DRM isn't going to win, because piracy will drive gaming to the consoles before that happens. Besides, you're employing a false dichtomy when you're saying it's the people who "do stuff" against the people who "don't do stuff". Pirates are extremely well motivated to keep DOING what they're doing - i.e. getting free stuff without paying by circumventing all attempts at preventing them. There's a very simple reason why DRM cannot work and it's almost identical to Raph Koster's law of MMO game design: "Never trust the client. The client is in the hands of the enemy. Never ever ever forget this".

Draginol,

And that's what people who run pirated operating systems do today. Don't underestimate the motivating power of "free stuff".

I personally dislike any kind of DRM. I find it silly that I have to keep a stack of DVDs next to my computer just so I can play the game I want to when I want to. I swear for my next computer I am going to get an oversized tower with 10 DVD drives just so I can keep my favorite games in a ready to play state. Nothing turns me off more than having to fish through a stack to find my game disk. I guess that makes me lazy, but I should not have to deal with that. Not with today's technology. Maybe 20 years ago in the 386/486 era when a hard drive was only 200 MB and video still streamed off disk. Today we have computers with Terabytes of storage. Ridiculous.

That said I do believe that DRM can never take hold without absolute government backing. There will always be Linux out there. Linux is a bright spot in the war against DRM. No it is not the leading operating system by any stretch of the imagination. However, there will ALWAYS be Linuz distros out there that will opt out of any sort of DRM. They key is to get a comptetative open source graphics technology such as DirectX in play and get people to develop games for it. DirectX needs to be squashed IMO. Sure I like DirectX, but I do believe an open source alternative would be better. We the people need to take back the dominance that we have allowed Microsoft to capture.

I suggest page 214 here.
Report

(Warning: it's a huge PDF, and only representative of the UK market)

That's very profound. I think I will put that on a t-shirt and sell it and make millions and not give you any.

Still think it's not stealing?

The sad fact is that for as long as there have been people trying to get ahead by selling something, there have been other people trying to get ahead by not paying for it. The harder the merchant tries to prevent theft, the harder the thieves try to steal. There is a good reason that casinos have security protocols tighter than a military installation. And, before someone asks, casinos sell amusement.

Piracy isn't the theft of the return on the creation of a distributable DVD, or a legitimate print of a painting, or a licensed reprint of sheet music. It is a theft on the return, both monetary and emotional, of the investment of hundreds of man hours spent in the creation that original painting/song/program.

To say that it is not stealing is ridiculous. Look in Roget's Thesaurus. Two of the synonyms for piracy are robbery and stealing.

*Sigh* - its NOT theft - that isn't anyone's opinion its a fact of LAW. Period.

If you are arguing that it SHOULD be considered theft - fine, make your argument - don't just post RIAA's mantra and assume it is fact. Basing one's moral code on what is written in a Thesaurus seems a little superficial to me.

To make an argument that downloading is wrong you will have your philosophical work cut out for you - you will be sailing oceans of "Ought" and "Hypothetical Events". And if you base it all on the idea that "Someone is getting something of value without paying for it", then a little imagination will show you the kind of world that slippery slope leads to.

If you are saying that "if everyone downloads then no one will make games any more "- you are probably right, but that isn't a moral argument. That is merely cause and effect. If you don't water your lawn the grass will die, but that statement is NOT saying you are morally OBLIGATED to water your lawn, merely that if you want your lawn to stay green then don't neglect it. Similarly I think that it is people's best interest to support the game industry.

I am NOT saying that downloading is NOT wrong - I am merely pointing out 1) Its NOT theft and 2) Pointing out exactly WHY it might be wrong is not a trivial task.


Dano

OK. I can't let that slide. If they are selling amusement, then they don't need any security. After all, how do you steal amusement? It's like trying to sell love. You can sell means and methods that might yield it, but you can't actually sell it.

Better to say that they are selling an against the odds chance of winning money, or even that they are selling a form of entertainment and some people find that form of entertainment amusing...

In all fairness to the flip side of the force, people here seem to be forgetting one important area; consumers kingdom!

Yup, we're all either against or for enforced control over corporate products (including C-opyrights, indirect/direct protection from theft, locking up a software into redundant and continual verification of validity, coordinated efforts by ANYBODY to impose systematic measures (read this one as THE Law__S from state and history, would you)... and what else!) but when it comes down to taking boxed items right off the shelves in a store, happily humping away to the cashier, sticking out the plastic card to pay and finally, running home to enjoy what we just bought legally.. i'd say the consumer won along with whomever provided (all the way from the assembly-line to packaging) the stuff.

Market dictates the conditions, that's a given. Why do you think Banks (profitable if anything, agreed?) and fatsy Oil Companies (essential fuel for cars or a sort of needs/demands factor, btw?) saturate urban areas with outlets? Real consuming potential, distance, money.
In the long term, the only result from this circuslike of a 'modernized' economy can be summarize in simple terms; Growth, Inflation, Productivity, steady Flow of products/services to & from a specific type of activity (you guessed it) again -- CONSUMING by population.

Take this fact out of the whole equation and you're goin' down, babe - crashing like hell. Bankrupt. Finished, done.
Cuz, if you don't have customers to distribute to, you have no profits. Because, currency says so. Since, the wheels are spinning as we speak.

No matter what the darn piracy word means to you or anyone else - it all comes down to IT. It's a loop. It's been around for eons. It's the first ever made bread exchanged for the rare juicy apple between two jungle HomoSapiens.
I've got the cash. I'm king of my decisions thank you. Your stuff MUST be worth every last penny i own and worked for, too.

Everything else is crap talk. Superfluous.

- Zyxpsilon.

Basing one's opinion on what is and isn't theft upon what the law happens to be seems a little superficial to me. I never said they were legally the same thing, but as far as I am concerned they are the same thing.

Ok, let us not start arguing whether or not something that has been passed into law is a fact. That will take us into another direction completely. I am saying that despite what the law SAYS, the argument can be made that piracy and/or copyright infringement are forms of theft. Not sure why you brought up the RIAA, as I never mentioned it, but the fact remains that stealing intangibles, whether named so or not in legal code, is still stealing. You are taking something that is not yours and using it as if it were. That is stealing.



How fine must we split the hairs? What is the difference between saying they sell a form of entertainment or they sell amusement? It is the gaming industry. Games are amusing and entertaining. If you really want to get granular, they are selling the opportunity to profit by amusing oneself. Feel better now?

I doubt it. I remember two years ago DRM was the future of the music industry, and it failed. I suspect the same will occur in the game market for much the same reason. I think a big factor in DRM is that it's now intruding to the level that consumers are actively boycotting or avoiding titles because of the DRM used. The real problem with the method is plain here - if there was no other option but to use the DRM enabled software, then this would be fine. Unfortunately, there is the other option, which leads to the perverse situation that consumers are actually being motivated to pirate software simply to avoid the DRM.

Wouldn't work. I work for a server and services company which uses this kind of multi-layered DRM, often including physical keys and similar, and even then we employ around a thousand people worldwide who's sole job is to adapt these systems to (hopefully) stay one step ahead of pirates and hackers.
I can't see a Telco, hardware manufacturer or OS writer agreeing to invest their own money in continually providing DRM protection without some kind of return. Without continual development, then the protection will be broken. Continual development isn't free though, and the question of who will foot the bill is even more important in an industry with traditionally low margins such as video games.

As others have said, I think DRM is going to be a dead end. What is really needed is a shift in the business model. The same applies to movies, music and indeed most of the entertainment industry. The problem is, most of these industries are focused on the wrong thing; rather than asking how to stop piracy, what they should be looking at is how to maximise their paying customers.


It's not, it's copyright infringement. There's some important distinctions between the two.

Does this definition of stealing not strike you as a little circular? For the record I am the last person that determines the moral status of an action by whether the courts uphold it. My point was simply that whether downloading is theft or not is NOT a legal question. Therefore it must be a moral one -



Ahh ... now this is a better definition. But wait a second - you mentioned TAKING something that is not yours. Yes, I imagine most people would agree that this constitutes theft. Unfortunately it doesn't apply in copyright infringement. If I copy something from you - where exactly is this "taking" happening? You still have your copy - what have I deprived you? Perhaps I have HYPOTHETICALLY denied you money that you WOULD have gotten - but that is a whole different kettle of fish. What if I won the game in a contest? In a hypothetical world I didn't win that contest, so do I still owe the developer money in this world? If I happen to be working a lot so I don't buy game X but in a hypothetical world I wasn't working so much so I DID buy it, does that mean in this world I still owe money to the developer? What if I was hit by a bus 5 years ago, but if I hadn't I would have bought the game ... does that mean my estate owes the developer money? Obviously I have picked silly examples but the point is this: If Ethical arguments are tricky then ethical arguments based on Possible Worlds (the philosophical term is 'Counterfactuals' if you are interested) is oil covered quicksand, on a bed of teflon in a field of black ice. How do you determine which hypotheticals to pay attention to, and which ones to ignore?

My point is that I think we can all agree that downloading hurts the game industry and therefore we shouldn't do it. To say that it is the moral equivalent of stealing? Well - you have got some serious philosophical labour ahead of you. If you can do it - more power to you - make sure you cc Harvard and Yale.

Dano

Draginol, here is a comment I found on a website about exactly the same article:



Personnaly, I always loved Stardock's approach of piracy. You win more customers while trusting your consumers than you do hunting pirates.

Actually, whether it is theft or not IS a legal question. Whether or not it is wrong in the eyes of your's or the public's values and ideals would be a moral question.




And for someone trying to point out so eloquently that arguing hypotheticals might be a waste of time, you sure went fairly heavy doing it yourself in that last post.

Easy...you have deprived me the right to deny you the chance to copy it, or ask for some type of compensation in return for the chance to copy it. So, in the eyes of the law, copyright infringement may not be stealing, as you would not be stealing anything from me physically. But you would be stealing my ability to ask for compensation in exchange for your opportunity to make the copy, or even to deny you the opportunity to make the copy. You would be stealing my ability to retain control over something, the creation of which, was the result of my hard efforts and the investment of my time and emotion.

Whether piracy is theft or not is irrelevant since it's just a matter of semantics. I would say it's certainly immoral regardless of how one wants to define it.

People who don't make stuff tend to find ways to rationalize piracy.  But the people who do make stuff will always have the upper hand.  Even now, piracy is driving some genres of games off the PC and onto consoles which are DRM'd already pretty thoroughly.

Stardock's perspective has always been that the focus of the industry should be on people who PAY for stuff.  I get weary of listening to game developers complain about piracy as they crank out yet another first person shooter.

Here's some news: Did you know Stardock doesn't focus on making games for China? I know, it's shocking. There's a huge number of gamers in China and yet we don't make games for that.  Now, let's say we decided to spend millions making a game specifically for the Chinese market and we lost our shirts.  How much sympathy do you think we'd get?

Yet the game industry keeps spending millions on PC games that target gamers who don't buy games and are then shocked, SHOCKED that they don't buy their games. 

 

Ah! Good try! You are trying to dodge the hypothetical bullet by saying that you are losing actual rights and abilities. I never thought of that approach. Unfortunately it just doesn't work. If person X downloads your game, you do NOT have less rights or abilities then before X started the download (if you DID lose your right then it follows that your rights have not been infringed - you have to still HAVE a right in order for it to be violated). It still comes down to losing hypothetical compensation - i.e. the 'theft' of something that never existed.

Hey Draginol - I am not sure I understand your final point. What games target gamers that don't buy games? Are you saying that as a demographic strategy players are more likely to buy games than twitch gamers? If you are that is a very interesting idea ...

Dano

I think that he means that the inclusion of DRM is there to try and force pirates to buy the game, rather then focusing on making a game that those who pay for games are willing to buy.

Hmm.. nope, that's not it. My concious is clean as a whistle. White as a sheet. I've stolen nothing of which you can put a price on.
I am no thief and I resent being called one before proven guilty.
Wait, what? Did you just claim that Amiga and Commandore 64 went belly-up because of piracy? In an age where the medium was hardly appreciated and 'piracy' was the only legitimate way to aquire programs and games for many, many people, you claim that systems that was eliminated through (more or less) natural selection and technological evolution died because of piracy?

You are a truly ignorant man and I pity a state of Germany that hasn't already institutionalized you.
While I'm not perfectly happy with the way Stardock Central works (one day, I won't have Galactic Civilizations 2, which means that I'll have lost my investment) I can only see invasive copy protection as another argument for the piracy scene - many cracks and rips completely (or partially) remove invasive copy-protection.

When my choice is between pirating a clean game that won't punch holes in my computer or pay for a copy that's essentially broken (Bioshock comes to mind, which I bought), the choice is pretty simple.

Doesn't this go both ways? I've NEVER bought a Microsoft product, and they STILL continue to produce utter and complete crap that's necessary (through monopoly) for me to run less crappy things.

When you buy a game, you generally don't know anything about it besides the hype. I regret, for example, buying Bioshock. Because I paid for this, they will probably produce a Bioshock 2 based around the same yawnish action model and in the end contribution to "game crap proliferation".
I couldn't agree more.
That's true for.. about 2 years. If you're, like.. 12. Then you realize that there's no "ha-ha" factor in the whole thing. You'll just get point and laughed at.
Oh please. While this "peer DRM" that you people describe is an intriguing thought, it's just pure fantasy. At least at this point. And at this point, if it's "invisible" (which there's really no way to do, at least not on current platforms), why care. Now. Here. If it's not intrusive or invasive, it's not going to scare off any pirates; ideologically motivated, rationalizing ones or pure criminal ones. "Oooh, watch out. Stop copying games, or this magic anti-piracy ghost will come shut down your machine. You'll never see it, because it's invisible to the naked eye."

I'm not actively trying to sound condescending here, but that's really the impression you guys are giving me right now.

Once again, couldn't possibly agree more. On a slightly related subject, I'd like to argue that piracy has overall done a huge favour for, not exclusively but at least in the majority, the gaming industry. It helped popularize games in an age where gaming as a market was almost nonexistant. This conundrum of piracy being "the next big satan" is a -very- new phenomenon.

As if this until-recently budding market got there all by itself, through sweat, blood and tears.
Which brings up yet another issue. They say that pirates "don't do" stuff. That they're not motivated. In fact, they are extremely motivated, since the scene works like an informal industry. But it practices a form of inverse production scheme - instead of trying to make money, it attempts to create a surplus of already aquired money.

Like an informal hive, "the Scene", they all chip in for the final product in one fashion or another. 1000 people working 8 hours a day can achieve great things. 8000 people working 1 hour a day trying to undo (or recreate) the work of the aformentioned people could arguably do more.

(of course, that's no exact science or even sound maths, but I hope my point gets across.)
I disagree. While arguing wheter or not it is theft is just semantics, that is true. But it's certainly not amoral by default. While a bad example (since games |= food) it's akin to stealing to feed your young. Theft? Illegal? Certainly. But not necessarily amoral. On a related topic, we all know that politicans are more or less corrupt, but did you know that here in Sweden we actually have a "Piracy Party" (http://www.piratpartiet.se/)? Knowledge, talent and culture should never have the opportunity to be monopolized.
Never understood that either. I've seen it come up time and again, but I've yet to see an un-pirate-able console. And what genres would that be? FPS? RPG? 4x4/6x6? RTS? Adventure? I don't see it. There are certainly certain games that are better suited for consoles and those that are more suited for PC (Oblivion comes to mind, that was first released for Xbox and then had a horrible porting to PC).

How racist you are. Shocking! SHOCKING! Are you saying that the chinese are more likely to pirate? In Sweden, that could get you a sentence to prison for up to four years.

What you just said: Amoral, or simply Criminal? :p

With what you've said, I don't know how you can not consider yourself to be a thief. You pirate, you steal, you are a thief. Get over it.

I've pirated. I've stolen. I've stolen REAL, PHYSICAL things. That makes me a thief. I'm okay with that. There have been times in my life where, believe it or not, it simply was necessary to steal. You'll just have to trust me on that. Admittedly, pirating is something else entirely, but the point still applies. I freely admit to pirating Windows. Should I move to Linux? Probably. But as well versed in computers as I am, I still don't want to deal with that learning curve if I don't have to. If I used Vista, I'd pirate it. Plain and simple. I've used it enough on friend's systems to know all I need to know about it. I'm vastly disappointed with the result given all the work that supposedly went into it, and if it ever becomes necessary for me to have it, you can bet your life I'll pirate it. It's not worth money to me.

I pirated XP because I don't see Microsoft in need of money. I don't see Microsoft asking their users what they want, or what they need. I don't see Microsoft wanting to make a good product. And therefore I chose not to pay them for my operating system. I don't use Office much anymore (and when I do, it's my perfectly functional, perfectly legal copy of Office 97, thank-you-very-much), and I therefore have no need for Office 07 or 08, pirated or not. At some point I may well jump to OO, but for now I'm perfectly happy. I used 98 until I was forced to use XP, and I was happy with that, too.

I initially pirated GCII. I heard great things about it, and wanted to try it. I don't remember if I ever tried the demo; I didn't see the need when I could experience the full game. And frankly, I never posted on the forums because I didn't feel, as a pirate, that anyone should help me with whatever problems I had with the game. I got it for free; I get no support. I spent several months, maybe more, playing it and realized that Stardock actually gives a shit about their customers, and I really, REALLY, enjoyed the game. So a little after TA went into beta I paid for the game-all three iterations-and although I haven't had as much time to play since then, I take comfort in the thought that I can with no qualms.

For me, pirating is about whether something is worth money, and whether or not that money will be put to good use. In Stardock's case, I can be certain that it will. In Microsoft's, I can't. Maybe not a valid legal argument, but I challenge anyone to refute it morally.

Just my 2bc.

Arrgh!

I wanted to have some fun to work on this but its taking too long. I have some other stuff I need to do right now.

I'll get back to this when I get some more time to work on it. I'm not going to waste anyone's time by posting an incomplete mess.

Piracy, and I'm talking about "intellectual property" here not "yarr, shiver me timbers", isn't stealing. Hence, I am not a thief. I'm a pirate.

Insert "yarr" here.

I haven't. I'm not.It's ok. I don't. I don't. I call bs and claim you're a liar and a cheat. I dont trust morally dubious people that try to rationalize their acts with "You'll have to trust me on that" and "It was necessary". Well bo-ho. Yeah, I know, working for your upkeep can be -so- hard sometimes. /violin

All of that is something we certainly can agree on (even if my case for piracy, on a personal level, has more to do with ideology than "this company deserves my cash, that one doesn't"). All the rest is pretty much spot-on compared to myself (although I have to ask myself why you stayed with 98 for so long. I've always considered 98 to be the worst kind of basic windows there were).

Well, there was 2000...which I couldn't stand. And then there was ME...

So, yeah. 98 it was.

And, to be fair, 95 was worse than 98.



I've stolen food so I could have something to eat, when I couldn't find something remotely edible in a nearby dumpster or trash can. And then at some point I realized that stealing things to sell them and thus buy food would be a better idea. Are you going to fault me for that? Are you going to fault me for choosing to live?

But we're getting off topic, aren't we?

Yarr.

Gosh, this subject is sooooo creepy.

What i find really amazing through this whole chit-chatting mess is that a common solution to 'the problem' has yet to exposed in all its glory (sure, DRM was mentioned at first and it has its appeal for *some*). Not that there IS actually one definitive answer to all piracy stuff of games (note the distinction and the limit set herein), but if one must search for it, i'd say s/he should begin by taking a long hard look at the product and its potential market as a whole.

Now, i won't get into the China syndrome argument - but, serious business, has to fit the bil-l-i-ons worth of consumers(sic!) in their hopes and even, their plans. Not DVD, bootlegs, swiftly crossing borders of Koreas & India... just the megabytes flowing through CRC checks worldwide.
Who would have guessed the PC networks would gain that much popularity just 10 years ago. I defy you to name even just one area where the process isn't solidly implanted as of today. Took what, a decade or so.

Fast-forward along with me, then.

2018, June;
BBC-Headline NEWS.
**
- Microsoft announced an hour ago that they will go ahead with their plan on providing their paying customers with the latest OS -- free of charge as long as these promise not to try cracking its built-in DRM systems.
**
zip-the wire and quick tap on the futuristic remote...
**
- This just in people, believe it or not; Piracy group X has revealed that their multi-purpose cracking tool Y has reached the billion mark in NET sales!
**

See? Where i'm getting at?
No matter what you try. No matter what you DO or NOT do.
The conclusion is and will always be the very same:
Freedom in as many ways as you can define.
Blame it on Humanlike thought processing. Organic emotions, and not frig'in algorithms coded to trap a rat.

Now, it's back to modding X-Worlds and its surface buildings Icons/Queries set.

- Zyxpsilon.

My memory may be wrong here, but I remember reading that at on of the French revolutions they abolished any sort of copyright protection. But soon afterwards they reestablished it because it totally stifled any innovation.

It makes sense (correct history of not), if your work is open to anyone to exploit even though you created the item and/or idea. Their is little hope of any profit and working further is rendered utterly meaningless.

this may be an extreme example, but certainly applies to the risks of pirating software.