Temple of The Roguelike Forums
Websites => Off-topic (Locked) => Topic started by: Fenrir on March 28, 2011, 02:37:49 AM
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This, Krice, is exactly the type of confusion I sought to avert.
What confusion? That piracy IS or ISN'T stealing? Piracy doesn't deprive anyone of anything, except companies of a part of their predicted income. Income which was only predicted and never came to fruition, and as such, can't be stolen, since it doesn't exist.
I had supposed that Krice was using the term hyperbolically or something, and I supposed that you might not realize that, but it seems like I was wrong. I do not think that piracy and theivery are the same. It seems that Krice does.
If those benefits were owed the company, it is still a wrong, whether you call it damage or not.
It's illegal. Killing people is both immoral and illegal, but in some modern states the death penalty exists, which I find barbaric. Morality and legality are not one and the same.
I'm well aware of the distinction. We are indeed discussing our opinions on morality, and I have not once defended something simply because it is law.
By terms of distributive justice, it's actually better than fair. It's even pareto efficient: nobody gets worse, and at least somebody gets better.
That depends entirely upon which rules of destributive justice you accept.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice-distributive/
It’s only “fair” in terms of strict egalitarianism, and such a philosophy cannot be effectual.
Yes, it's not theft, I was speaking metaphorically, but the agreement is made upon purchasing the digital media, also, the whole "you're not buying this disk you're buying a license to use it" is a legalese contraption that limits your ownership of a physical item.
I expect you suppose all other forms of barter to be legalese contraptions, yes? Deeds to land and the like? It is only by agreement that things are possessed, for nothing else can imply ownership. It is a pact, and it should be honored, as honest people are the best benefit to society.
I don't concur. I know many people who wouldn't have bought a lot of gaming systems so happily if it weren't for their vulnerabilities. And probably, so do you (knowing people like that).
We aren't discussing “willingness to buy”.
With intent of black market monetary profit. That's the difference.
I understand.
Yes, we do. Here is a counter question: do you really want us to feel sorry for you because you don't want to buy those products?
No, I don't.
It certainly does not appear to be that way, as you were just complaining about the high prices of software.
Your justification for piracy is that you think the companies make too much money? Very well, how much is too much in your opinion? You would deprive them of what is theirs by right just because they make more money than you do?
It's theirs by right because they hold sway to determine what rights they have. The problem isn't that they make more money, the problem is that it's blown out of proportion to the effort and money they put in. It may not be unjust, but it is unfair.
Who is the judge of that? Who are you to say that it is out of proportion? By what measure shall you determine how much they deserve for the work?
Do you know that with a flat benefit rate of 20% for everyone, for every transaction, people would still be able to actually become rich?
Yes, but why should they not charge as much as people are willing to pay?
Poverty doesn't give one leave to take what he will from the rest of society. Such is gravely arrogant thinking.
I'm not taking what I want from the rest of the society (since I'm not depriving anyone of anything), I'm duplicating for my personal use a digital resource.
Yes, but you are using your poverty to justify your violation of copyright. Poverty alone does not give one leave to commit an act that is unfair and unjust, whether it is stealing or not.
Except they don't decide the price, the price is decided by the seller. Sometimes not even the seller, but the provider:
I was correct in assuming that you know little of business. The “provider” is also a seller. They sell the the PS3 to the stores. The stores are under no obligation to accept the price.
You can't sell a PS3 any price you want if you own a retail store, you know? You have to keep at a fixed price.
I am not familiar with the laws in your country. Does the law require that goods are sold at a certain price? If it is, I will agree that such is unfair.
They purchase it because they want it, and because they can afford it, not because they think it's worth the price.
This sentence contradicts itself. If they are willing to spend the money on the object, it must, by the very definition of the word “worth”, be worth the price to them. If they wanted to purchase it, and they are willing to spend the money, how can you hold the seller to blame?
If one cannot afford their product, he should swallow it like a man. Also, I'm afraid you shall have to tell us which crisis you mean and evidence that companies have thrown us into it.
If you can't see this for yourself, I'm not going to spell it out. Sorry =(
I’m not going to make your point for you. You and you alone must provide evidence for your claims.
It could be construed as encouragement of illegal behavior ;)
As long as you don't help anyone do it, I don't see a problem. Of course, it's up to Slash to decide.
Do you see the irony here? You say that they care too much for themselves, but only because they will not freely give you what they have created.
Not because they won't freely give me what they have created, but because they abuse their already bloated power.
You consider their insistance that the public keep the pacts they made an abuse of power? You say “bloated”. How much power is “bloated”? By what measure do you consider power to be in excess?
Opposite positions tend to mirror one another.
That would make sense if I was mirroring you.
The evil of business is proportional to its size.
So I guess everyone that has a job (they sell their services to their employers) is a little evil too then? Why is business evil? Trade powers human progress.
Repression of software piracy stems from the overzealous protection of the entertainment industry, which is a sin of the current capitalist governments.
I do not consider the acts of a government keeping consumers to the pacts they made a sin, nor do I know if they are truly overzealous.
Why do you suppose that public officials are more trustworthy than private companies? At least companies give you the option to simply not purchase their products. Taxes are compulsory, and, if you don't like how they spend it, you can do nothing to stop it.
Do I have to suppose the contrary?
No, you don't, but you don't have to suppose as you do either, so you must defend what you hold to be true. Like I said, they aren't more trustworthy, but, unlike the government, you have the option of not accepting their terms if you deem them unjust.
Taxes are compulsory, but are spent on things I and my fellow citizen can enjoy freely afterwards. Even if they couldn't afford it, were them market offered. Taxes aren't in place for the one who can pay them, but for the one who needs that which the taxes pay.
This system is flawed, for it does not reward work, and I should not be robbed of what I have rightfully earned to be distributed to others. Yes, that IS robbery.
Yes, I honestly think it. A company is not a man, and this is bringing again the piracy !=/= theft issue.
Yes, piracy is not theft. Already established. Just an example.
You cannot seperate people from the company, for a company is owned by people. It is an organization of people. What you have said is like arguing that you don’t mind taking the man’s money from the wallet because a wallet isn’t a person.
It means that you have to pay a tax (the state's privilege) to a private company, for letting your customers hear your radio (a radio you already paid and which is airing a broadcast)
I’m not familiar with the laws in your country. That does sound unjust, but, of course, this has nothing to do with software piracy.
An agreement, however partial, can't be made without the parts making. If you want me to clarify it, even more, to me it feels like a deserved injustice.
That is an oxymoron. There is no such thing as a “deserved injustice”.
Companies aren't people, and as such cannot suffer.
Again, they are comprised of and owned by people.
Trying to better your social standing and income is fair competition. Making your life worth several thousands of other lives is humiliation.
Are you honestly trying to say that making money makes one's live more valuable, and, thus, a rich person has made his life as valuable as thousands of other lives? Such a conversion is the only way that what you have said can make any sense.
And we all live in this system, even you and me. If company and governmental honchos were each half as rich, everyone in the world could be several times as rich as before.
Sure, but, of course, why should other people have that wealth? What makes them more deserving of it? They didn't earn it. No one paid them in exchange for a product.
Hell, we could all work three hours a day and live in paradise.
It doesn't work that way.
It's the obscenity of it all what is hard to get for the average citizen who defends that system. But it's clear for me that it's main beneficiaries not only get it, but bask in it.
It's the efficacy of it all what is hard to get for the average citizen who doesn't understand how life works.
Don't blame them. They have not forced anyone to buy anything. Regard their customers with contempt, for it is they that have willingly supplied the companies with the money they have.
With contempt, after they've had their minds bombarded with a thousand and one forged promises of satisfaction, broadcasted in the hundreds of TV and radio stations, and plastered everywhere? What should I regard those directives with, admiration? I refuse.
Here in America, we have laws against false advertising, because, you’re right, false advertising is wrong. I don’t know how broken your free market system is, I’m afraid. With truthful advertising, it is just, which is why I suggested that software licenses be placed in more obvious places.
Well, it seems we have strayed from the topic a little with this talk about economics, but I don’t mind if you don’t.
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Software piracy is theft. Any attempt to say otherwise is because you don't want to call yourself a thief. When you create something, it belongs to you. When a company creates something, it belongs to that company. If I write a story, it belongs to me. It is within my right to ask for money for people to read it. If I write a song, it belongs to me. It is within my right to ask for money to listen to it. If Bioware creates a game, it belongs to them. It is within their rights to ask for money to be allowed to play it. Just because you think someone asking to much doesn't give give you the right take it anyway.
Extra Credits did an excellent video on this topic: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2653-Piracy (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2653-Piracy) I encourage you to listen to it.
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Software piracy is theft. Any attempt to say otherwise is because you don't want to call yourself a thief.
What people want or don't want is irrelevant. Arguments remains arguments.
When you create something, it belongs to you. When a company creates something, it belongs to that company. If I write a story, it belongs to me. It is within my right to ask for money for people to read it. If I write a song, it belongs to me. It is within my right to ask for money to listen to it.
Once I have something it belongs to me. Once I heard or know something it belongs to me. It is within my rights to give it to anybody. We are speaking about moral, not legal rights, right?
Extra Credits did an excellent video on this topic: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2653-Piracy (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2653-Piracy) I encourage you to listen to it.
Richard Stallman has an excellent story on this topic:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html)
I encourage you to read it.
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The modern meaning of 'piracy' was invented specifically to defame (unauthorized) duplication or (unlicensed) broadcasting. It is not synonymous to theft, as duplication doesn't actually deprive another of the thing that was taken. The problem exists because it concerns things that are perfectly duplicable with no damage to the original.
Despite that, I think unauthorized copying of a paid product is (morally) wrong. I agree with the opinion that as a user, you should be paying for a license to use the product. It is right for the people that made the product, to be paid for making it.
My personal opinions are probably easily falsified from an educated point of view on law or economics, of which I have no clue whatsoever. With that as a disclaimer, I think the digital rights lobby and the entertainment industry (not the creators of the product, but those solely involved with law and marketing) are no strangers to shady practices themselves.
For example (AFAIK this applies to at least Western Europe):
- If you're buying storage media (like a hard drive, a blank DVD or USB flash drives) part of the price is charged as a compensation for the predicted loss of digital rights owners. Although you might use these media exclusively to store backups of your personal files, you're paying for others' unauthorized copying.
- You may not be in the position to choose whether or not to purchase a product. If you're buying a new PC, for example, you may not be able to opt out of a pre-installed version of Windows, even though you might already have a valid Windows license, and you're scrapping your old system.
- As a paying consumer, you may still be subjected to preventive DRM measures, without having done anything illegal. I remember Starforce, which secretly installed a device driver for optical drives, with no uninstall option. This comes dangerously close to malware.
These, to me, are plainly unjust and should be as unlawful as what they call 'piracy'.
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Ok people this is getting academic ;D
Do any of you mind if I print this sometime and give it to my Social Philosophy teacher? perhaps he'll find some interest in it, and maybe he can point us to some flaws or shining points in our ageements.
Now I'll take some time to quote most of this and give my answers.
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<snip>
Once I have something it belongs to me. Once I heard or know something it belongs to me. It is within my rights to give it to anybody. We are speaking about moral, not legal rights, right?
<snip>
Richard Stallman has an excellent story on this topic:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html)
I encourage you to read it.
I am talking legally (at least for USA) and morally. Just because I know the story of Harry Potter doesn't mean that Harry Potter belongs to me. I have no right to write a book that takes place in Hogwarts and publish it for money. I have no right to listen to a Dream Evil song over and over again until I can recreate the song exactly as they wrote it and sell it/give it away.
As for that article...I quite reading after I saw the line 'It is illegal to let others read your books'. For me at that point the author lost all credibility. As citizens we do have the responsibility to keep the government in check, but this can be done without blatant anti-government/paranoia.
One thing I would like to bring up is that there is a difference between civil disobedience, and crime. Civil disobedience is done to benefit society at large. The men and women who defied the Jim Crow laws in the USA come to mind. Yes they were criminals at the time, but they weren't doing it strictly for their own personal gain. They wanted to change society. They broke the laws in a way that drew attention to how unfair the laws were. Most software pirates quietly download from a torrent, with no thoughts other than 'F*** the man, I want free games'. No true desire/intent to change the laws. Notice I said most. Not all are like that, and sometimes depending on your country, you really don't have a choice. The game can't be purchased in your country, the game is no longer published, ect.
All this being said, I can see how the game industry isn't exactly helping their case. DRM is invasive and the first thing I rip out. I stand up in front of my students and tell them this, and urge all of them that if they get in the industry (I teach game design/programming) to fight for the removal of DRM. Also the draconian return policies don't help either. I go to a store and buy a crap toaster, I can return it. Even if it does technically 'toast' the bread, I can still return it. Buy a crap game? S.O.L. buddy. The game industry does need to change. But quietly stealing a game from the torrents won't enable change.
Ok people this is getting academic ;D
Do any of you mind if I print this sometime and give it to my Social Philosophy teacher? perhaps he'll find some interest in it, and maybe he can point us to some flaws or shining points in our ageements.
Feel free to include anything I post. I'm a professor myself, and I'm all for bringing real-life issues into the classroom :)
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I am talking legally (at least for USA) and morally. Just because I know the story of Harry Potter doesn't mean that Harry Potter belongs to me. I have no right to write a book that takes place in Hogwarts and publish it for money.
I don't agree with morality presented in this particular example. As far as I have heard, some authors have tried to sue Dan Brown because the theories presented in Da Vinci Code were similar to ones they have previously published in their own book (they have lost, but still). Also, it is apparently illegal to use hobbits in a published work, because they have been invented by JRR Tolkien (while it is legal to use halflings or orcs, because these words have existed before Tolkien - even if the meaning in a new work of art is based on the Tolkien's version). I believe in both cases, if the new work of art affects the original copyright holders, it actually helps them (nobody would hear about that book if Da Vinci Code were not a bestseller, and if I have not read Tolkien's books, then playing a Tolkien-based game will make me more likely to read it eventually). Art is usually based on prior art, and law like this just blocks creation of new art, or reduces its quality. Also it forces authors of new art to hide their inspirations, rather than credit the original authors (like Thomas Biskup did when he called the small guys with good missile skills hurthlings). I believe it would be better if the new authors credited the original ones and the original authors saw it as good for them, instead of seeing them as a potential reason for a lawsuit.
Of course it is bad if someone claims that he has written Harry Potter and sells it and earns money instead of J. K. Rowling. But why then should a library be allowed to earn money from lending books written by someone else? Well, I believe that the world would make the most sense if there would be no DRM-like protection anywhere, and anybody print a novel and sell it (the price would be low then, just to cover the printing costs, so you could not actually earn on someone else's work), and a moral standard (or tax?) that makes people actually pay the authors who have created something they like.
As for that article...I quite reading after I saw the line 'It is illegal to let others read your books'. For me at that point the author lost all credibility. As citizens we do have the responsibility to keep the government in check, but this can be done without blatant anti-government/paranoia.
I don't understand what you mean here, the story does not tell about the present state, but is a vision of what the future may look like if the current trends become stronger.
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@Z:
I think we're talking two slightly different scenarios here. I'm say that I have no right to write a story that takes place in Hogwarts and follows the adventures of Harry's kids and publish that for money. Rowlings created that world, not me, it is her right to profit from it, not mine. Mind you my viewpoint on this is skewed somewhat because I do write stories/design game worlds ;D It sounds like you are talking about some of the more nit-pick aspects of the law, like the hobbit example. I agree that sometimes the law gets carried to far, but there are creative ways around it. D&D got in trouble for having Ents in the game, so they just changed the name to Treants. I would argue that such restrictions encourage creativity in the arts, because you can't just ride on other people's ideas. Also, sometimes the law works in the copier's favor, like in the Queen vs Vanilla Ice case. A single changed beat allowed him to get away from basically copying Queen's song.
I also completely disagree with your solution to the current broken system 8) My opinion is that most creators would get robbed silly in that system.
As for that article, if just the opening paragraph had been that ridiculously paranoid vision of the future and then he went on to rationally discuss problems and solutions, I could have accepted it. But when someone has to rely on nothing but paranoia to sustain their point, they lose credibility in my eyes. And I did speed-skim the rest of the article, and it was basically all paranoia that I could see.
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In your case, this is still your story, even if it takes place in Hogwart. You get a profit from what you have created. It's true that you get easier money because you did not have to create your own world and you get interest from all the fans of Harry Potter, but why JK Rowling should have something against that? She profits too, because your story is a good advertisement for the original one. Should the Greek goverment earn a percentage on all uses of the Greek mythology? If you have an idea for a story which takes part in Hogwart, but you don't develop in because you fear JK Rowling, then creativity is lost.
I don't see how using a name "treant" instead of "ent" promotes creativity. It only hides the fact that DND got the idea from Tolkien.
Inventing a system which makes everyone get what they should won't be easy, probably it is impossible. Hopefully discussions like this bring us closer to make everyone see that the situation is not black and white (publishers are holy knights and pirates are evil, or vice versa) and to try something new.
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Any attempt to say otherwise is because you don't want to call yourself a thief.
This accusation is nonsense. Even if I did suppose that it fit the definition of "theft", I would not be a thief, for I do not commit acts of software piracy. One can but wonder why you thought it wise to accuse me of the same.
Extra Credits did an excellent video on this topic: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2653-Piracy (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2653-Piracy) I encourage you to listen to it.
This video is riddled with appeals to pity and other such logical fallacies. The animation is charming, but it does not succeed in making a decent point.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html)
This little story is absurd. It does not provide any evidence or reasons for anything, and it is so poorly written that it does not have any entertainment value, so it is completely useless.
I believe in both cases, if the new work of art affects the original copyright holders, it actually helps them (nobody would hear about that book if Da Vinci Code were not a bestseller, and if I have not read Tolkien's books, then playing a Tolkien-based game will make me more likely to read it eventually).
It is not the less a wrong, even if it does help the original copyright holders (and you can't prove that it does). By your reasoning, I suppose it is not wrong of me to break into your house so long as I wash your dishes while I'm there.
Hopefully discussions like this bring us closer to make everyone see that the situation is not black and white (publishers are holy knights and pirates are evil, or vice versa) and to try something new.
Evil is fitting. If pirates insist upon violating the rights of others, what else shall we call it?
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@Z: If I am interpreting what you're saying correctly, the law permits this. It's called Creative Commons/Open Source. Wizards of the Coast did an experiment with this (somewhat) with D&D 3rd Edition. So it's not the law that prevents your scenario from happening, it's the creators/publishers that prevent it. Or are you trying to say that creators should be forced to share what they create via CC or Open Source?
@Fenrir: My apologies. It is extremely rare that someone will argue against software piracy being theft without having committed piracy, but I should have considered that. My stance still stands though, software piracy = theft. Theft is taking something that doesn't belong to you. Piracy is taking software that doesn't belong to you. Therefor, piracy is theft. Limiting theft to the taking of physical goods doesn't work anymore in this digital age. Data has very real value.
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Most software pirates quietly download from a torrent, with no thoughts other than 'F*** the man, I want free games'.
*downloading* software is never illegal. Only uploading / providing it without the appropriate license is.
this is true in US + EU. i see the RIAA is trying to make that illegal but they haven't succeeded so far http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_download#The_RIAA_against_illegal_downloading
Piracy is taking software that doesn't belong to you. Therefor, piracy is theft. Limiting theft to the taking of physical goods doesn't work anymore in this digital age. Data has very real value.
Again: piracy is providing, giving away software which you do not own. Taking software from someone is never illegal.
To add some thoughts of my own and not just diss you:
The problem with copyright as it is today is twofold:
* copyright de facto lasts forever (see: mickey mouse laws)
* DMCA indirectly limits our usage rights
Why 1) is a problem should be obvious.
Problem 2) is more subtle: It is perfectly legal to copy a DVD to give it to your mom (fair use). But since it is illegal to circumvent the copy protection of a DVD you are de facto deprived of that right.
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*downloading* software is never illegal. Only uploading / providing it without the appropriate license is.
Can you source that? A quick Google search didn't turn up anything supporting that statement. In any case, using software that you have not paid for is illegal. The only way you can argue against that in a court would be if you honestly thought you had legally obtained the software (but even that might be questionable with some things I just read). Same thing goes for stolen physical items. Buy a hot PS3 from a pawn shop legitimately, and you won't be in trouble (probably). Still might have to give it back to the owner though. Buy a hot PS3 from a scruffy guy off the street...and now you're in for a more interesting time with the law.
With the other points, I do agree with you that current copyright laws are screwed up. Wizards of the Coast have term 'Tapped' copyright for CCGs. That's right, you can't make a card game and have in the rules 'To use this card, you must tap it'. That's just not right. And don't get me started on software patents....
But your fair use example is wrong. Unless you can provide a source on that? Fair Use almost never allows the complete and un-transformed copying of something. I'm not a lawyer, but I am a teacher. We get training on what we can and can't do under Fair Use, and it isn't as open as many people think. That said I do agree that DRM violates our rights as consumers. We are allowed to make archival copies, as long as those copies are kept personal. DRM is made to stop this.
To make sure no one is misunderstanding my stance on this: Playing a game you did not pay for is a crime in the USA, unless the creators provided the game for free. Playing Dragon Age 2, or Crysis 2, or Bulletstorm, or <insert recent AAA release here> without paying is a crime. There is no argument here, it is illegal. You will be in trouble with the courts if caught. You download, install, and play a copy of these games on your computer without paying, you are breaking the law. This is fact. If you don't accept this...we'll have to agree to disagree.
Is it moral to do so? I think not, but now we are in the realm of opinion :) Are the current USA IP laws messed up? In my opinion, oh my yes. They are really messed up. But, I don't think stealing software is the best way to get the law changed ;)
Keep it coming everyone. I love debates like this ;D
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It is not the less a wrong, even if it does help the original copyright holders (and you can't prove that it does). By your reasoning, I suppose it is not wrong of me to break into your house so long as I wash your dishes while I'm there.
You don't provide reasons why you think it is "wrong". Moreover, AFAIK both publishing fan fiction and downloading music (as long as you find someone who wants to share it with you, no matter what the authors and publishers think about it) are legal in some (civilized) countries.
It is a well established fact that Da Vinci Code helped the original authors a lot (at least that's what I get from reading the Internet articles on this topic, I am not willing to do a accurate research on that).
Your example makes no sense IMO.
@languard: Creative Commons is just one particular set of licenses, and Open Source has nothing to do with the case (it's author's decision whether to distribute the source or not and I agree with that). But yes, I believe that there are cases when laws allow authors/publishers too much monopoly, and they should be changed to limit this monopoly somehow. No monopoly would be great for people like me (as a person who wants to perceive good art, wants to create art, wants other people to build on it, and believes that crediting the authors who really did the job by donations etc is the right thing and is willing to do that and hopes that other people will similarly credit me for my art), but I understand that probably it would not work well with other people, and thus some genius needs to invent a new system. Somehow such openness seems to already work for scientists whose research has no direct application in industry (who get government grants for their work even if their research has no direct practical use, is not of general interest, and probably will never be), even if they have to pay heavy fees to the scientific publishers, both as authors and as readers, and are not paid for doing reviews.
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You don't provide reasons why you think it is "wrong".
I had supposed that I explained this in a previous post, but it seems I am mistaken.
I think it is wrong, because, when you buy a software license, you are buying only such priviledges as the license stipulates, and you are agreeing to be bound by that license. If you distribute the software, you're violating your agreement.
Downloading pirated content is simply being an accomplice to the pirate's misdeed.
Moreover, AFAIK both publishing fan fiction and downloading music (as long as you find someone who wants to share it with you, no matter what the authors and publishers think about it) are legal in some (civilized) countries.
If we were discussing legality, one could simply look up the appropriate laws, and we would not be having this discussion. We are discussing what is morally right.
It is a well established fact that Da Vinci Code helped the original authors a lot (at least that's what I get from reading the Internet articles on this topic, I am not willing to do a accurate research on that).
"I am not willing to do a accurate research on that"
You admit that you're not even willing to confirm that it is truth, and yet you expect us to believe it? You would support your argument with things that you cannot prove are fact?
Of course, as I said, "it helps the victim," doesn't make it less wrong...
Your example makes no sense IMO.
...which is exactly why I gave an example of a fictional circumstance where someone's rights are violated, but he is helped all the same.
@landguard
I do not condone piracy AT ALL. I just don't think it fits the definition of theft, as I am not certain that one can really possess a sequence of symbols or an idea. If we suppose that a certain individual is in possession of an idea, then we must suppose that all others who concieve the same idea—even if it be of of their own accord without prior knowledge of the original thinker's conception and ownership of that idea—are thieves.
Piracy involves breaking an agreement, and that is where the injustice is committed.
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But your fair use example is wrong. Unless you can provide a source on that? Fair Use almost never allows the complete and un-transformed copying of something.
[...]
We are allowed to make archival copies, as long as those copies are kept personal. DRM is made to stop this.
that's what I meant! archival copies! my example with 'give copy to mom' was wierd. DRM makes both impossible.
similar to how I can lend any book to my mother (not making a copy). yet, you can't do that with books bought on the kindle. technically it's possible and some books allow it, but most indirectly limit your rights through DRM.
You download, install, and play a copy of these games on your computer without paying, you are breaking the law. This is fact. If you don't accept this...we'll have to agree to disagree.
really, it's not. You can download whatever you want and play it. Not illegal. Uploading & providing software for which you do not have distribution rights: that is illeglal.
it's about distribution of software. what you distribute. not what you get.
the media tell you often that 'downloading' is illegal. but that doesn't make it true. do you have a source :)
Is it moral to do so? I think not, but now we are in the realm of opinion :)
I don't think it's moral. We agree for once! :)
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Downloading pirated content is simply being an accomplice to the pirate's misdeed.
that sounds about right. but no one has ever been charged for downloading pirated content so it's hard to say what the courts would do in such a case.
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That said I do agree that DRM violates our rights as consumers.
I had supposed that software containing DRM was labeled as such. Is that true? Unless you are unaware that a copy of software contains DRM, I disgree with your statement. If you buy a copy of software that they have told you contains DRM, your rights are not being violated, for you willingly purchased DRM.
I do not mean to imply that DRM is a good thing for anyone, for I do not know, but, if the seller has been honest about what the software contains, the choice belongs to the consumer.
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You don't provide reasons why you think it is "wrong".
I had supposed that I explained this in a previous post, but it seems I am mistaken.
I think it is wrong, because, when you buy a software license, you are buying only such priviledges as the license stipulates, and you are agreeing to be bound by that license. If you distribute the software, you're violating your agreement.
You are attacking a strawman here. I have asked why publishing fan fiction and other derived art is (morally) wrong, and you respond why breaking a software license is wrong.
It is a well established fact that Da Vinci Code helped the original authors a lot (at least that's what I get from reading the Internet articles on this topic, I am not willing to do a accurate research on that).
"I am not willing to do a accurate research on that"
You admit that you're not even willing to confirm that it is truth, and yet you expect us to believe it? You would support your argument with things that you cannot prove are fact?
I did confirm that is it truth. (By googling it and finding information about that case on Wikipedia and other websites. It is possible that Wikipedia and other websites are spreading lies, but I prefer to believe them rather than your conspiracy theories. ) You know the title of the book in question, so you can do the same.
Your example makes no sense IMO.
...which is exactly why I gave an example of a fictional circumstance where someone's rights are violated, but he is helped all the same.
Breaking into houses and cleaning dishes is wrong for many reasons which have no application in the case we are discussing (for example, it violates privacy). Besides, in good hotels, housekeepers are implicitly allowed to enter the guest rooms to clean them (unless guests state that they don't want it), and nobody seems to have any problems with that.
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You are attacking a strawman here. I have asked why publishing fan fiction and other derived art is (morally) wrong, and you respond why breaking a software license is wrong.
Ah, apologies. It seems I have made a mistake.
Books do include copyright information printed upon them, but I am not sure if that is enough to say that one is agreeing to anything by reading it, so I could hardly write with any certainty about what is right in this case.
I did confirm that is it truth.
Just one post ago you said that you weren't going to accurate research, and now you're telling me that you have "confirmed that it is truth". How can you confirm truth without doing accurate research?
(By googling it and finding information about that case on Wikipedia and other websites. It is possible that Wikipedia and other websites are spreading lies...
They don't have to be lying. They can just be wrong.
but I prefer to believe them rather than your conspiracy theories. )
Where did I say anything about a conspiracy?
You know the title of the book in question, so you can do the same.
You can provide links to these credible studies that prove that The Da Vinci Code helped the original authors "alot", but you aren't, because you don't have them. I'm not going to look for them, because, like I said, your assertion isn't just unsubstantiated, it's irrelevant. It doesn't matter if they were helped or not.
Breaking into houses and cleaning dishes is wrong for many reasons which have no application in the case we are discussing (for example, it violates privacy).
EXACTLY. Rights were violated, and it didn't matter one bit that you were helped in the process, did it? Clearly, "it helped the victim," is insufficient reason to suppose that an action is not unjust. You have tried to justify plagiarism by saying that the original authors were assisted. If their rights were violated (not saying that they were), the dubious assertion that they were assisted is irrelevant, so it is hardly worth mentioning.
Besides, in good hotels, housekeepers are implicitly allowed to enter the guest rooms to clean them (unless guests state that they don't want it), and nobody seems to have any problems with that.
How can you compare trespassing in one's home and the cleaning lady at a hotel? The people that rent hotel rooms don't actually own the room, and, as you said, they can request that the cleaning lady not enter, so I don't understand what you have sought to prove here.
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Just one post ago you said that you weren't going to accurate research, and now you're telling me that you have "confirmed that it is truth". How can you confirm truth without doing accurate research?
I meant that I did enough research on this topic to convince myself and use it as an argument in our discussion. For example, see this article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4886234.stm) (precisely, the sentence quoted in the last paragraph). The judge agrees with my statement. I assume that he has good arguments for his claim (he probably has looked at the sales history and clearly sees that the rise in sales could not be attributed to anything else) and I believe him. By "accurate research" I would mean that I look at the sales history myself.
Note that I don't think it is very relevant for discussion, I just feel offended by your repeated claims that I cannot prove my statements. If you say that I cannot prove them beyond all doubt, you are right, but this can be done only for clearly defined mathematical statements (and even then you can change the axioms or logic). In our case, I think quoting the judge is good enough.
Where did I say anything about a conspiracy?
By a "conspiracy theory" I meant "a claim that a commonly established fact is false". Sorry if this is a bit of an abuse.
EXACTLY. Rights were violated, and it didn't matter one bit that you were helped in the process, did it? Clearly, "it helped the victim," is insufficient reason to suppose that an action is not unjust. You have tried to justify plagiarism by saying that the original authors were assisted. If their rights were violated (not saying that they were), the dubious assertion that they were assisted is irrelevant, so it is hardly worth mentioning.
Morality is of course a very difficult subject. But still, I think the good rule for separation of acts into moral and immoral is whether it benefits or harms the community, and the moral laws try to approximate this. The cases where people don't agree on morality are mostly situations where it is hard to determine whether something brings more good or harm. Let's use your example: allowing people to break into houses and clean dishes would harm them (because the right to privacy is destroyed) and give no benefits (since nobody would actually do clean the dishes, except for dark reasons like wanting to invade privacy). But if we change the circumstances a bit so that there is a benefit (like in my hotel example), it becomes moral. Can you give me a good example of a case where morality and benefit to community disagree?
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I meant that I did enough research on this topic to convince myself and use it as an argument in our discussion.
You have satisfied yourself with a certain level of accuracy. That is fine. You are certainly not required to really care. I, however, do care, or I would not have begun this whole conversation. If all your supposition is good enough for you, than so be it, but do not try to convince us with it.
For example, see this article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4886234.stm) (precisely, the sentence quoted in the last paragraph). The judge agrees with my statement. I assume that he has good arguments for his claim (he probably has looked at the sales history and clearly sees that the rise in sales could not be attributed to anything else) and I believe him. By "accurate research" I would mean that I look at the sales history myself.
"I assume..."
"...probably..."
These are not words of certainty.
Like I said, good enough for you is just fine, but you said that you had confirmed the truth. The words of one judge are not sufficient to confirm the truth.
Note that I don't think it is very relevant for discussion
I'm sorry, but surely you can understand why this perplexes me. If you did not think this relevant, why did you mention that they had been aided by the Da Vinci Code? I'm merely asking you to confirm assertions you made to make your point.
I just feel offended by your repeated claims that I cannot prove my statements.
Why have you taken offense? I do not ask you these things out of malice; I merely wish to see you provide sufficient proof that your assertions are truth, and you have yet to do so.
If you say that I cannot prove them beyond all doubt, you are right, but this can be done only for clearly defined mathematical statements (and even then you can change the axioms or logic). In our case, I think quoting the judge is good enough.
Then you should have said that, instead of "I have confirmed the truth."
By a "conspiracy theory" I meant "a claim that a commonly established fact is false". Sorry if this is a bit of an abuse.
I had but your word that it is "commonly established", and what does "commonly established" mean? If you mean to say that many people think it true, such is a logical fallacy, for popularity is not an indication of truth.
Let's use your example: allowing people to break into houses and clean dishes would harm them (because the right to privacy is destroyed) and give no benefits (since nobody would actually do clean the dishes, except for dark reasons like wanting to invade privacy). But if we change the circumstances a bit so that there is a benefit (like in my hotel example), it becomes moral.
You're not using my example. I never said that people should be allowed to do so. It was merely an example of a circumstance where someone's rights were violated (privacy), but they recieved a benefit (clean dishes).
Morality is of course a very difficult subject. But still, I think the good rule for separation of acts into moral and immoral is whether it benefits or harms the community, and the moral laws try to approximate this. The cases where people don't agree on morality are mostly situations where it is hard to determine whether something brings more good or harm.
[...]
Can you give me a good example of a case where morality and benefit to community disagree?
This argument begs the question. You define morality as "benefit to community", then you try to prove it by asking me to find an example of where morality and benefit to community disagree, but the question already assumes the conclusion that it is trying to prove.
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Like I said, good enough for you is just fine, but you said that you had confirmed the truth. The words of one judge are not sufficient to confirm the truth.
But do you believe that they had been aided by the Da Vinci Code or not? (yes/no/don't care/...)
I just feel offended by your repeated claims that I cannot prove my statements.
Why have you taken offense? I do not ask you these things out of malice; I merely wish to see you provide sufficient proof that your assertions are truth, and you have yet to do so.
I would not be offended if you asked me for my arguments. I am offended because you say that I have no arguments.
You're not using my example. I never said that people should be allowed to do so. It was merely an example of a circumstance where someone's rights were violated (privacy), but they recieved a benefit (clean dishes).
I have already explained why they have been harmed, not received a benefit.
Can you give me a good example of a case where morality and benefit to community disagree?
This argument begs the question. You define morality as "benefit to community", then you try to prove it by asking me to find an example of where morality and benefit to community disagree, but the question already assumes the conclusion that it is trying to prove.
No, I did not define morality.
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Modern AAA titles have budgets in the millions.
http://www.planetxbox360.com/article_9268/Game_Development_Budget_Somewhere_Around_25_Million
Approximately $18-25 millions to be precise. Say you expect to sell a million copies. To break even you have to sell those at about $18 each. To break even. On the development budget. Problem is, very few AAA games even sell that well. A safer bet would be $36 estimating half a million copies.
But that's still very rare. In the end, publishers have to raise the cost of games because those games that sell millions of copies have to pay for not only the $18000000-25000000 budget of that game, but the other games that didn't break even. And they still have to make a noticeable profit from that. Remember here I haven't even factored in advertising, production costs, parts of that money took by various other sources, etc. Why do you think Console games cost more than the same game for PC? Simple: a percentage of the profits for Console games go to the producer of the Console.
AAA games are an expensive market to enter, and to work in. Indie games cost a lot less because they are developed by small teams with little initial investment, usually with cheaper middleware, less expensive-to-produce assets etc.
...As for people who think they are somehow morally just, even rightous in pirating software: Welcome to the world of self-delusion. Even if it's not stealing in the letter of the term, it's clearly stealing in the terms intent. It's like using a person's designs for an invention without their permission, since that's effectively all a computer program is: A designs, or set of instructions, for the computer to use to create the various changes required to bring about the invention, i.e run the program. Why do people fool themselves into thinking they aren't in the "moral wrong" by any reasonable sense of morality?.
They are not likely to be caught and punished significantly enough and even if you were the "moral defence" wouldn't be of use to you. The only two reasons to do so are to comfort themselves about the guilt, or to stroke their own ego. I vote the latter since they aren't likely to be caught, so the guilt can't be from that fear, and can't visibly see any sadness caused the action, so no guilt from empathy, so there are no sources of guilt.
That or they are psychopathic so can't feel guilt, but then they'd have no reason to try and defend themselves or justify their actions except as a way of escaping the consequences. Since we've established the "moral defence" is useless...yeah, not Psychopaths.
My guess is they pirate because they are, like all mentally-sound humans, selfish beings driven by selfish impulses who wants as much as possible for as little as possible. They've managed to latch onto a nice one with feeling moral over "piracy", a double-whammy of getting something for nothing and stroking your ego at the same time. Heck, they're still defending themselves now on web debates like this one for a simple reason: to keep stroking.
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But do you believe that they had been aided by the Da Vinci Code or not? (yes/no/don't care/...)
I don't know. I don't care either, because it doesn't matter.
I would not be offended if you asked me for my arguments. I am offended because you say that I have no arguments.
Arguments you have indeed! Proof is what you lacked (beyond some one-liner from a nameless judge). I'm saying you have no proof, as you were very reluctant to yield such. Of course, we don't really need to discuss it further, because, as I said, it doesn't really matter.
I have already explained why they have been harmed, not received a benefit.
I've already explained why you're wrong.
No, I did not define morality.
Please explain the following quote then.
I think the good rule for separation of acts into moral and immoral is whether it benefits or harms the community...
If this "rule" isn't what makes an act moral or immoral, why use it?
Mr. Morley, I agree with you that software piracy is wrong, but your post isn't helping. It's certainly permissable to feel that way, and I wouldn't object to you expressing the way you feel about it, but what you wrote can only make people upset. It's also completely unreasonable to think that software pirates are psychopaths, as you have no evidence. I'm having a difficult enough time trying to not insult people as it is.
I'm not even sure that Z advocates software piracy. We're talking about books right now.
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Mr. Morley, I agree with you that software piracy is wrong, but your post isn't helping. It's certainly permissable to feel that way, and I wouldn't object to you expressing the way you feel about it, but what you wrote can only make people upset. It's also completely unreasonable to think that software pirates are psychopaths, as you have no evidence. I'm having a difficult enough time trying to not insult people as it is.
The first part of that post is an explanation of the costs that go down into making big games, the second sheer-bafflement at the "piracy is justice" attitude I've seen before...maybe I was a bit to confrontational but I don't tend to have many if any emotions when I write in debates and that seems to come across as coldly angry. I have that problem sometimes. Present logical point of view, people get horrified like I'm the next Hitler for not bringing warm and fuzzy emotions and kindness into a situation that involves neither :S
I'll admit I (disclaimer: not a confession) may have pirated before, I just don't see the need to try and justify it by making it seem right. I don't mean to insult outright, just be blunt as required to cut through all the bullshit.
I was using Psychopath in the purest medical sense, as-in it's key characteristic of a lack of empathy (which leads to a lack of guilt) and simply presenting and debunking one of the alternative explanations. Then again the gradious sense of self would explain the ego-stroking... In fact, I believe I outright said such people most likely don't have ASPD and for a good reason, such people only care enough to defend themselves when they get caught. (Though obviously some pirates have ASPD, that's just down to statistics).
My conclusion was they're just normal people doing what normal people do, either trying to remove guilt (though the source of that guilt I cannot fathom) and/or ego-stroke and all without giving something up. Seems like a reasonable conclusion to me. After all, charity is also an ego-stroke and/or attempt to remove guilt, but requires giving something up in payment.
From an individual point of view, piracy is more practical than charity. I don't see why people pretend they're doing charity out of anything more than ego-stroking and removing guilt either :S That or 1p coins are bloody annoying and it's easier to drop them in the charity box when you buy a 99p drink xD
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the media tell you often that 'downloading' is illegal. but that doesn't make it true. do you have a source :)
http://www.leagle.com/xmlResult.aspx?xmldoc=in%20fco%2020100910084.xml&docbase=cslwar3-2007-curr (http://www.leagle.com/xmlResult.aspx?xmldoc=in%20fco%2020100910084.xml&docbase=cslwar3-2007-curr) and http://www.lw.com/upload/pubContent/_pdf/pub4047_1.pdf (http://www.lw.com/upload/pubContent/_pdf/pub4047_1.pdf)
It is not directly the same, but the principle is. From the PDF I'll pull a relevant statement out:
“Because Vernor was not an owner, his customers are also not owners of Release 14 copies. Therefore, when they install Release 14 on their computers, the copies of the software that they make during installation infringe Autodesk’s exclusive reproduction right because they too are not entitled to the benefit of the essential step doctrine.”9
The key here is that the vast majority of software is licensed, not sold. And you aren't allowed to transfer the license. And if you don't have a valid license, you cannot use the product. If at this point you still don't believe that it is illegal to use downloaded commercial software, I'm done. I'm not a judge, and if this hasn't convinced you most likely the only thing that will is a court rendering judgement on you or someone you know, and I most sincerely hope that does not happen.
Also, http://www.copyright.gov (http://www.copyright.gov) is a good place to visit as well. For USA laws at least. Also answers the fan fiction question I saw someplace.
@Fenrir:
Regarding ideas, the law doesn't protect the idea, nor should it. If I want to create a game about a kid who goes off to collect monsters and have them battle in a tournament, I can. Nintendo can do nothing to me. But...I can't go and make a game in the Pokemon world, and I believe this is just. It takes a lot of time, emotional, and creative investment to create something truly good. I see nothing wrong with the creator wishing to protect their work, and I'm glad that the USA has laws to protect creators.
That said...the law does need work as it is to easy to abuse. I'm mainly thinking of 'abandoned' works. The copyright for, say, The Bard's Tale, is still active. EA holds the rights. But the franchise is effectively abandoned. They only thing they did recently is sell the use of the name. The lore, the world, everything is sitting collecting dust. And that's a shame. There are many, many other IP's like this in all forms of media, IP's that could be resurrected and given new creative life and interpretations, but can't because of copyright laws.
But is it moral of me to ignore the law, and ignore the wishes of creators who do not want other people to play in their world? I think not. How long should a creator be allowed to protect their work? Now that is a hard question, and one that I don't have a ready answer to.
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I'm going to pirate some cookies and take a megabyte out of them.
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I don't know. I don't care either, because it doesn't matter.
In one of your previous posts you said that you care.
Arguments you have indeed! Proof is what you lacked (beyond some one-liner from a nameless judge).
The judge is not nameless.
If this "rule" isn't what makes an act moral or immoral, why use it?
Sorry, I don't understand.
Mr. Morley: OK, you said that the cost of creating an AAA game is $18 million, and a cost of creating an indie game is much less. From my experiences I know that I prefer playing indie games. (It seems that much of the cost of AAA game goes on advertisement (i.e., making a bad game seem good), movies (which I don't really care about), graphics (which some people like, but I am just bored of seeing the same animation again and again), and to compensate for other games which did not sell so well, as mentioned by you.) Thus I don't play AAA games at all. They spend $18 millions to create a game and they earn no money on me. I am very, very evil.
An advocate of piracy could now say that if I downloaded the game, played it, then maybe I would like it and change my opinion on AAA games and buy the sequel, recommend it to my friends, just send my thanks to the authors, or whatever. An anti-pirate could say that then anybody would download the game and the company would lose $18 million. Both are right, I suppose.
I think this all means that if indie games are created much cheaper than AAA games, and yet I prefer to play indie games, then the production process of AAA games is extremely ineffective. It should be stopped.
But coming to think about it, it seems that there actually is a hope for them. I am thinking about crowdfunding (like on 8bitfunding (http://www.8bitfunding.com/)). I just have to convince people that if I get $30 million, I will release a game which will be worth this price, and everyone will then be able to play it. If I do, I get $30 million from the people whom I convinced, and everyone gets a game. No problems with piracy. And how do I convince the people? Well, by pointing out that I have created something great in the past. And only people who actually did create something great can do that. Those who just plagiarize or sell other people's work cannot. No problem with plagiarizing. No problems with DRM.
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In one of your previous posts you said that you care.
I meant that I care about the entire topic of ethics and morality. In my previous post I stated that I don't care whether the original authors were assisted in this case.
The judge is not nameless.
True indeed! I have made a mistake. He has a name, but he is still just a judge that you're assuming looked at the sales figures that you're assuming exist.
Sorry, I don't understand.
You're saying that moral deeds and benefit to the community coincide. If you don't know what is moral, how can you tell when it coincides with benefit to community? If you do know what is moral, why do you need to judge deeds by their benefit to society?
Mr. Morley: OK, you said that the cost of creating an AAA game is $18 million, and a cost of creating an indie game is much less. From my experiences I know that I prefer playing indie games. (It seems that much of the cost of AAA game goes on advertisement (i.e., making a bad game seem good), movies (which I don't really care about), graphics (which some people like, but I am just bored of seeing the same animation again and again), and to compensate for other games which did not sell so well, as mentioned by you.) Thus I don't play AAA games at all. They spend $18 millions to create a game and they earn no money on me. I am very, very evil.
I agree entirely, Z.
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Wait, you are saying an advocate would say "I don't like expensive AAA games, so I'll download them illegally to play for free instead"? That's...okay...what? Does the contradiction not leap out to anybody else?
The "if I like it I'll buy it" argument is a better one morally, except bet your bones that market only makes up like 0.1% of pirates and falls apart somewhat with games with demos available and reviews that confirm the game doesn't drop in quality after the demo, or especially when they play a game through to the end and then not buy it (I mean, you finished the damn game! What, were you hoping it'd just get good 10 hours in (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FinalFantasyXIII)?)...and still isn't legal. But we have also established legal and moral are not the same thing.
As for the AAA industry as a whole. Well, people are still buying enough AAA games to keep that ball rolling along. Otherwise they'd all fail and well, end of that entire industries economy fails I guess?
Now, I'm often the first to just assume people are stupid, and that's what I'm going to assume to explain why games like Call of Duty: Black Ops sell in such numbers despite a near identical game that most of them already own called Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 being available...
Still, indie games tend to have more niche appeal, and more unique gameplay and graphics. I may call that a good thing but since, as established, people are stupid it seems to have it's downsides. Also most indie games people play are good because only the good ones or interesting ones tend to make it onto services like Steam or attract enough attention to be noticed.
If you tried to turn indie games into a full-fledge industry instead of a cottage-industry (which would happen in a situation without the AAA industry) you'd have the same situation you do with AAA just with lower prices. Then competition, mistakes, increasing team sizes to try and do more and raise the scales, general market forces all of that stuff would raise the costs and bring us back to square one...
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Wait, you are saying an advocate would say "I don't like expensive AAA games, so I'll download them illegally to play for free instead"? That's...okay...what? Does the contradiction not leap out to anybody else?
I don't see where Z said that.
The "if I like it I'll buy it" argument is a better one morally, except bet your bones that market only makes up like 0.1% of pirates
You just made up that statistic.
As for the AAA industry as a whole. Well, people are still buying enough AAA games to keep that ball rolling along. Otherwise they'd all fail and well, end of that entire industries economy fails I guess?
What was the point of this remark? Yes. The industry must be doing well enough if it isn't gone. I think we all realized that. This doesn't respond in any way to Z's point that your reasoning means that anyone who doesn't buy games at all is evil, whether they pirate them or not.
Now, I'm often the first to just assume people are stupid, and that's what I'm going to assume to explain why games like Call of Duty: Black Ops sell in such numbers despite a near identical game that most of them already own called Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 being available...
Maybe people like Black Ops better. You don't know.
Still, indie games tend to have more niche appeal, and more unique gameplay and graphics.
Do you see the irony in the fact that we're in a forum dedicated to mimicking the gameplay and presentation of Rogue? "More unique" indeed. "Unique" doesn't necessarily mean that a game is more fun anyway.
I may call that a good thing but since, as established, people are stupid it seems to have it's downsides. Also most indie games people play are good because only the good ones or interesting ones tend to make it onto services like Steam or attract enough attention to be noticed.
What is "good" or "interesting" is merely your opinion. You can't call someone stupid for having a different opinion, and mainstream games get more advertising anyway, so people might like independently-developed games if they only knew about them.
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Wait, you are saying an advocate would say "I don't like expensive AAA games, so I'll download them illegally to play for free instead"? That's...okay...what? Does the contradiction not leap out to anybody else?
I don't see where Z said that.
"An advocate of piracy could now say that if I downloaded the game, played it, then maybe I would like it and change my opinion on AAA games and buy the sequel, recommend it to my friends, just send my thanks to the authors, or whatever."
Nowhere did was it even mention buying the game downloaded if it was enjoyed. Maybe that's an oversight on Z's part?
The "if I like it I'll buy it" argument is a better one morally, except bet your bones that market only makes up like 0.1% of pirates
You just made up that statistic.
Yes. Yes I did. I figured that was obvious and it was just to get across the point that those people are most likely not in the majority.
As for the AAA industry as a whole. Well, people are still buying enough AAA games to keep that ball rolling along. Otherwise they'd all fail and well, end of that entire industries economy fails I guess?
What was the point of this remark? Yes. The industry must be doing well enough if it isn't gone. I think we all realized that. This doesn't respond in any way to Z's point that your reasoning means that anyone who doesn't buy games at all is evil, whether they pirate them or not.
I never made that point. I called them selfish, and trying to get something for nothing, but isn't everbody? I call myself selfish and trying to get something for nothing and damnit I'm dragging you all down with me! :) Heck, if you look I even "offended" people who give to charity.
Unless you are of the opinion anything "morally wrong" is evil? Is it? I always thought evil required something extra...
Unfortunately I don't understand talks of morality very well so I just go by what I think seems to be other people's concept of it. Since stealing seems to fall under morally wrong, and I addressed that in the the whole "stealing a design by using it without permission" part of an earlier post, I just assumed most people have that concept of morality and find it "wrong" even if willing to do it. The people who don't tend to be zealots, and any honest zealot in my world view is obsessed about...well, to reuse the phrase "stroking their ego" regardless of what they claim. That or they are so afraid of the hypothetical worst-case alternative they have withdrawn completely into the protective shell of their zealously regardless of the world around them.
Now, I'm often the first to just assume people are stupid, and that's what I'm going to assume to explain why games like Call of Duty: Black Ops sell in such numbers despite a near identical game that most of them already own called Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 being available...
Maybe people like Black Ops better. You don't know.
I address my "people are stupid" concept a bit further down.
Still, indie games tend to have more niche appeal, and more unique gameplay and graphics.
Do you see the irony in the fact that we're in a forum dedicated to mimicking the gameplay and presentation of Rogue? "More unique" indeed. "Unique" doesn't necessarily mean that a game is more fun anyway.
Indeed I do ^^ But games here still have that niche appeal so hey, that's 1/3? Also the big roguelikes all have something quite unique about them and small ones are generally developed by hobbyists. And we aren't expected to pay money for most of these, they'd just hobbyist projects. It's a lot more forgiveable when you're not trying to sell the result.
I may call that a good thing but since, as established, people are stupid it seems to have it's downsides. Also most indie games people play are good because only the good ones or interesting ones tend to make it onto services like Steam or attract enough attention to be noticed.
What is "good" or "interesting" is merely your opinion. You can't call someone stupid for having a different opinion, and mainstream games get more advertising anyway, so people might like independently-developed games if they only knew about them.
True, and yes I can because I am god *que rock music*. But yeah, my god complex aside I was using the word stupid in the "slow to learn and disliking of change" sense. Since unique gameplay often means some major changes, it's a risk publishers don't like and yes, could cost sales even if it works. Maybe I'm wrong, people aren't slow to learn and disliking of change, but that's a moot point since the publishers seem to assume this anyway ergo the Viewers Are Morons (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ViewersAreMorons) trope.
I do smack down indie games as well. A good percentage of them aren't good at all, but we don't tend to see them because...well, they don't get much attention. It's all about the advertising, like you said.
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I see walls of text that could be better translated into roguelikes's LOC ;)
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this guy:
http://blogs.forbes.com/insertcoin/2011/03/04/minecrafts-notch-piracy-is-not-theft/?partner=contextstory
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I'll have to go and re-listen to that talk. I remember Notch saying that he didn't consider it a lost sale, but I don't remember the 'not theft' line.
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He just states the same pro-piracy things that have already been presented in thread. The fact that a famous developer says that piracy isn't wrong doesn't make it true, so the link you have provided doesn't really support your point or contribute anything meaningful to the discussion.
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He just states the same pro-piracy things that have already been presented in thread. The fact that a famous developer says that piracy isn't wrong doesn't make it true, so the link you have provided doesn't really support your point or contribute anything meaningful to the discussion.
See that's what bugs me about that article. I was at the GDC and in that session specifically, and that's not the message I got from Notch. I didn't get the feeling that he was saying the piracy is OK, but rather the concept of 'lost sale' is wrong. He points out (rightly, I think) that a pirate isn't a lost sale because you never had that sale to begin with. Instead of punishing your honest customers, figure out a way to convert the pirates into a sale. As I said, I need to go to the vault and re-listen to his part. Could be a case of remembering what I want to remember.
Oh and just because it isn't a lost sale doesn't mean that it isn't theft as far as I'm concerned. If I go into a store with the intent of stealing something, I'm not a lost sale. I never intended to buy the item. I'm still a thief though, I took something that doesn't belong to me.
Edit: Just listened to Notch's portion of the session. He does state piracy is not theft, but he does say that it is copyright infringement. So Notch is not saying piracy is OK to do, just that the AAA industries approach to it is wrong. Of course I still disagree with him, I still hold that piracy is theft in the moral sense at least. You are taking something that doesn't belong to you.
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Notch owns 23 million euros. He can say anything he wants.
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I didn't get the feeling that he was saying the piracy is OK, but rather the concept of 'lost sale' is wrong. He points out (rightly, I think) that a pirate isn't a lost sale because you never had that sale to begin with. Instead of punishing your honest customers, figure out a way to convert the pirates into a sale.
That's how I understood it too.
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this post about an unhappy (book) author http://www.davidflanagan.com/2011/04/javascript-the-1.html
triggered this interesting response: http://diveintomark.org/archives/2011/04/29/the-book-is-dead
Imo the following - as argued in the latter article - is very true:
If I pirate a game or a movie, then I *get the better product* compared to buying the DVD. For the content industry to survive the digital age, they must catch up and make buying content at least as easy, and the product I buy as good as the pirated version.
For example: I started buying games after I discovered Steam. I almost exclusively pirated for a decade but with Steam it's again easier & more convenient to buy the game then to look for it on a torrent site!!
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So you pirated because was more convenient? If stealing would have been more convenient, would you have done that too? If not, convenience isn't a good reason.
15 years is a long time. What a blessing to have been able to do something you love for that long, and get paid for it.
So this is trying to justify piracy by implying that getting paid for something for 15 years is long enough? That isn't sufficient reasoning. Apply that elsewhere, and you'll see why. "Having a good car for 15 years is pretty sweet. I'll just take that from you now." "It's pretty cool that you got to live for 15 years; I'll go ahead and murder you now."
No, before you ask, I'm not equating software piracy and murder. I'm demostrating that "you benefited from it for 15 years" isn't a good enough reason to obstruct those benefits or violate agreements.
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So you pirated because was more convenient? If stealing would have been more convenient, would you have done that too? If not, convenience isn't a good reason.
stealing isn't socially accepted and can have harsh repercussions. I think convinience is a good explanation of why people do things.
15 years is a long time. What a blessing to have been able to do something you love for that long, and get paid for it.
So this is trying to justify piracy by implying that getting paid for something for 15 years is long enough? That isn't sufficient reasoning. Apply that elsewhere, and you'll see why. "Having a good car for 15 years is pretty sweet. I'll just take that from you now." "It's pretty cool that you got to live for 15 years; I'll go ahead and murder you now."
No, before you ask, I'm not equating software piracy and murder. I'm demostrating that "you benefited from it for 15 years" isn't a good enough reason to obstruct those benefits or violate agreements.
mh, I don't think he tried to justify pirating. I understand his post as 'it's not a big deal and google is already working against it'
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stealing isn't socially accepted and can have harsh repercussions. I think convinience is a good explanation of why people do things.
We already know why you did what you did, as you have already confessed to pirating for convenience, but I am questioning whether that is a good enough reason for you to do it. Unless I misunderstand, it seemed to me that you were trying to justify your piracy by saying that it was more convenient to be a pirate. If you were not trying to justify what you did, then you are merely stating that being a pirate has benefits. Of course being a pirate has benefits! If it didn't, it wouldn't be a problem, because no one would do it. That doesn't mean that it is in any way excusable.
mh, I don't think he tried to justify pirating. I understand his post as 'it's not a big deal and google is already working against it'
He is still telling the original author to not complain, because the author got fifteen years out of it. Shall we not be angered by injustice, simply because we have already reaped benefit? My above point yet stands.
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i still don't think its about finding someone to blame, who needs to excuse himself.
i want people to not pirate and we should find incentives, new ways to make buying content attractive. and I think both articles point to a problem and possible solutions in how we currently sell content.
ps.: the problem is that bought content is often intentionally made unattractive. if that wasn't clear. it's not so much about pirating being more attractive, it's about bought content being degraded, less usable.
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Often the "openness" of something is itself a desirable feature. F'rexample, I have a machine which is used to drive a CNC mill. Neither Windows nor Linux are real-time operating systems, and a real-time response is needed for reliable production. Windows Users have woes about windows update interrupting their CNC drivers, flushing I/O caches, and making their machines destroy builds. This kind of problem is rarer with Linux, but can still happen if a kernel process doesn't yield control fast enough.
But because Linux is an open system, someone was able to hack up a real-time kernel for it by working directly with the kernel source code. And therefore my CNC-control box wins by running (a version of) Linux.
The commercial nature of windows means they can't release source code or allow people to modify it for fear of losing control of the product. And that makes the product less valuable, because it can't be customized for specialized jobs.
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Be that as it may, I don't think it entirely irresponsible to presume that the majority of Windows users do not need to customize their operating system for a special purpose, so the capacity for Linux to be specialized is of no value to them.
Even if you pirated Windows, you would not get the source code, so I'm not really sure what this has to do with software piracy.
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take for example DVDs - i wouldn't use them even if they were free. i think the attached picture sums it up pretty nicely ;)
this is pretty polemic but the point is that content producers should focus on making the form of the content, the content itself and the way they deliver / provide the content more attractive as opposed to worrying about privacy.
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this is pretty polemic but the point is that content producers should focus on making the form of the content, the content itself and the way they deliver / provide the content more attractive as opposed to worrying about privacy.
Making a product better is never a bad idea, but they should try to make it more attractive so people will stop pirating it? You are telling me that most pirates are just people that do not want to be inconvienced by what is in the product for sale, and that may or may not be true. Before you can say which they should focus on doing, we would need to find some way of judging the efficacy of what they are doing to prevent piracy and compare it to how many converts they would get if they used that money and effort made the product better (if they even COULD use that money and effort to make that product better); which is nearly impossible.
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I don't like people pirating stuff either. But my solution has nothing to do with new incentives to buy stuff. My solution has to do with providing stuff free. Because I want to. If I release software, audio recordings, movies, etc, all open source (or open content) and free, then nobody can pirate it. Problem solved. If the audience likes it so much they want to give me tips, so much the better.
So-called "Intellectual property" is a good idea, but the implementation of it has gotten so onerous and restrictive that we need less of it, not more. Maybe the more marginal providers who produce stuff people don't want to pay them for will have to get jobs in manufacturing or personally providing services like normal people, but I think that's okay. And besides, creative people *WANT* to provide music, movies, software, etc, because it's all created by doing things we like to do.
There is an astonishing amount of excellent content provided free, by artists and artisans in the course of creative pursuits (There's also an astonishing amount of ... other ... content, so finding the good stuff takes some work. But I digress.). If you can live without the multi-million dollar ad campaigns that tell you to BUY COMMERCIAL STUFF, there is a whole new universe of really excellent stuff out there. The artists who produce it are happy to be treated as a busker playing for the crowd. If you like the tune, it's nice to put a dollar or two in the hat. But if you don't wanna, or you can't afford it, then don't.
Bear
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As I have said in my last post, I believe that we should promote crowd funding as an alternative to the current Intellectual Property system. The artists start by doing their job for fun and releasing it for free, as Bear said. But there is a limit there: some masterpieces such as AAA games and movies require so much work that it is not reasonable that anybody will do this for free. Thus, they register a project saying that they will create something if they get a given amount of money, and if they get the money, they release it to the public for free. For example, JK Rowling could write her first book (or just the first chapter) and release it on the Internet, and gain her fortune by requesting money for her following books. I think this model could work for everything that IP is currently for (art and inventions, science already works in a way which is a bit similar to this) and also solve the many current problems with pirates, poor/rich users, plagiarizers, lawyers, publishers, and authors in a natural way.
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I'm not sure crowd funding will fix this for *everyone* but it's a good model! I agree! I think crowd financing is, for example, the only way to get decent media outlets but that's another story.
Today: another puzzle piece, another blog post. For now, without comment from me :)
You need some way to force people to pay. Not because they are evil or dishonest, but because they procrastinate. Registration is a pain. They'd rather be spending their time playing your game! If you don't do anything at all to make them pay, they'll just forget.
But tread lightly. Once you have any barrier in place at all, you'll get your payment from all the honest people, the people who know that, if nobody pays, you won't make more awesome games for them. Anything beyond that will inconvenience your paying customers and do little to nothing to prevent piracy.
http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2011/05/final-answer-for-what-to-do-to-prevent.html
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From the article:
The system was confusing, and this wasn't helped by the fact that we were the only ones ever to use it.
Maybe there was a reason that he was the only one to ever use it; maybe even because it was confusing. This man's own failures do not mean very much to me. He may well be incompetent, or his methods may not work for all.
I don't like people pirating stuff either. But my solution has nothing to do with new incentives to buy stuff. My solution has to do with providing stuff free. Because I want to. If I release software, audio recordings, movies, etc, all open source (or open content) and free, then nobody can pirate it. Problem solved.
Problem not solved. The very reason that piracy is a problem is that people DO want to make money, so any "solution" that does not involve making money is no solution at all! This makes as much sense as preventing murder by committing suicide.
Maybe the more marginal providers who produce stuff people don't want to pay them for will have to get jobs in manufacturing or personally providing services like normal people, but I think that's okay.
What do you mean by "normal people"? Anyway, if consumers do not want to pay for something, the manufacturers would need to find different employment in ANY industry, so I do not see your point. People are willing to pay, which is why the industry exists at all.
And besides, creative people *WANT* to provide music, movies, software, etc, because it's all created by doing things we like to do.
- All of these things described require use of equipment that is not free, and they require spending time, and time is also valuable. Answer me this: shall I not seek a job in a field I like, simply because I would be pleased to do it without pay?
- These people can and do create things things, but these things, as they are built by people doing what they love, may not meet general consumer desires and demands.
There is an astonishing amount of excellent content provided free, by artists and artisans in the course of creative pursuits (There's also an astonishing amount of ... other ... content, so finding the good stuff takes some work. But I digress.). If you can live without the multi-million dollar ad campaigns that tell you to BUY COMMERCIAL STUFF, there is a whole new universe of really excellent stuff out there.
Excellent stuff.... according to you. Other people may like and be willing to pay for the things that come out of commerical studios; in fact, if they did not, there would be no commercial studios at all. We are talking about entertainment here, not critical medical equipment, so no one NEEDS to buy any of it.
Besides, maybe people do not care to search; well, obviously they do not, for they do not! People can not use products that they have not discovered, and advertising campaigns bring products into their perception, but advertisers need money to do that at all.
The artists who produce it are happy to be treated as a busker playing for the crowd.
Not all artists may be satisfied with the same.
If you like the tune, it's nice to put a dollar or two in the hat.
We must needs be guaranteed that enough people are that nice.
But if you don't wanna, or you can't afford it, then don't.
One might ask the same of the pirates.
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I am not suggesting that you don't seek employment in a field you enjoy because you'd be happy doing it free; I'm suggesting that employment in the field you like may not be available because other people will happily do it for free. The sooner you accept this the more time you have to be happy with the rest of your life.
You know why being a singer generally doesn't pay? It's because there are a million singers who are actually good -- the business isn't driven by singing talent, it's driven by marketing. For every top-selling artist out there, there's a team of marketers, promoters, agents, producers, etc, who cut deals to get airtime and buy advertising slots, etc. That team could have made the same sales numbers and profits with any of a thousand different equally available artists. The "talent" is completely interchangeable. Most singers who get signed to exclusive contracts get signed specifically to prevent them from competing with the singers who the marketing effort is being spent on.
So singing winds up with this weird two-tier system where the "big names" get a tiny, tiny slice of huge marketing-driven sales, a whole lot of wanna-bees get signed to an exclusive contract and then not marketed (making zero money) and the "indies" get just about 100% of their sales but don't have a huge marketing engine behind them. On average, the pay to the singer is about the same whether they go "indie" or get a studio contract. Read 'Courtney Love Does The Math' if you want details. Of course everybody wants to be the studio's cash cow, but the average singer signed with a studio makes squat because the studio doesn't market them.
And we're starting to see a similar thing in the games industry. People go to work for a big-name game studio and they get an hourly wage, with overtime, which is the tiniest slice of huge marketing-driven sales of a huge team-created product. Other people produce something small without getting paid, and then get donations and tips from people who like it, and increasingly the money's the same per hour worked, either way. The studio job will make you work sixty hours a week, and pay you for it, and the "indies" usually don't spend more than fifteen hours a week on their projects, so the money's different. But the hourly money? Nearly the same, and declining.
The Internet means you no longer need all the intermediaries to reach your market. The marketers, promoters, and so on, are no longer making contributions that make things more available to the consumer, and their value is accordingly reduced. It also means you have competition from anybody who's willing to do the job cheaper than you, including those who want to do it for free. So, the price point for creative work is in a race to the bottom and has been declining for several years now. And the bottom? The bottom is free. In another couple of decades, singers, artists, game designers, programmers, and novelists will be working mostly at day jobs, doing their creative stuff out of passion alone or on commission from a single patron who's paying for a specific product that that individual patron wants, the way painters get paid for portraiture.
Expensive products are undesirable in the presence of cheaper (or free) products that are equally good or better. "Piracy" is just the marketing people complaining about consumers recognizing how worthless the marketing people have become and refusing to provide the revenue that their former status deserved. But it's not what's going to kill their jobs. What's going to kill their jobs is when better stuff becomes available for free and people notice.
Piracy becomes a nonissue when the race to the bottom is finished. And it will be finished.
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The race to the bottom is being accompanied by a race to providers like Valve's Steam, which will also do a better job at solving the piracy problem and personally I'm all for. The sooner software sales go purely digital like games are the better...does anybody even buy PC games on CD any more?
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Yeah. Steam has a model where they provide ongoing services, which people are willing to pay for. They don't bother with DRM stuff on their progs, they don't get in people's face, they don't make it inconvenient to buy, and hey, people buy their stuff.
Even people who pirate the games eventually want the services, so they buy a password. The guys at Steam spend most of their time providing services; the software itself functions as a compelling advertisement for their services.
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I am not suggesting that you don't seek employment in a field you enjoy because you'd be happy doing it free; I'm suggesting that employment in the field you like may not be available because other people will happily do it for free.
They would do it the more happily if they can obtain payment for it, and they can do that without much more effort.
The sooner you accept this the more time you have to be happy with the rest of your life.
I recently started my own business, I’m in good health, and I’m surrounded by loving family, but, no, my happiness hinges upon the availability of employment in the video-game industry. I am also spending much time worrying about it. Your assumption is almost amusing.
You know why being a singer generally doesn't pay? It's because there are a million singers who are actually good -- the business isn't driven by singing talent, it's driven by marketing. For every top-selling artist out there, there's a team of marketers, promoters, agents, producers, etc, who cut deals to get airtime and buy advertising slots, etc. That team could have made the same sales numbers and profits with any of a thousand different equally available artists. The "talent" is completely interchangeable.
Obviously, singing is not as valuable as marketing. Singers are everywhere, and marketing is expensive.
And we're starting to see a similar thing in the games industry. People go to work for a big-name game studio and they get an hourly wage, with overtime, which is the tiniest slice of huge marketing-driven sales of a huge team-created product. Other people produce something small without getting paid, and then get donations and tips from people who like it, and increasingly the money's the same per hour worked, either way. The studio job will make you work sixty hours a week, and pay you for it, and the "indies" usually don't spend more than fifteen hours a week on their projects, so the money's different. But the hourly money? Nearly the same, and declining.
Note the words “big” and “small” here. A team of people that are working full-time can create a far superior product more quickly than a single man, so the lone wolf will not be able to somehow make the company obsolete, as his game is far inferior. Wages rise as employees become more scarce, so, if they really are “nearly the same, and declining,” for which I have naught but your word, it is unlikely the wages will descend below the lone wolf’s profits.
The Internet means you no longer need all the intermediaries to reach your market. The marketers, promoters, and so on, are no longer making contributions that make things more available to the consumer, and their value is accordingly reduced.
This is incorrect and naive. The Internet does not guarantee visiblity to the target market at all. People usually find things out in the wilds of the Internet with a search engine. You need to discover which keywords they will be using. Better use of the right keywords will get you better rankings of course, but there are thousands of other websites out there with the same idea. It’s not just as simple as using the right keywords either. Search engines have different ways of prioritizing the soup of billions of pages that they get. Even if you devote your time to studying search-engine-optimization techniques, it is difficult.
The Internet does not equal visibility, and it is ironic that the popularity of the Internet is precisely what has done that.
Expensive products are undesirable in the presence of cheaper (or free) products that are equally good or better. “Piracy” is just the marketing people complaining about consumers recognizing how worthless the marketing people have become and refusing to provide the revenue that their former status deserved.
It is not just about marketing. As I have previously mentioned, a team of people working full-time on game project can do far more than any single man working alone on both his project and a full-time job.
I have already explained in this thread why piracy is immoral; it is not just someone “complaining”.
You have also suggested that piracy is directly linked to the uselessness of marketers, but there is no perceptible correlation, especially since marketing is not useless. If it is, we should go call all of the businesses that use it, as I am sure that they would like to save the millions of dollars that they spend upon this useless practice.
People can not use products that they do not know exist. Businesses must reach consumers. Marketing serves that end.
Piracy becomes a nonissue when the race to the bottom is finished. And it will be finished.
What you have written here is based upon incorrect assumptions, so I see little reason to believe you.
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http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/05/13/136279162/an-internet-rock-star-tells-all
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyJeC99QO8A
(LA face with the Oakland booty.)
Let's agree at least that there are multiple threads here with conflicting conclusions. I forget what the courtroom objection is that goes over testimony that's unreliable due to the likelihood that the witness has a big incentive to lie in his own favor, but it's safe to say that most geeks on the net who argue that piracy = progress had better watch their asses very closely.
But that said, there are (contested but valuable) arguments from all over the world suggesting that one of the biggest current impediments to human progress, from vidya games, to medicine, to the quality of beef, is itself the stranglehold that corporations MUST ensure if they are to continue to ensure their primacy. The Randian argument breaks down at the point where the titans of aggressive, legal competition in the marketplace start to game the system - and the titans do this eleven times out of ten, for they are motivated not by any dedication to a larger picture, but solely by their bottom line. Another win for Ouroboros.
Oh, hey, the new Game of Thrones just finished downloading! gtg cya
EDIT: Obviously, singing is not as valuable as marketing. Singers are everywhere, and marketing is expensive.
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Fixed your typo.
http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/784/
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http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/05/13/136279162/an-internet-rock-star-tells-all
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyJeC99QO8A
(LA face with the Oakland booty.)
Yes, one man managed to win fame and glory on the Internet. I did not say that it could not be done; I said that it was not at all easy. I was pointing out that the Internet is not the marketer-killing pancea that Bear thinks it is, because, as it becomes more accessible, competition increases. Of course, someone has managed to use it to their advantage, but, for every Internet rock star singing churlish songs about a woman's fat hindquarters, there are a legion of other people that are not making a dime.
Let's agree at least that there are multiple threads here with conflicting conclusions.
What conclusions? Have our threads (within this thread) reached conclusions? How do they conflict? If you mean that we should agree that people here disagree, agreeing on the obvious is far from something that I care to do.
But that said, there are (contested but valuable) arguments from all over the world suggesting that one of the biggest current impediments to human progress, from vidya games, to medicine, to the quality of beef, is itself the stranglehold that corporations MUST ensure if they are to continue to ensure their primacy.
What in the world does intellectual property have to do with corporations maintaining a stranglehold? Is your inability to copy Call of Duty a sign that large corporations are oppressing anyone? You shall need to explain precisely how it is that you think manufacturing a product and releasing it to the public under a license is somehow hurting market competition.
The Randian argument breaks down at the point where the titans of aggressive, legal competition in the marketplace start to game the system - and the titans do this eleven times out of ten, for they are motivated not by any dedication to a larger picture, but solely by their bottom line. Another win for Ouroboros.
Again, explain how intellectual property is “gaming the system”. You want what they made, and they will not give it to you unless you promise not to copy it, and they get annoyed when you break the pact you made.
Yes, they are dedicated to their bottom line. It is called “efficiency”. Spend the least amount of effort and resources necessary to achieve the goal. It is the consumers that decide what the goal is, as they decide which businesses to reward with trade, so it is the consumers that decide what is acceptable.
When everyone has a different idea of what the “larger picture” should be, it is foolish to require anyone to keep to any particular vision of it.
EDIT: Obviously, singing is not as valuable as marketing. Singers are everywhere, and marketing is expensive.
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Fixed your typo.
http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/784/
Firstly, that is T. S. Eliot. He is not a singer. That is not a song, it is a poem. Secondly, what is valuable is subjective. Bear and I were talking about the marketplace. In his example, since singers were not scarce, so they were not particularly valuable to the marketplace. Scarce resources cost more, and that includes talent and labor. Due to competition, abundant resources cost less.
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The fact that marketers earn much does not mean that their work is valuable or useful for the community as a whole. I think most marketers, spammers, and propagandists do jobs whose usefulness for community is questionable (and also mafia bosses, casino owners, tobacco manufacturers, etc). They also tend to justify their anti-piracy actions by saying "artists are losing money instead", not "we are losing money instead" (even if the artists earn only a tiny fraction of these money), so apparently people consider artists' work more valuable.
Obviously, marketing is useful for the person who hires a marketing specialist, and free market/free speech means that everyone is free to hire one.
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The fact that marketers earn much does not mean that their work is valuable or useful for the community as a whole.
If by “as a whole” you mean “the majority”, then you are wrong. They only make money when people trade money for the product that they are selling; lousy marketers do not get paid very much. If people did not desire, and, thus, value, the product being offered, they would not purchase it. So marketers help bring value to the lives of people by bringing products that they value to their perception. If a marketer is making much money, it must be because he has brought the product to the conciousness of many people, and, thus, it must be that the marketer has helped bring value into the lives of many people. Tell me, how many people must have been helped before something can be said to be valuable to the community “as a whole”?
I think most marketers, spammers, and propagandists do jobs whose usefulness for community is questionable (and also mafia bosses, casino owners, tobacco manufacturers, etc).
Mafia bosses do not earn their money by fair trade. They rob and pillage. They use threats and coersion to earn their money. They do not produce a product. They provide no service. That is not how marketers operate.
Casino owners are just part of the entertainment industry. They provide entertainment. They do not force anyone to spend any money. If the people playing did not value what the casino offered why do they spend their money there?
Tobacco is an addictive substance that alters your brain chemistry.
None of these are fitting comparisons to marketers.
They also tend to justify their anti-piracy actions by saying "artists are losing money instead", not "we are losing money instead" (even if the artists earn only a tiny fraction of these money), so apparently people consider artists' work more valuable.
It is not more valuable (to the marketplace), no matter what they think. They do not know that singers are a dime a dozen. By your reasoning, roadworkers should be paid very well, as many people would not be able to do much business at all without roads. That does not make sense, of course, as there are millions of people that can be roadworkers, so it is pointless to reward roadworkers very well.
Obviously, marketing is useful for the person who hires a marketing specialist, and free market/free speech means that everyone is free to hire one.
It is also useful for the people who would not have been able to enjoy the product if they had never heard about it.
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EDIT: Obviously, singing is not as valuable as marketing. Singers are everywhere, and marketing is expensive.
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Fixed your typo.
http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/784/
Firstly, that is T. S. Eliot. He is not a singer. That is not a song, it is a poem. Secondly, what is valuable is subjective. Bear and I were talking about the marketplace. In his example, since singers were not scarce, so they were not particularly valuable to the marketplace. Scarce resources cost more, and that includes talent and labor. Due to competition, abundant resources cost less.
I don't understand anything else you wrote, but I'm pretty sure it's a song. I think I heard him open for Lady Gaga a few months ago...
Actually, I only had a couple points to make. Three if you count me wanting to assert that this is an ongoing discussion between the world's best minds and mouthpieces, very hotly contested. Nobody at ToTR is going to put the lid on the discussion.
1) There are alternatives to direct marketing, and these alternatives run the gamut. Some are successful.
2) If I was a rich guy who wanted to make sure I stayed really rich and got even richer, I would insinuate myself into economic theory, commercial regulation, and law so as to structure things to my benefit regardless of what it did to the greater picture of prosperity as a whole. It's like that one song, "Machiavelli" by Prince. That said, you can't write off the moral complexity of stealing by calling yourself Robin Hood.
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I think I can be forgiven for being a little disappointed to discover that you mean to just repeat yourself without replying to my objections in any meaningful way.
I don't understand anything else you wrote, but I'm pretty sure it's a song. I think I heard him open for Lady Gaga a few months ago...
Charming.
Actually, I only had a couple points to make. Three if you count me wanting to assert that this is an ongoing discussion between the world's best minds and mouthpieces, very hotly contested. Nobody at ToTR is going to put the lid on the discussion.
I do not think it useless for a community of software developers to discuss intellectual property and software piracy.
1) There are alternatives to direct marketing, and these alternatives run the gamut. Some are successful.
Are these alternatives--for which we have only your word that they exist--enough to make direct marketing obsolete?
2) If I was a rich guy who wanted to make sure I stayed really rich and got even richer, I would insinuate myself into economic theory, commercial regulation, and law so as to structure things to my benefit regardless of what it did to the greater picture of prosperity as a whole. It's like that one song, "Machiavelli" by Prince. That said, you can't write off the moral complexity of stealing by calling yourself Robin Hood.
If you did not understand my rebuttal to this point in my previous post, I see little reason to repeat myself as you have.
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Whilst one thing that is very true with games is that too many cooks spoil the broth, most games do usually need a few cooks...graphics, audio, code, level design and the like are so very different skills you usually need at least one person for each. Free games rarely work or come close to finishing because you need to find people covering so wide a range of skills willing to work for nothing on one project for months. People generally just don't have the willpower for that without some kind of real-world motivation.
I'll be honest: The game I think is the most well-designed and well-made game in history is Portal (the first one). Yahtzee put it best in Zero Punctuation when reviewing Portal 2, that the original game was developed with a small team who had to "cut corners" by trimming it down so it contained exactly what it needed and nothing more. It was incredibly well designed, and amazingly well executed.
I've heard many interviews with developers and managers who have moved over from "AAA titles" to "Indie" development and commented on how much less stressful and more streamlined it is developing Indie titles. in short, I do feel a major problem with modern games is that teams have gotten too big, and seem to almost go out of their way to be big.
Indie developers don't tend to try to be big, they try to hire exactly as many people as are needed to complete a project. I remember one producer saying "If I could make the games that we make, publish and sell them with only 3 people instead of 30, I'd gladly fire 27 of my employees." and that's the attitude I think they need...
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It's really funny how pirates refuse to understand the basic economy rule here. I'm thinking what would they do if computers were never invented and there were no bytes to steal. I guess they would do it the old school way, just stealing something.
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Oh, of course a bunch of people working on their own and just giving away the result couldn't possibly make something as complex and polished as an AAA game -- or an OS with thousands of free applications, or anything, you know, major like that....
Linux gets better and better. Windows, therefore, gets cheaper and cheaper. The same thing is happening to music as amateurs put their stuff out on YouTube or wherever and people notice some of it is good. The same thing can (and, I think, eventually will) happen to games.
I believe that it is good, for people as a whole, to have things available for their use, entertainment, and empowerment. I believe that price is an impediment to availability. I believe therefore that when people choose to give such stuff away free, they are doing something morally good, and that the best outcome for people as a whole is that the market for information products (software, designs, games, stories, music, etc) should eventually be dominated by free stuff. The market for performance, support, and other services, is a labor market not a copy market, so it's reasonable IMO for long-term profits to be realized there. But with copy markets, the benefit to the producers of making a profit is not as important in the long run as the benefit to everyone of its eventual free availability.
I do not believe that piracy is good. I do not pirate software, I do not download commercial music for free, and I do not believe that those who do so are within their rights. Piracy is part of a cycle of bad-begets-worse. The best solution is that stuff is free. A morally neutral solution is that stuff is commercial. Piracy is a morally-wrong response to commercial stuff. DRM is an even worse morally wrong response to piracy.
The serious problem with DRM is not its effect on piracy; the serious problem with DRM is that as practiced, it deliberately seeks to impoverish the public domain. Remember that our descendants have a right to the public domain. The stuff published in our era MUST become free for everyone at some point.
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Linux (which I do use alongside Windows) isn't "I'm going to make this cool game!" it's "I'm going to make this OS!". Linux is one thing being modified in a million ways. Each games is it's own unique thing. There's a reason most free/open-source video games become abandonware.
I'm not saying free games can't be good or compete with AAA games or just paid games in general, I'm saying it's inevitably rarer that they do. Besides if you're good at something, why do it for free when people are willing to pay? Especially after you've sunk thousands of pounds going to University to study Computer Science...I'm sure as hell not in it for the revolution, but because I want to make enough money to live off doing something that doesn't bore me.
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Oh, of course a bunch of people working on their own and just giving away the result couldn't possibly make something as complex and polished as an AAA game -- or an OS with thousands of free applications, or anything, you know, major like that....
Nowhere did I say that a bunch of people working on their own and just giving away the result couldn't possibly make something complex. Nowhere. I said that commercial developers have an advantage, because they can spend more time on a project than a hobbyist can. Given enough time, a group of hobbyists can create something complex, given enough time and motivation, of which commercial entities have more.
The rest of what you write is just a red herring. An operating system is not the same as a AAA video-game title. It is a different beast with a different market. There are only three real competitors in the operating-system market: Windows, Mac OSX, and the various distributions of Linux. You have your BSDs and Solaris, but, unlike Linux, they do not have distributions targeted at the general consumer. That is it. Nothing else. Three choices for your average consumer. There is not very much competition with Windows holding a near-monopoly, and that is probably why Linux can challenge Windows, if people but knew that it was a viable option (Now, if only Canonical could afford some marketing...) This is not a relevant example, because Microsoft probably could do better than a bunch of hobbyist developers in their free time, if they had the proper motivation that comes with competiton.
So, will there be a day where one of Linux's more beginner-friendly distributions like Ubuntu overthrows Windows and takes its rightful place on every man's desktop? Perhaps, if felling Microsoft does not allow the blooming of new commercial competition. Does that mean that all forms of intellectual property will eventually be led into a Utopian land of free? No.
Linux gets better and better. Windows, therefore, gets cheaper and cheaper.
That is right. Distributions of Linux get better and better, but games do not do that. They release once. When a new game is made, they do it all over again. Sure, they can reuse old engines and code, and maybe even some old media, but there is still plenty of work to be done. Levels to be designed. Scripts to be written. New code. New media. Engines and media also need to be updated to take advantage of new hardware and platforms.
There is also the part where you will probably only ever want one operating system. Most users do not “complete” their operating system and go out to the store to get the sequel. They also probably do not want to try out new flavors. It is like comparing a fork and the food you eat. Usually people do not get tired of using the same fork--most people do not even think about their fork--but they do get tired of eating the same thing every day.
You have not said that you think that all of the tools will become available for free. You are saying that all intellectual property will become free. In fact, you did not even mention word processors, text editors, compilers, code analyzers, and the like. You specifically referred to the entertainment industry in your posts: books, movies, songs, video games...
The same thing is happening to music as amateurs put their stuff out on YouTube or wherever and people notice some of it is good. The same thing can (and, I think, eventually will) happen to games.
...to which we seem to have returned once again. Music is yet another beast entirely. Can an amateur, working in his spare time, compete with commercial distributors? If it were not for the nagging problem of proper marketing, I might say “maybe”. Of course, that implies nothing about novels, movies, paintings, and all other intellecual property. Making a movie especially requires susbtantial time and investment. Props need to be bought, locations need to be reached, actors need to be paid, and all the people need to be coordinated.
I believe that it is good, for people as a whole, to have things available for their use, entertainment, and empowerment. I believe that price is an impediment to availability. I believe therefore that when people choose to give such stuff away free, they are doing something morally good, and that the best outcome for people as a whole is that the market for information products (software, designs, games, stories, music, etc) should eventually be dominated by free stuff.
1. Having stuff available for entertainment and empowerment is good.
2. It is harder to have stuff available when you need to pay for it.
3. Therefore, giving stuff to other people for free is good.
4. If giving stuff away for free is good, most stuff in the market for information products should be free.
You added a qualification to your conclusion that your postulates did not support. Why only in the market for information products? By this reasoning, everything should be made free. Farmers should be churning out free food. Miners should be churning out free ore. People should be offering free everything. They should not, and you recognize that, but you do not acknowledge it, because that would bring this argument down on your head. See, to give something away, someone has to lose something. That is the irony here. To grow your food or mine your ore or program your games or compose your music or film your movies or write your novels, someone must spend a big slice of their ever-precious life, if not some money. Time is the ultimate resource, because no one gets more.
Now, you are saying that everyone should give away stuff for free, at least in your opinion. That does not mean that everyone will. It does not imply that this slow sinking into free is actually happening; which is what we have been discussing. The detours seem to never end.
I do not believe that piracy is good. I do not pirate software, I do not download commercial music for free, and I do not believe that those who do so are within their rights. Piracy is part of a cycle of bad-begets-worse. The best solution is that stuff is free. A morally neutral solution is that stuff is commercial.
It seems to me that commerce is morally right by your standards. In trade, one person has something that they value less than something someone else is offering. If that other person values what the first person has more than what he himself is offering, he will probably be willing to make a trade. They swap items, and now both people have experienced a net increase of value in their lives instead of just one. Both walk away with their lives enriched. In the case of a business, the business can then invest that net gain in value into what it needs to make more products that enrich more lives. According to your reasoning above, commerce is of the highest virtue.
Piracy is a morally-wrong response to commercial stuff. DRM is an even worse morally wrong response to piracy.
You shall have some explaining to do in order to tell me how adding restrictions to software that is clearly labeled to have those restrictions is morally worse than breaking a pact for your own gain.
The serious problem with DRM is not its effect on piracy; the serious problem with DRM is that as practiced, it deliberately seeks to impoverish the public domain. Remember that our descendants have a right to the public domain. The stuff published in our era MUST become free for everyone at some point.
You will have some explaining to do on this one too. Right? What right? Where do they get this right? Stuff enters the public domain by law eventually--70 years after the life of the author where I live--so you can relax about that. Why “MUST” they have it for free at some point? The world is not going to run out of novels or stories or programs or paintings or whatnot if they do not get it for free, so you must explain how you came to this conclusion.
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Okay, two meta things I'm not happy about regarding this discussion. Maybe we can find consesus on those first :)
1) Copying video games without permission is not theft. It's illegal distribution but it's not theft and it's certainly not robbery or pirating.
2) All intellectual property *will* one day be free (but not all will be free at the same time ;) Copyrights in all their incarnations have been invented to foster creativity and the smart people who formulated the law understood well, that everything humans make is built upon knowledge and 'prior art' of humans that came before that.
Can we agree on those two? Objections? :)
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1) The uploading is illegal distribution. The downloading or receiving of a copy is about on par ethically with the intentional purchasing of stolen equipment. Legally I'm not sure what that's called.
2) But that doesn't happen until long after the owners of the rights have either
a) Abandoned the property completely
b) Died
The argument that since it'll be free eventually it may as well be free immediately is flawed. Everybody will eventually die, should I run around stabbing everybody I see?
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You have not said that you think that all of the tools will become available for free. You are saying that all intellectual property will become free. In fact, you did not even mention word processors, text editors, compilers, code analyzers, and the like. You specifically referred to the entertainment industry in your posts: books, movies, songs, video games...
Text editors, word processors, compilers, code analyzers, etc, are all examples of what I referred to as software. In fact tools were (and are) the driving force behind opensource software. Guys got sick of having no way to get anything done on their own without resources provided by their employers (and frequently results therefore claimed by their employers) or major cash layout, and built tools for themselves. Everything else, all the free applications, games, etc, came after the tools.
I believe that it is good, for people as a whole, to have things available for their use, entertainment, and empowerment. I believe that price is an impediment to availability. I believe therefore that when people choose to give such stuff away free, they are doing something morally good, and that the best outcome for people as a whole is that the market for information products (software, designs, games, stories, music, etc) should eventually be dominated by free stuff.
You added a qualification to your conclusion that your postulates did not support. Why only in the market for information products?
It's a copy market. Information products have the peculiar property that they can be copied easily, quickly, and without noticeable expense, where physical objects can only be transferred (depriving one person of the object) and services can only be performed (which requires time and effort). Musicians playing concerts, painters painting portraits and commissions, programmers supporting games (and tools, etc) or running tournaments, etc, are providing a service. Farmers growing food are providing a physical object which, afterwards, they do not have anymore.
See, to give something away, someone has to lose something. That is the irony here.
Except that if the thing they give away is information, they still have it.
To grow your food or mine your ore or program your games or compose your music or film your movies or write your novels, someone must spend a big slice of their ever-precious life, if not some money. Time is the ultimate resource, because no one gets more.
Except we're not talking about production. We're talking about copying. It's true, production takes time and effort and often other resources. If you hire someone to program a game, you don't expect him to work for free, you expect to pay him. What he's doing there is working in a service market. But what you wind up with is information, and when you go to sell it, it's a copy market -- because after you sell it, you still have it.
The same is not true for growing food or mining ore - you can hire someone to do these things for you (labor is a service market) but what you wind up with at the end is a physical object, which you can sell, but having sold it you do not still have it. Physical objects are not a copy market, so the analogy does not hold.
I do not believe that piracy is good. I do not pirate software, I do not download commercial music for free, and I do not believe that those who do so are within their rights. Piracy is part of a cycle of bad-begets-worse. The best solution is that stuff is free. A morally neutral solution is that stuff is commercial.
It seems to me that commerce is morally right by your standards. In trade, one person has something that they value less than something someone else is offering. If that other person values what the first person has more than what he himself is offering, he will probably be willing to make a trade. They swap items, and now both people have experienced a net increase of value in their lives instead of just one. Both walk away with their lives enriched. In the case of a business, the business can then invest that net gain in value into what it needs to make more products that enrich more lives. According to your reasoning above, commerce is of the highest virtue.
Sure. A mutual net increase in value is good. Giving stuff away is also altruistic, which is probably a different moral criterion. But in both cases, the people involved experience an increase in total value.
Piracy is a morally-wrong response to commercial stuff. DRM is an even worse morally wrong response to piracy.
You shall have some explaining to do in order to tell me how adding restrictions to software that is clearly labeled to have those restrictions is morally worse than breaking a pact for your own gain.
The man who breaks a pact for his own gain has committed a morally wrong act against a single entity, who can take action to stop him. Adding content controls to information, without provision for ensuring that the protected content eventually enters the public domain is committing a morally wrong act against future generations who cannot yet defend themselves.
Copying while it may be in breach of a pact and therefore wrong, increases information and the access to it, which is a net good. DRM, while it may be legal, decreases information and access to it, and is therefore problematic. But DRM without ensuring that the content eventually is available in the public domain is more accurately theft than copying. It is theft from members of future generations, and it is theft that deprives them of access to information rather than "theft" that deprives someone of exclusive control of information.
In short it is more precisely theft (as in depriving them of something with value) it is a theft against more people, and against people who are defenseless.
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Aw, phooey, I messed up the quotes.
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Okay, seems we have trouble with even those basic ideas :) Not good.
1) The uploading is illegal distribution. The downloading or receiving of a copy is about on par ethically with the intentional purchasing of stolen equipment. Legally I'm not sure what that's called.
The uploading is illegal distribution. The downloading is not illegal at all - at least in the EU several courts have confirmed that. Downloading is never, under no circumstances illegal.
Now I'm confused: is this handled differently in the US. I know MPAA, et al *want* downloading to be illegal but has anyone actually gone to court in US regarding this?
2) But that doesn't happen until long after the owners of the rights have either
a) Abandoned the property completely
b) Died
The argument that since it'll be free eventually it may as well be free immediately is flawed. Everybody will eventually die, should I run around stabbing everybody I see?
Didn't want to turn the argument in that direction. But the basic, normal status of content should be free so it benefits everyone but lawmakers agreed that it is under some circumstances beneficial to allow to limit that right to copy for a limited time (according to wikipedia it's most often "dead + 50 years" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries%27_copyright_length).
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1) The uploading is illegal distribution. The downloading or receiving of a copy is about on par ethically with the intentional purchasing of stolen equipment. Legally I'm not sure what that's called.
The uploading is illegal distribution. The downloading is not illegal at all - at least in the EU several courts have confirmed that. Downloading is never, under no circumstances illegal.
Actually in the UK I believe The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended by the Copyright and Trade Marks (Offences and Enforcement) Act 2002 holds that people who distribute and download copyrighted material without permission face civil actions for potentially thousands of pounds of damages. If you can be proven to be distributing the material further, it becomes a criminal offence and jail time is a possibility.
It's not a case of "crime that put you in jail" or "legal", the third option is "civil actions for thousands of pounds in damages". There does exist a sort-of gentleman's agreement that ISP holders will first notify you that you've been caught and to cease-and-desist, and only if you fail to stop will they give your details over to the copyright holders.
The "becomes free eventually" is to prevent things being left in a position that they can't ever be used because the copyright owner is no longer able to give out permissions. Likewise in the UK we have a concept of orphaned works, where if the copyright owner cannot be determined (as is often the case with photographs found in archives for use in documentaries) it can be used without granted permission.
Anything you create (music, art etc.) is automatically copyrighted to you, at least in the UK and the USA it is. That is it's default state. You can then place it in the public domain, or release it under a licence like GPL.
I own what I create, at least until I decide or have agreed to other conditions (such as for a job, ghost writing, that kind of thing). Otherwise, I see no point in creating.
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Text editors, word processors, compilers, code analyzers, etc, are all examples of what I referred to as software. In fact tools were (and are) the driving force behind opensource software. Guys got sick of having no way to get anything done on their own without resources provided by their employers (and frequently results therefore claimed by their employers) or major cash layout, and built tools for themselves. Everything else, all the free applications, games, etc, came after the tools.
This handly ignores a large chunk of my post, and it just states the obivous. The whole point I made was that you are comparing operating systems and video games, but both are consumed diffrently and have different markets.
It's a copy market. Information products have the peculiar property that they can be copied easily, quickly, and without noticeable expense, where physical objects can only be transferred (depriving one person of the object) and services can only be performed (which requires time and effort). Musicians playing concerts, painters painting portraits and commissions, programmers supporting games (and tools, etc) or running tournaments, etc, are providing a service. Farmers growing food are providing a physical object which, afterwards, they do not have anymore.
Yes, but that is not what you said. You pointed out that, since having stuff is good, and price makes it hard to have stuff, having free stuff must be good, and you concluded that, because of this, all intellectual property should be free. Now, you threw in the “intellectual” part, and none of what you said supported that restriction. Your reasoning would require that all goods be free.
Except that if the thing they give away is information, they still have it.
Except that they can never get back the time it takes to produce the information originally.
Physical objects are not a copy market, so the analogy does not hold.
By the reasoning you used in your previous post, the analogy does hold. I was pointing out that your reasoning led to a logical extreme that did not make sense. Now your argument has changed.
But in both cases, the people involved experience an increase in total value.
Um, no. Not necessarily. If you give away a physical object, you experience a decrease in total value. If you give away intellectual property that you have created, someone is getting something for which they did not need to spend time, so the increase in net value was not equal.
The man who breaks a pact for his own gain has committed a morally wrong act against a single entity, who can take action to stop him. Adding content controls to information, without provision for ensuring that the protected content eventually enters the public domain is committing a morally wrong act against future generations who cannot yet defend themselves.
Copying while it may be in breach of a pact and therefore wrong, increases information and the access to it, which is a net good. DRM, while it may be legal, decreases information and access to it, and is therefore problematic. But DRM without ensuring that the content eventually is available in the public domain is more accurately theft than copying. It is theft from members of future generations, and it is theft that deprives them of access to information rather than “theft” that deprives someone of exclusive control of information.
In short it is more precisely theft (as in depriving them of something with value) it is a theft against more people, and against people who are defenseless.
That logic is absurd, if I may be so blunt. By not writing software, you are depriving everyone something of value, and, as you define theft as “depriving someone of something of value” every piece of software you did not write you stole from everyone. By this reasoning, every piece of software, music, literature, and other art that you do not create and give to society, you stole from them. Should society come to your door and demand that you generate information for them? If you do not comply, should they throw you in jail for theft? Are you robbing future generations by not churning out music and video games?
You have mostly ignored what I posted in my initial reply to you while shifting the topic to a matter of morality. If you recall, the initial point of discussion was whether all intellectual property will become free. You said that it will, but you have yet to give a decisive argument to support your assertion.
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You know what? I'm sick of the argument, and what we believe won't affect the outcome anyway. If this is a "what will happen" thing for you, then let's just wait 20 years and see who's right.
I can't NOT make stuff. I can't imagine what it would be like to be so depressed I was not creating anything. I really hope that never happens to me.
Do whatever you like, pursue whatever dream you have; I wish you the best. In my opinion, that information which is not free is far more likely to wind up as a footnote to rather than the main story of the future. I've worked on a lot of commercial projects on day-jobs, and what all that code has in common is that it all ceased to exist. For marketing reasons, for corporate reasons, for whatever reason to do with the companies, all that blood, sweat and tears and really EXCELLENT work, all went down the drain, and it was heartbreaking for me. The stuff I've made free, by contrast, is still around and people are still finding it useful and making it better, and I'm more satisfied with that than I was with paychecks from a software company.
Now, maybe you're not like me. Maybe you never feel a loss when some marketing idiot throws away your work because joe-average-user can't understand how to use it, or when some rival corporation buys out the company and trashes your code in order to limit competition with their product, or when a project which you've given some of the best work of your life gets canceled, or whatever. Maybe you can stand to just not make stuff if nobody pays you, and not miss doing it.
That's okay. But ... well, best of luck, I guess. You pursue your happiness by trying to get paid, but I've been there and done that and although I love programming, working in the industry made me profoundly unhappy. So, I'll pursue my own happiness by releasing stuff for free.
Bear
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If this is a "what will happen" thing for you, then let's just wait 20 years and see who's right.
I thought this was a “‘what will happen’ thing” for you too, since you were telling me what will happen. You were also wrong, which is why I corrected you, which is why this argument started, which is why we are here. I do not get your point.
So, some work you liked was discarded by some person to whom you had willfully given the rights to said work when you willfully entered their employ while presumably knowing that you would be in their service, taking their orders, and generally being their employee, and, by mentioning this, you are now trying to justify and validate your assertion that intellectual property is dying, it is immoral, and it is stealing from people that do not exist. Furthermore, by objecting to your assertions, you think that I have demonstrated that I am developing software just for the money.
Firstly, while I am sorry that you are not happy in your job, and I do hope you find some occupation that does make you happy, your unhappiness does not at all support anything that you have asserted in this thread. It does not mean that everyone in the profession is unhappy. It does not mean that no one can be happy in that profession. It is not a criterion for what will happen to intellectual property as a whole, and it is not a criterion for what should happen.
Secondly, all of your work has ceased to exist (perhaps because it was too hard for the customer to use?) Does that make intellectual property bad? Does that mean that intellectual property is dying? Should I not sell software?
No.
Thirdly, I have not once stated anywhere that I develop software just for the money. Nowhere. If you think that no one could possibly make money doing something that they love doing and be happy, you are sorely mistaken, despite your own failure.
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Thirdly, I have not once stated anywhere that I develop software just for the money. Nowhere. If you think that no one could possibly make money doing something that they love doing and be happy, you are sorely mistaken, despite your own failure.
I did say that I wish to be a programmer to make a living off of a career that does not bore me. It's not so much trying to buy happiness as being paid and doing something I find interesting at the same time ^^
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Before you can say which they should focus on doing, we would need to find some way of judging the efficacy of what they are doing to prevent piracy and compare it to how many converts they would get if they used that money and effort made the product better (if they even COULD use that money and effort to make that product better); which is nearly impossible.
Converts: there are always more people who do not even know about your game then there are people pirating your game. That's almost always true unless you built Modern Warfare or similar.
But even for such triple A games the number of people in the world who don't know about them but might be interested is always higher then the number of pirates.
edit: in fact, that's the whole point of the article so i'm not sure you read it ;)
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1) The uploading is illegal distribution. The downloading or receiving of a copy is about on par ethically with the intentional purchasing of stolen equipment. Legally I'm not sure what that's called.
The uploading is illegal distribution. The downloading is not illegal at all - at least in the EU several courts have confirmed that. Downloading is never, under no circumstances illegal.
Actually in the UK I believe The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended by the Copyright and Trade Marks (Offences and Enforcement) Act 2002 holds that people who distribute and download copyrighted material without permission face civil actions for potentially thousands of pounds of damages. If you can be proven to be distributing the material further, it becomes a criminal offence and jail time is a possibility.
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thanks for looking this up! I can assure you that in austria no download is illegal. In fact that is the wording the judges used. 'a download is never illegal'
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Converts: there are always more people who do not even know about your game then there are people pirating your game. That's almost always true unless you built Modern Warfare or similar.
But even for such triple A games the number of people in the world who don't know about them but might be interested is always higher then the number of pirates.
edit: in fact, that's the whole point of the article so i'm not sure you read it ;)
I read both of your articles, but that was not the point of either of them.
Firstly, in the context of your first article (if you mean that one) and my post, a “convert” does not mean someone that does not know about your game.
Secondly, of course there are more people that do not know about your game than people that pirate it, but what kind of point are you trying to make with that? Are you trying to say that we should not deal with pirates because there are more people in the world that just do not know about the product? (People that may pirate it anyway.) What kind of sense does that make?
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Secondly, of course there are more people that do not know about your game than people that pirate it, but what kind of point are you trying to make with that?
i was answering to this: "we would need to find some way of judging the efficacy of what they are doing to prevent piracy and compare it to how many converts they would get if they used that money and effort made the product better"
i misunderstood "converts". with convert i mean: get new people to buy the game. and you meant "get pirates to buy the game". pirates don't buy the game by definition, so yes: i would rather focus on making the product better & more well known to enhance sales. most developer interviews i read agree with me.
Are you trying to say that we should not deal with pirates because there are more people in the world that just do not know about the product? (People that may pirate it anyway.) What kind of sense does that make?
yes! why does that not make sense? you want your product to sell well. ignore pirates, focus on the people that want to *pay* for your game.
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Linux (which I do use alongside Windows) isn't "I'm going to make this cool game!" it's "I'm going to make this OS!". Linux is one thing being modified in a million ways. Each games is it's own unique thing.
I think this uniqueness is what actually makes people want to develop free games. There are more free roguelikes (even good free roguelikes) than free OSes, free vector graphics programs, or free office suites.
There's a reason most free/open-source video games become abandonware. I'm not saying free games can't be good or compete with AAA games or just paid games in general, I'm saying it's inevitably rarer that they do.
I think you use a wrong word here (abandonware is contradictory with freeware). And saying something about "most free games" is useless, 90% of free games are crap because 90% of everything is crap. As I try lots of roguelikes, including experimental 7DRLs or ones in early development, I find lots of them to be bad, but still, the best games I know are free roguelikes.
Besides if you're good at something, why do it for free when people are willing to pay?
Of course it is always nicer if you get money for what you are doing, but...
By writing your own game, you hopefully get: a game that you really like, this great feeling that you have created something that people like, experience, fame, and probably other benefits. Fame and experience actually have real material value (if you can show that you have created a great game, you have a bigger chance of getting an interesting job at a game company, instead of working 25 hours per day on making menus work -- that's maybe a bit of exaggeration, but I think that's what the normal job at a game company looks like). That's why it is good for you to create your own game.
Now you could release it for free (possibly still getting some cash from donations), or for money. If for money, in many cases it is not worth it, since you have do to boring things like the legal stuff, and if it is a niche indie game it probably would not sell anyway. Also, the conscience. I would feel very bad if I requested money for playing my game, if it was designed using free tools, and based on the ideas I got from playing free games myself. If you have been playing free games or using free tools, or, even worse, you have ever been a pirate, then you should allow everyone to play your game for free. :)
Especially after you've sunk thousands of pounds going to University to study Computer Science...I'm sure as hell not in it for the revolution, but because I want to make enough money to live off doing something that doesn't bore me.
As a Computer Scientist you have lots of awesome jobs even without relying on copyright. Look at Google or Facebook: although most of their services are free for ordinary people, they earn a lot. IME people working for them are happier than those who work on commercial games. If you are into games... try online games, since they sit on an online server, it is impossible to pirate or "steal" them. For example, the games on Facebook I have seen are free for "normal" players, but you can pay for additional powers or customization.
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I was of course thinking of only the projects with notability, or at least clear potential for notability. Well planned out, well designed, solid foundation, skilled programmers and artists willing to work...only for it to just stop. Doesn't happen just to games...
Roguelikes are an even different beast, anyone with appropriate mathematical and technical interests can be kept entertained for days just tweaking the level generation algorithms xD
And sure there are alternatives. And there are alternative ways to generate profits, like putting ads inside the program itself (a practice that has took the mobile phone app market by storm ^.^). But you still need people with skills, and people traditionally work on a flat commission instead of a % of profits basis. It grants economic security for the time invested.