Funnily, after hearing this song in the game Sequence I really considered buying a Jenkees album.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRnZtn1a9bM

But 10 dollar is too expensive. Would take it for 3-5 dollars.
(The CD price, on the other hand, is ok - I mean, it's a CD and not only MP3 then)

It's about the freeloading principle, and it's bound to become a tragedy of the commons eventually.

You already see the signs with more and more indignation when the supplier model does not deliver - in the region, at the price, exactly the way someone wants.

Sooner or later, it's going to hit the fan. For the moment, the number of people willing to support the freeloaders (or unaware they are) is still ok.

Do you see the parallels to how we got into economic situation? Too many freeloaders and too few producers... of course with software we do not have a demographic inversion.

I find it funny how the moral argument against piracy is so clear, really black and white, but instead of owning to it, it all then becomes about some kind of utilitarian marginal argument that the system is working fine as long as the freeloading is so and so or for this and that exceptional reason.

As someone said above, it's about respect of the creator/producer/distributor. He decides how to sell, you decide if to buy. Freedom for all. Piracy is an abuse of the creator/producer/distributor freely made agreements. And it makes the decision of the buyer irrational (from economic side). Perverse anyway you look at it, end of story.

A bit over the top? Yes, but I find this type of arguments a great example of how subjective senses of injustice lead to trampling all over other's rights.

That is exactly the misconception people have about digital goods. They aren't comparable to current economic. A digital good is basically an infinite good. It still has to be profitable, of course, but once this number has been reached, the good is universally available.

Let's say an indie games needs100.000 sales to get the production costs back in and give the devs a nice fat bonus. The only concern for the dev is to get those sales. It doesn't matter if 100.000, 250.000 or 10 million people play the game as long as 100.000 pay for it. And that is how it works currently. And it does work. The idea that nobody will pay for entertainment if it is freely available says more about the person that thinks that way then about piracy as a problem. Again, this isn't a "what if scenario" this is happening right now, as we type. And it is working.

As statet before, the internet has brought a totally new playing field into the world. Current economic and legal playbooks are becoming irrelevant. Those who accept this and work are the ones profting from it, like Valve with Steam. Or Amazon. But also my local bookstore, who doesn't try to compete with price, but with personal support.

And don't try to educate me about freeloaders. I'm a german tax payer, if anybody has the right to complain, it should be me. And I don't.

The plural of "anecdote" is not "data". There are plenty of actual studies out there on the prevalence of piracy and also on the attitudes of the people involved in it. Also telling are several studies that show that people who pirate content also tend to purchase more content than those who don't pirate. This alone seems to blow away the idea that people only purchase content because they don't know how to pirate it.

You're still refusing to acknowledge reality. You have no say over the shift of power to consumers. It's already occurred. And it already works fine for consumers. It already works fine for content producers that have acknowledged it and have adapted their business models. No one has the power to reverse this shift in power to consumers, all content producers have the power to do is adapt their own business models to work in the current reality of the world.

You don't have to like this. You're free to believe that things would be better overall if the world operates differently from how it currently operates. But none of this changes what reality actually is.

It's not that I'm OK (or not OK) with the current state of copyright and piracy, but rather that this has no bearing on the current line of discussion. I think that society at large should most certainly consider how it wants to view copyright and piracy, and whether it wants to try to make some changes to the overall environment, and I have plenty of my own thoughts on this. But none of this is relevant when it comes to discussing how content producers should respond to the current reality of piracy. That discussion needs to remain restricted what the current reality of the world is, and what content producers actually have the power to change. Letting discussions of how people think things should be seep into that discussion doesn't accomplish anything useful.

It comes down to a question of whether you want to take a moral stand, or whether you want to accomplish something useful. Or in the context of content producers, do you want to try to enforce your moral beliefs, or do you want to make money?

I really think that trying to justify piracy in a moral ground is just plain stupid. It doesnt make any sense. Piracy is wrong, period. Youre taking away someones work whitout giving the creators any credit. I cant see how one can morally justify this. In my opinion pirates are just way too selfish. Theyll find a reason to pirate no matter how cheap or how widely available the product it. They feel like its a crime to charge money for a game, so theyre doing the right thing. "Hey wait, theyre charging me 50 dollars for ME 3? Wtf? They should go to jail right now, greedy bastards".

Pirates think they have the right to get the game for free whenever they dont agree with publishers/developers policies. "Hey, im pirating your game, and thats your fault". This is just nonsense. If you really do want to make some kind of protest, dont buy it, dont play it, DONT pirate it. When you pirate their game out of protest, publishers will see it as a lost sale to piracy and will make even more DRM schemes. This idea of "protest" is just flawed. If you pirate, it just shows publishers that you are actually interested and agree with their work, but they need stronger DRM, at least thats the way publishers will see it.

Games are not charity. Developers/publishers have all the rights to get some money for their work. They are NOT forced to work for free just to satisfy your hobby.

There are ways, I understand them a lot more now than I did years ago when I said all the same stuff you just did.

Still, the reason for like 90% of piracy is people who don't give a shit about the moral aspects of it, plain and simple.

The "if enough people choose to pay for it, we'll be OK, we can ignore the rest" principle only works whilst there is a sufficient proportion of us who do choose to pay.

Its a big world - maybe that can (continue to) work. But if the "don't know better, all their friends are doing it" group grow sufficiently this fine utopia breaks down.

The producer do have the ultimate power to choose - they can choose to stop producing.

And I still don't buy this "once its in the digital domain its not yours any more, its owned by the hive mind, let it go, man, let it be free...smell the daisies" nonsense - all that is doing is cooking up justification for a wrong doing on the back of the simple fact that the wrong doing is happening in the first place - circular arguments.

Yes, there are new business models taking shape, some will work others will fail. And a lot of people will still choose to circumvent whatever system you put in place ... because, as StingingVelvet says - they just don't give a shit.

As I have said before I would love it if we could all trust each other to do the right thing.
I really don't give a shit about the "hard core" pirates and I think the "fighting the system" ones are a little deluded. But I fear that middle group of casual pirates fuelled by petty greed - they have the potential to grow into a passive destructive force.

I have to say tho' that this struck a chord ...

This would seem to apply to me, not just on piracy but in life in general, as I get angry seeing people cheat their way to things I work for, taking and giving backhanders and generally "playing the system".

Why, precisely am I getting angry at them - its their problem not mine. I'll need to think on this a lot more - thanks.

I'm not refusing reality, as you might have noticed I have never said that people don't pirate stuff. This is like walking into a discussion about 'What would you change about Fallout 3?' and say that what is in Fallout 3 is fact and therefore discussion is pointless. As for consumers, of COURSE it works fine for them, they get stuff for free, how could it not. As for the system working fine for producers, that we'll never really know as long as piracy is around, will we? That you have to adapt doesn't mean what you're adapting to is somewhat good. At any rate, all this is based on my experience with my surroundings and generally, well... Czech people and their mindsets. I would really like to see those studies and if you can provide me with some links, I would be grateful.

If I "pirated" less, I would comsume less.

I would just focus more time per item. For example, I had bought an itunes greatest hits of a legacy act from the 70's. I heard they were going to play in my area, so I downloaded their 15+ album discography and gained a lot more appreciation for the band. I then bought a ticket and brought 3 friends with me, plus I spent $60 on merch


Net cost of albums on itunes (which I would not have bought): $150

Net money spent that all went to the band: $360.

Everyone wins.

Given that the people who choose not to pay are perfectly capable of doing so, do you think that making the people who do choose to pay jump through hoops and limit what they can do with the product they paid for is the best way to entice people to pay?

See attached image for an example. It explains very well why some people choose to pirate movies instead of buying them.

I think there is lots of value in the games and media that some people can misunderstand or choose to ignore for a variety of reasons . I'm not being sarcastic or threatening when I suggest that if anyone here hasn't tried programming a simple program in a relatively simple language like Euphoria : http://openeuphoria.org/ , and see : http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Euphoria

It may help to understand what work goes into making software. It is mental work but it is hard, just in a different way than shoveling dirt or some mixture of physical and mental labor. Labor is hard to equate into number. So I don't take money very seriously. But to me labor is still worth something, if not money, but something more than an easily neglected promise of something in return of an unspecified type, or nothing. But only if the maker requests something in return, and they often do. Some games are freeware, and developers love to give it away and have people enjoy the software for social, experimental, altruistic reasons. But that is the agreement pirates mistake most software to be using.
I do understand how it might be more effective for the industry to put pressure on people, or give alternatives to pirating habits by changing their business models. But I also think it may help for individuals to change independently at the same time. IIRC would those be called top-down and bottom-up ways? You can have people change behavior by changing what is expected of them without having them think, but also have them be aware of decisions and do it themselves.

It is just entertainment after all. I'm a little confused now. Take care of your pancreas and keep your blood glucose in a healthy range. Don't pirate while you are doing so.

Then it seems that you're actually looking to have the wrong discussion entirely. If you want to have a theoretical discussion about what you'd change in the world if you could then you can have the discussion with someone else- it does not interest me. What the open letter addressed, and what I am trying to talk about, is saying to content producers "Here are certain aspects of how the world currently is that you have no control over. Given this, here are things that you do have control over, and here are some actions you are capable of taking that would make people like me more likely to buy things from you. You can either take these actions and potentially make more money, or you can just continue to complain about things you have no control over and things will continue as they currently are. Choose."

The new system, which empowers consumers, is not simply piracy, but rather the triviality of distribution that the internet introduced. In addition to empowering consumers it also has provided lots of new opportunities for content producers. This is because the triviality of distribution allows the actual content producers to bypass middlemen, greatly reduce distribution costs, and also reach a much wider audience. Some notable recent success stories are the Humble Indie Bundle, Minecraft, and Lewis CK. When people recognize the reality that triviality of distribution brings and actually take advantage of it it can work out quite well for them. The reality of this for consumers is that if they want to they can always get content when they want, in the format they want, in a convenient way, and for a reasonable price. The reality of this for content producers is that if they offer their product to consumer when they want, in the format they want, in a convenient way, and for a reasonable price, then the content producer can end up making quite a bit of money thanks the wide audience and low costs of distribution. The people that run into problems with this reality are those who refuse to recognize it and keep trying to use business models that no longer work particularly well (models centered on control, trying to restrict access to content, etc).

Here is one, and here is an older one (commissioned by the CRIA, of all groups).

It again comes down to what content providers do have the power to change vs what they don't have the power to change. They do have the power to change their business model and how they offer their content. They don't have the power to change how individuals view piracy (this doesn't mean industry groups haven't tried this- they have for decades, and failed miserably). This also doesn't mean that people's attitudes towards piracy won't change over time, but this is something that slowly changes on its own, and which no company or organization really has any meaningful control over.

Thank you, I'll take a look at those later :-)

Fun fact. Two best selling games for PC of last year are:
Battlefield that have almost the most hated DRM: Origin
Skyrim that have DRM (Steam) and heavy regional locks.

TW2 didn't have regional locks (even on GOG they removed regional lock just for TW2 release), had removed DRM right after release (GOG verison didn't have it at all) and game was very heavily pirated.

On other hand Football Mangaer 2012 was the first edition of FM that had additional DRM (before they have only Steamy DRM) and even tho this edition have bad fame of being the least innovative edition of the series it sold during first weeks of release WAY better than any edition before and devs was happy about how DRM worked.

Does DRM or regional locks hurt sales? I don't think so. People that use them as excuse for pirating games don't buy games anyway.

I bet that in not so distant future publishers will start releasing blockbusting games for PC, only on platforms like Onlive and everyone will be happy. Pirates won't be forced to pirate games in order to fight with DRM or regional locks.