Digital Piracy

Those clauses attempting to deprive customers of right-of-first-sale are legally dubious. The only thing you should bank on there is that they discourage laypeople from testing them.

edited 21st Nov '11 6:06:03 PM by SavageOrange

'Don't beg for anything, do it yourself, or else you won't get anything.'

To an extent, they are, but it's not doing much to help. Digital sales have been increasing steadily since 2004, but both physical and overall sales have been plummeting since that same year. source (second and third graphs)

EDIT: Whoops. Fix'd, thanks, Orange.

edited 21st Nov '11 6:09:19 PM by Wulf

They lost me. Forgot me. Made you from parts of me. If you're the One, my father's son, what am I supposed to be?

Think you're missing "quoteblock" tags

'Don't beg for anything, do it yourself, or else you won't get anything.'

People who advocate piracy almost behave as if they were being charged for something that they need, like electricity or gas. If you think the price is too high, then just don't get the bloody game. Don't pretend you're doing anything other than "I want it for free."

You're only being selfish and screwing over honest customers by encouraging DRM.

edited 21st Nov '11 7:08:51 PM by RTaco

I'll try to find the studies again.

For sale loss due to DRM, Stardock studies indicated it was in the 20-25% range, which is rather significant. That could turn companies from profitable corporate machines into stinking piles of crap.

I think people are stuck with the issue of having someone pay for something whereas someone else did not. That's certainly not that fair but I think that the issue of piracy is only so prevalent because the current model only allows for "Pay my price or pay nothing and pirate". So either you pirate, or you pay full price and there lacks any middle ground.

Businesses in real life, such as shops and other small outlets have largely solved their problem with this (people don't steal their goods because you can't magically digitally copy their stuff) through price discrimination. I'm saying that unless the digital-distribution formats follow the same manner, they're going to suffer high levels of piracy when they could be enjoying much higher sales.

For instance, a pizza store will sell their pizza for cheaper to students all the time. Would you call this student parasitism in the pizza industry? They are paying less than others for the exact same good after all.

edited 21st Nov '11 7:53:55 PM by breadloaf

There is a middle ground- it's called "buy the game used, during a sale, or after a few months, when the price has gone down."

edited 21st Nov '11 8:06:26 PM by DisasterGrind

^ There is, what I'm proposing, far more middle ground for digital media and the use of the internet. I stated some before but I'll restate some new pricing models

• No set price. It is based on number of pre-orders. Essentially the problem is that there is a single cost, the sunk cost of developing the product, but there is hardly any distribution cost. Therefore, the higher number of pre-orders, the lower the price of the good. Thus you pre-order, and get your friends to pre-order, the price goes down.

• Time-based pricing. If you pre-order, you get it at a cheaper price and enjoy a beta first.

• Voluntary donations. This is built into a game so that even pirated versions allow you to donate money (where if you get any money, it's more than zero so it's still better)

• Price discrimination. People of different groups get it at different prices. You a student? 75% off.

Used sales don't work with digital media unfortunately. If it's just a download from some indie developer's website, what are you reselling? Digital stuff becomes weird in that sense. The problem is trying to assign resources back to the developers for the amount they invested in there.

See I think the problem is also that people want to become a megarich man from developing a very popular product. But, you can still do that. Afterall, a market pays you what it is willing to pay you. Requiring a guy who produced a product to turn a profit based on regulated pricing is silly and anti-capitalist. If he doesn't enjoy a product, not enough people were willing to pay him any money.

edited 21st Nov '11 8:09:03 PM by breadloaf

It's not parasitism for a number of reasons- Firstly, the pizza place, the one who has to buy the ingredients and make the pizza is the one setting the price. Secondly, for this specific example, students get a discount because the pizza place knows two things- firstly, that students don't have a lot of money, and secondly, that students will buy a metric fuckton of pizza.longish continuation/explanation

Difference being, a pizza place (or game company) selling to certain people at a discount is choosing to do so, whereas they've got no control if we just walk in the back and take some pizza. And a couple more for our other friends. And some churros.

They lost me. Forgot me. Made you from parts of me. If you're the One, my father's son, what am I supposed to be?

A game company can't control (or at least theoretically shouldn't be able to control) the ability of you to sell a copy of your game to a third party either. Does the fact that you can make it unethical?

I simply don't think it's that simple or cut and dry. I actually think that used sales are more parasitical than raw downloading. Here's why. Let's assume a monopolistic competitive market that uses timed price discrimination. (This is generally what happens in terms of cultural products). If I buy a game used, I value it at say 20-30 or so. That means that when the price discrimination gets to a point where it costs that much, I already have the used thing or I buy it used instead as it gets to that point first.

Edit: I should add, that scale is still important of course. Not all parasitical activity is equal. Downloading something that you intended to buy is really bad. Downloading something just to try it out isn't nearly so much. Downloading a movie to watch once isn't nearly as bad as downloading a DVD to burn and put in your personal library, etc. You can insert things such as renting, library loans and used sales into these scales as well.

Or I only want to pay 10 so I rent it, or whatever. Again, this is all kind of blockades. Now, of course, the companies are getting a portion of that money. But they don't want a portion. they want the whole thing, otherwise they wouldn't put so much effort on preventing casual copying (DRM is mostly aimed at preventing casual copying, of course. Widespread piracy/torrenting is NOT the target of DRM)

But as those things are pretty much arbitrarily legal, we can do that. And that's a good thing, as it facilitates a wider spread of culture (and like it or not, culture really is a necessary thing...it's an emotional need...it's that emotional need that gives it a lot of its value, actually)

Now if piracy got to the point where nobody ever bought anything, that would be bad. But I see no reason to think that would ever happen. Where individual markets shrunk (that is, music and PC gaming) is largely because of other competitive factors. (DVD's being a much MUCH better entertainment deal than music CD's and the rise of powerful console systems).

In short, we're all a bunch of "parasites" in our own individual ways, probably. As long as we keep it to a roar, and do our best to reward as many creators as we can (and it's probably a big problem that most people have less and less ability to do so) then it's probably fine, just like it always has been.

edited 21st Nov '11 9:13:00 PM by Karmakin

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

Whatever happened to renting? Or Gamefly? Or demos? Why do you have to pirate a whole game in order to "try it"? Shit, the price starts going down after a few months! Why not simply wait if you're strapped for cash? The longer you wait, the better of a deal you can get these days, with GOTY Editions of games including the game and DLC for a price less than what the original game, standalone, was going for.

If you must try a game, and there's no demo, you could always rent or borrow it. If you're a student, rent the game. Use Gamefly. If you can't afford to own the game, you don't get to own it. It's how things work; if you can't afford a car, you can't have one. If you can't afford a pretty ring, you can't have it unless you win one, or have someone give one to you.

Games, as someone mentioned earlier, are not your daily bread; games are a luxury, not a right. If you can't afford the luxury, you simply can't afford it; you don't get to break the law and get it for free just because you want it.

That's when it gets unfair, because you start making it necessary for things like DRM to come included with all of our purchases, simply because you want free shit.

Now, I can understand wanting a student discount, I'd love that, but being in a bind financially doesn't allow you to break the law as it stands.

edited 21st Nov '11 9:40:29 PM by DisasterGrind

No, because*

you don't have your copy of the game anymore. They've already made their money. You can walk down to Dominos and order a pizza and sell it to someone else for more if you want, but you can't do that and still eat it.

That's more or less kosher, since, like I've been saying, the company's already made its money on that copy. The problem comes in when someone still has access to something they've sold.

The problem is, casual copying can easily lead to piracy and torrenting, because, internet. Make it hard to rip DV Ds and games at all to make it hard(er) to put said rips on the internet. Companies wind up not making any money.

They lost me. Forgot me. Made you from parts of me. If you're the One, my father's son, what am I supposed to be?

^ That's actually not true at all. Almost all indie games have no DRM to speak of but they all make plenty of money. Piracy typically only hits games that have heavy DRM or high prices because the point of piracy is to try out a game but it costs way too much otherwise.

The pizza example works fine because if a pizza store did something equivalent, which is "You can do any of the following pay me anywhere between the cost making you a pizza and giving me 30% profit on a pizza" is exactly equivalent to a piracy scenario for digital media. I put my product out on the open market and you pay me anywhere from the cost of distributing it to the full price I'd like to ask for. The price of distribution is zero dollars, so that's the "cost" price. Or you can give me "up to" 30 bucks.

What you're making too much of a big deal here is

"Me am capitalism, for you to get a product that cost zero to make should cost you money because that how capitalism works!"

Actually no it's not. You know how capitalism works?

"A good is worth the market value"

I pay you zero dollars for something that costs zero dollars to make and you've had nothing stolen? Then too bad, you make no money off me.

Essentially, the equation we should be looking at is this:

• [Money people will pay me for the product purchased from me as I expect] - [Money people would have paid me but instead pirated] + [Money people pay me because they pirated] = [Total money I make]

If those last two parts are positive, one need not care about piracy. If it is negative, then care. But no study has shown it is negative except those from companies who are failing for absolutely unrelated reasons (such as record companies dying to digital sales, so they want to bolster their income via government regulations).

edited 21st Nov '11 10:50:36 PM by breadloaf

"What you're making too much of a big deal here is "Me am capitalism, for you to get a product that cost zero to make should cost you money because that how capitalism works!""

"I pay you zero dollars for something that costs zero dollars to make and you've had nothing stolen? Then too bad, you make no money off me."

What the hell have you been smoking? Sure, the CD, DVD or whatever may have cost an extremely negligible amount of money to make, but the actual media that you are consuming costs millions to develop; the media is the main event, the 0.05 cent CD/DVD is just the vehicle.

You keep emphasizing the "cost you nothing to make" thing, when that's nowhere close to the truth. The average video game's development costs around five million dollars, with AAA games gosting around four times as much. And what's stopping you from waiting a few months to buy the game when it costs $18?

Look at Duke Nukem Forever: $60 at launch, and then barely three months afterwards, it's down to $20. $18 if you're buying it used.

And honestly, what's stopping you from using Gamefly, or renting a game? What you're getting angry about is the cost to own a copy of the game, not the price you have to pay to experience it.

edited 21st Nov '11 11:10:18 PM by DisasterGrind

Perhaps I was unclear in that post. It costs zero dollars to distribute. What we are talking about here are additional sales. An additional copy being consumed costs the corporation zero marginal dollars.

I think it seems like my ideas are being constantly ignored to promote a regulatory-authoritarian market system wherein which you pay the price a corporation sets or else the heavy hand of government swoops in and takes the money out of your pocket. I am saying the current pricing models don't work because they do not reflect reality. We are imposing regulation on a digital product that no longer works like a boxed item.

EDIT:

Also I don't think you are arguing your point correctly. Simply because an AAA title costs 100 million to make, or an indie title costs a team of 3 several years of their life does not justify any amount of revenue. Certainly you *hope* your hard work is rewarded but capitalism gives no guarantees. You might as well state that an artist who somehow manages to blow 100 million to paint a masterpiece should deserve 300 million in revenue. But a person can just as easily not pay him anything. If he should make a digital copy of that artwork it is copyright infringement, not theft.

EDIT 2: While nobody has replied yet.

Essentially, digital goods differ from boxed goods in two major ways.

• If x is the number of sales, as x approaches infinity, the sale price approaches zero. No price set for any cultural good reflects the fact that it should approach zero as there are more sales. Even with a AAA title, if you put it at cost, then at 10 million sales, the price should be 10 dollars a unit. Is it anywhere close to that? Nope. So I can choose not to purchase (and some choose to pirate but as stated, if the price was over what they were willing to pay for it, then you lost the sale piracy or not, thus the question of piracy never mattered)

• Digital goods have the potential to be pirated, that is, to create a digital copy which cost the producer zero dollars. This is unique to digital goods. I cannot digitally copy a car and then have a car. This should substantially reduce prices because we've invented a new technology which has substantially reduced industrial costs. Have prices gone down? No. The only option by consumers is to not purchase until prices fall to reflect this new technology.

I think people focus too much on piracy and very little on the fact that the market has only very slowly adapted to new technology.

edited 21st Nov '11 11:25:52 PM by breadloaf

"Perhaps I was unclear in that post. It costs zero dollars to distribute. What we are talking about here are additional sales. An additional copy being consumed costs the corporation zero marginal dollars."

That's untrue- distribution costs are huge as well. Distribution is often said to be harder than actually making the game/movie/song in the first place.

"I think it seems like my ideas are being constantly ignored to promote a regulatory-authoritarian..."

Why can't you just wait until the cost actually goes down? Why can't you just rent the game, or sign up with Gamefly? Why have you got to download it illegally, for free, and get everyone else stuck with DRM? Steam does sales regularly- why not just wait for those? The prices aren't permanent, especially when you can just wait a little for the cost to go down.

The big thing here isn't some kind of terrible establishment, it's people getting so caught up in instant gratification that they willingly break the law- thereby robbing people of their money- simply to get free shit. There's no way around it- there are many alternatives to paying full price for a game- it's just that pirates want free shit. There's no message to be spread here- this isn't some sort of struggle against an oppressive force; if you want things for a lesser price, all you've got to do it wait, or rent.

"But a person can just as easily not pay him anything. If he should make a digital copy of that artwork it is copyright infringement, not theft"

Which is against the law, and potentially deprives people of a sale. There's no way around it.

"Also I don't think you are arguing your point correctly. Simply because an AAA title costs 100 million to make, or an indie title costs a team of 3 several years of their life does not justify any amount of revenue. Certainly you *hope* your hard work is rewarded but capitalism gives no guarantees. You might as well state that an artist who somehow manages to blow 100 million to paint a masterpiece should deserve 300 million in revenue."

Nobody's saying that. What I am saying, is why do you feel that you should get something for free when the law- and developers- believe you should pay? You are the developer's source of income. You are also the source of income for all of those involved in the work; why should you consume their work without paying them for it when our whole way of life is founded on this very basic exchange?

Say you have an office job- and you have to fill out some paperwork- what if your boss decides to only pay you for an hour of work- even though you worked all day- because the forms you filled out had only minor variations to them?

edited 21st Nov '11 11:29:45 PM by DisasterGrind

Okay, I'll repost one of my edits because you probably missed it.

—-

Essentially, digital goods differ from boxed goods in two major ways.

• If x is the number of sales, as x approaches infinity, the sale price approaches zero. No price set for any cultural good reflects the fact that it should approach zero as there are more sales. Even with a AAA title, if you put it at cost, then at 10 million sales, the price should be 10 dollars a unit. Is it anywhere close to that? Nope. So I can choose not to purchase (and some choose to pirate but as stated, if the price was over what they were willing to pay for it, then you lost the sale piracy or not, thus the question of piracy never mattered)

• Digital goods have the potential to be pirated, that is, to create a digital copy which cost the producer zero dollars. This is unique to digital goods. I cannot digitally copy a car and then have a car. This should substantially reduce prices because we've invented a new technology which has substantially reduced industrial costs. Have prices gone down? No. The only option by consumers is to not purchase until prices fall to reflect this new technology.

I think people focus too much on piracy and very little on the fact that the market has only very slowly adapted to new technology.

—-

Additionally, for your responses of other methods, none address the point I am making. Corporations are giving you lots of legal ways to give them money based on an old model.

Your quote on distribution is nice but completely untrue. I'm not sure how you might expect torrenting, or p2p technology to work, but the distribution cost is near-zero. We are not shipping boxed products. People are not stealing boxed products. Pirating does not get you a boxed product. So this discussion is solely within the realm of digital goods whose distribution is via the internet through the various technologies of downloading.

I'm not arguing about distributing digital goods, as you can tell- I'm talking about distribution costs for physical copies- which does not simply vanish because a game is also distributed on the internet -for no cost- as well.

Prices don't go down because they already go down- a game costs a certain amount at launch; too high? Wait. Three months later, the game's down to $40- $30 if you're a PC gamer; too high? Wait. Five months later, the game's 10-20 dollars; too high? Hope for a sale. There'll be one. All you have to do is wait! is that such an unreasonable expectation? It always nets you a better deal- the deal you wanted in the first place, but sometimes better, since DLC/expansions are usually included.

The games are priced high so high in the beginning to take advantage of hype, and recoup losses more quickly. If it's too much for you, then you just wait it out. This is what people who want to own video games have been doing since before things got so tight.

And you know, you still never told me what everyone has against renting and Gamefly.

edited 21st Nov '11 11:48:04 PM by DisasterGrind

I'm not arguing about how capitalism works. I'm arguing that piracy is (a form of) theft. I don't care if Bob gets a discount at the Pizza Place for being a student. I care that Alice is walking behind the counter and taking a bunch of the pizzas.

The "money people pay me because they pirated" part is dubious. Somehow, I doubt that "people who pirated but went back and bought it" is a significant number. There's plenty of people who say "I'll buy it when I get the money" but far fewer who actually will.

While companies are failing for a multitude of reasons, piracy is still a big one. Record sales have been falling since before digital sales had really caught on, and digital sales haven't even come close to counteracting the loss.

Not sure where you're getting that- I don't really care to fix prices of goods or any bullcrap like that- I'm saying it's not right to steal a game/CD.

The pricing models of digital goods don't reflect reality, but it's the closest thing we've got. Relying on donations is a crappy way of trying to make money (although it can work). Having sales/discounts is a good way of drawing in people who wouldn't have bought it at all. Letting people name their own price can be a good draw. The problem is that all of them have problems of their own. The last one, especially. When you let people name their own price, you end up with people "buying" a thousand copies for a penny each. Or people who pirate it anyway.

The best way to handle digital distribution is with light DRM- something just irritating enough to deter people from pirating, but not so bad it loses you legit customers. Generate a product key at purchase. Require an E-mail address. Small stuff.

They lost me. Forgot me. Made you from parts of me. If you're the One, my father's son, what am I supposed to be?

These are relevant, I think:

[1]

[2]

[3]

If you can't afford to own, then rent! This isn't rocket science; you don't need to pirate anything.

@Disaster Grind: The question is what if something you want can't be rented...

Another problem is that if the pirate have no method to actually acquire stuff you want (no credit card, no boxed copy, boxed copy doesn't exist in your region, etc)...since there's no market there in the first place, can you really consider that as loss?

Third: when several CREATORS says that piracy can help them, then people should start thinking why would they say that, after all, they're supposed to get hurt, not helped...too bad several people out there don't listen...yeah, publishers are all that matters, not the developers...

edited 22nd Nov '11 4:31:40 AM by onyhow

Give me cute or give me...something?

You're taking the line that cultural goods are basically widgets are are completely interchangeable. I think this is the attitude that pretty much killed the music industry, to be honest. So the ability to "rent" extremely old games means that the option is there for every PC game, when it really isn't. If you want to talk to your friends about playing a game, it's that specific game.

The thing is, rentals are parasitical too. Maybe not as much, but they are. Every rental is a potential lost sale, as well. I know that speaking for myself I rent console games instead of buying them sometimes to save some money. Maybe not 50 dollars loss, but probably 20 or 30 dollars loss, to be sure. At the very least, I for sure would pay 20 dollars for any game I rent. Hands down. It costs almost that much to rent a game locally to be honest. That is probably 15 dollars or so in lost revenue to the creator. (Assume that a game is rented 12 times or so, although it's probably even more lost revenue to be honest)

It's like saying that buying a knock-off package of a DVD is OK because at least you paid something for it. That makes absolutely no sense at all. That's the line we have to be very careful from crossing, because we're moving from looking to reward to creator to simply looking to spite people. And yes, that line has been crossed quite frequently in this thread.

In short, any discussion about parasitical cultural behavior MUST include legal forms of parasitical behavior as well. How can we encourage people to spend 5 more bucks for a console game instead of buying it used in order to further reward the creator? How can we have and maintain better forms of price discrimination? (Honestly, in the PC gaming market I think Gabe Newall kinda found the answer by using his fuck you money and his fuck you company to force it on the industry)

The truth is, a lot of publishers would rather eat the parasitism than to actually aggressively pursue 1st-party price discrimination. Nintendo I think is a good (bad, really) example of this.

edited 22nd Nov '11 5:13:44 AM by Karmakin

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

What if you (unspecific you) download an emulator game of a game that's not available anymore, AND it was a game you owned in the past but it broke?

What about downloading things that aren't available in your country (such as anime)? And then if you delete the downloaded copies and buy the real version if it becomes available for purchase?

If it is wrong to experience a work without paying for it, then is it wrong to play someone else's game/watch a DVD with their permission?

About the downloading things and then later buying the actual product, I'm going to do exactly that. I watched the Friendship is Magic cartoons on Youtube and if it weren't for that, I would never have gotten interested in it to download the version from iTunes that I would pay for? In that case, it's less an issue of not having enough money for the download (I do) but I didn't know there even WAS a way to buy the series legitimately until yesterday.

I would also pose my question again "If something costs time and money to create a first copy of, but costs nothing to duplicate, do those duplicates have the same worth as the original?" It's something I can see different possible answers for, which is why I'm putting it up.

edited 22nd Nov '11 6:21:41 AM by Rainbow

Once again, things get really grey if you own a copy, but as I understand it, it's a relatively light shade of grey.

As for the getting things that simply are not present in your market? I don't see any problem with that, especially if you do purchase it when it is available in your market, but the copyright owners would say "NO!". Why do you think we have shit like region locking?

The third part is what people have been saying for like half the thread: piracy actually helps many things (mostly those smaller than the absolute biggest, most popular things in their media) by being essentially free advertisement.

As for the issue of value? Their value is )theoretically) much more determined by what people are willing to say it's worth than what the copyright holder say it is. Now, on the other hand, it usually works out to "whatever it would cost if it was as physical media because the copyright holder says so".

>implying you dirty foreigners are allowed to legitimately buy our stuff with money◊

edited 22nd Nov '11 6:42:50 AM by Excelion

Murrl LustFatM

The standard response given by groups who support restrictive changes to copyright law is that yes, experiencing that content is bad, because your time is going towards those things that are not monetized towards them, instead of the latest and greatest that they just brought out.

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