Well I will allways belive that banning pirates from the internet is justified.

I do not belive there ever will be a true "silver bullet" solution to the problem.
As long as there is a demand for it, pirated software will allways be available no matter what. Handling it case by case would be best.

One thing I think would have a large impact is what Time Warner is now doing in my area.
Not only are you just paying for internet service now, the service plans are becoming "flexible". Your paying for it like pay for a utility.
More bandwith you eat up = more you pay for the service.

So the download junkie down the street is now going to have to pay a lot more for all that massive downloading.
So you get a 2 pronged effect,
1. After getting the rather new and much larger bill for using up the bandwith, he's going to think twice since its going to cost him money now.
2. My connection speed goes up =D.

Piracy has existed as long as writen media has existed.
It's just untill recently it has not been a (big) problem for the industries.
It really hits the bottom line now.
Studio "A" may have turned over $100,000,000 in "profit" but a large ammount of that money is reinvested as wages, material, ect.
Companies and industries are not cash sponges soaking up revenue, money is a constant flow through them.
"If" there is a raw, true bottom line profit, its probably only 3-5 cents on the dollar. And thats only if things are running right without unexpected losses.

Piracy was time consuming and somewhat expensive back in the day, and that was the best deterrant as a result. Only really determined individuals were prosecuted. Even large operations didn't affect the bottom line of a industry much.

P2P sharing was hard to, usualy it involved buying a blank (insert whatever), copying it yourself and then giving it to the other person, in person.
DvD burn drives didn't exist and VCR/casset copies sucked.
The industries cared, but not enough to spend money chasing down everyone with a VCR and a tape deck and then prosecute them.
It was way to many people that made copies that were not as good as the originals and only gave them to the people closest to them. They would have ended up spending more money chasing everyone down then what they would have earned if everyone bought legal.

Well computers came along.
First data storage was limited, computers were very expensive, dial up modems were slow.
So the industries didn't care so much about computers in the home either, untill CDs came along.
The movie and music industries tried to block the DvD hard drives in home computers, as well as hard drives that could burn thier own CDs. Thier fear was justified but fell short since you still would have to buy blank CDs, copy them yourself and then give them to someone personaly.
Then MP3 came along with faster internet connections, harddrives doubling in size every few months and a global internet with servers overseas.
Napster treated the music industry with all the gentleness of a prison anal rape.
The was also an unawareness of what everyone was doing was wrong or not. Copyright infringement was not a hot button issue since it was not actively prosecuted or covered by the media.
Personaly, my first memory about the issue was reading a story about a young boy who downloaded about 12,000 songs not knowing it was illegal. I thought in disbelief, there are not 12,000 GOOD songs.
Well everyone found out it was wrong to do what they were doing, but didn't care. They were getting something free from the magic world of the internet. And alot of people in thier own form of logic still think what thier doing is not wrong.
And the best part? It costs people praticly nothing to do it. All you have to do is get a half decent computer with half decent internet connection and your set.

So yeah its eats into the bottom line of a industry when they have such a large ammount of sales lost and have to spend extra revenue on security on thier product.

Well I don't care that its "copyright infringement" or any legal meaning its still theft in my eyes.
Go apeshit, or whatever, I don't care.
If I were to beat the hell out of you in an alley and take your stuff,
Is it a mugging? Or will you call it "agressive negotiation"?

Using arguments like "it was a shitty game" is not good enough.
Read a review, thousands are online right now for praticly any game you can think of. Game makers buying off the game informer website? Well read some player submited reviews.

"Not avaible in my country" Sorry, nothing anyone can do about that. Then again downloading pirated software mare not be a crime where you are so feel free.

"I am a student and/or I can't afford the new games with my current job" Sorry to say this but, You should probably shift your priorty from gaming to finding a better job for yourself or finishing school. Or, you could just be patient a little while and watch the price of the game drop after a couple of months on the shelf. It won't kill you.

I like Stardock's SINS game and how they treat thier customers. If Stardock makes another game soon I'll probably buy it.
I haven't bought an EA game in I don't know how long. (probably have if it was from a company owned by EA and I didn't know) Why? Well It kinda goes back on principal of how they treated thier football game franchise, they are dicks.
Blizzard? WOW was both the best and worst game, played it a while. It was fun but recycled alot of the same elements over and over.
Blizzard makes abother game soon? I probably won't buy it since they lost alot of thier creative team recently. Unless it gets good reviews I probably won't even look at it. I came close to buying Hellgate since it had much of the same team that made the games I liked working on it. But I waited and found out that it was nothing like what everyone wanted it to be.
So yeah I use shopping skills for buying games. I look for what I am interested in, read reviews, look at player reviews, and be patient. Guess what? I very rarely get burned. It still happens but o well.

So unless you happen to be unlucky enough to live in a monopolized area, they are going to lose a ton of customers to a provider offering standard flat-rate and "change their minds". If my ISP started throwing excrement like that, I'd switch faster than you can say something that takes a really short time to say.

And here we come to the crux of the problem - companies abusing the rights of the customers, while at the same time a lot of noise is being made about certain individuals abusing the rights of companies.

And as usual in such things, those who are the least to blame take the punches, on both sides.

Well, otherwise they wouldn't have that much money in the first place.

That doesn't make sense - it is still cheaper to download a pirated game than to buy a legitimate copy, no?
And besides that, flat-rate is still the norm in the "free" world as far as I know.

So I should think this is just one of them "business strategies" at work.

In my opinion, the game companies are screwing the customers harder than that the pirates are screwing the game companies.

Like Zaisha said, it's basicly a cartel. That's really the big problem (by far not only in the entertainment industry). There's a bunch of producers working in the same market. They know not to lower their prices because they know when they do that so will the other guy, and all producers would get stuck into lowering their prices untill they're at a minimum and thus their profit is down to a minimum. They don't even have to make a deal with each other, they just know not to lower the price, meaning there's no way anything can be done legally. It's the big problem of current capitalism only most people don't see it or the ones who do are the ones who don't want people to see it.

Take cd's for example. The actual cost of making a cd is 10 cents (actually less but ok). Even adding transport and sales costs (which are both very cheap for cd's) to that won't get it near 50 cents. Now, artists often get contracts for several million dollars or more. Up that they get a percentage of every cd sold, usually around ten percent. Next to that there's alot of band merchandise and live tickets being sold. Making any well known artist extremely wealthy. It may sound strange, but still after taking off all these costs we're not even near the actual price of a cd. Because the record companies will add alot of money to it. What for? Buying a new cruise ship, the last one was only 20 metres.

It's really not much different for the gaming industry. Except of an artist there's a bunch of developers who get paid normal wages and more money goes into developing in general.

This is not how capitalism was intended to be fair. The idea is, take all costs, add a little bit profit for the boss and you got a product price. And not take all costs and add 30 times that for the boss.

In short, capitalism is made in such a way that product prizes are connected to producing costs. But because competition is not working, prizes are only set to maximize profits. Which mean that maybe a select few people get very rich, but consumers are screwed. And especially in the entertainment business this is extreme, due to actual producing costs being very low (thanks to current technology), but because it's a high quality luxury product, companies can ask alot of money for it.

Personally, I find that worse than piracy. Especially since most illegal downloads would not be a purchase otherwise (which means nobody lost anything in the economic sense). Ofcourse, people who download everything and don't support any of the companies/artists they really like I certainly don't respect, and the people selling it for their own gain even less, let that be very clear. But downloading what I wouldn't buy anyway doesn't bother me no, and I certainly don't see why it should.

---Warning: Developer Rant. The following is not targeted directly at anyone here, but rather a general public attitude that some individuals hold---

Not all entertainment industries, companies, and practices are the same. I am tired of people ignorantly looking at any business as 'the man'  - some faceless corporate behometh ready to squash anyone in sight. Guess what? Ironclad is a corporation....ahhhhh run for your lives!  Come on. We are just regular people with names, families and lives, just like you. No one here has a head of grey hair, wears a suit to work, and drives a BMW. We just happen to work hard doing something we love. I can't stand 'the man' any more than you do. I hate getting ripped off too. I was recently speaking to a kid at circuit city who was telling me how upsetting it was to have so much merchandise stolen everyday. I replied by saying, I know exactly how you feel. I explained that I owned a game development studio and how irritating it was when pirating got out of control.  I could tell he was nervous and scrambling for something to say as I stood there looking into his eyes. At first he said he didn't believe me, then he remarked, "well you don't actually recieve much from the sale of games anyway, do you?"  I was dumbfounded. 

The way I see this subject, is that in a lot of cases, it's not piracy really.

They download a program, yes, but it comes down to whether or not they deprive the makers of it of any profit, which is what the laws come down to, and say the person wouldn't have bought the program anyways, then downloading it does not deprive the makers of any of their money.

wrong on two counts. well, maybe. dunno if you live in the US, if so then your gas tax isn't being set aside to fix roads. the federal tax goes to the general fund where it can be spent on silly things like $10,000 toilets and laws prohibiting incandescent light bulbs. (better stock up on them by 2014. personally, i'm gettin' into that black market.) your millage may vary with state taxes.

what you don't take into account is the affect of adjusting the price on demand. it's a simple point to miss, but when you think about it, your assessment would have to assume that your demand for gas is exactly the same as it was when it was $1.50/gal. I dunno about you, but I sure as heck ain't pining for a Hummer H1 anymore (H3's are for pansies who suck at overcompensating )

it would be fair to say that we wouldn't get 100% of the difference the tax would make. the savings wouldn't be phenomonal. still, gas stations and oil companies in general know that enough people scan the town for the cheapest price. even reduction of a few pennies will cause people to flock. competition is what makes capitalism great!



ahh, but that's not the whole story about the pirate market. most probably wouldn't buy the item. but some would. it's at least worth figuring out how many. back in the days of Napster ("You'll never shut down the real Napster." i'd be impressed if anyone gets the movie reference without googling it) there are many songs i would have bought CDs for had Napster not been available. in fact, when i grew a conscience and got out of my college days narcissism i actually did buy several of them.

though, arguably, DRM has for a while driven people into piracy who weren't there before. there are stories about average joe folks who, say, wanted to copy a dvd because their kids might damage the original copy and, finding they can't because of pesky CSS, they download the movie using Kazaa or equivalent. they aren't bad people, and sometimes they don't know better. all the same, it's clear that fighting piracy will at some point actually bring about further piracy as folks who wouldn't do wrong otherwise are driven to the dark side.

I'm a bit late, but this is a fun discussion.  However, several critical facts have been skipped over if you're thinking at all about the US.

To have a constructive debate on any subject, you need to have something you agree on.  Most (999/1000) people's opinions on copyright law are completely baseless, though the better informed half may have enough "rules of thumb" to figure out some stuff.  Really, though, unless it's your job or a hobby it's too complex and there's too much false info and too many lies floating around for the ordinary person to figure it out.  Since we're (mostly) from the United States and US law copyright law originated with British law and spread to much of the world, it's the best basis. 

Firstoff:  The whiny pirates are partially right.  Intellectual property is not actually property, and abusing it isn't theft.  This has no bearing on how "wrong" it is, or whether you can get punished, though, but it does place some important limitations on the extent to which copyright is applicable.  Effectively, copyright is a government-gifted monopoly over the use and distribution of a work and derivatives, so that cool people like Stardock will make more (or as the Constitution says, to promote the progress of science and useful arts).   This means that application of the copyright monopoly is heavily limited through the principles of Fair Use.  The author's creation is not their baby, and the Supreme Court does not look kindly on those who forget this (see Sony v Universal City Studios).

This is where you run into problem territory trying to force people off the net.  Shaking them up for money (i.e. settlement letters) appears to be a rather dubious practice, as shown by the judicial responses in Arista vs Does.  Forcing them off the net is going to be extremely difficult:  the RIAA's IP address hopscotch is not going to work here - and you really, really don't want to mess up and (for example) take a classroom offline due to educational use of material which fits under Fair Use.

Practically, you'd have to force every ISP in the country to do an unprecedented level and range of deep packet inspection, replace all wireless access points with new versions which don't allow for open wifi, and generally lock down the internet to the point where the content providers themselves would take a heavier financial loss than from piracy. 

Even then, you'd still have false positives and only catch the less technically adept (the opposite of who you want).  Basically, this is a hilariously bad idea. 

@ProzacMann

In Toronto, we can take out game software from the library. I am not sure how up to date the list is from our local library.

And why don't students take out books from the library. Well..they do. But as far as textbook goes, you can only take a book out 2 weeks at a time, and you need the book for the entire semester and at times the entire year. And every other student in your course needs to use the book too. Soo everyone figured it is cheaper to just xerox the entire text. I were in courses where the prof told us in the case where the book is ridculously expensive to just photocopy the book.

BTW - I knew that in Indiana the gas tax is dedicated to highway funds, but it looks like it mostly is federally as well - per

History of the gas tax

I haven't found anyplace else that has it all in one place - I prefer .gov when I'm sourcing stuff like this, but everywhere else seems to confirm what they have here - it looks like from 1990 till 1997, from 17.7% to 37% was allocated to the general fund, but that stopped in 1997, and federally it goes to the highway fund, mass transit fund, and <1% to 'other trust funds'.

So it's actually not in the general fund - eliminating that gas tax will result in your not having to worry about buying gas cuz of all the potholes and blown tires - {G}.

Jonnan