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[umiman]

I wouldn't say it's a war between governments and pirates so much as it's a war between public lobby groups and the public. The pirates themselves don't care about all these actions and the government is as much a victim as regular people (if they don't do anything, they'd be seen as irresponsible and the US will put them on their naughty list).

The ones doing most of the real fighting are normal, non-pirates and the major lobby groups.

[LegoLord]

No . . . the pirates are the ones stealing from companies.  The companies are the ones trying so hard to fight the pirates.  Governments don't step in until they are caught pirating, and only occasionally try to improve the method for catching them.  They don't do squat about preventing piracy (example: Securom [sp?])

[Aqizzar]

There are these things called Lobby Groups.  They're spokesmen, to talk to lawmakers, to influence their decisions on passing laws and regulations.  It's a cycle-

Pirates do their pirating thing, theoretically (read probably) costing license companies money.
Companies, not wanting to lose money to pirates, have their spokesmen propose ideas or issues to lawmakers.
Government people, seeing the issue, propose laws and influence departmental practices.
Pirates find new ways to be pirates, 30 GOTO 10.

There's nothing conspiratorial or nefarious about this, it's just the way things work.

[umiman]

Thanks for explaining it to him Aqizzar.

[LegoLord]

And the government wouldn't do much without the companies' complaints.

But anyway, the point is, pirates pirate, companies push for tighter regulations, making it harder for honest people to get things in an honest way, making more pirates and causing them to find new ways to pirate.

[Aqizzar]

...And because companies don't get to make and enforce their own legal system, their method of fighting pirates is to convince the government to do so, usually by working harder at enforcing laws that already exist.

I'm not sure what you're actually arguing about here.  Who to blame?

[LegoLord]

That pretty much falls under "companies push for tighter regulations".  I really wouldn't blame the government too much on this particular issue; it's really the pirates and corporations turning things to crap.

[Fossaman]

And while companies are trying so futilely to crack down on pirates, independent musicians (or game designers, for that matter) are giving away their product for free and asking for donations of you like it. Somehow I don't think this will end well for the major corporations.

[Aqizzar]

While I applaud the effort, it's not that great of a business model.  Yes, you can make a living wage on asking for donations.  You can hardly self-publish for any kind of audience that isn't online, you can't go on tour, and you hardly make enough money to do anything but live on.

If you're just in it for the artistry, more power to ya.  But no one ever made it as a rockstar on pocket change.

[Vucar Fikodastesh]

And the same goes for games. Mainstream commercial games like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Halo 3, or Fallout 3 require a massive amount of funding, employees, and effort. I seriously any of those games would have got off the ground on a donation-ware business model.

[612DwarfAvenue]

Need i remind you, that there exists a game called Dwarf Fortress? You don't really need any other games.

Now, on topic: Honestly, Piracy is a fact of life. Like the Flu. You can try to crack down on it, but it'll just find ways around you.

SecuROM, for example. The Legit to Pirated ratio for Spore was 1:1. Yes, believe it or not, Pirates can still crack even the most sophisticated copy protections and put up the game files for download. And there's no doubt Pirated copies of Dawn of War 2 which don't require Internet access to install. And that's another thing that game developers don't seem to get, is that SOME OF US ONLY HAVE 56k! But that's another story...


Ahh... I rant sometimes...



Actually, quick OT question: In the event i get Broadband, does DoW2 require internet access just for installation, or do you have to verify the game everytime you start it up, or something?

[Jreengus]

Need i remind you, that there exists a game called Dwarf Fortress? You don't really need any other games.

Now, on topic: Honestly, Piracy is a fact of life. Like the Flu. You can try to crack down on it, but it'll just find ways around you.

SecuROM, for example. The Legit to Pirated ratio for Spore was 1:1. Yes, believe it or not, Pirates can still crack even the most sophisticated copy protections and put up the game files for download. And there's no doubt Pirated copies of Dawn of War 2 which don't require Internet access to install. And that's another thing that game developers don't seem to get, is that SOME OF US ONLY HAVE 56k! But that's another story...


Ahh... I rant sometimes...



Actually, quick OT question: In the event i get Broadband, does DoW2 require internet access just for installation, or do you have to verify the game everytime you start it up, or something?

I have a pirated version of DoW, if I remember rightly it went something along the lines of:
1. Download
2. Install
3. Crack
4. Make Offline Account
5.
6. Profit

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

7. Rage about it and be glad I didn't waste any money.

Edit for clarification: That's DoW 2

[Agdune]

I maintain that the big piracy war doesn't really even have an impact on casual pirates, the crackers have a neat habit of making their cracks pretty user-friendly.

The only times I've had trouble cracking things (Note that that does not mean downloading stuff, just cracking the oh-so sophisticated protection software. Pretty sure that's perfectly legal where I live.) is when it's a brand new painfully thorough program. Wait a month week few days and wahey! Someone'll have released an executable or mini-image or some new way of circumventing it. The legions of crackers will have an approach to base their cracks off and suddenly the rest of that generation of copy protection software will have zero day crack in easy to apply format.

Wait, this has nothing to do with the thread topic. Isn't it reasonably standard fare for determined little souls to spoof their IPs? Script kiddies with anarchic streaks could probably clog the French monitoring system with false positives in a matter of hours.

[Tormy]

This image made me lol in real life. Good one! 

[Floirt]

Argh what the hell, I didn't knew it passed! It was the final vote from the Senate who has pretty much no real power, but still!
DAMMIT.

Spoiler: France rules! (click to show/hide)

A Rafale, the best fighter aircraft EVER. AND IT'S ONLY OURS. CAPABLE OF NULCEAR STRIKE AND ALL. HAS A AIR-TO-SEA WEAPON CALLED "FIRE AND FORGET". IT'S AWESOME.


AIRCRAFT CARRIERS!



NUCLEAR SUBMARINES!



TANKS TOO!



Oh yeah, we got nukes. This is awesome too. NUCLEAR POWER FOR THE WIN!



So yeah, try to invade us and we'll blast you to smithereens.

Also, I surrender to myself so I can get the spoils of victory! Muahahahahah...