Piracy

[crompton]

Hey guys, I know this forum is very anti-warez and anti-piracy which is why I want your opinions. I am doing a report for university on The effects of Piracy on the software and entertainment industries. What I want to know is this, why do you think people pirate software, music, movies etc.?

[Joe Forster/STA]

The industry took away people's money, both from the authors and from the users of such "entertainment products". It's a similar attitude to that of banks, themselves the main causes of economical crises, including the recent one, "only" in smaller scale. The word "piracy" appears mostly in announcements by publishers and rarely by developers. The same goes for movies and music, not only games or software in general. Also, copyright, intellectual property and related concepts need to be re-evaluated as they, along with patents, are now holding back our general development. Technology allows people to easily duplicate and distribute digital information. Well, that's the major point of digital information so why are some companies surprised that not only them but others, too, make use of it?!

I can imagine what happened in monasteries when Guttenberg came up with his printing machine: their monopoly of making (read: copying) books was over. But has mankind enjoyed the advantages of being able to duplicate written material easily? Hell, yeah! So, why the fuck would we care about monasteries? They had their time but they were unable to change so competition killed them. That's also happening now but today's "monasteries" are multinational companies of billion dollars worth that have even more control over the world than religion did/does so they let go much harder.

Read Wikipedia's page for "copyright" about how copyright was established. Guess who wanted it: authors or publishers?

Piracy is not only for those who don't have money to buy software. In the early times, software was bundled with the hardware (mainframes, anyone?) and thus 1) was given away without extra price, 2) had its source freely available for inspection and modification. It's easy to see that this exactly what free open source software is about. For many people, it is completely natural to not pay for software. Yes, those people who create software need to be paid but do you pay for e.g. watching TV channels? For most, you probably don't because it's already been paid for by the advertisements, whether or not you like them disrupting your enjoyment. Guess what, Micro$oft is already thinking of giving away free copies of their upcoming Office package and those will be financed by showing advertisements while you work. (Of course, crackers will remove even the advertisements but that's another story. )

Professional crackers sell their work to the highest level of the warez distribution hierarchy. However, we get them for free. It may sound a bit far-fetched but, along with open source software, you can think of this as the freedom of software, kind of communism spreading in the digital world.

I have nothing against piracy. I create software at my work place that cannot be stolen simply because it is given away to educational institutions for free and it is the state and a bunch of citizens who actually pay for it. But the citizens pay for the whole service that we and the educational institutes provide them with, the software is "only" needed to make that service work (as today virtually nothing works without some level of computerization). Now see Linux distributors who give away the Linux installation package for free - not that they could do anything else as it mostly consists of material that, according to its licence, must be distributed free - and they only charge for actual services they provide: printed manuals, user support and such extras. If you can do it yourself, you can have it for free, if you're not experienced enough, you'll only pay for services that real humans provide and which is, therefore, expensive. Because remember: even if it takes a lot of time and people to develop software, as soon as it's finished it can be distributed for almost no further costs whatsoever: put the file online and see people download it (if needed, after they pay). Today's software prices are way too high, especially that 1) the vast majority of the price goes to the publisher (the company that published but not necessarily developes the software) and the vendor (the shop in which you can get the physical media with the software on it) and 2) you often pay for functionality that you don't use (see "bloatware") because companies (publishers?!) cannot sell their products if they "only" keep fixing bugs in their already existing software and make it more stable, they have to add new features all the time to be able to call it a new release for which people are supposed to pay.

The process called "piracy" is simply the industry's way of describing their own incompetence of being unable to sell people products of acceptable quality for acceptable prices, because of their incredible greed, nothing more. Had they stopped supporting inferior products - most of contemporary music and movies is plain crap, I keep wondering why people get them, let alone pay for them - and/or had they stopped sacrificing quality for as soon as possible release dates - rushed games, with multiple patches within weeks of the release - and/or had they fired all the redundant people (from the CEO down a few levels) who just pick up money (lots of it!) but do nothing useful then I could say they are finally getting on the right track but that track is still a very long one.

This above may not be a clear or complete answer to your specific question. However, I think I walked around the topic, showing multiple points of view so that you get the feeling...

Ohhh, and as for the anti-warez/-piracy rules, we only don't want 1) companies (= publishers) to have an obvious and valid reason to have the site/forum closed and 2) warez kiddies to swarm here with their idiotic questions.

[crompton]

Thankyou very much for that Joe, absolutely fantastic. Provided a real insight and well thought-out arguement.

[sepheronx]

The general concept that products now cost outrageous amounts for little content these days. Rehash of the same crap over and over again.

As well, the recording industry (for instance), gains a lot in terms of sales, and gives little back to the actual artist. This leaves a bad taste in my (and others) mouth.

If a game with sub-par story, quality, performance did not cost $60, then I wouldn't download it. Plain and simple.

[Trooper1234]

Originally Posted by Joe Forster/STA

The industry took away people's money, both from the authors and from the users of such "entertainment products". It's a similar attitude to that of banks, themselves the main causes of economical crises, including the recent one, "only" in smaller scale. The word "piracy" appears mostly in announcements by publishers and rarely by developers. The same goes for movies and music, not only games or software in general. Also, copyright, intellectual property and related concepts need to be re-evaluated as they, along with patents, are now holding back our general development. Technology allows people to easily duplicate and distribute digital information. Well, that's the major point of digital information so why are some companies surprised that not only them but others, too, make use of it?!

I can imagine what happened in monasteries when Guttenberg came up with his printing machine: their monopoly of making (read: copying) books was over. But has mankind enjoyed the advantages of being able to duplicate written material easily? Hell, yeah! So, why the fuck would we care about monasteries? They had their time but they were unable to change so competition killed them. That's also happening now but today's "monasteries" are multinational companies of billion dollars worth that have even more control over the world than religion did/does so they let go much harder.

Read Wikipedia's page for "copyright" about how copyright was established. Guess who wanted it: authors or publishers?

Piracy is not only for those who don't have money to buy software. In the early times, software was bundled with the hardware (mainframes, anyone?) and thus 1) was given away without extra price, 2) had its source freely available for inspection and modification. It's easy to see that this exactly what free open source software is about. For many people, it is completely natural to not pay for software. Yes, those people who create software need to be paid but do you pay for e.g. watching TV channels? For most, you probably don't because it's already been paid for by the advertisements, whether or not you like them disrupting your enjoyment. Guess what, Micro$oft is already thinking of giving away free copies of their upcoming Office package and those will be financed by showing advertisements while you work. (Of course, crackers will remove even the advertisements but that's another story. )

Professional crackers sell their work to the highest level of the warez distribution hierarchy. However, we get them for free. It may sound a bit far-fetched but, along with open source software, you can think of this as the freedom of software, kind of communism spreading in the digital world.

I have nothing against piracy. I create software at my work place that cannot be stolen simply because it is given away to educational institutions for free and it is the state and a bunch of citizens who actually pay for it. But the citizens pay for the whole service that we and the educational institutes provide them with, the software is "only" needed to make that service work (as today virtually nothing works without some level of computerization). Now see Linux distributors who give away the Linux installation package for free - not that they could do anything else as it mostly consists of material that, according to its licence, must be distributed free - and they only charge for actual services they provide: printed manuals, user support and such extras. If you can do it yourself, you can have it for free, if you're not experienced enough, you'll only pay for services that real humans provide and which is, therefore, expensive. Because remember: even if it takes a lot of time and people to develop software, as soon as it's finished it can be distributed for almost no further costs whatsoever: put the file online and see people download it (if needed, after they pay). Today's software prices are way too high, especially that 1) the vast majority of the price goes to the publisher (the company that published but not necessarily developes the software) and the vendor (the shop in which you can get the physical media with the software on it) and 2) you often pay for functionality that you don't use (see "bloatware") because companies (publishers?!) cannot sell their products if they "only" keep fixing bugs in their already existing software and make it more stable, they have to add new features all the time to be able to call it a new release for which people are supposed to pay.

The process called "piracy" is simply the industry's way of describing their own incompetence of being unable to sell people products of acceptable quality for acceptable prices, because of their incredible greed, nothing more. Had they stopped supporting inferior products - most of contemporary music and movies is plain crap, I keep wondering why people get them, let alone pay for them - and/or had they stopped sacrificing quality for as soon as possible release dates - rushed games, with multiple patches within weeks of the release - and/or had they fired all the redundant people (from the CEO down a few levels) who just pick up money (lots of it!) but do nothing useful then I could say they are finally getting on the right track but that track is still a very long one.

This above may not be a clear or complete answer to your specific question. However, I think I walked around the topic, showing multiple points of view so that you get the feeling...

Ohhh, and as for the anti-warez/-piracy rules, we only don't want 1) companies (= publishers) to have an obvious and valid reason to have the site/forum closed and 2) warez kiddies to swarm here with their idiotic questions.

that looks interesting, i wished i could understand, but my rnglish is to horrible.