Pirating

[kvnchrist]

I've now seen so many cases of people pirating the games we discuss here and come here with no concept of crime that they've just perpetrated and without hesitation ask for help fixing the problems they have with stolen property. What is wrong with the world that so many people think they are entitled to a corporations intellectual property, without compensating that corporation for their efforts, by buying their products and services?

 

Rightfully so, they are immediately banned from the site, but Is there not safeguards that these companies can place inside their software that would alert them to computers who are illegally using their software? I mean, tracing it's use could, hopefully lead corporations back to the source of their loss or at least allow them to find out who is dispersing these pirated copies.

 

The record companies have been fighting this for a while. Shouldn't software companies follow suit?

[Xaranth]

Do you know what we call software that silently phones home to report on the user's activities?

 

Spyware.

 

Honestly, you're on slightly questionable legal ground when you start monitoring your user's activities. You're DEFINITELY on shaky moral ground.

 

Finally, the pirates would simply disable or spoof the monitoring component anyway. It would be obvious to any halfway competent network technician that the software was trying to make connections across the network, and then they'd reverse engineer that just as they do the encryption. So what you're actually looking at is probable 'false' flags from anti-malware with a very limited impact on piracy.

 

Added to that is the possibility of criminal and civil sanctions depending on how many users lose their temper and where in the world you are.

 

Add to THAT the increased overhead that you likely can't adjust the unit price to compensate for... It would be nice to get rid of piracy, but it's not really possible, and the more stringent your anti-piracy measures the more street cred you lose when they invariably blow up. Remember the Starcraft 2 fiasco?

[Vagrant0]

Generally speaking, even excessive DRM software doesn't work. Outright spyware wouldn't work any better. Requiring substantial amounts of game data to be downloaded from a secure server for the game to function (patches or incomplete install disks) only prevents leaked versions from working properly. Requiring the game to connect to a server to run (like ubisoft's games) not only annoys those without reliable connections, but also doesn't work.

 

The reasons why are very simple, there are people out there who make it a game of figuring out game encryption and structure Part of proving that a person has cracked a given game is posting the proof on one of many non-public message boards or shared as links among a group. In many ways, this serves as a way, within that group, to weed out posers and help hone other "cracking" skills.

 

The act of sharing these cracks to a larger audience is not always intentional however. Instead it happens because of someone downloading from that group and posting a torrent or ftp, or as a way to prove that a given group was "first" for bragging rights. Generally, the people doing this sort of thing HATE those who just download a game to play it for free.

 

 

 

About the only thing that actually has worked to some degree are those few cases where game makers actually bothered to reach out to their customers providing free bonuses, minimal (or absent DRM), and acknowledging that piracy will happen but appreciate those who pay for their games.

[JimboUK]

The record companies fought it and lost, in the end they had to offer DRM free downloads themselves. People wrongly assume that piracy is just about money, it isn't, it's also about convenience. For example someone wants to buy a bands latest album, in the past they had to go into town, find a place to park, pay to park, walk to the store, find the album, queue up to pay for the album, walk back the car and drive home. The alternative was click a link and download it, the illegal route was the most convenient. Now you can do this legally a lot of people do just that, look at the huge success of iTunes and to a slightly lesser degree Amazon. Also by legally downloading you know exactly what you're going to get, the music industry now offers something superior to the pirates, in the past their product was inferior. The same goes for the movie industry, there are a myriad of download and streaming services which people make use of, again it's more convenient. Now look at gaming, the most pirated games aren't the most popular, they tend to be the ones with the most DRM, Spore was a classic example of this, another being GTA4.

 

There's no doubt that many do pirate to avoid paying but by adding more DRM and causing more inconvenience they're making the problem worse, not better. The games industry should learn from the record industry, picking a fight with your customers is picking a fight you cannot win, give people what they want and they will pay.

[Acetoolguy]

In retail we walk a fine line trying to prevent shoplifting but still offer a pleasant shopping experience for the vast majority of honest folks. 10% of what you spend in a store goes to replace stolen items or efforts to prevent it. If you go to far people are uncomfortable and will go elsewhere. You can't treat everybody like a crook because of the actions of a few.

[Ihoe]

I've now seen so many cases of people pirating the games we discuss here and come here with no concept of crime that they've just perpetrated and without hesitation ask for help fixing the problems they have with stolen property. What is wrong with the world that so many people think they are entitled to a corporations intellectual property, without compensating that corporation for their efforts, by buying their products and services?

 

Rightfully so, they are immediately banned from the site, but Is there not safeguards that these companies can place inside their software that would alert them to computers who are illegally using their software? I mean, tracing it's use could, hopefully lead corporations back to the source of their loss or at least allow them to find out who is dispersing these pirated copies.

 

The record companies have been fighting this for a while. Shouldn't software companies follow suit?

 

That's a Bit harsh. Probable capability of carrying Pirated material cited by an artificial source could be Used as a scapegoat of God-Knows-Why by some corporations Dying to get their hands on it. Just look up the number of bogus DMCA Requests sent to MEGA (I hate how it is gathering publicity for it's unsafety and utter unimportance) and, outragously, how MEGA instantly removes those files just by simple accusations of nobodys who have no Idea what they are doing (A television company tried to sue itself after thinking their own site holds pirated material of their own shows... not saying which company for personal reasons)? think if Some right holder could erase your whole personal life for allegedy suspecting you hold pirated material?

 

Pirating is unjustifiable, but do you understand where I come from, younger/uninformed people think Original games have cracks since they are SOLD the said pirated data? we live in an age where the whole world could access the internet at a slow speed. and those that do probably have basic Understanding of english. The world is a complicated place, and Most important laws were not coined overnight.

 

Pirating is, just not right. most of the people who do it usually have no other way of accessing the material that they want badly.

 

What I don't understand is how companies attribute losses to pirates. A pirate wouldn't pirate something if he/she was planning on buying it. even if they were planning on buying and they downloaded material, they will eventually buy it.