Reducing Piracy May Stimulate World Economy

Krazypoloc said:
Why can't we just have software rentals? Just like the library. You pay a monthly/yearly membership fee and you can rent whatever programs you want, unlimited usage and no trial versions, however you can only rent 5 applications at a time.
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Maybe something like the Microsoft Action Pack for home users?

I got the Action pack years ago when they had a deal for $99. I was in the business, working on my MCSE and needed some hands on with some of the server software. Now it's $299 a year, so I'd find it hard to justify the price since I don't need access to all the server stuff anymore.

However, I'd gladly pay $99 a year for access to all the current versions of Windows (home, pro, ultimate), Office, Project, home server, ect, with up to 10 licenses like the action pack that I can use around the house.

Microsoft would actually make more money from me at $99 a year, and I wouldn't still be running an 8 year old OS and Office 2003 on some of my systems.
 
Azhar said:
No, it applies to everything. If you can't afford it, then you can't have it. There is absolutely no justification to piracy whether you define it was copyright infringement or theft or whatever.
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This is true, strictly speaking. But, I hate the fact that the software, movie, and music industries all think they shit gold. And if you buy that gold you can never return it if you don't like it or it doesn't work for whatever reason. And sometimes they lace their golden shit with DRM that may hamper performance or perhaps cause their "product" to flat out not work. Now the gaming industry is trying to hamper/control/cut in on the used game market. So now if you don't like a game, you can't bring it back and you might not even be able to recoup some loss in a resale. Yes, I believe their can be some reasoning to piracy. As a consumer, I have no protections whatsoever when it comes to this stuff.
 
Kalabalana said:
In my experience, piracy has encouraged sales.
(Friend of mine has dropped 2 grand in the past 2 years because of his developed interest in computing and gaming thanks to a few initial pirated games. Now, he's bought most of the same games successors in addition to other games.)
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This. I know a TON of guys who ended up buying all sorts of games after they got to try a few out at LAN parties certain frats at my college hosted.

On the music front, one of them is also into instrumental music and he told me a while ago how he'll sometimes download the first track of a CD he can't preview on Amazon/wherever else, then delete it after listening and make his decision. Based on the size of his CD collection, which is roughly large enough to go around the world several times, I'd say what he did led to quite a few sales.
 
World economy. . . . right . . . only if you consider India's economy "the world economy".
 
Azhar said:
Bullshit. Most people pirate because they're cheap. Don't tell me nobody can afford a 99 cent mp3 download, but a $50-$99 a month broadband connection.
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Allow me to clarify, Oh-High-And-Mighty: This forum's lack of a f-cking edit button on these discussions makes communications difficult.

My point is, if they weren't going to buy it anyway (whether it's because they're "cheap" or legitimately cannot afford the item), saying one pirate = one lost sale is retarded.
 
Hey heres an idea, instead of spending 30% of a games budget on DRM that is broken in days, don't spend anything. Instant extra 30% profit.
 
If a software developer has an expensive piece of software that has no trial peroid, or a trial that has features disabled, how can they expect people to pay full-price for something that may not work as we need it to. What if for whatever reason a piece of software is incompatible with our machines? (Not very common anymore)

If software were returnable, which it isn't, my above point would be moot.

PC games (maybe all software) needs a rental system. I'd gladly pay a fraction of the cost for software to make sure it's something I really wanted to own. Anydvd has gotten pretty good at locking out their software after the trial period, so it can't be that hard to do.

I am sick of buying software (mostly games) only to install it, run it for ten minutes and then never look at it again.

Just for the record, since I sound pretty pro-piracy, I have no pirated software on either of my machines. I've spent a shitload supporting the developers of the software I use daily. Software developers need to stop with the invasive DRM (that will inevitably be cracked anyway) as it only really hurts their paying customers.
 
Wait, isn't the amount of piracy in Russia greater than their GDP? So if we stop piracy in Russia, we'd boost their economy by the amount equal to their GDP? (Yeah right...)
 
WBurchnall said:
Wait, isn't the amount of piracy in Russia greater than their GDP? So if we stop piracy in Russia, we'd boost their economy by the amount equal to their GDP? (Yeah right...)
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Exactly...

Reports like these are very poorly thought out. Their only purpose is to work as propaganda to support their position on legal issues.
 
DeathPrincess said:
Hey heres an idea, instead of spending 30% of a games budget on DRM that is broken in days, don't spend anything. Instant extra 30% profit.
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No, but nice try. In that case, people would just burn copies of any game they buy for their 10 best friends. This would be especially true in cases of popular titles like Halo 3 if Microsoft didn't have its anti-piracy system build into the xbox 360 to prevent most burnable disc from reading, updating the firmware occasionally to prevent modchips, etc.

If MS consoles played burnt cames with no modding needed b/c they put no efforts into anti piracy, I suspect game sales would be at most 10% of their current level. Once ppl figured out, 'Hey, i can just copy this game I rented and have it FOREVER in my collection for a $0.50 dvr' profits would go way down. Sure you'd save money on drm but your sales would take completely counter-acting that 'save 30% effect' and driving a company into the red.
 
no it wouldnt since the use of piracy provides millions of jobs world wide.

lol.

most countries still use pirated software since they cant afford billionare software prices. a person whose income is 2000$/yr is not going to pay 1000$ for windows server 2003 lol.

anywho... american companies use pirated software daily, to what extent are they implying? whose software is more important. malwarebytes is used by every tech i ever met but nobody pays for it.
 
Can you steal something that you can't actually own in the first place? :p

Yeah, I know you can, but thinking of it this way makes it sound outrageous.
 
also ps: how many farking gaming companies in the last year have fired everyone BEFORE THE GAME IS RELEASED THE DAY IT GOES GOLD. and your telling me if the game wasnt pirated they wouldnt of fired everyone? BS.

george lucas is the dark side along with EA and every other ridiculous company that blames piracy for their staff cuts.
 
greatbear you make a good point with so many companies lately saying you don't own the product you bought which makes no sense. if you dont own it then you cant steal it.
 
Actually it will create less "tech" jobs.

The gaming industry will remain to have the same amount of game developers, regardless if piracy is stopped or not. If I am wrong, it would hardly affect the gain of more game developers anyways... no more than 5000 people.

Now on the other hand, piracy requires tons of bandwidth. Who needs to operate all the machines that have held, transported, or compiled all the piracy? Hell of a lot more nerdy tech guys working on servers, and swapping drives than what the game industry will ever see in its whole I presume.

How many people does it take to make a normal game anyways?

This person writing the article should spend his time looking at all the big companies shipping out jobs oversees (google: outsourcing) and showing congress whats really causing our loss of jobs in the tech industry... COUGH, Dell hindu, COUGH. I have had one of these hindu guys recommend 4GB's of ram for a Dell system of theirs (my customer) that could only take one stick of ram, and had Windows XP anyways (which uses at most 3GB max, so 4GB was pointless and overcharging of Dell hindu rep)
 
study's and statistics always show what the person or company that funded them want them to say...PERIOD.

the statements made are so ambiguous.

i pirate cause i can, if i couldn't, i would go without
 
If I were to hypothetically pirate something I'd do it for one of three reasons...1) It's something I can live without and wouldn't buy it anyway, 2) It's something I wanted but couldn't find a fully functional demo to try out before I dumped a ton of money on it, and 3) Pirating offers it in a form I want and the provider refuses to support.

To elaborate on #3 take a look at HTPC setups vs cable. By downloading rips one can watch it on any tv, any device, any number of times they want and the big upside is that you can get them again should your hardware fail. If your cable provider's DVR breaks you're screwed, good luck getting all of those old shows you wanted. The benefits to a HTPC setup over cable are numerous. Let's face it, for a truly usable HTPC setup pirating is far from free. $15/month for usenet, $45 for internet, one time fees for indexing services, and then you have the hardware setup and your time. I would gladly pay my TV provider if they could offer me something similar but they seem so hell bent on wasting their time fighting pirates that they miss the legitimate complaints that lead them to it. Giving the people what they want won't stop piracy but it's a step in the right direction.
 
Development of games or any software is part business.

When someone comes up with an idea for a potentially awesome game, the publisher weighs in to see if making it is worthwhile. A lot of good game concepts are canceled because the financial rewards don't stack up with the financial risks. If you minimize the risk, then a publisher is much more inclined to risk it's money in investing in the development yet of another game. It's a business, if a publisher thinks they can make more than what they invested, they will give the game a green light. Otherwise it's a no go. It's all about risk and reward.

Piracy increases the risk. Imagine if everyone in China and Russia bought their software. We we would see a huge boom in software development in the U.S. The chances of breaking even in your software investment are much higher when you have all sorts of promise that foreign people will purchase it.
 
I'll ignore all the people who think that Piracy is illegal, immoral, etc. As the real reason most people Pirate is as varied as the posts in the [H]ard Forum. You can't lump them all together without making yourself look ignorant.

There are however, several points to be made regarding Piracy.

1. If you want to cut out Piracy, lower your damn price. Need any examples on this, just check out Steam, everytime they lower the price on games, they get tons of people buying.

2. Some Pirates think of themselves like Robin Hood, robbing from the Rich (like Microsoft needs another Billion in Profits), and giving to themselves (and or friends, family, etc).

3. With companies poor regard to their paying customers (DRM, Allows on Internet Connection, Wont take back or replace defective media, etc). I can't begin to list the times I've had a damaged CD/DVD (for either Games, Music, or Movies), which the companies that made them, wont do anything for you, the paying customer. They simply want you to pony up the money and buy another copy.

To me, the real crime being committed is the GREED these companies feed off of. Cause lets be real honest, if Music CD's cost $1, Movie DVD's cost $2 and Games cost $3, who wouldn't buy all that you wanted. And at that price, they would probably sell millions of copies more than they normally would. Think of it like this....

- A Gold Record is a Record that sells 1 million copies at say an average of $11 each = $11million
- A Platinum Record is one that sells 5 million copies at say an average of $11 each = $55 million

- At $1 for a Record, do you think that same Gold Record could sell 11 million copies? 100 million? or more with ease. Maybe you offer the same Record for $0.50 and sell 200 million copies. See where I'm going with this. The Record companies still make the same amout of money, and they are able to sell to a much larger audience.

I remember when Tapes first came out, and they were initially cheaper than Records ($8 vs $10). Then when CD's were introduced, they were supposted to be cheaper than Tapes (since the cost to make was estimated at $1 each). But guess what, the Music Industry's GREED actually forced the industry to price them at over $10.


So if you want to elminate Piracy, here are some Ideas that should help.

1. Lower the damn price. Since the only overhead with digital copies is bandwidth, the price on anything digital should be extremely low.

2. Give Software/Music away free to people, but charge corporations for it's use. There are too many examples to list for this, including the MalwareBytes example listed above. Its far easier for a company to be checked for Piracy, than it is to include DRM on every individual copy of a given software. Besides, everyone knows that Pirates break/crack every DRM that has ever been released.

3. Include extras to entice people to buy your stuff. How about if I buy that Music CD, that I have a key to get some free behind the scenes videos, interviews, etc of the Band that is streamed from their website.

4. What about the Movie Industry you ask. How about Pay-per-view (cable, satellite, etc) of new releases at the same time they are in theatres. Oh yeah, at a resonable price, not the current price gouge rates you charge in a movie theatre. Hell, my home theatre is more high end, has more comforts, allows for bathroom and food breaks, and allows parents to watch adult rated movies after their little ones go to bed.

There are many more examples I could list, and I'm sure others will chime in with their ideas, the problem though, is nobody in the Music, Movie, or Game industry will listen. Instead they will hire lawyers to Bribe, errr Lobby, the Government to enact harsher laws on their citizens for Piracy.

The real scary part for us consumers is, the industry is headed to streaming of all this. So in fact, in the future, you wont have any media at all, it will just be pushed to whatever system you have, and tracked that way. So you will eventually have to pay for everything, at whatever price they want to charge. A win for GREEDY companies, and a loss for all consumers.
 
The topic of piracy is becoming a dead horse... Lets just face it. There are two theories to subscribe to: 1) Piracy is stealing, It causes prices to be inflated, millions of dollars are lost in sales. lost jobs, what ever...

2) Piracy is copyright infringement, just because someone pirates something, does not mean they would buy it, the world is a better place because of piracy, piracy is an integral part of the economy... whatever...

Back on topic...
I completely disagree with the article; I seriously doubt that the economy would be effected in the slightest bit. I really think that organizations use piracy as a crutch for other problems; a lowest common denominator, if you will...
 
Powerhouse2k said:
The real scary part for us consumers is, the industry is headed to streaming of all this. So in fact, in the future, you wont have any media at all, it will just be pushed to whatever system you have, and tracked that way. So you will eventually have to pay for everything, at whatever price they want to charge. A win for GREEDY companies, and a loss for all consumers.
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The funny thing is, what they're pushing towards is basically DIVX. You don't own something, but only own a license to use it how they want on a couple of devices, etc. Buy it again if you want a copy on your ipod. Buy it again if you want to watch it and accidently deleted it off of your Tivo. Etc. It's totally the DIVX model...just cloaked. Thanks to DRM that's basically what is going on.
 
GreenMonkey said:
The funny thing is, what they're pushing towards is basically DIVX. You don't own something, but only own a license to use it how they want on a couple of devices, etc. Buy it again if you want a copy on your ipod. Buy it again if you want to watch it and accidently deleted it off of your Tivo. Etc. It's totally the DIVX model...just cloaked. Thanks to DRM that's basically what is going on.
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Oh, and I'm not talking about the codec, kiddies. Google DIVX + Circuit City, kids.
 
If half of people are pirating as they claim, than piracy laws are no different than Prohibition in regards to the number of people doing it.

Do we really want an artificially-created Prohibition II?
 
WBurchnall said:
No, but nice try. In that case, people would just burn copies of any game they buy for their 10 best friends. This would be especially true in cases of popular titles like Halo 3 if Microsoft didn't have its anti-piracy system build into the xbox 360 to prevent most burnable disc from reading, updating the firmware occasionally to prevent modchips, etc.

If MS consoles played burnt cames with no modding needed b/c they put no efforts into anti piracy, I suspect game sales would be at most 10% of their current level. Once ppl figured out, 'Hey, i can just copy this game I rented and have it FOREVER in my collection for a $0.50 dvr' profits would go way down. Sure you'd save money on drm but your sales would take completely counter-acting that 'save 30% effect' and driving a company into the red.
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Fine maybe not no drm. But a simple copy protect DVD, checksum and key. Its just as effective and useful as all the other stupid DRM that costs the companies millios and millions. Look at asassins creed. They have to upkeep servers for DRM for every single person playing. They spent (probably) millions and millions on this system and its upkeep and it was broken in the first few days. A key system is a fire once program that costs almost nothing, is far beyond most ordinary people to stop simple copy 50c DVD hacks.

The consoles already have DRM on them. Yet companies will still spend stupid amounts on protecting their content for...3 days. If they can't see how thats a waste of time and money. These systems have to be integrated into games in some instances so messes with the game code,and even if they don't it adds more and more time to the production/staff hire costs. Public outrages against some DRM schemes have also led to poor sales. Get rid of all of this frivilous spending and you could shave a large chunk off development costs. Unless someone has come up with an uncrackable Drm... Until then it's all a big waste of money.
 
Personally for me, I wouldn't buy the game anyways so how could it be considered a lost sale?

I think the only way to slow down piracy is resort to the old way of dealing with software...

1.) Allow fucking returns of software with in at least 3 to 5 days. Hell give back in-store credit if you have too, but allow the return of software. I think this is one of the big factors of piracy. If you know that dropping $50.00 to $60.00 will give you zero chance of getting that money back because the game was a horrible experience, doesn't help the cause.

Suprised we haven't see subscriptions for gaming. For instance you pay $49.99 a month to play all the games you want. Hell you could charge a higher fee if you want access to "new" games once they get launched.

There are so many different ways to increase sales. But with how they treat consumers with software, Piracy will never go away.... IMO.
 
MajorDomo said:
A new study by the Business Software Alliance finds that piracy, if reduced by only a factor of 2.5% for four years, would result in producing 500,000 new high tech jobs. BSA claims they found four out of 10 programs installed on computers was pirated in one form or another, an alarming statistic
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if i can't pirate software, i just won't use it. I'll use some free alternative.
photoshop and MS office have many competent alternatives.

most home users don't even use 90% of the functions in photoshop. They only use photoshop because it is easy to obtain the pirated version.


the BSA forgot to mention that in a best case scenario, 500k jobs would be created............. IN INDIA. Companies still give a big fuck-you to us Americans.
 
I did a study that found if people gave me money for no reason 1 MILLION jobs would be created. I think we should start giving me money before we reduce piracy, obviously 1 million jobs is better than a measly 500k.
 
Shotglass01 said:
This is true, strictly speaking. But, I hate the fact that the software, movie, and music industries all think they shit gold. And if you buy that gold you can never return it if you don't like it or it doesn't work for whatever reason. And sometimes they lace their golden shit with DRM that may hamper performance or perhaps cause their "product" to flat out not work. Now the gaming industry is trying to hamper/control/cut in on the used game market. So now if you don't like a game, you can't bring it back and you might not even be able to recoup some loss in a resale. Yes, I believe their can be some reasoning to piracy. As a consumer, I have no protections whatsoever when it comes to this stuff.
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Buying anything digital is always a risk for consumers. Especially since it can be considered entertainment. When I go buy a car, I like to test drive it. How often can you test drive software today?

It's not like back in the day where you had shareware or demos, all over the place. Remember the magazines that had game demos in them? All gone.
 
The BSA knows nothing about economics. They truly need to read Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. http://fee.org/library/books/economics-in-one-lesson/#0.1_L2

For every 1 additional dollar the BSA sees due to reductions in "piracy" there is 1 dollar that cannot be spent elsewhere in the economy. For all the "seen" benefit to the tech industry, there is the "unseen" reduction that will take place in other industries due to those reductions.
 
xanas3712 said:
The BSA knows nothing about economics. They truly need to read Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. http://fee.org/library/books/economics-in-one-lesson/#0.1_L2

For every 1 additional dollar the BSA sees due to reductions in "piracy" there is 1 dollar that cannot be spent elsewhere in the economy. For all the "seen" benefit to the tech industry, there is the "unseen" reduction that will take place in other industries due to those reductions.
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A zero sum economy believer. I thought you all died out. Please tell me they are not teaching you that in college.

Even in a mythical existence where zero sum really works, a dollar spent, is a dollar destroyed. In reality, that dollar would in turn be spent again elsewhere, again, and again. The same dollar can be spent countless times. All that changes is who is spending it. It's only when people/corporations that have money get all panicky and stop spending that we have problem.

I think the BSA is full of shit on this, money spent, is money spent, after all. It just might not be being spent where the BSA wants it to be. But with that said, they are a far cry from the MPAA and RIAA, the BSA goes after corporations that at least have the capability of defending themselves in court. They don't go after Johnny Warez's dead grandmother or the like.
 
Ashbringer said:
The person I quoted said it applies to everything.
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Then my answer is yes. It applies to your well being. If you're not responsible for yourself, society shouldn't have to pay for it. If you're a victim of circumstances, then there are ways to get assistance. Stealing is not one of them. It applies to everything.
 
Redmond Magazine did a really good article on the BSA in their most recent issue. You might want to jump over to their site and read what some of the big business licensing companies have to deal with in regards to the BSA.

They are not a government entity, despite their government sounding name. They are a for profit, private enterprise. OF COURSE they want to bust you with anything they can re: piracy, or licensing issues, or anything of the sort. (They use piracy cause it sounds EVIL, but they'd be just as happy crushing you for 150,000 per violation if you license 99 copies for your office instead of 100 like you should). They are not to be trusted, and they should not be allowed to operate. They are extortionists and their practices are heinous.

Read the article, you'll see what I mean in detail.
 
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