Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Poll

Is piracy a crime? (Please expand on your vote in the thread)

Yes, and it should be punished under theft.
Yes, and it should be punished under copyright law.
Yes, but it shouldn't be punished.
Certain cases are crimes.
I feel ambivalent towards piracy being a crime.
No, but it should be punished.
No, it is a natural part of a consumer's routine.
No, not at all.
Other
Don't Care / View Poll

Pages: 1 ... 6 7 [8]

Author Topic: Let's Discuss Piracy  (Read 9274 times)

Bauglir

  • Bay Watcher
  • Let us make Good
    • View Profile
Re: Let's Discuss Piracy
« Reply #105 on: May 14, 2010, 12:31:56 pm »

-snip-
« Last Edit: May 04, 2015, 10:56:48 pm by Bauglir »
Logged
In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
“What are you doing?”, asked Minsky. “I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe” Sussman replied. “Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky. “I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play”, Sussman said.
Minsky then shut his eyes. “Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher.
“So that the room will be empty.”
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

bjlong

  • Bay Watcher
  • [INVISIBLE]
    • View Profile
Re: Let's Discuss Piracy
« Reply #106 on: May 14, 2010, 12:37:42 pm »

Why does it matter that artist loose money?

Because if artists lose money, they have to make something other than art for a living. Surely a DF fan understands this principle? Thing is, Toady's realized the proper response, and most artists (or, probably more accurately, publishers), have not.

Which is?
Logged
I hesitate to click the last spoiler tag because I expect there to be Elder Gods in it or something.

ChairmanPoo

  • Bay Watcher
  • Send in the clowns
    • View Profile
Re: Let's Discuss Piracy
« Reply #107 on: May 14, 2010, 12:47:03 pm »

changing the business model to fit better with the current situation. And, lo and behold, it works.

Logged
Everyone sucks at everything. Until they don't. Not sucking is a product of time invested.

Phmcw

  • Bay Watcher
  • Damn max 500 characters
    • View Profile
Re: Let's Discuss Piracy
« Reply #108 on: May 14, 2010, 12:57:53 pm »

My point Bauglir realy. And of course, the whole piracy will kill the usual buisness model is nothing but a lie. It may make it less rentable, but as long as we don't cu our entertrainement spending there will still be money to make.
Logged
Quote from: toady

In bug news, the zombies in a necromancer's tower became suspicious after the necromancer failed to age and he fled into the hills.

Soadreqm

  • Bay Watcher
  • I'm okay with this. I'm okay with a lot of things.
    • View Profile
Re: Let's Discuss Piracy
« Reply #109 on: May 14, 2010, 03:11:00 pm »

Why does it matter that artists loose money?

As always and as usual, technology has rendered something else incredibly cheap. Books became a thousand times cheaper after the invention of the printer printing press, aluminium price pummelled plummeted after we found out how to get it from bauxite, industrial revolution decreased the price of everything, and now, information is almost free to share. Not that free actually, we still pay for Internet access and storage of data isn't free either. But as entertainment companyies are powerful, they try to refrain us to use from using what is ours, by, basically, controlling any exchange of data. So we must fight them. Simple.
I thought the music and software industries were actually YOUNGER than trivially easy file sharing. In fact, they were only made possible by trivially easy file sharing; you can't make assloads of money from selling music if you need to carve the discs out of platinum or something. Film industry, maybe not. They had a nice golden age of glory before VHS came.

Anyway, if quality software was cheap-as-free to make, shouldn't the miracle of Free Market Capitalism push prices down? For some strange reason, the existence of free software isn't pushing commercial software out of business. Without knowing more of the matter, one could guess that having loads of money to spend on making their product is giving commercial software some kind of edge over volunteer-driven projects. Which would suggest that despite being information, software isn't free to make. Truly shocking. The same goes for music. And film. And books.

Entertainment companies are providing a service, at their terms. If you disagree with the terms, you are free to not use their service. If you need the service, pray and hope entertainment companies feel gracious enough to keep providing it.

Speaking of Toady One, I don't think his business model would work for the game industry. He's been making his game for like six years now, and it is nowhere close to nearing completion. Modern games with sophisticated graphics are fairly expensive to make, requiring game developers to take millions of dollars of other people's money in advance to afford it. They then work very hard, cutting features as needed to meet the deadline. And for most of its development cycle, the game won't be entertaining to play at all. Most games in Alpha state are horrible, unplayable monsters, and developers have to pay the testers to play them, rather than the other way round.
Logged

DarthCloakedDwarf

  • Bay Watcher
  • Urist McCloaked
    • View Profile
Re: Let's Discuss Piracy
« Reply #110 on: May 14, 2010, 03:39:03 pm »

Piracy is the reason why I will probably never make games to sell (even for like, $2 a game) because I'll only sell a single copy. Then that person will go onto a file sharing site and then everyone will have it, and then no one will buy it because everyone already has it.

I will then have completely wasted my time.
Logged
Yes. Clearly a bug that ought to be fixed in the future, but exploit it in the meantime.

Aescula: *snerk*  Just thought of a picture I saw a long tome ago...
Darth Guy: A long, long tome ago, in a library far, far away?

Soadreqm

  • Bay Watcher
  • I'm okay with this. I'm okay with a lot of things.
    • View Profile
Re: Let's Discuss Piracy
« Reply #111 on: May 14, 2010, 03:46:30 pm »

Ah, but if you ask like a million dollars for that single copy you are scheduled to sell, you can still make a decent profit if you manage to keep the production costs low enough.
Logged

quinnr

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Let's Discuss Piracy
« Reply #112 on: May 14, 2010, 03:52:26 pm »

That's...an awesome idea.

If the entire world manages to raise millions of dollars, you can have the game.
Logged
To exist or not exist, that is the query. For whether it is more optimal of the CPU to endure the viruses and spam of outragous fortune, or to something something something.

DarthCloakedDwarf

  • Bay Watcher
  • Urist McCloaked
    • View Profile
Re: Let's Discuss Piracy
« Reply #113 on: May 14, 2010, 03:57:51 pm »

Ah, but if you ask like a million dollars for that single copy you are scheduled to sell, you can still make a decent profit if you manage to keep the production costs low enough.
Name one person who would pay a million dollars for a computer game.
Logged
Yes. Clearly a bug that ought to be fixed in the future, but exploit it in the meantime.

Aescula: *snerk*  Just thought of a picture I saw a long tome ago...
Darth Guy: A long, long tome ago, in a library far, far away?

LeoLeonardoIII

  • Bay Watcher
  • Plump Helmet McWhiskey
    • View Profile
Re: Let's Discuss Piracy
« Reply #114 on: May 14, 2010, 03:57:56 pm »

Or, as a respected video game designer, you ask for money beforehand. Once you get your full payment, you make and release the game for free distribution to everyone forever.

Ah, but to become a respected video game designer, who people would pay money to on the trust that he will make a good game, you have to pay your dues.

You work as a game designer and release your games for free, accepting general donations. You work as part of a game designer team which is selling some kind of subscription game (like an MMO or something that just constantly updates with new content, or microtransactions, or whatever).

Look at it this way. Pick a game you really like, where the project director also made a couple games you also liked. He puts out a press release saying he's going to make a sequel. Imagine that he has already made a good sequel, and you liked that too. So you're willing to pour $20 or $100 or whatever into the project so he can get paid and begin working on it. When he's done, you like everyone else can download the game.

Free riders are a problem. The people who pay into it may feel like chumps. But if you don't get enough people paying in, the project fails and nobody gets the game.

I know I paid my money to Toady. When 1.0 comes around he's definitely going to get an envelope from me again. I would totally be a part of a Threshhold Pledge thing. And I'm the cheapest gamer you will ever meet.

I have made figurines and wargaming terrain out of carboard and paper that I had lying around.
Logged
The Expedition Map
Basement Stuck
Treebanned
Haunter of Birthday Cakes, Bearded Hamburger, Intensely Off-Topic

Firehound

  • Bay Watcher
  • !!human!!
    • View Profile
Re: Let's Discuss Piracy
« Reply #115 on: May 17, 2010, 10:38:41 pm »

Because it's not taking anything. It is, quite literally, asking someone what the content in question looks like, and reproducing it on your own machine. Trying to label that "theft" would be like trying to label "creating, at your own labor and expense, an exact copy of a given car, by asking someone who owned one what it looked like" as "grand theft auto".

Yes, clicking a download link and building a car are exactly the same thing.

And that would still be illegal, because you're not a licensed manufacturer of the design, and you're not paying the designer any royalties for using their car design.  Really, this argument just keeps coming back to a myopic, egotistical interpretation of a very shallow understanding of the law, where murder and theft are the only crimes, and if you can use good enough wordplay, anything you do is perfectly legal because it doesn't fit an incredibly strict interpretation of that shallow understanding of the law.

An apt description of the American Legal system.

"Your wrong because their lawyer sounds better then yours."
Logged

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Mandaril

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Let's Discuss Piracy
« Reply #116 on: May 17, 2010, 11:54:29 pm »

This far I've resisted the temptation to download anything, partly because of wonderful service named Spotify. However I'm extremely tempted to sometimes just download the latest episodes of my favourite series, for example. Why?

In tens and tens of channels, there are only few things I watch, and my country shows the episodes with YEARS of delay. If at all. So I can easily imagine why someone like me would download, if they did.

If I downloaded stuff, it would be because I have no other way to see the stuff I want. Seriously, up to year or more wait for a dvd/bluray release to come out because I can't see it from tv? I can take it now, but if the service providers don't make things better, one day I might not be able to resist the temptation.
Logged
Oddom Adagsibrek, war Mandrill (Tame)
"He is incredibly skinny yet gigantic overall. His hair is brown. His skin is cinnamon. His upper body bears a very short straight scar. His left front leg bears the marks of old wounds, including a tiny straight scar. His right front foot bears a very short straight scar. His throat bears a massive curving scar. His eyes are orange."
Pages: 1 ... 6 7 [8]