Moral dilemma regarding 21st century imperialism by dreamtrove

... fully loaded, safety off...

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
I'm not sure who is copying whom here, or where it legally stands.

You really don't see that these people copied the ipad? You think Jobs copied the iped? You're trying too hard to see something that isn't there. It's theft, pure and simple.

Just curious, do not respect or recognize intellectual property?

The ability to copy cheaply the property and work of others has turned the consumer into a digital crack head - "FREE SH*T!
Like we do with a lot of things (especially on this board) we'll rationalize this theft with " effin' corporations, slave laborers, they charge too much, they're against the we, the little man..." I still see it as theft, but the lure is so strong we can't resist.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 23, 2010 4:50 AM

On theft: I'm someone who always pays for music and video, and I make sure I use businesses that give the money back to the artists and the production. The RIAA pisses me off, but then so do the pirates, who think they have the right to everything, for free. Yes, the music industry is a failing business model. That doesn't make it okay to loot it.

This, though? I see as something different. I'm going to talk about patents. Bear me out here.

Apple has produced a product called the iphone. A rival competitor has produced a very similar internet phone called DROID. I've seen DROID commercials advertised all over, and so I'm assuming that DROID is not violating any copyrights or patents that Apple has awarded. I'm assuming that this DROID phone is probably legal, because I would have heard about a lawsuit and the advertisements would have been cease and desisted otherwise.

So, Apple starts to produce iphones basically in laptop form, and starts calling them ipads. Some company in China decides to produce a very similar product, and calls them ipeds.

If Apple has no ability to dispute the DROID, I can't see how they have any ability to dispute the iped.

Furthermore, the iped has better features, functionality, and is more convenient. Apparently they offer a better service as well.

If both products are legitimate, regardless of if the company took an idea Apple had and made it better (and they did, but this happens all the time in business and is not illegal), then may the best product win.

Much like with the DROID, I suspect Apple's rabid fanbase will not be fooled, regardless of the unfortunately similar name, and they'll choose the inferior product that has been better marketed and with the more recognizable brand name.

Theft? No. Competition? Yes.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 23, 2010 4:56 AM

Gee, and the proven history of utterly rapacious behavior, blistering abuse of the legal system and blatant exploitation of our own government in the name of squeezing profit out of folks who weren't even consumers (like the folks the RIAA sued who didn't even own computers, most of whom paid up cause it was cheaper than trying to fight em) doesn't have any impact at all on the matter, does it ?

Every time I hear someone make these kinds of arguments, I am pointedly reminded of Eric Flints verbal rampage in the opposite direction which lead to the Baen Free Library, as him, Baen, Drake, and many others pointed out the fallacy of treating your customers as the enemy and then did the one thing none of these litigous nutters would dare - they put their money where their mouth was.

And yanno what - they won that one, undeniably, and Eric will hand you the numbers to prove it if you so much as hint at askin him - hell, they've sold me quite a few books that way.

Here's the rant in question, mind you.
http://www.baen.com/library/

-Frem

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 23, 2010 5:31 AM

... fully loaded, safety off...

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

Here's the rant in question, mind you.
http://www.baen.com/library/

-Frem

Interesting Frem. I take exception to the author's premise:

"piracy occurs when artificial restrictions in the market jack up prices beyond what people think are reasonable."

Piracy occurs when and where piracy can occur. If cds were $5.99 people would still rip them.

Byte: it's a tricky and expensive thing trying to prove copyright infringement and when it's between Google and Apple I wouldn't assume that no infringement occurred just because you didn't see any law suits. They are big players in the same market and also very different markets. "Leveraging" partnerships is hugely important to these companies so entering into a lawsuit has to be weighed very carefully since the negatives can be devastating (as in Google not working with Apple in the future and vice versa).

I wouldn't be so quick to say one was better than the other until you had them side by side either, that's probably pirate marketing 101. Really doesn't matter too much in these cases, who's Apple going to sue? Some sweat shop in China? Not worth it.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 23, 2010 6:19 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

If it has a different name, a different arrangement of components including different screen size, and an enhanced feature set, then I'm not clear on what is being copied. It's as though they've built a next generation version of the apple product, and I thought that improving something was equitable to creating something new?

Is it the software, and not the hardware, that has been copied?

--Anthony

Due to the use of Naomi 3.3.2 Beta web filtering, the following people may need to private-message me if they wish to contact me: Auraptor, Kaneman, Piratenews, Wulfenstar. I apologize for the inconvenience.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 23, 2010 6:31 AM

Sure, I did say it was an assumption.

But yeah, the likely hood they're going to sue is not high.

...Here's an interesting thought. Is it theft, if the person being taken from doesn't care?

In criminal law, theft isn't theft unless it's reported and maybe the perpetrator charged, which would require the victim of the theft to care.

But more abstract, or on principle...

There's some good arguments for no, it's not theft, but at the same time, I'm hesitant to outright say 'no.' Seems dangerous to just hand wave it, because there are so many ways the naive or unthinking might just give away something they do or maybe should care about. So many ways they could be taken advantage of.

On closer inspection, this sounds like sociopathy.

And as much as I don't really want to support any corporation, Apple included, I'm not sure anymore I want to make the argument that this is okay because Apple just doesn't think it's worth it to go after the thieves. I wouldn't feel the same way for people the RIAA accused how had to pay up just because it wasn't worth it to fight, I'd feel bad for them.

I'm seriously contemplating feeling bad for a corporation?! What.

Must reconcile this. Corporate personhood is a legal scam?

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 23, 2010 8:01 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by pizmobeach:
The ability to copy cheaply the property and work of others has turned the consumer into a digital crack head - "FREE SH*T!

Not just the consumer, but companies too. Companies like Apple, who are as guilty of ripping off other peoples products as anyone, despite being the first to bitch about it. Apple is technically in breach of the GPL a couple times over, since half their code base is taken from open source projects, but they only release the code piecemeal.

Apple makes Microsoft look positively open and friendly, and their belief in intellectual property rights, that is rights they don't own of course, is practically nil.

ETA:
This particular case is clearly not infringement. They might get them on iped being to closed to iPad, but that's it. Change it's name they've got nothing. Either that or accept that Apple has infringed on the UMPCs like the Samsung Q1, I know Apple keep screaming that the iPad is revolutionary, but I'm sorry tablet PCs have been around for nearly a decade, they're late in the game.

EETA:
Or of course the OQO, released a year before the iPad:
http://www.itechnews.net/tag/oqo-umpc/
(Smaller, and more powerful than the iPad too, btw...)

--------------------------------------------------

If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 23, 2010 8:25 AM

Pizmo,

Interesting you should ask? ( I tyoe on my iPad) no, really, the ipad is great. Love it. Okay, so the next question is why is there iPad.

Okay, first off, where does iPad come from? Well apple produces iPad, right? Sure.

And who makes iPed? FoxConn.

Okay, settled that one. But the hitches keep on coming.
Actually,no, FoxConn makes iPad.

FoxConn makes iPad? I thought apple did?! Nah, FoxConn makes kindle too.

Okay, but they're stealing apples idea, right?

Not so simple. Sure, iPed is based on iPad but then iPad is based on other machijnes. Ipad was sort of invented overnight to compete with kindle, and the bones came from another similar tablet, something like the fujitsu stylistic, so no, iPad isn't entirely original.

Okay, but iPed is identical to iPad, right? No, not really, it's smaller, has some new features, and probably a different CPU and OS, so it's not really iPad, is it? So why call it iPed? To force the comparison between the two units and their prices.

Byte,

Google makes the android OS, and most of the droids are made by HTC, it's really a different animal, its a Linux based machine.

As for whose idea the app store was, I haven't looked into it. It might be apples, or could be some random japanese company.

I mean, Goojje is a real search engine, right? I mean, its not Google, and its not Baidu, they made a search engine. Good for them.

So I guess were really down to kibitzing about namespace, or the space next to name space. Oh face it, were screwed. Maybe thats because we don't make anything. FoxConn makes the iPad, I guess they can do whatever they want with it.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 23, 2010 8:40 AM

Oh, I think you answered your own qiuesitonk piz with the theft. It's the 5.99. Now if it were 59 cents, no, no one would copy it. It wouldn't be worth it, it costs us more to copy than it costs them to make it, therein lies the profit, outSide of that, they are just trying to pad the price. As is apple.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 23, 2010 3:20 PM

... fully loaded, safety off...

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Oh, I think you answered your own qiuesitonk piz with the theft. It's the 5.99. Now if it were 59 cents, no, no one would copy it. It wouldn't be worth it, it costs us more to copy than it costs them to make it, therein lies the profit, outSide of that, they are just trying to pad the price. As is apple.

That was my point - piracy exists and will continue not because a corporate dinosaur is charging too much (the righteous consumer angle) but because it's cheaper period. If it costs less to buy from the *jailer* then suddenly we're happy subscribers. That's the basis of ALL advertising - the consumer is above all, first and foremost, unrelentingly selfish and price driven.
But your tact overall makes me sad - creative achievement means nothing? The next movie should be written by Deep Blue? The next soundtrack should be written by an algorithm? Maybe the next news report is a cron job, a mash up of search results? If we stop celebrating (PROTECTING) what is unique then we stop celebrating/protecting what it is to be human, and the machines win.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 23, 2010 3:50 PM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

"the consumer is above all, first and foremost, unrelentingly selfish and price driven."

Hello,

Most people I know have a library of movies. Legitimate movies. All of these movies are available on the pirate market, but these people choose to purchase them for 10-30 dollars (depending on title and format and previously viewed status and sale of the week) in order to add them as articles to their personal libraries. Almost universally, the people who own these movies have already seen the movie in question. Almost universally, the movie in question will become available for free on HBO or Showtime, or some other channel. Almost universally, the movie in question could be purchased or even downloaded for free as a pirated copy, saving the person money.

Most people I know have a library that contains purchased music. All of this music is available on the pirate market, often for free... But these people choose to purchase them anyway. Sometimes they buy CD's, other times they download MP3's at a buck a pop from an MP3 download service.

What I continue to see over and over is that people choose to buy things that they can get for free, or at least for less money. Generally, if someone likes something, they seem to want to own it. And they tend to want to own it legitimately.

I'm not sure why this is. But clearly, there's something more going on in the mind of the consumer than, "Get it as cheaply as I can." There is an additional element swirling around in the brainpan. Based on what I've seen, I don't think the additional element is 'fear of litigation.' This is because some of these same people who have libraries of legitimate paid-for stuff... They also have some quantity of illegitimate pirated stuff. Sometimes they will get the illegitimate version, try it, and then bafflingly purchase the item they already have.

So, I posit that the consumer is a bit more complex than people want us to believe.

--Anthony

Due to the use of Naomi 3.3.2 Beta web filtering, the following people may need to private-message me if they wish to contact me: Auraptor, Kaneman, Piratenews, Wulfenstar. I apologize for the inconvenience.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 23, 2010 4:30 PM

I disagree, Piz - as Eric said, it's kids stealin chewing gum, rather than any real or viable threat.

I buy a lotta games used, which of course doesn't put money in the developers pocket, but those used games do come back around to benefit them when name/brand recognition comes up, I have a certain fondness for particular developers like Interplay, Rockstar, BlueByte, etc...

In fact, although I didn't and still don't much care for the game, I bought GTA4 at full retail cause I know one of the devs personally and wanted to financially support his work (GTA: San Andreas is one of my all time faves) and recently nailed own a copy of Sword of the Stars, WELL worth the asking price.

Now oppose that to someone who paid full retail for something as broken as say, Big rigs over the road racing ?
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/driving/bigrigsotrr/review.html

As far as literature goes - even though Ebooks are a cheaper way to get your product to the customer, a lot of folks, myself included, prefer the treeware, especially in light of incidents with Kindle and such which highlight just how little control you have over content you SUPPOSEDLY "own" when it's in electronic form with someone else having control over how you use it - that being one reason Baen doesn't use DRM.
(And that being the reason they sold me about $60 worth of E-books in the BOLO series I couldn't friggin FIND in print anywhere)

Larry Corriea made serious bank that way on MHI, cause he made the smart move of offering MHI in an Ebook version about a week before the pre-order treeware shipped, causing impatient folks like me to jump all over it and buy the Ebook too!
(His original self published version is still worth well over a hundred bucks as a collectible)

So the assumption that consumers are greedy thieves barely held in check by regulation is pretty much just a variation on the same self serving lies that we need to be controlled for our own good, it's bunk, always has been - and hypocritical besides, cause as someone else beat me to the punch on pointing out, Apple rips off the open source community every chance they get.

Not to mention there's who companies that EXIST for no other reason than rolling out vague patents and suing everyone they can as a pure-profit motive, tell me that isn't ridiculous ?

-Frem

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 23, 2010 4:52 PM

Pizmo

That fantasy spin doesn't touch the reality of the situation. I write, I draw, I play guitar. I can do so well or poorly, makes no difference, theres just no money in it. In fact, I cant do any of it nearly as much as I want, because I need to earn money. Everyone I know who is involved in the arts is rich, they were rich long before they were involved in the arts. They could do it because they were already rich.

The mainstream industry that markets art markets it's internal creations, almost nothing else. You cannot hitch yourself to that bandwagon. You csn sign on the dotted line. Even if you get an incredibly self debasing contract, something that will take basically you're whole lifes effort to get, for a snowflakes chance in hell of an in, an in which will basically make you a slave tl the industry, there is an overwhelming chance that you will not make any more doing so. And if you do, it is because you are on the team, and always were. You will be the arch whore.

Yes, I hear those buts coming, nit I said mainstream. Yes, there are small independent outlets for art. Little publishers than make runs of 3000 books, or mint their own CDs to sell at concerts. I know a fair number of people in this sort of industry too. None of these guys make money. Hell, they're not about making money, they know they aren't going to make money. They're about art. But in order to be about art, they probably had to have some money,

So, no, this is not about the artist making money. Lady Gaga isn't a musical genius, she's the product of a machine. That machine wants to make money, and its connected to the power. Nightwish is not about making money, and they're not making money, and everyone in the world has heard of them, picture the financial level of the profit machines of groups that no one has heard of. There are probably a million musicians out there with more talent than Lady Gaga, which is not to trash lady gaga, it's just that statistically, you gotta know that its true.

So, plain and simple, this is an industry, that industry makes a product, and that product can be sold at a substantial profit to a market willing to pay. Instead, it chooses to manipulate laws to cat what is a de facto artificial scarcity and we all know that contains two elements outside of the free market: outside regulation and market manipulation.

Furthermore, the money game is being played by, and profiting people who are not musicians or artists. Heck, even most of the movies, objectively, pretty much suck, because they're all heavily loaded by the industry message until all interesting characters and twists have been removed, and surely you realize that a left-authoritarian slant is the end result of that one.

So screw it. What would ha
Pen if we killed the machine? Production values would drop. So what.

Imagine if the only pay was a penny a hit advertising. A YouTube would have to reach a hundred million hits to make you a millionaire, OTOH, a fair number have, and they're only you tubes. A movie or tv show would have a lot more traffic, because not only would there be the show, there would be merchandise, websties, and oh yeah, forums, where people would go and talk about your random unsuccessful show that got cancelled halfway through the first season, and they would talk about it for years and years. And that would generate traffic,

So yes, I can imagine this world without our media handlers, and result would be that firefly would ha had lower production values. OTOH, it would had continued until *Joss* said it was over.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 23, 2010 5:05 PM

Oh it's far, far worse than that, Dreamtrove.

The Problem With Music
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
"Some of your friends are probably already this fucked."

Remember I used to do promo for Cursed Eternity and a couple other local bands.

-Frem

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, June 23, 2010 5:09 PM

Frem has a point. I read an interview with one of the guys from the Clash, I don't remember which. Anyway, he said that they had wanted to call the second album "Steal this Album" but the record company wouldn't go for it, so they went for "Black Market Clash." the idea, he said, was to promote bootlegging. They had done the math and realized that if the records sold nothing, but were copied by everyone, the resulting increase in ticket sales would dwarf any possible record sales. The Clash end out selling out Madison Square Garden 16 consecutive nights.

Also, I wanted to add this

My brother teaches intellectual property law, so I asked him about the iPad/iped. He said that they're sunk, but they don't care. Heres how it works:

First off, FoxConn is under contract, which would not enable them to sell ipads, or contract with anyone else for the creation of ipads. However, they also make apples ipads. They ca probably shove the cup ability off to any branch firm, etc. And not worry about it, and apple wont worry about it because they rely on FoxConn, so it's just a matter of how long can we get away with it.

For the shell company who holds the iped, its the same game. Apple of Cupertino ca has no say in the matter at all, but apple of Shenzhen has all kinds of say. Technically they cant touch foxconn as its not a chinese company, it's Taiwanese, and that will never fly in a taiwanese court but no one cares, since everyone is operating inside of china by Chinese law, and under that law, apple of shenzhen holds the rights to the iPad. Iped has no intended long term support, it will be abandoned before the suit can actually be brought, and the company that makes it will probably be dissolved.

However, the fast moving business operations on the mainland side are planning to be in the market long term, and this sort of gig is just their way of raising capital. After all, apple only pays the workers who make the ipad $4 a day, at that rate, if they save every penny they earn, in a year or two, they might be able to become ipad developers after buying a mac and the SDK licensing etc. By that time, everyone will have moved on,

It's a tough game, and they're playing it in the grey market they have available. Obviously, FoxConn doesn't want to be apples lapdog forever, they want to be a permanent major player in the electronics industry, when that happens, it will be called something like FoxPad, and there will be no bones about whose idea it was and where it came from,

And we should recognize this model of industry. It's what Korea did in the 80s and 90s, a trick they learned from the Japanese. And the Japanese, of course, learned it from us, because that was how our industrial economy was originally built.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, June 24, 2010 3:20 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
So the assumption that consumers are greedy thieves barely held in check by regulation is pretty much just a variation on the same self serving lies that we need to be controlled for our own good, it's bunk, always has been - and hypocritical besides, cause as someone else beat me to the punch on pointing out, Apple rips off the open source community every chance they get.

It's pretty much 180 degrees reversed. The companies complaining about pirating far better resemble the greedy thief image than any consumer.

Since DRM for games was brought up, I'll mention this: I was really interested in having a look at the game Spore, I've still not played it. I'm not willing to buy it now that it's on the budget list. The reason has absolutely nothing to do with how much it costs, and everything to do with the pure evil DRM. DRM so damaging and insidious if it were released by some kid, it would be called a Virus and the kid would end up in prison. I'd only be willing to play a pirated copy, simply because it would have no DRM on it.

It's an anecdote that highlights a wider point. DRM is more harmful to the gaming industry than pirating ever has been, or ever will be. For one simple fact over any other: the only people it harms are the legitimate customers. Pirates aren't even slowed down by the best DRM: so the only people harmed by it, the only people who can't play their game when and where they want without asking permission first, are the people who damn well paid for it.

Punishing your customers for giving you money, someone'll have to explain how that one is good business sense to me.

And you know, it's really not the creative talent that created these things that is being protected here: it's the fucking parasitical publishers who exploit other peoples work while leaving the actual creative talent with virtually nothing.

If you actually wanted to protect the creative talent, the way to do it would be to stop DRM, and get rid of publishers, not support those things.

--------------------------------------------------

If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, June 24, 2010 3:36 AM

I've noticed with the iPad it's more difficult to bootlegbut the prices are so low that you don't even bother. Most designers are finding out real quick that you sell more than fifty times more at a busk than you do at $50

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, June 24, 2010 3:43 AM

... fully loaded, safety off...

Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:

"the consumer is above all, first and foremost, unrelentingly selfish and price driven."

Hello,

Most people I know have a library of movies. Legitimate movies. All of these movies are available on the pirate market, but these people choose to purchase them for 10-30 dollars (depending on title and format and previously viewed status and sale of the week) in order to add them as articles to their personal libraries. Almost universally, the people who own these movies have already seen the movie in question. Almost universally, the movie in question will become available for free on HBO or Showtime, or some other channel. Almost universally, the movie in question could be purchased or even downloaded for free as a pirated copy, saving the person money.

Most people I know have a library that contains purchased music. All of this music is available on the pirate market, often for free... But these people choose to purchase them anyway. Sometimes they buy CD's, other times they download MP3's at a buck a pop from an MP3 download service.

What I continue to see over and over is that people choose to buy things that they can get for free, or at least for less money. Generally, if someone likes something, they seem to want to own it. And they tend to want to own it legitimately.

I'm not sure why this is. But clearly, there's something more going on in the mind of the consumer than, "Get it as cheaply as I can." There is an additional element swirling around in the brainpan. Based on what I've seen, I don't think the additional element is 'fear of litigation.' This is because some of these same people who have libraries of legitimate paid-for stuff... They also have some quantity of illegitimate pirated stuff. Sometimes they will get the illegitimate version, try it, and then bafflingly purchase the item they already have.

So, I posit that the consumer is a bit more complex than people want us to believe.

Hey Anthony - you left off the first part of that sentence:

"That's the basis of ALL advertising - the consumer is above all, first and foremost, unrelentingly selfish and price driven."

I think that still holds true, especially from my days working in advertising (no more, put your blunt objects down). You may find individuals that mix it up but as a body Consumers are cheap cheap cheap. Let the price of gas rise 4 cents and listen to the outrage. "But Shelly, you only drive 20 miles to work round trip? That's like a quarter extra week, like a dollar a month." "I know! Outrageous!"

I would also add to the equation that many people just don't know how to pirate so they buy instead.

Frem - I have to question the motives of the "pay what you want" marketers. Do they have a warehouse of stock that isn't moving? Then giving it away isn't costing any more and they might generate word of mouth = more sales.
Recently it was Cold Play? REM? that was giving away cds online with a pay want you want model. These guys are millionaires so they can risk that, so it's not an endorsement of the model and they make huge PR points too from consumers. When I see it adopted in more places repeatedly then I'll feel differently about it.

What I find interesting is this defense of the consumer, as if they are powerless or not an integral part of the retail cycle. Look at the wasteland of tv - producers produce what consumers watch - that's a consumer driven *bad* product.

I think I've veered off topic. I didn't know Apple was guilty of stealing open source. In the big picture my concern is about artist's rights, so by extension, code is the coder's creation and should be protected. I also thank God every day that Apple isn't more like Microsoft.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, June 24, 2010 3:50 AM

Citizen: speaking of Spore, I have to concur that EA games is absolutely awful about this. In the interest of making sure that they get as much money out of people as they can, a number of their games have started sporting downloadable content. The reason why this is ridiculous is because often downloadable content is made available the very same day that the game releases. Clearly they have a backlog of extra stuff that they could have released WITH the game.

In the interest of keeping people from sharing, they also make their games so that they can't really run without the game disks, which, if you have a crappy Rom drive, can really tax your system. This one I can understand little more, to an extent, except if say a parent and their child want to play a game together, they have to buy two copies of the game. It's not a family friendly policy.

The second problem with this is that the download manager that comes with every game also collects information on your system specs and the other programs you have running on it, and sends it to proxy servers, and I'm sure EA Games sells that information out to people.

The trick is to sidestep the game launcher, and remove the EA download launcher from your list of start-up programs, and play with your wireless internet off (I'm assuming that's what you have because it's just about what everyone has now).

Though I still haven't played Spore, either. Largely for these same reasons.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, June 24, 2010 6:27 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by pizmobeach:
In the big picture my concern is about artist's rights, so by extension, code is the coder's creation and should be protected. I also thank God every day that Apple isn't more like Microsoft

Point one:
DRM, Publishers, all that stuff == Bad for artists.

Point two:
Apple is worse, not better, than Microsoft.

--------------------------------------------------

If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, June 24, 2010 7:00 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Clearly they have a backlog of extra stuff that they could have released WITH the game.

Downloadable content is a pretty good system imho, that is if it's done as a downloadable content system, and not, as I suspect EA is doing it "charge them full price for the game, then milk them for playing it too!".

If you buy it episodically, like the high life2 expansion packs, or if you have a small outlay then pay for little bits as you play, I'm more ok with it (as long as you're not paying much more than a whole game up front).

I want them to be more creative with the idea though. Web games are the perfect example of how to do it, free to play, and buy extras. Even better if the extras you buy customise your game and lock others out, so you personalise not only your character, but the entire game as well.

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
In the interest of keeping people from sharing, they also make their games so that they can't really run without the game disks, which, if you have a crappy Rom drive, can really tax your system.

NoCD cracks make those things moot, but for some unfathomable reason companies still plaster them on. TBH I use no CD cracks a lot for the games I buy, because it's pointless digging through disks looking for the one you want when all the content is on the hard drive anyway.

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
This one I can understand little more, to an extent, except if say a parent and their child want to play a game together, they have to buy two copies of the game. It's not a family friendly policy.

That one is fair enough I think, you only get one licence per game (though I do have issues with the licensing model). If you're releasing a family oriented play together game though, you really should be releasing it as multi-licence.

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
The second problem with this is that the download manager that comes with every game also collects information on your system specs and the other programs you have running on it, and sends it to proxy servers, and I'm sure EA Games sells that information out to people.

It won't be sending the information to proxy servers, but I know what you're talking about. And you can be damn sure that they're selling that information on. The Open Source world takes this information too, difference is they always ask if it's ok first, and use it to make a better application for you.

Side stepping the launcher isn't a perfect plan. Most DRM is built directly into the game executable and/or it's component libraries. Hence why most pirate patches have a cracked .exe file.

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
The trick is to sidestep the game launcher, and remove the EA download launcher from your list of start-up programs, and play with your wireless internet off (I'm assuming that's what you have because it's just about what everyone has now).

I have a Wireless Router connected to an ADSL line, set up as a hardware firewall. My Desktop/Server connects directly to that through a wired connection, my Laptops are wireless. If I don't want a program connecting to the net, I can close down any program or machine with either the software or hardware firewalls.

Problem is the move with modern DRM is to require an always on internet connection, so they can constantly check your licence details. Steam gets pissy without an internet connection (it'll work in off line mode, but will does close you down if it hasn't been able to log on in awhile).

DRM is pretty insidious now. It's a program that installs on the system with the game, as part of the game. In the good old days it was pretty pathetic, a piece of paper with code words or something, now it's stuff that burrows into the core of the machine and fucks with it. Its also a significant percentage of the end price of the product, so I'm fairly happy to claim that removing DRM would, long term, actually reduce pirating.

DRM is not about protecting artist rights, that's just the bullshit the parasites use to shovel it, DRM is about forcing people to spend more money than they should, it's about milking legitimate customers. Pirates are the bad guys sure (well some, most only do it to destroy the DRM, what you do with their crack is your responsibility), but the DRM guys are far far worse.

--------------------------------------------------

If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, June 24, 2010 7:07 AM

Agreed.

I do usually take the pirates side when they get caught and put on trial, but some of their arguments do annoy me.

Hmm, you pose a good idea about using the firewall to block the offending program from the internet, that actually didn't occur to me. I suppose it seemed more comprehensive at the time to just shut off the internet whenever I was playing, in case starting up the game also started up some background program doing all the information gathering.

The question is if programs might find away around firewalls using loopholes coded into the more common ones.

I've never tried a noCD crack, I know they're out there, but I don't know which sources are trustworthy. Plus, I guess I have this odd compulsion about not wanting to break any terms of service or void warranty, even though the side practices of the services provided almost warrant breaking the agreement.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, June 24, 2010 8:48 AM

EA did even worse with the battlefield series, in that you HAVE to log into the authentication server even to play single player - and not buying each crummy update (for full retail at $59 or so) will block you off the multiplayer servers completely anyway - not that the game didn't suck hard enough that didn't matter, I got stuck with it when a friend desperately wanted me to play on his team and begged till I decided to give it a shot, and between the DRM, the content-control-exploitation, and the typical EA bullshit, I wound up stuffing the CD back in the box and running the fucking thing over with my lawnmower.

And don't forget Motor City Online, and the weeks of promises they were going to keep supporting the game, followed by ha-ha, we LIED, suckers!
And just like that, wiped the servers, rendering all who paid for it outta luck cause the game was online only - AND left it on store shelves for up to six weeks after by not telling the retailers they'd shitcanned the servers.

And don't even get me started on Rootkits or Starforce/SecuROM, and their hardware wrecking bullshit - not to mention I've had a hard-on for Macrovision since they RUINED my first chance to re-watch the original star wars trilogy, cause when I rented them the Macrovision protection not only made them unwatchable, it permanently fucked up my hideously expensive VHS players auto-tracking... and it seems they've continued in that vein with Blueray, as Donny never was able to get his to work at all cause of that shit, and has relegated it to the bottom of his closet - and of course, Windoze Vista is the perfect nightmarish example of what happens when you incorporate that shit into the operating system.

For a fact, if you do not have COMPLETE and TOTAL control and access to the content, IMHO it's a fucking RENTAL, and I don't pay full retail for a rental, I buy it, I OWN it, simple as that.

And then there's the wonders of user operation prohibit flagging...

When it comes to this kinda thing, the greedy bastards don't just shoot themselves in the foot, they take a machinegun and make sure to reload twice - it's the same as why Adblock and Flashblock are now used by most savvy net browsers, and THEY BROUGHT IT ON THEMSELVES.

-Frem

Disclaimer: I HAVE legally purchased some games and vids, and THEN (since I have a legal right to the content at that point) hacked the hell out of em to cut out this kinda bullshit, cause it should be MY choice what runs on my hardware I personally own, not someone elses, once I have paid for it I'll hear no bitchin about how I use it whatever.

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, June 24, 2010 8:58 AM

Reminds me of the early days when games came with a decode wheel, and if you lost it, the program wouldn't work because you had to use it each time you booted up to enter some funky code. They never got a clue to hey, just let go.

I remember reading sometime back that the best selling came was Doom, and that nine of the top ten were shareware. Companies just undervalue word of mouth,

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, June 24, 2010 9:02 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Agreed.

I do usually take the pirates side when they get caught and put on trial, but some of their arguments do annoy me.

We might be getting terms mixed up. When I say pirates, I don't mean the people playing a cracked game, I mean the people who cracked it. I've not heard any of those people getting caught, they're usually fairly secretive. In my experience they do it to screw over the DRM. There seems to be a try before you buy angle too. If you like the game, buy it, if you don't why should the company force you to pay for a shoddy product because they lied and told you it wasn't crap?

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Hmm, you pose a good idea about using the firewall to block the offending program from the internet, that actually didn't occur to me. I suppose it seemed more comprehensive at the time to just shut off the internet whenever I was playing, in case starting up the game also started up some background program doing all the information gathering.

Problem is some of these DRMs are rootkits and other nasties, meaning the game might not be running, but it's DRM and virus like appendages probably are...

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
The question is if programs might find away around firewalls using loopholes coded into the more common ones.

The firewall companies have a vested interest to not have loopholes in their product, so if they're there it's a bug that'll be caught and fixed eventually. Further there's already programs that do exactly that, they're called trojans and they're sort of illegal. Games publishers are probably evil enough to make trojans, but not stupid enough ;).

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
I've never tried a noCD crack, I know they're out there, but I don't know which sources are trustworthy. Plus, I guess I have this odd compulsion about not wanting to break any terms of service or void warranty, even though the side practices of the services provided almost warrant breaking the agreement.

Well games have no warranty, it probably breaks the EULA, but over here I'm fairly sure it's not actually illegal (as opposed to must EULAs that infringe our statutory rights). As an aside we recently got a law that makes it illegal to break CD copyright protection, but our statutory rights explicitly state we have the right to make a back up copy, which means breaking cd copy protection to do it.

The upside is this new law doesn't make piracy illegal, it makes cd copy protection illegal, because it now infringes our statutory rights, by preventing us from making a legal backup copy.

That test case is going to be very interesting...

--------------------------------------------------

If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, June 24, 2010 9:31 AM

There was a pirating case over in Europe somewhere that I got wind of a year or so ago, but I can't remember what they were pirating. It might have been video games, because I probably found it trhough one of my gaming webcomics I read. But it might have been music, too.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, June 25, 2010 12:19 PM

And now I get to laugh, once again, at the folks asserting mankind is fully rapacious barbarians held in check only by threats.

Panera Co. to open more pay-what-you-wish eateries
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100625/ap_on_bi_ge/us_panera_pay_what_you
_wish

Quote:
Ronald Shaich, Panera's chairman, admitted as he watched them line up that he had no idea if his experiment would work. The idea for Panera's first nonprofit restaurant was to open an eatery where people paid what they could. The richer could pay full price — or extra. The poorer could get a cheap or even free meal.

A month later, the verdict is in: It turns out people are basically good.

Panera, which operates 1,400 franchised and corporate-owned bakery-cafes across the country, plans to expand the nonprofit model around the nation, opening two more locations within months.

"I guess I would say it's performing better than we even might have hoped in our cynical moments, and it's living up to our best sense of humanity," Shaich said in an interview.

So, where's the rapacious horde looting and torching the place, eh ?

Again, I assert we're being sold a bad bill of goods about what human nature is, and that is entirely deliberate and with nefarious intent - after all, if we really *were* like that, how'd be build civilization in the first place ?

-Frem

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, June 25, 2010 5:14 PM