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[Gantolandon]

When did all this piracy hullabaloo start up, anyway? I mean, the big dogs using it as an excuse to push control over digital/intellectual material, etc, etc.

In the game industry it really started after Internet really developed and people started to set up servers with game copies (warez). This is roughly when CD-keys started to be a standard. Of course, someone would crack the copy protection, so publishers started to scream for even better copy protection.  And someone probably realized, that while he can't do anything about piracy, at least he can force the customers to pay the same amount of money for less. The music and movie industry were already doing this - DRM is their idea actually. So why not?

There is also another problem - this is their last stand. If restrictive copy protection doesn't work, the publishers would really have to rethink their business model - and drastically. This is not something that you would want to explain to your boss and/or shareholders. It's much better to pay a moderate amount of money for even more restrictive DRM, proclaim it uncrackable and celebrate victory.

And there are some dumb executives who actually think that DRM has a huge impact on piracy. Nothing says that a manager can't be disconnected from reality - the higher up in the ladder, the greater chance that he doesn't even know how this actually works.

[fenrif]

When did all this piracy hullabaloo start up, anyway? I mean, the big dogs using it as an excuse to push control over digital/intellectual material, etc, etc.

In the game industry it really started after Internet really developed and people started to set up servers with game copies (warez). This is roughly when CD-keys started to be a standard. Of course, someone would crack the copy protection, so publishers started to scream for even better copy protection.  And someone probably realized, that while he can't do anything about piracy, at least he can force the customers to pay the same amount of money for less. The music and movie industry were already doing this - DRM is their idea actually. So why not?

There is also another problem - this is their last stand. If restrictive copy protection doesn't work, the publishers would really have to rethink their business model - and drastically. This is not something that you would want to explain to your boss and/or shareholders. It's much better to pay a moderate amount of money for even more restrictive DRM, proclaim it uncrackable and celebrate victory.

And there are some dumb executives who actually think that DRM has a huge impact on piracy. Nothing says that a manager can't be disconnected from reality - the higher up in the ladder, the greater chance that he doesn't even know how this actually works.

Before CD keys you had question/answer blocks on progression. "turn to page 17 paragraph 2 word 5 of the manual to continue."

Why would they rethink their buisness model when the music and film industry have proven you can just throw money at the lawmakers to pass laws that protect the middlemen's outdated practices indefinatly?

[Sowelu]

personally I think DRM's should go back to how you lot described earlier in the thread, where games when pirated would have a fault with them like, a gun firing out of line or the game not letting you past a certain level or deleting everything you have done. That seems like a batter idea, and is not sticking a big middle finger up at the consumers who buy the game.

It used to be that if your copy protection didn't work, or if you were missing a part from your box, you KNEW it right off and you could complain to the company or at least knew that something was broken.

Copy protection has a nasty way of triggering on legitimate customers sometimes.  And while a SNES game can get away with this--there are basically no false positives, ever, since the hardware and bios are a completely known factor--PC games, not so much.

[Aklyon]

New news, seems silly. 'UltraViolet'
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/not-so-moronic-dece-drm-scheme-a-big-improvement.ars

Apple has not joined DECE nor has it licensed FairPlay, meaning that UltraViolet videos won't play in iTunes, nor will UltraViolet devices be able to play iTunes encrypted video.
-snip-
All of this could have been accomplished years ago by just selling the video without DRM, like the music industry finally did, since anyone interested in pirating the content had no difficulty in doing so anyway.

[nenjin]

Someone wants to become the Steam of digital video.

Good luck, I really don't see that taking off. They only really got the project rolling in 2010.

[Aklyon]

Someone wants to become the Steam of digital video.

But unlike Steam, this thing has a very well-known to the public competitor in iTunes.

[nenjin]

Unlike iTunes though, they aren't trying to tie in sales to their whole device line. That's why iTunes' share is always relative to the device's market share.

These guys are shooting for a much broader base.

[Levi]

Someone wants to become the Steam of digital video.

Good luck, I really don't see that taking off. They only really got the project rolling in 2010.

I dunno, steam for digital video would be pretty nice.  Steam made buying games more convenient than pirating games for me, something like that could make buying movies more convenient than pirating them (assuming they were reasonably priced, which most movies aren't).  If I could have a legal digital movie collection that I didn't need to worry about platform and I could own forever it would be pretty nice.

[Aklyon]

It would be nice only if it was made right. this is pretty much Spore DRM + changes.

UltraViolet will support six accounts per family, each of which can access the full set of family-owned video content, but only support 12 unique devices per family.

[Levi]

It would be nice only if it was made right. this is pretty much Spore DRM + changes.

UltraViolet will support six accounts per family, each of which can access the full set of family-owned video content, but only support 12 unique devices per family.

Boo. 

Yeah, that sounds kind of lousy. 

[Sowelu]

Someone wants to become the Steam of digital video.

Good luck, I really don't see that taking off. They only really got the project rolling in 2010.

I dunno, steam for digital video would be pretty nice.  Steam made buying games more convenient than pirating games for me, something like that could make buying movies more convenient than pirating them (assuming they were reasonably priced, which most movies aren't).  If I could have a legal digital movie collection that I didn't need to worry about platform and I could own forever it would be pretty nice.

For my own personal purposes, Netflix does this job exactly right.

I NEVER watch movies more than once, unless it's with someone else who's never seen it before--and my friends usually have the same tastes as me, so they would already have seen it.  I like watching some old TV series that would cost like $50 to buy, but instead I can go through them in a month for $9.99 by streaming them online at great quality.  I don't own a TV or any console that could play DVDs, so I'm using my computer anyway.

The only problems I have with Netflix streaming is 1) no subtitles, 2) not everything is out yet.  1 is a problem with probably any digital option, and 2 is remedied by getting the physical discs (which I almost never even do anymore).

It's not ownership, but...well, renting is the new owning, I guess.  Why buy something that you don't need to buy, when it's cheaper to rent?

[nenjin]

People still have this fascination with media collections. I'm the same way. I'll watch something once, and if I want to watch it again, I'll rent it. I loves me some movies, but I don't see the value in having them sitting around.

TBH, games used to be the same way for me, until the PC industry's asshole puckered up tighter than a snare drum. I remember when I used to be able to rent PC games, and video stores had actually selections to choose from for console games.

Might actually start getting into Gamefly, I've heard good things.

[Sowelu]

I dunno.  I tend to play video games over a long span of time.  Like, Bioshock isn't a LONG long game (in the way that Final Fantasy games are).  But I would never want to rent it.  Same way with your Halo kinds of games; you beat it, then you want to kick the difficulty up a couple notches and try it again.  Even something like Iji I would want to play over a long period.  And random stuff like Eversion...I dunno.  It would be too much effort to rent it compared to what I get out of playing it, but it's still cute enough to fire it up once in a while just for giggles.

[nenjin]

Having played a lot of Bioshock...I think it was a quality rental. But a rental still. Not that I regret owning it for $20, but, if I could have rented it for 3 months and returned it, I'd probably be just as happy.

There are games I do need to own. But there's a huge percentage of them out there, that are really only good for a playthrough. Two if you've got selective amnesia. Army of Two? Kane & Lynch? Mercenaries? Need for Speed? Some of these titles were born to be rented.

[Sowelu]

What's your ideal price point to rent a game like Bioshock, then?  And you say 'for three months', that seems like a real long time.  Is this a Gamefly thing, and if so, how exactly does it work?  One game at a time, return it whenever?