Be Excellent To Each Other

As an aside, how come FACT (or whoever puts those adverts on DVDs) are allowed to keep putting on them

"Downloading pirated movies is stealing"

In big letters when clearly it isn't? Shouldn't the law tell them to fuck off and make something accurate?

That's not even in the top 10 of the things the law should have done to those organisations.

"Downloading pirated movies can be argued to be morally wrong by certain people"?

"Copyright infringement is a crime. Do not accept it."

"Sorry for putting this crap all over this DVD you've paid for. Did you know if you just downloaded it you wouldn't have to put up with it? You didn't? Forget we ever said anything then."

"You Knock-Off Nigels..."

This is precisely why when I open a front restaurant, there will be signs reading "Refusing to tip your waiter is RAPE. Do not accept it."

It's exactly the same thing, morally and legally, as what the cunts do to DVDs.

I do apologise, but is this a euphemism for cunnilingus?

(Genuine LOL!!!)

I think the point Kovacs was making was that any opportunity of making a sale/profit is probably "removed", i.e. there IS a tangible loss to the copyright owner. We can argue about whether this 'lost sale' applies to 1% or 99% of all pirated software/music downloads or whatever, but the basic principle holds.

I don't need 'hard evidence' to instinstively know that for most people, if given the "choice" between spending £40 of their limited cash on a new game that they seriously want (e.g. GTA4 or whatever) or simply robbing it off of bittorrent or via one of their IT savvy mates, many will go for the 'freebie' almost every time. And the chances of their subsequently thinking '... y'know what, I love this game so much that, despite my already having it, I'm going to buy it anyway 'cause I just lurrrve the CD cover and all the associated documentation!' is almost nil. To claim/think otherwise is surely perverse?

Hence, this will result in a definite lost sale and lost revenue scenario for the legitimate owner of the pirated goods and that being the case, the actual interests of the copyright owner are directly and irrefutably harmed, however you care to dress it up or pretend that it somehow ain't so.

Not all download scenarios will be as clear cut as this to be sure, and no doubt there're plenty of examples of more casual 'consumption' by indifferent users, but certainly there will be at least some that are like the example I describe.

You can claim that the copyright owners are tossers and/or charge too much for their stuff etc. for all I care, and you might even be right, but even if true this is still entirely besides the point. Equally, I don't think anyone here (least of all me) is claiming that the illicit downloading and copying of software/music for one's own use is actual theft according to English Law, either. This is a matter of plain fact, and I am quite prepared to accept at face value that it is not "theft" according to the legal definition of the term.

I don't claim to be a paragon of virtue in respect of having occasionally copied stuff like mates' CDs or whatever etc., but then again I didn't ram it down anyone's throat as to what a supposed big favour I was doing the music industry either, or even claim that my actions were wholly moral and victimless in all respects.

Well no it doesn't, due to the things that are bought purely because of piracy.

Yet again piracy = lost sales is trotted out when the only evidence presented says the exact opposite.

Yep. If I didn't download music, I wouldn't hear any new stuff at all - ergo, I wouldn't buy any new stuff.

What evidence, exactly? Your previous examples of, say, DS vs PSP does not constitute "evidence". The DS is triumphant because of a bunch of factors such as price point, software library, demographic targetting, and many more. Same thing with PS3 vs 360; you've done you share of ranting, Dudley, about the PS3's myriad shortcomings; surely you are not now going to say that actually the main reason the 360 and Wii outsell it is that you can (just about) pirate games for them?

Now lets consider the Dreamcast, which I could just easily make a case to be a console that was killed stone dead by piracy. I know, because I was there, on IRC, downloading 0day ISOs from FTPs running on compromised academic servers. A lot of publishers dropped support for the Dreamcast because of how rampant the piracy got, and redirected efforts to the PS2 and Gamecube which at least required more legwork from the consumer before they could download games. Is that why the Dreamcast failed? Who knows? There are other factors, like Sega's terrible marketing, but I think it's hard to deny that piracy was played a part in the downfall of the system.

In my time, I must have copied hundreds of Dreamcast games for friends and acquientences. I also chipped 50+ Xboxes and supplied the 500+ DVD-Rs of games to a wider group of friends. Many of them didn't buy a single game for either system, including me. Can you claim this didn't cost sales?

Then there are the persistent rumours that Microsoft turned a blind eye to piracy in the early days of Windows in order to get strategic dominance down the road. I can see that, as a business strategy, although it's a big gamble.

Does one pirated copy equal one lost sale? I contend it's clearly obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense that this cannot be true. But surely you can't sit there and claim with a straight face that no sales anywhere have ever been lost to piracy? I would suggest that is just as nonsensical. I would further suggest that the point of view that artists are get nothing from their work whilst fat cat record execs hoover up all the profits is not true either, as we appear to have hundreds of thousands of professional musicans on the planet right now earning a living. They clearly get something somewhere along they way, don't they?

I am uncomfortable with how hard a lot of people are working in this thread to turn these complicated issues into a black-and-white monochrome. Have I pirated things I would have bought? Yes, in truth, I have. Have I copied things for friends who then didn't buy them because they had a free copy? Also yes. On the other hand, have I pirated things them bought them, and more albums from the same artist, and seen them live in concert? Yes, in at least three specific cases (Heather Nova, Bob Mould, and Ben Folds). Who here cannot say the same?

Yeah I really can't buy the argument that piracy has helped the DS in any way. Pretty much the only reason it hasn't really harmed it is that the vast majority of people who buy them simply have no awareness of how easy it is to download the games for nothing.

Almost no-one I talk to knows much about DS piracy[1]. I would say that actually, it isn't that easy unless you already know what you are doing. If you don't know about the flashcards they aren't easy to just stumble across, and to suggest that most of the average DS users are familiar with BitTorrent is to completely overlook how deeply non-geek most DS owners are. Look at the shelves of your local game store's DS section, what do you see? An awful lot of puzzle games and Barbie Horse Sheath Cleaning Adventures. The crossover between people who buy those games and people who understand about p2p and flash cards is not huge.

[1] Like a lot of us here, I am "the guy who knows all the stuff" for a large range of friends/friends of friends/acquientences and, as I have a stepdaughter of 11, "other parents at the school gates". I do consider my sample size to be significant here. I've managed to pursuade five people to buy 360s instead of PS3s this Christmas.

I'd say it's easier than any other console I can think of, it's only lack of awareness that's keeping a lid on it. Most people figure out even fairly geeky stuff out pretty quickly if they can get loads of stuff for free, if it was only the geeks using bittorrent the music and film industries wouldn't care. However in the case of the DS even torrents aren't necessary you just need to know the name of a flash card, how to use a memory stick and how to type "DS downloads" into Google.

What was the earliest DS flashcards? Google Trends doesn't show any search volume for R4DS until spring 2007:


By this point, the DS Lite had been out a year, the DS itself nearly 2.5 years. Both consoles had broken sales records all over the place, and thoroughly trounced the PSP's mediocre early sales numbers. In April 2007, vgchartz.com was showing 39.7m DS and DS Lites sold worldwide, almost double the PSP's 21.07m. At this point, I do not believe either platform had been open to piracy, and I also contend that the relative fates of both platforms in the marketplace was written.

Again, I do not think piracy helped the DS.

I agree with that -- but I think that lack of awareness is enough, and will continue to be enough, to prevent most DS owners pirating games.

The R4 is a new generation slot 1 card, slot 2 cards for DS were around since before the UK launch of the machine.

I am curious what evidence.... Both sides of the argument an manipulate stats...

Good point, but the early ones where only for GBA games, right? When did the first boot-DS-from-slot2 stuff appear?

http://www.hbs.edu/news/releases/032904_file_sharing.html

It is curious that a great many of the most popular computer formats (e.g. Spectrum, C64, Amiga, PC, DS, PS1, etc) have had rampant piracy, yet they've still thrived. Which doesn't prove anything, but it is interesting. As for the music industry - they rode the wave of CDs in the 80s and 90s. There's only so many times you have make people re-buy the back catalogue, so there was always going to be a tail-off when the back-catalogue market was saturated.

Nope. the M3 perfect came out in the arse end of 2004 and can do DS. I'm fairly sure even that wasn't the first but since Europe didn't get any DS until March 2005 it'll do.

Exactly mate, enough said I feel.

I'm going to theft all of your copyrights in a minute!

Also the RIAA will be subjecting you all to brain scans in the near future to check which songs you've heard on the radio or seen on tv that you thought were 'not bad', can remember and haven't bought. You will be charged for every one of them*.


*admittedly this may not amount to very much money if you happen to be forced to listen to a local commercial station

It is interesting and there is probably some causality there. But not the way round that some people try and make it out. In short why would there be loads of piracy on a failing system with a shit games catalogue? If something is desirable then people try to find a way to get it cheap.

You can run DS code from most GBA flashcarts if the DS' firmware is flashed.

I've been thinking about the thing that keeps me buying music and I've decided it's the experience. I enjoy going round the music shops and 2nd hand/charity shops and hunting through the CDs and vinyl for a rare bargain, something I've been looking out for, something I never knew was out or even just something that looks interesting. If I find anything exciting I'll head up to the tills, make my purchase and talk shit to the folk behind the tills about bands, gigs, etc.
Once I've been round my usual haunts, I'll sit on the train home and pore over my buys, open the shrink wrap and give the record a wee sniff, then look at the pictures and read the inlay. Old records are the best for this, big sleeves and there's usually more effort in the presentation.
Finally I'll get home and make a cuppa, lift the lid off the turntable, bung the record on, place the needle into the groove and 'listen to the hiss'.

I love that lovely warm hiss, it creates a tension, I know something is just about to happen, and then the music starts and I relax.


Having said all that, illegal downloads are a fast and free way for me to try out new sounds and hear rarities, but not as much fun as record shopping and I can't mess around with mp3s on my turntables.

As with all things in life, you get out what you put in.

What Wullie said. Completely.

Bingo.

Bingo has benefitted from piracy? I don't even know where to begin with that.

It is hard for me to see how it is not black and white.

You either pay for it or you illagally download... how is that shades of grey?

Sorry, I was discussing the slightly parallel issue many people in this thread have been talking about of "does piracy hurt or harm sales".

You are quite correct that copied content is illegal, under the current law. One of the debates to be had here though is: would content producers be better off if the law was changed? For example to allow unlimited music downloads and copies to made by consumers in return for a fixed tariff on all broadband internet connection bills and portable music player sales? Basically, should content providers take the view that this stuff is going to happen anyway, it cannot be stopped or controlled, so they change their business models to adapt around it and even benefit from it in the form of increased consumer exposure to their content. Lawrence Lessig writes about this a lot on his blog.

This is what a lot of people in this thread have been saying to you Kovacs: there is an upside for the content producers to consumer copywrite theft, in terms of discoverability. The three artists I mentioned earlier (Bob Mould, Heather Nova, Ben Folds) I discovered through bootlegs (either copying CDs or mp3s from friends) but since then I have purchased their entire back catalogs and seen them in concerts half a dozen times.

Put him back this INSTANT!

Really, we should call piracy by it's real name: murder.

If anyone disagrees with this, you're just trying to justify your awful, murdering ways.

Arr, jim-lad etc.

Oops, haha. Work kept interrupting that long post so my proofreading was a bit fragmented.

Diskeeper can help you with that. For a price.

Another Post of the Week here. I'm going to buy a turntable next year.

Thanks for that post.

You're not Myoptika, as that was actually chuckle raising. What have you done with Myoptika, Xenu? And can you keep him there?

I suppose you can use that 'piracy' as advertising..
A loss lead into making more money, and some firms will do this.


It is the ones that don't have a choice, that do not want to do business the way you do.

No-one has a choice in how they do business, it's all 100% dependent on what the consumer is willing to go along with.

Not really, you do have a choice and letting people copy your work, and not make money is not a good business model is?

'Letting' isn't what's happening. People are doing it. Where companies introduce crippling DRM into their products, consumers move elsewhere.

The key thing is knowing what your customers are willing to put up with and how to capitalise off their behaviour, whether they are purchasing or copying illegally. That is why we are seeing a lot more experimentation by the suppliers - Amazon's DRM-free mp3 store, bands giving away tracks or asking for a voluntary contribution, etc.

Those who aren't changing to adapt to their consumers are falling by the wayside, and in large numbers.

My argument, is just because people are doing it does not make it right.

and the drm argument does not work for me, as you have to upload it for some on to copy it.

I do agree that business have to change and the RIAA arn't helping them. The LP and CD market will become niche, and MP3 downloads will be the way, but there has to be away to protect buisnesss form the 'cyber theft'

maybe it is making MP3s so cheap that you don't have the copy them

See also : Steam's DRM giving customers something they want in the convenience stakes with re-downloading any game, anywhere, without keeping track of CDs, yet still keeping copying to a minimum.

We weren't discussing right or wrong, we were discussing how businesses respond to their customers.

Excellent point Sheep - provide convenience as a selling point, something that people won't get from their hooky games. That's proven to be an excellent way of adapting.