The slow death of the internet…

Well, skyplayer and iplayer are both p2p and I use them quite a lot, so those two apps alone must generate an absolute shed load of internet traffic. But, all content is legal and drm is in place.

I figure the impact that illegal file sharing might have on internet traffic is now more important than ever, if people are paying for premium services such as skyplayer and struggling for bandwidth when streaming media, then big corps like sky are going to be sticking their noses into this.

In short, illegal p2p file sharing has always been a pain in the ass as far as strangling bandwidth for gamers etc goes, I personally detest it for that reason alone, but the music corps and gamers didn’t have enough concerned parties backing them up to make the lawmen listen. With the likes of Sky, BBC and all the other TV corps now offering streaming services, some paid for and premium, it’s hard for the lawmen not to take a stance.

Also, from what I understand of it, you can download free mp3’s from certain sites now that make revenue from advertising, so is it really necessary to risk using file sharing software?

Personally, I think anybody that does it is mad, I’ve always had creative soundcards in my systems which allows me to record anything that passes through it, if I can hear it, I can record it, so if you can afford it buy a good soundcard, go to myspace music, last fm etc and just record what you listen to.

Xarian_Prime wrote:
THIS IS AN OFFICIAL NOTICE THAT LIMEWIRE IS UNDER A COURT-ORDERED INJUNCTION TO STOP DISTRIBUTING AND SUPPORTING ITS FILE-SHARING SOFTWARE.
DOWNLOADING OR SHARING COPYRIGHTED CONTENT WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION IS ILLEGAL.

I turned on my limewire today… and found this… another one bites the dust due to corporate greed…

Discuss…

I always find these subjects amusing. Limewire is down due to Corporate greed? Surely Limewire is down due to piracy?

Is it so wrong that anyone should be paid for a service they provide?

So, honestly, what legitimate and legal files do you share - and don’t start making things up, please state exactly what you are sharing with the world that is legal.

I don’t know anyone who has used file sharing software for legal purposes only. Every single one of them has used it exclusively to download movies, music, television, games, books and illegal software…

I used to download TV shows - in particular Ed, NCIS, Bones, Numb3rs, Band of Brothers. I never downloaded movies or games, and only ever downloaded about 10 songs (I’m just not into music that heavily, I own it all on cd instead).

For the past 3-4 years I haven’t downloaded anything as my morals finally exceeded my greed.

I never used filesharing for any legal or legit reason…

I tend to favor BT for things like Linux ISOs and, recently, Company of Heroes update files

However, I agree, there’s a lot more illegal P2P than legal one. Again, though, I have to wonder whether making 80% of the population “criminals” is a good thing. Surely other business models can eventually appear that won’t require this?

Same thing for software/business patents. The stuff I read about is really incredible sometimes.

ooo I should have also therefore stated what has been downloaded illegally as well - otherwise it presents a view that since I only ask for legal, everyone only uses it for legal :lol

A short sightedness.

I must admit, I tend to DL iso’s for Linux via the more traditional http method. At home it takes perhaps an hour, at university it takes just a few minutes.

Uni connections. Installed Steam on my PC in uni, and downloaded a 2Gb game in about 20 minutes… whoooosh!

This year all PC’s at uni have a warning about the legality of file sharing…

Ironically, a university network is best suited for file sharing.

My home connection is 30 mbit down, 1 up. My uni connection (wireless N on whole campus) is 30 mbit down, 35 up

Isn’t it wild though, how a huge percentage of people that would never have the balls to steal from a shop, have absolutely no problem with stealing on the internet. Perhaps that’s the real discussion to be had.

The internet turns total pussies that would otherwise cower in a corner and pee themselves when confronted with real fear, into fearless warriors, thieves, bullys, political masterminds etc. Half the world is living two different lives, online badass and real world pussy. You should of course know that I’m 8ft tall and 6ft wide weighing in at 20 stone and I literally caved mike tysons head in last night for a laugh, so don’t mess with me! Punk!

Anonymity and the fact you’re not really stealing. Making a copy of something does not deprive the owner of what you’ve copied. A more apt comparison is photocopying a book you rented from the library.

FriendlyFire wrote:
Anonymity and the fact you’re not really stealing. Making a copy of something does not deprive the owner of what you’ve copied. A more apt comparison is photocopying a book you rented from the library.

Though it must be admited that the copyrighters aren’t damaged in the same way as if their stuff would be physically stolen, there is no ressource/variable cost damage, plus not everything which got pirated would have been bought.

I am not saying that piracy doesn’t harm the copyrighters, but you can’t expect, for iantance, super pirate with 300 games and movies per year downloaded to purcahse each of them. He wouldn’t be even financially able to do that.

Also, which might be also interesting, I read that “pirates” are just playing a game for a few days before they switch to the next, while buyers are just buying about three games per year (averagely! we are hardly average people, arent we?).

Also, an ethic question comes up to my mind, I am buying old games used for very low prices (about 3-5 € per game) at a local store here. Is this ethical as worse as pirating or stealing?
On the one hand, many goods are sold used and I think it should be the right of a human being to sell own property.
On the other hand I am “damaging” the developers and publishers.

What do you think about this one?

You’re not anonymous on the internet either, its only the fact that noone bothers tracking you on the internet.

Chips: The government really doesn’t care if you’re going on with piracy or not, its only when the corporations offer them money, or goes to court towards someone they actually care.

what is piracy actually? if i hack my software so i can use it without the disc, is that piracy already? if i make use of my right given by the laws of the country i live in, and share my software with five of my friends calling it safety copy, is that piracy? is it piracy, when they share what i gave them, too and the recievers share it again and so on? honestly, the governments, the human mentality has not grown enough yet to declare clear and fair rules that would manage the possibilities mankind suddenly got with the appearance of the internet.

The laws were written with the concept of materiality in mind. The Internet, giving anyone the ability to become a producer and distributor at effectively no cost, is something that had not and probably could not have been planned.

@Bas: Effectively, used games are just as bad as piracy, even though one is legal and the other is not. There’s a reason more and more games use DLC (think Cerberus Network) that are specifically aimed, not at adding supplementary content, but at restricting the content you can get with a used copy. Day-one DLC that’s free for purchasers is essentially a deterrent for second-hand sales, because that DLC won’t be free for them since DLC is not transferable.

Game publishers would much rather kill the second-hand market and piracy at the same time, and are trying their best to manage both. Problem is, piracy is still as big as ever, and I think they’ll find themselves stuck with an antiquated business model with no way out.

@Wolfie: You’re effectively anonymous, if you want to be pedantic. If you give yourself the trouble, you can be so anonymous the time and effort required to track you down would not be worth the reward.

@Gisteron: I think you’d be allowed to share the backup copies with them, but those people would not be able to use them. Again, the current model was never built with the concept that you could easily make a perfect copy of whatever you owned. When photocopy machines first arrived, book publishers were decrying the end of the books industry. When magnetic tapes made their appearance, it was the music industry. VCR, movie industry.

None of them died from it, but they sure as hell freaked out. Many of the laws that control what you can and cannot do with what you own actually come from such freak-outs.

Well, I wasn’t argueing about the damage I “inflict”, but rather if it is ethically wrong for a single person to purchase used games. (I might have mistaken your answer)

@Gisteron: I think you’d be allowed to share the backup copies with them, but those people would not be able to use them. Again, the current model was never built with the concept that you could easily make a perfect copy of whatever you owned. When photocopy machines first arrived, book publishers were decrying the end of the books industry. When magnetic tapes made their appearance, it was the music industry. VCR, movie industry.

Well, I am not totally sure, but there might be a law/law passage in German law that allows the distribution of music/games/software/movies to near friends and family. But it isn’t clearly defined who belongs to your friend and family, but it is defintivly sure that you can’t call a guy in the internet your friend or maybe “a lot of friends in the internet”.

It has been some time I read about it, so please don’t take it as a total fact or think you can distribute it as you want (for my German pals) in your clique since I am not sure enough about it.

what is piracy actually? if i hack my software so i can use it without the disc, is that piracy already?

Actually, it is at least illegal to bypass copy protection. However, as far as I am aware there is one single exception; when you are not able to use the software except by bypassing the CP. This means, if you are able to buy the software, lengthen a license or whatever you are NOT allowed to workaround the CP, but there might be some cases where you are allowed to do. An example: You bought a game which connects to CP-server and checks if you own a legal copy. If this service gets shut down after two years and you can’t use the software anymore cuase of this, you might be allowed to work around the copy protection.

@Bas: I personally am undecided, but the answer is simple: if you think piracy is bad, then logically used games should also be bad. The original creator doesn’t benefit from it either, and quite a few people can play on a single copy. Obviously, piracy tends to have a much higher ratio of legit:copied, but the principle of the thing is fairly similar.

Since nobody’s really finding used sales to be bad, I think we might need to redefine how piracy is bad. The hardest part is finding a business model that will work without being stupidly ineffective, counter-intuitive and anachronistic like the current one.

As for copy protection, it is illegal to circumvent it unless the publisher/developer has released such a thing. I’m not even sure there are clauses everywhere about bypassing DRM being allowed if you cannot use the product without doing so. I’d hope there is, but…

With regards to taking a book from the library, kinda wrong. You state you pay for the loan. With piracy, you don’t pay for shizzle. The books pay for themselves over the multitude of loans. Just link rental dvd’s/movies. They cost more to buy rental versions, but you can charge.

FriendlyFire wrote:
@Bas: I personally am undecided, but the answer is simple: if you think piracy is bad, then logically used games should also be bad. The original creator doesn’t benefit from it either, and quite a few people can play on a single copy. Obviously, piracy tends to have a much higher ratio of legit:copied, but the principle of the thing is fairly similar.

Since nobody’s really finding used sales to be bad, I think we might need to redefine how piracy is bad. The hardest part is finding a business model that will work without being stupidly ineffective, counter-intuitive and anachronistic like the current one.

Few thoughts:

It is copy per copy. For every person who bought, this item can be resold onwards. Any copy has been paid for and only one is in existence at any point in time…

With piracy, it is one copy (which may not have even been paid for, but is a preview copy) which is then given to MILLIONS. I do not think you can even start to compare the two…

On the release date, for example, of Doom (insert last version) the news stated over 800,000 copies had been illegally downloaded prior to the release. Potentially (not actually) lost revenue of nearly £30 MILLION.

This is a physical impossibility with second hand sales. At any one time there is only 1 physical owner of each individual copy… and each copy has been purchased. Additionally, they have to resale onwards, it takes time and is not instantaneous. Ergo, it is unlikely to hurt new sales (also why games and movies tend to drop in price over time -they recoup their costs, make a profit, and then can start charging less).

Now the big argument is usually that pirated copies do not translate into lost sales. My answer - should I be allowed to have 100 bottles of wine for consumption. Why? Because I’m not going to buy them, so therefore it doesn’t matter - it isn’t a lost sale!

The obvious counter is that wine costs to produce… per bottle. Actually, so do games. The development of games is costing millions per game - with the media reporting that one game cost more to develop than a Hollywood flim (forget which one). A certain amount of games must be sold to cover the cost. However, if it’s okay to steal because you wouldn’t buy anyway, then why should anyone buy.

Personal view:

I cannot see a single justification for piracy, every single one is motivated by self greed. It costs to produce, so every pirated version is a potential lost sale. Using the logic that you wouldn’t buy it anyway, then great, don’t pirate it as you don’t deserve it you cheap bastard If you do, you should be fined or jailed

As for banning software. Well, they license guns to restrict access to those responsible…

I dont use limewire, why, cos its crap. I download from the newsgroups because they are faster and i have never had any virus etc with the files i get from there.

Myself personally i download games and i download them for a reason too. I like to try before i buy because at the end of the day it costs £40 for a game these days (which btw is bloody extortionate) and if im going to pay £40 for a game then i want to know that im going to like that game. So when i see a game i like the look of i download it and try it out, if i like it i buy it. If i dont ive saved myself £40 and from having another coaster to put my coffee on.

Before anyone says “just get the demo” demo’s dont give you the real feel for the game and arent always available for every game that is released.

Movies i dont bother with seeing as i can go to the local store and buy them from between £3 - £7 which i consider to be a reasonable price for them.

But lets face it if the fat cats dont want people to pirate their stuff then dont charge ridiculous amounts of money for it and people wont need to download illegaly.

Mind you if everyone used their heads they’d realise, dont buy new stuff the second its released wait a couple months and guess what? the price goes down lol.

Unfortunately you can’t just put a single face on a pirate and generalize it to everyone else. Pricing, quality, interest, etc. all factor into the equation. Piracy exists for a reason, you know. If there was no flaw in the business model, there would be no piracy. If piracy is so huge nowadays, maybe there’s a reason? I don’t know if you heard of the experiment Valve did with L4D. They made a very, very large sale on the game to see how profits would fare, compared to launch day sales. The result was simple: they had a higher income AND greater profits by selling the game for about a third of its original value.

The thing is that right now we’re faced with a large oligopoly where all the “good” products are sold for high prices. The makers can get compensated and should, but you can’t simply say that those who buy the games are good and those who don’t are evil bastards. It doesn’t work that way. How can you say that all those people who bought games for sale wouldn’t have pirated them otherwise? I think all the industry needs is an important price drop and to stop fucking us with DRM.

Anecdotal evidence: ever since the rise of Steam and finally having good sales on games, I’ve bought more PC games than I had in a long, long time. I’m quite sure I’m not alone.

It is copy per copy. For every person who bought, this item can be resold onwards. Any copy has been paid for and only one is in existence at any point in time…

With piracy, it is one copy (which may not have even been paid for, but is a preview copy) which is then given to MILLIONS. I do not think you can even start to compare the two…

Well that totally depend on where you are in Taiwan and in China MILLIONS !!! of copys of games, movies are soled at shops on the streets/market so your copy per copy aint correct also these shop make profit its sold cheap but they still profit from it unlike a torrent.

When i was at the age of 10-11 i started having Lan’s with my friends we pirated games and shared em so we could play them together. As i grew older i started to get weekly allowance about 20-50 the amount grew with age by the age of 15 it was like 400.
Anyways to get the game i wanted i had to save money for like forever and that gave me enought money to buy ONE game that i didnt even know if i would like or not and yes this was before internet !!! and this is what create’s a pirate as i grew older i got the max allowance i can get 900-1050 the cost of NEW GAME that i want is 499-599 AND THIS IS WHAT MAKES A PIRATE ITS TOO BLOODY EXPENSIVE !!!
So there for i started downloading games now when im older and can afford a couple of games a month but im too used to simply download them so i keep doing so unless its a real good game then in some cases i buy them but its the habit that makes the pirate if was possible for every kid to afford 5 games a month by the time they start playing computer they wouldn’t get into pirating in the first place and that is the source of the problem.

Also selling 1 million for 499 of the games makes em earn money on it
to sell 5 million at a price that children can afford 99,9 would make em earn the same money !!!
ITS THEIR OWN GREEDS FAULT !!!

P.S. if i didnt pirate music i wouldnt listen to it at all and its pretty much the same for movies, games that means that its not a potential sale they lose they dont lose crap cause they didnt have crap to begin with ( yes i would infact be stuck with kizz n iron maiden forever! )

The obvious counter is that wine costs to produce… per bottle. Actually, so do games. The development of games is costing millions per game - with the media reporting that one game cost more to develop than a Hollywood flim (forget which one). A certain amount of games must be sold to cover the cost. However, if it’s okay to steal because you wouldn’t buy anyway, then why should anyone buy.

Well, it should be noted that it doesn’t make any difference if you pirate a game you won’t buy, telling about the costs factor.

I mean, if you don’t pirate a game nor buy it = 0 income for the producer. If you do pirate it, the same applies.

However, this ofc implies that you would NEVER buy a game that you can’t pirate. Means, if there are some instances in whcih you buy the game because you can’t get it for free and you are willing for doing so, this rule doesn’t apply.

Bas wrote:

Well, it should be noted that it doesn’t make any difference if you pirate a game you won’t buy, telling about the costs factor.

This is always trotted out as a justification “why piracy is okay”. It’s right up with the “it’s their own fault it is too expensive”. They are the justification of selfish children…

I put it into a real world counter - the wine.

Here is another. I will never buy an Aston Martin because it’s too #$%% expensive. But I do want one
By the logic of many people here, this means I would be entirely justified to steal one because I can’t afford it otherwise, and therefore they won’t have lost a sale.

Again, people justify their criminal activities “there isn’t really a victim”. Honestly, it’s a crime. End of discussion.

Piracy is greed. Plain and simple. For some fucked up reason we’ve started to believe we are justified to take something that we otherwise cannot afford to have, and deny the fact that we’re just selfish greedy people. We want something and we’ll take it…

Take the vast majority of people who pirate, put them in a shop and say “go on, you’d never buy that - steal it - hide it under your jumper and walk out” and they wouldn’t. It’s wrong, it’s against their moral fibre.

Get on your computer, sit at home and suddenly you’ve got an entirely different moral viewpoint. “Oh it’s not so bad, it’s the companies fault it’s too expensive”. No, it/s your fault you are a greedy bastard Just admit it and stop trying to justify piracy as being their fault.

As for buying more games - it is easy. It’s convenience. If I had to go to the store, I’d never have seen 90% of the games I own. Furthermore, it’s also about a 15 minute walk there, 15 minute walk back, all to look for things I’ve not heard of or seen. Steam… I load, I see something and think “oh, looks interest”. There are reviews, videos, screenshots, demos - all at the finger tips.

Convenience can easily explain the higher sales - not just price.

I do, personally, think games are expensive. Prices are set to offset a risk taken by the publisher in paying for the game, and the money to be made back. However, if I see a game I like and it’s expensive - guess what. I don’t #$%% buy it and I don’t #$%% steal it. I wait. Sometimes a year, sometimes two - and then I get it cheap, on sale.

Ya’ll think it’s fine to steal - knock yourselves out But please, I just ask pirates one thing. Just admit you are a greedy selfish bastard XD XD

p.s. Yes, I stole a few games when I was young. I was selfish, I was greedy. I had things like Doom 2, Wolfenstein 3d, Monkey Island 1. I haven’t pirated a game in… oh boy! I think it was around 1995/1996 when I last pirated a game - the old fashioned way, by handing 3.5" floppy disks After that, I grew up. I changed - it was a concious decision because I didn’t like the person I was making myself into by stealing games

I honestly don’t care about folks stealing games, but I am tired of all the BS justifications. It really is simple. You are greedy, you are selfish - end of

I don’t really care about whether piracy is right or wrong - this often is a matter of personal opinion which hardly could be changed by a forum discussion. I know people who do, I used to do it back when I was a kid with no money, but honestly, the main thing should be “how can we stop it?” It’s entirely useless to jump into philosophical discussions of the ethicality of it all when people won’t stop whatever we say.

I think most companies are unfortunately very, very blind about all of this. They hope a technical solution will solve a human problem. Fat chance. DRM tends to make things even worse, for sometimes pirating gives you fewer problems than actually buying the game (StarForce is a prime example, but so is Ubisoft’s invasive always-online DRM). Steam is, I think, the way forward with this. Yes, it still has DRM, but that’s not what actually makes it so good (in fact I wouldn’t be surprised that Valve put it there just to please corporate execs).

Convenience is certainly one of the advantages; the so-called “impulse buy” is oh so very frequent on there. Still, I think price is the main factor. You wouldn’t do an impulse buy if the game was $20-30, but $5? Sure, why not. Games are overpriced and legal copies tend to cause more trouble than pirated ones. Fix both of those issues and you’ll find yourself with less piracy. You can’t eliminate piracy, but you can totally diminish its importance by playing nicely with your customers.