This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: Digital Piracy Is Evil: From YKTTW
Shay Guy: Removed this:
- A recent episode of the Nickelodeon show iCarly shows the police trying to catch someone selling pirated DVDs, and the characters are all in favor of the man's arrest, despite the three main characters being supposedly net-savvy kids who have probably watched their share of illegally-copied media. (Honestly, are any fans in favor of selling pirated media, not just downloading?)
...because when you read it, it just looks silly.
Vampire Buddha: I'm a bit suspicious of this:
- If the viewers know what the characters are talking about, they will probably feel a bit alienated, since most audience members are on the opposite side of this debate.
Charred Knight: Sadly, from my experience that's quite true, humanity tends to only care about instant gratification, and don't really care about the consenquences. Americans only stopped driving insane amounts of gas guzzling cars because of Gas prices, and apparently gas guzzlers are in huge demand in China due to cheap gas.
Dalantia: True or not, it seems to take a side. On a page like this, which is something of a hot-button issue, I hate to say it, but we probably shouldn't leave the impression that The Collective takes a side for or against - focus on "This is the trope, this is how it is used", instead of turning the page into an Author Tract on how the notion of someone encouraging us to buy their product instead of get it through other methods is evil.
Mike S: Are there enough straight examples of this available? (Characters treating piracy as evil, rather than anti-piracy PS As preceding the work.) The examples given are nearly all subversions or aversions.
Kalle: cut this quote for length-related reasons:
- "How do you think this stuff gets made?
You think artists create if they don't get paid?
It's the only reason they do what they do,
It's not the flipping work, most of that's poo!
They depend on the money that you idiots give,
So they can make more crap and so they can live
The good life! Yes, the life of the stars,
But you're taking their pools and you're taking their cars!
You bastards!"— Adam Buxton, "Piracy"
later: ... and again. Won't somebody please think of the 1024x768 users? D:
"
Austin: I removed this
- Wait, wait, WAAAAAAIIIIT... This troper is Brazilian, and "piracy finances organized crime" is NOT Truth in Television, unless you think those dudes with DV Ds in crownded bazar-like streets are evil Organized Crime Mooks, instead of Informal Workers that took to pirating DV Ds as a way to feed themselves and survive in a sucky country to live in. Organized Crime would never waste their time selling Pirated Movies for R$2.50, they waste their time drug dealing, like any decent kind of Organized Crime in the world.
- We had "piracy finances the drugs trade" in the UK, but it's not seen as much now they've realised that Viewers Aren't Morons and know full well what actually finances the drugs trade.
Because it's too much of a generalization. It also seems to make the assumption that drug dealing is the only type of crime OC groups are guilty of, which isn't even close to true. Organized Crime groups that expand beyond drug dealing often dip their hands into many different kinds of crimes, although I seriously doubt that sites offering free downloads are connected to crime groups. Also, drug dealing can be financed by other, more culturally accepted crimes (like gambling for the Mafia) instead of just users, but I don't know if piracy ever has. To be fair, I modified the original statement from "Truth in Television" to point out that it does sometimes happen
fleb: Endless natter as far as the eye can see...
- Or in EA's case, that SecuROM is backfiring on them for being draconian.
- Worth shedding a tear for World Of Goo, though. A completely original game, $20, highly rated by everybody, no Secu ROM or DRM or anything... and approximately 90% of the copies people have are pirated.
- 'cept that they have the Wii version backing them up.
- The World of Goo developers present the important caveat that 99.99999% of the people who pirated the game wouldn't have bought it anyway if they couldn't get it for free (based on the fact that a similar independent game with extensive copyright protection had virtually identical sales figures, i.e. the extensive copy-protection made not a whit of difference in sales). That doesn't make it any less despicably akin to robbing a one-eyed Ethiopian puppy.
- Crysis was worse, it was estimated that for every 1 sold copy, 15 were pirated. It's only DRM was that it needed the CD to run. The sequel used Secu ROM and was sold much more.
- Of course, Crysis was a game that appeared to be designed for some sort of futuristic, crystal-based computer, and would have caused that to chug. The sequel runs much better on lower-specced computers, and more people have computers of awesome. Bigger possible audience = more sales. I wonder how many of those downloads were people seeing if the game worked on their rigs, without blowing actual money?
- Inside word is that Crytek is just using (overstated) complaints about piracy as an excuse to ditch PC gaming entirely and go console-exclusive where the big $$$ are.
- Such companies could be as well as... uhm... quite overconfident.
- Overconfidence does enter into it: a lot of companies make the assumption that everyone who downloads the game for free would have paid full price for it. Once the principle of supply and demand is taken into account, along with the fact that Copy Protection is invariably broken, many of them may actually be paying more to the DRM companies than they'd have lost through additional piracy had they not used it.
- Yet, some companies like Stardock made quite a good amount of money out of their game, which has no DRM. This is their policy.
- Which makes the whole DRM issue very questionable. There are instances of games going bankrupt from no DRM, and there are instances of games being very successful from no DRM. In fact, from what I've noticed, while DRM may lose sales, having it will keep a more stable sales figure between the two variations of without DRM.
- Stardock also has a unique business model approach to games: there's no DRM, so yes, you can steal it, but if you want the updates (and they are generally packed with content in addition to game fixes), then you need to buy the full game. Very few companies are interested in constantly investing into the same game like this, however, so DRM for everyone!
- Or in EA's case, that SecuROM is backfiring on them for being draconian.
Filby: Took out this natter from under the Dan Slott entry:
- And he roundly-and deservedly- became the subject of ridicule when people saw the 12 gigs of downloaded material in his ratio.
- How is that 'deservedly'? If the point is not "never download anything ever" but "pay for stuff you like in order to support the creators" then there's no hypocrisy in having a lot of downloads so long as you buy stuff too.
- Because he most certainly didn't say 'just keep it in mind,' he asked them not to download She-Hulk period. It's what we call 'hypocrisy.'
slb removed the following from the Brian Wood/Warren Ellis section:
- Wood does like the sound of his own opinions though, so the fact that he helped drag out such a discussion is hardly surprising
for natter.
Thinks Too Much: Should we sort the page into two sections, straight examples and inversions/counterexamples?
Caswin: Decrying Communism is Values Dissonance?
Caswin: "And why wouldn't musicians support filesharing?..." A natter fight is out of the question, of course, but I did have a question about this. The entry claims that the "pennies" that artists lose on CD sales if they advocate filesharing would be more than made up for by added exposure. What will exposure give them?
Daibhid C: Presumably, the idea is that the real money's in live concerts. And you can't pirate a live concert (well, you can, but it's clearly not the same as actually Being There).
