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<blockquote data-quote="scott-fs" data-source="post: 1592115" data-attributes="member: 5714"><p>Jumping into this thread just now so I'm not sure how much the discussion has mutated.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I have a friend who has a program which lets you open an .ISO* file from your hard drive and make your computer think that the cd is in your drive, and thus will run a program requiring a cd without ever needing to put a cd into the drive. With this program, and access to any ISO, you could actually survive without a cdrom <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> . Let's just say, my friend has alot of ISOs</p><p></p><p>* An ISO is an image file of a cd (for those less technically minded)</p><p></p><p>One thing I remember from many years back was during the time of Warcraft II. At the time, Blizzard was a smaller company, and probably didn't think their customers would want to buy multiple copies just to play multiplayer. Cd burners were expensive (if not available at all). Warcraft allowed you to play with up to 8 players with all of 3 cds. One cd could support 3 players, 2 cds 6 players, up to the limit of 8 players. I was thinking about this, and considered an idea I would love to see being implemented in future games. Each copy comes with a second cd-key. This cd-key allows the installed copy to run the game, but only allow the player to join LAN multiplayer game. You wouldn't be able to create a game, go online, or play the single player missions, but you could participate in the multiplayer aspect. For many years, multiplayer in this way is all we did.</p><p></p><p>At our lan parties, we often have 4-5 burned copies of a Broodwar cd floating around. There were maybe 2-3 legitimate purchased copies of the game, and it wasn't that difficult to copy the game. Eventually more of us have picked up legitimate copies because it's well worth the price by now, and has been one of the longest standing games in our lan gaming.</p><p></p><p>It would've been nice if Warcraft 3 had this option. With the high price point, we're more likely to make these extra copies and crack them so that we can play without spending $50+ on our own copy.</p><p></p><p>I'll be waiting until the Warcraft 3 battlechest comes down to $30 CDN before getting it.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Using Starcraft as an example, it was possible for a time to have two computers connected to Battlenet using the same key. I've heard they've closed the loophole, but I haven't had the chance to check lately. Basically, when you enter your cd-key (it must be one that has not been registered), you use an asterisk (" * ") for your name. Basically the system didn't understand the *, and allowed the user to connect even if there was another * user. Chances are, getting a key from a key generator won't work this way.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Very true.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This was the main part I was going to respond to before I got sidetracked by the above points.</p><p></p><p>I briefly jumped into publishing and did an incredibly horrible job. I am horrified about the product I put online and tried selling. If I can get my finances back into order I plan to contact those that purchased my pdfs and offer them a refund.</p><p></p><p>With that said, I have another plan to jump back in, and my business model may not make much sense (or profit), but I foresee much benefit regarding customer service. Here it is:</p><p></p><p>I plan to make future releases under a shareware style "license". Essentially, you can download the releases for free, copy them wherever you wish, pass them onto friends, etc. For those unfamiliar with shareware, they often included a splash screen with a "plea" to potential customers that if they liked the product enough to send them a bit of money. In essence, try to make the user feel "guilty" about using it for free but not paying anything for it, and encourage the customer to feed the "starving programmer". I wouldn't try to make anyone feel guilty for using the product without sending over a little cash, but I'd definately encourage it.</p><p></p><p>This stems from my personal philosophy when it comes to downloading and filesharing, and I started thinking about it when DTRPG appeared with their DRM "protection". My philosophy (more or less) is such: "Feel free to download copyrighted material, whether movies, games, music, or documents to test whether the content you are interested in is worth the price that it is being offered for. It is ok if it takes just one day, ten days, one month, or even a whole year or more of continuous use to determine it's value to you. If you feel the item has value, support those who created/produced it, by purchasing a legitimate copy."</p><p></p><p>As I've mentioned in the past, in Canada, filesharing is legal, and I can feel free to download whatever I want to try before I buy. For an item which I don't have an immediate use for, or will take time to learn fully, I want to be able to have the item (mostly computer programs and games) and use it until I feel comfortable enough with it that my purchase will be well worth it. This philosophy is also there to protect me from buying a program or game which my computer ends up not being able to run (even though it should be able to handle the requirements). I got burned on NFS: Hot Pursuit 2 because I got it before I learned I needed better hardware (an actual sound card).</p><p></p><p>My initial thought was that this business model may be suicidal, but I actually believe that this might be very successful. I believe there are gamers out there that would love to grab a product, and use it and find out that they like it so much that they want to help out the creator. This thread (and others) have shown atleast that there are some out there that feel including DRM in a product means that the publisher doesn't trust them with the content. I'll imagine what those same people might think with the trust I'm showing my potential customers by essentially giving away my product for free, with only the hope that they feel it's worth it to send me a couple dollars.</p><p></p><p>Imagine the revolution! And to think, my products could <em>never</em> be pirated!</p><p></p><p>The above business model applies to pdfs. If I actually manage to get any product together, I am also planning to have a Print On Demand option that will allow a customer to purchase and receive a hardcopy. Depending on page counts, they'd be priced very reasonably (cost of printing+shipping+$5).</p><p></p><p>This here leads into another philosophy behind the why I would choose to "give" away my products in electronic form. A pdf, a mp3, and a mpeg, are all virtual objects. It may have similar content to the hardcopy that you purchased, but it is just that. Content. They are intangible. You can't hold them, feel them. When I purchase a book, a cd/dvd, I acknowledge that it took resources to produce the physical object (the paper for the book, ink to put on the page), the manhours to place the content on the medium, and then the cost of infrastructure to deliever it to the B&M store. There are real costs in the creation of the physical object. I also prefer to have a hardcopy of the object, whether it be a book, cd or dvd. A file has no physical object. It is some data located on a hard drive inside my computer. I could never buy music online (such as through itunes). Why, because the item I am getting is not physical. It does not have the value that holding a physical object does. So while I am sitting here listening to my mp3s writing this message, the music doesn't have inherrent value. What does have value is the circular disk of plastics sitting in my cd binder from where that mp3 was extracted from. Ideas are free.</p><p></p><p>I do acknowledge that it takes time and energy to create content.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="scott-fs, post: 1592115, member: 5714"] Jumping into this thread just now so I'm not sure how much the discussion has mutated. I have a friend who has a program which lets you open an .ISO* file from your hard drive and make your computer think that the cd is in your drive, and thus will run a program requiring a cd without ever needing to put a cd into the drive. With this program, and access to any ISO, you could actually survive without a cdrom :) . Let's just say, my friend has alot of ISOs * An ISO is an image file of a cd (for those less technically minded) One thing I remember from many years back was during the time of Warcraft II. At the time, Blizzard was a smaller company, and probably didn't think their customers would want to buy multiple copies just to play multiplayer. Cd burners were expensive (if not available at all). Warcraft allowed you to play with up to 8 players with all of 3 cds. One cd could support 3 players, 2 cds 6 players, up to the limit of 8 players. I was thinking about this, and considered an idea I would love to see being implemented in future games. Each copy comes with a second cd-key. This cd-key allows the installed copy to run the game, but only allow the player to join LAN multiplayer game. You wouldn't be able to create a game, go online, or play the single player missions, but you could participate in the multiplayer aspect. For many years, multiplayer in this way is all we did. At our lan parties, we often have 4-5 burned copies of a Broodwar cd floating around. There were maybe 2-3 legitimate purchased copies of the game, and it wasn't that difficult to copy the game. Eventually more of us have picked up legitimate copies because it's well worth the price by now, and has been one of the longest standing games in our lan gaming. It would've been nice if Warcraft 3 had this option. With the high price point, we're more likely to make these extra copies and crack them so that we can play without spending $50+ on our own copy. I'll be waiting until the Warcraft 3 battlechest comes down to $30 CDN before getting it. Using Starcraft as an example, it was possible for a time to have two computers connected to Battlenet using the same key. I've heard they've closed the loophole, but I haven't had the chance to check lately. Basically, when you enter your cd-key (it must be one that has not been registered), you use an asterisk (" * ") for your name. Basically the system didn't understand the *, and allowed the user to connect even if there was another * user. Chances are, getting a key from a key generator won't work this way. Very true. This was the main part I was going to respond to before I got sidetracked by the above points. I briefly jumped into publishing and did an incredibly horrible job. I am horrified about the product I put online and tried selling. If I can get my finances back into order I plan to contact those that purchased my pdfs and offer them a refund. With that said, I have another plan to jump back in, and my business model may not make much sense (or profit), but I foresee much benefit regarding customer service. Here it is: I plan to make future releases under a shareware style "license". Essentially, you can download the releases for free, copy them wherever you wish, pass them onto friends, etc. For those unfamiliar with shareware, they often included a splash screen with a "plea" to potential customers that if they liked the product enough to send them a bit of money. In essence, try to make the user feel "guilty" about using it for free but not paying anything for it, and encourage the customer to feed the "starving programmer". I wouldn't try to make anyone feel guilty for using the product without sending over a little cash, but I'd definately encourage it. This stems from my personal philosophy when it comes to downloading and filesharing, and I started thinking about it when DTRPG appeared with their DRM "protection". My philosophy (more or less) is such: "Feel free to download copyrighted material, whether movies, games, music, or documents to test whether the content you are interested in is worth the price that it is being offered for. It is ok if it takes just one day, ten days, one month, or even a whole year or more of continuous use to determine it's value to you. If you feel the item has value, support those who created/produced it, by purchasing a legitimate copy." As I've mentioned in the past, in Canada, filesharing is legal, and I can feel free to download whatever I want to try before I buy. For an item which I don't have an immediate use for, or will take time to learn fully, I want to be able to have the item (mostly computer programs and games) and use it until I feel comfortable enough with it that my purchase will be well worth it. This philosophy is also there to protect me from buying a program or game which my computer ends up not being able to run (even though it should be able to handle the requirements). I got burned on NFS: Hot Pursuit 2 because I got it before I learned I needed better hardware (an actual sound card). My initial thought was that this business model may be suicidal, but I actually believe that this might be very successful. I believe there are gamers out there that would love to grab a product, and use it and find out that they like it so much that they want to help out the creator. This thread (and others) have shown atleast that there are some out there that feel including DRM in a product means that the publisher doesn't trust them with the content. I'll imagine what those same people might think with the trust I'm showing my potential customers by essentially giving away my product for free, with only the hope that they feel it's worth it to send me a couple dollars. Imagine the revolution! And to think, my products could [I]never[/I] be pirated! The above business model applies to pdfs. If I actually manage to get any product together, I am also planning to have a Print On Demand option that will allow a customer to purchase and receive a hardcopy. Depending on page counts, they'd be priced very reasonably (cost of printing+shipping+$5). This here leads into another philosophy behind the why I would choose to "give" away my products in electronic form. A pdf, a mp3, and a mpeg, are all virtual objects. It may have similar content to the hardcopy that you purchased, but it is just that. Content. They are intangible. You can't hold them, feel them. When I purchase a book, a cd/dvd, I acknowledge that it took resources to produce the physical object (the paper for the book, ink to put on the page), the manhours to place the content on the medium, and then the cost of infrastructure to deliever it to the B&M store. There are real costs in the creation of the physical object. I also prefer to have a hardcopy of the object, whether it be a book, cd or dvd. A file has no physical object. It is some data located on a hard drive inside my computer. I could never buy music online (such as through itunes). Why, because the item I am getting is not physical. It does not have the value that holding a physical object does. So while I am sitting here listening to my mp3s writing this message, the music doesn't have inherrent value. What does have value is the circular disk of plastics sitting in my cd binder from where that mp3 was extracted from. Ideas are free. I do acknowledge that it takes time and energy to create content. [/QUOTE]
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