitutes-- who'd then be free to research things that are more beneficial.

Same kind of science that leads to improved cosmetics and newer diet sweeteners can be used to create new medicines or new methods to clean up toxic waste.

I'd like to respond to the rest of your post, but this has become too political already.

By insisting that information should all be free is insisting that nobody should be recompensed for the time and effort it took to develop that information.

There are ways of compensating authors and designers (and researchers, if we wish to maintain that argument) that don't involve selling their works directly for profit-- and given how rampant piracy is, it is in the best interests of everyone who makes their money in any information industry to discover those ways.

And your basic humanity did have a cost. A major one. And it still does.

Maybe you're right... but who's paying it?

 

[Falkus]

This is simply not the case-- one need only look at Open Source, publically-funded research, and the natural human desire to create and to learn.

Open source and the like is not a praticularly popular way of producing information. Windows still powers ninty-five percent of the computers in the world.

We would lose some of the incentive to research, but I think this would be more than made up for by the advantage gained from the ability to build off of others' research. We'd also gain by the fact that we'd have far fewer people researching cosmetics and synthetic sugar substitutes-- who'd then be free to research things that are more beneficial.

The equipment to perform advanced biology and pharmeceutical research can cost upwards of tens of millions of dollars. Who exactly would do this sort of thing without expecting compensation? I'll answer it, nobody.

Oh, and who the **** are you to say what should and shouldn't be researched?

There are ways of compensating authors and designers (and researchers, if we wish to maintain that argument) that don't involve selling their works directly for profit--

Name one that could ever possibly work.

 

[Numion]

Except that you are stealing exactly what the property in question is: the right to make additional copies. If your friend deleted the item from his computer when he sent it to yours, then that would be analogous to a lending arrangement.

But if I stole his right to make copies, the copyright, shouldn't I now be the holder of the copyright? I stole it, right?

Of course, that didn't happen. I don't have the right, so I couldnt've stolen it. But thats a minor point for me, and the law of the land actually agrees with me (and here even goes as far to tell me that I'm just making fair use of the content, pretty far from thieving) so there's no truth to saying I stole anything.

Why are people so adamant in claiming that copying stuff is thieving, BTW? Trying to bolster their argument about the legality or moral rightness of such? Please .. thats so lame. Argument your case on the facts at hand, not yelling "filthy thieveses" in gollum voice

 

[Psionicist]

Open source and the like is not a praticularly popular way of producing information. Windows still powers ninty-five percent of the computers in the world.

Ever heard of OpenOffice, Firefox, GIMP, Python, Miranda, BitTorrent, DC++, Thunderbird, Media Player Classic, XVID, phpBB, PHP, Apache etc?

These are all open source projects.

 

[Henry]

Ever heard of OpenOffice, Firefox, GIMP, Python, Miranda, BitTorrent, DC++, Thunderbird, Media Player Classic, XVID, phpBB, PHP, Apache etc?

These are all open source projects.

While these projects are great, not one is used by any more than 5 to 10 percent of all computer users, and even opensource projects do not preclude developers from making money off of them. Just because there are numerous open source projects, it doesn't mean they are a popular means of software development. For every open source project, there are thousands of companies developing software IP and selling licenses conventionally. The projects you've mentioned are successful, but sucessful in a "Malhavoc Press vs. WotC" kind of way.

Most open source developers make their money from services rendered rather than selling code info. Where this breaks down with file-sharing is that the developers of RPG products are not compensated for services rendered. In my analogy, it's like getting phone or on-site support from Red Hat for you box running a Linux distro, but not paying them for it.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Ever heard of OpenOffice, Firefox, GIMP, Python, Miranda, BitTorrent, DC++, Thunderbird, Media Player Classic, XVID, phpBB, PHP, Apache etc?

These are all open source projects.

Yes, clearly he has.

Did you bother to read what you quoted? The market share expressed there is about accurate.

I'm blown away at the ranting going on here in this thread now. Near as I can tell:

1 - Copying is not theft; it's copyright infringement

That would be correct as a legal assessment. The problem is that those who are pursuing that issue aggressively seme to be doing so with a view to establishing that copyright infringement is not a moral wrong or an offence of moral turpitude. A view which is hard to accept when taken to extremes.

The discussion is soundling like a broken record at this point. you guys stopped listening to one another long ago.

2 - Someone, Korimyr, is parttling on about information desiring to be free and how researchers "need to find the ways" to make money off of patents because piracy is a fact of life.

Here's another fact: goernments have police. Courts have wide and sweeping investigative and injunctive powers. When they choose to use them, the rampant piracy we often see comes to a screeching halt and the powerless and ineffectual government you were sing at is now the Big Bully. Be careful of The Man. Most of the time he's nice enough - and then somedays he decides to BE The Man.

Look - I'm not big fan of the RIAA and I could care less about their business model -I don't even care much about some of the artists who apparently are suffering. There are others and there always will be. It's just not important to me.

But shrugging at music downloading is one thing, gaming stuff and movies another.

Really. Try to be a little responsible in some of the views advocated here. While I am not a fan of big pharmaceutical companies trying to maximize their profit by keeping out generics for as long as they possibly can - I DO realize there is a reaon for the patent.

Just because I think software patents are stupid - does not mean that I throw the baby out with the bathwater.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

As far as I know, data is data. You don't need any kind of video suite or fancy equipment to make an image (an exact digital copy) of a DVD.

You are correct, however I was replying primarily to the below quoted material, which was mostly about gettin a pirated copy that significantly deviates from the original, and gets to the consumer faster. If its out before the legit copy, it's generally bootlegged in some way, and is of lesser quality. It's true that you can get exact digital-to-digital copies after something is released, but in that case Psionicist's points in the quote below have no relevance to the discussion.

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.