Ethics and Legality of Copyright and Online Distribution

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So.... what was the point of all the discussion about online Diablo 3 gaming if it didn't let us get closer to a consensus of Online Distribution?

What profit is it to a man, when he gains his money, but loses his internet? Anonymous 16:26 I believe...

"We're waiting to see how this model pans out, and then can come up with better opinions on Blizzard's new twist on an older model?" I think that's the short-form.

Well, the question is if it's primarily being done as a form of DRM or if it's being done for game design reasons. I actually think this is an important question, in terms of the way that the market is going to go.

Democracy is the process in which we determine the government that we deserve

I'm sure it's both. Making a game online-only is clearly an anti-piracy measure, but it also gives Blizzard the opportunity to implement features like a RMT auction house that would be impossible to do in an offline game due to the inevitable cheating.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Eh, that's no more impossible than the online-only features included in Diablo 2 that were simply not functional for single player/open realms characters. Of course, it's probably easier just to code a single universal system, and I don't even blame the devs for it - I just wish they'd admit that there are drawbacks too, that it's not a universal upgrade. Especially after what the fanbase went through with their last so-called universal upgrade, Battlenet 2.0.

Blizzard has this habit of doing what's best for them and then claiming it's what's best for everyone. It comes across as condescending even when you theoretically agree with the end goal in mind.

edited 4th May '12 9:08:50 AM by Karkadinn

Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.

I am unclear how one would go about making such a change without it being seen as condescending, but oh well.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Just so you know, there's a difference between being pushy and being sincere. If you really wanna implement something into your digital products, shouldn't you offer a grace periods approach like releasing betas?

What profit is it to a man, when he gains his money, but loses his internet? Anonymous 16:26 I believe...

http://movies.yahoo.com/blogs/movie-talk/scared-annoyed-more-dvd-anti-piracy-warnings-221532151.html

They're just digging themselves deeper...

edited 15th May '12 6:25:50 PM by TroperOnAStickV2

Hopefully I'll feel confident to change my avatar off this scumbag soon. Apologies to any scumbags I insulted.

Wow, I'm sure that's going to put the fear of God into all those filthy viewers watching DVDs that they legally bought and paid for. [/sarcasm]

To be fair, someone has to scan the original copy. Indeed, under current law, distributing is a much worse crime than downloading.

I tend to agree with the law in this regard that the wrong is in the people distributing, not the people using.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

As if distribution (word-of-mouthing) is a means that offsets the media profits....

Tell ya what: I BUY YOUR MOVIES TO WATCH THEM. Put the warnings on the case, and be done with it. I don't buy them to watch your silly, INEFFECTIVE, warnings. RUINS MY MOOD

What profit is it to a man, when he gains his money, but loses his internet? Anonymous 16:26 I believe...

Especially because pirates WILL REMOVE those same warnings. And many people wouldn't realize that piracy exist if it weren't for those stupid ads.

The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.

those two things are not one in the same. Word-of-mouthing is telling someone that they have to buy this product to check out how cool it is. Distribution is giving someone this product so they don't have to buy it anymore. While that still may lead to a future customer, the questionable part happens when you're not just giving the stuff away, but selling someone's product without giving them a cut.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

Why do people in threads like these keep saying this?

All it does is help refute one of the more important arguments on the anti-legislation side: the idea that online distribution isn't sufficiently damaging to overall sales to warrant it. You're basically following it up with "and the reason why it's still profitable for the companies is because a lot of consumers don't know that they can download it".

If I understand the situation correctly, downloaders are saving money without running a risk of being arrested for it, and clearly the risk of viruses is low enough that those people still do it, so I'm not seeing any personal downside to actually taking part. Thus, if I know that I can get all these things for free with only a minimal additional effort, the fact that I don't do it proves that I am either sufficiently altruistic to the process or an utter moron.

I'd hate for it to be the latter. I'd hate to think that all entertainment industries are heading the way of network television and website hosting, where a large portion of people enjoy a service for free thanks to another large portion of the audience being sufficiently idiotic that seeing an advertisement actually compels them to go out and purchase the depicted product. At the very least, I'd hate for it to be considered the way it should be.

So please prove me wrong. Please show me a reason to have faith that if we announced to the world that you can download all of these things for free without fear of consequences, there would still be more than enough people willing to pay for the products that the industry wouldn't shortly crash from the news. Because the alternative is that downloaders are simply leeching off legitimate customers and eliminating them is a sound option.

That is a good point. If content creators could not earn a profit on their creations given a totally open market in which paying for something is legally optional, then there is a legitimate case to be made that copyright (and, by direct consequence, copyright enforcement) is necessary.

Now it's been suggested that some sort of socially subsidized content creation would potentially work, where you can earn a living wage by "doing art" regardless of its value or popularity. But that would, nevertheless, utterly kill the concept of the blockbuster film or the AAA video game title, because there would be no way to recoup the investment.

edited 16th May '12 1:07:55 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Fighteer: You could easily create a socialized system that rewards content providers based on traffic that the central content bank receives. There's no reason why some works couldn't be rewarded more or less than others.

I think your use of the term "easily" is ever so slightly exaggerating there, Tomu. You're talking about unseating something built into the fabric of human culture.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Yup. Marx was horribly, horribly wrong about a few fundamental facts. People tend to be rather greedy.

I think he meant that if such a system was in place, rewarding those who had more traffic more than those who had little traffic would be easy.

Well, sure — in fact, such a thing would probably be demanded as a condition for creating a socialized IP system in the first place. But you are never going to get people to willingly subscribe to a system in which content creators don't, by default, own the rights to exclusively profit from their work. It's one thing to willingly surrender one's rights; it's quite another to be told that you don't get them in the first place.

edited 16th May '12 2:08:40 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I'm trying to propose solutions! I can't be expected to cow tow to human nature :P

Let's take You Tube as an example. People who upload videos to You Tube own those videos, and you aren't supposed to just copy them willy-nilly. However, there's no charge to view them, and so success becomes a matter of popularity (and likes) rather than how much you can sell your work for. Creators earn money not from selling their works directly to the public, but indirectly from Google sharing the ad revenue their work generates.

This would seem to be an ideal prototype of the type of IP market that you're talking about Tomu, but let's look at the reality. You have to be monstrously successful to be able to earn a living on You Tube; most users cannot afford to quit their day jobs (or don't have them to begin with). Also, the fact that views = revenue means that people plagiarizing popular content is rampant.

While the You Tube model may allow for professionally produced content, it certainly doesn't generate the kinds of revenues needed to support the modern film industry. We would never see a movie like The Avengers if it was distributed on You Tube.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

The difference is that You Tube earns revenue through ad revenue. A socialized database earns revenue through taxes.

Basically, ignoring the human component (HA HA HA HA HA-that's always a good way to start a theory), there is money spent on production that goes to distributors, marketing teams, etc. Middlemen. If dollar per dollar, the country instead spent that revenue as taxes which went to fund a central media database, and the database offered works for download, tallying downloads, and rewarding "High volume" works, you would have a surplus.

It really is just about getting rid of the middlemen.