Doom 3: Interesting piracy statistics

That’s not the issue here. Yes, I pirated Doom 3 and don’t feel the least bit guilty for doing it. FedEx says the box will come in today. But I’m already a soulless, baby-killing pirate, so I suppose that doesn’t matter.

Here’s the issue: twice now you’ve put words in my mouth, either because you’re here to troll or because you’re too dense to come up with a better method of debate. The third, most likely option is a combination of the two.

If you want to have custom-scripted arguments with yourself, I suggest you get a box of crayons, a ream of paper, and a set of finger puppets. Find a dark, quiet corner and fulfill your immature, petty desires. That should do wonders for getting the moronic troll out of your system.

You wouldn’t happen to be Thomas Covenant, would you?

You guys are thinking way too small.

That’s just at once. A 1.5 gig file doesn’t take that long to download through bit torrent if it’s popular (many downloads = many sources, unless someone hacked up a bit torrent client that allows leeching?). I’d guess 300k total bit-torrent downloads, minimum.

I wonder if Activision/iD is going to have anything to say to Best Buy; it’s pretty obvious that’s why the pirates had a chance to crack the file a few days before release. If it were a primarily multiplayer title, it wouldn’t be an issue since it’s really hard for casual pirates to keep up with an active patch schedule. But Doom 3 is mainly single player.

Bah that’s not even close to accurate. Before my wife actually picked up the phsyical CD’s, I snagged it off suprnova, and I had all three torrents going at once just in case one messed up (i.e. tracker dies). Given the relative parity of the numbers for each file, I would bet quite a few others do the same.

60,000 others?

divide by three?

To be fair to BB, the only one to blame for the early pirating is Activision itself. Warez-scene members are everywhere, from employees at stores like BB to deliverymen to anyone in-between. The one copy that goes missing out of tens of thousands that ship isn’t really noticed, the problem is, that’s the copy that gets turned into the warez release.

The really frightening statistic there is that 27 people were downloading Nancy Drew and the Secret of Shadow Ranch.

I believe those are the people that want to get games for their kids, but don’t want to be seen buying said games in their local software store. :)

Is 3 simultaneous downloads that efficient? Wouldn’t it limit your upstream and downstream bandwith on each file?

Ah, a fine example of debating, you soulless baby-killing pirate! I suppose this is your way of dealing with my use of your previous inconsistent statement. You only had to explain the material inconsistency. Classic, classic LE-style response, and it didn’t take much to draw it. But don’t worry, “the rest of (my) post isn’t worth (your) commenting on” (another fine debating tactic). Feel free to ignore my reply.

Getting back to actually debating as opposed to the LE-style argument, my position is this: while a person may feel less culpable downloading a game that they feel they’ve already ‘paid’ for, it’s not a legally justifiable position i.e. you are a pirate (though not necessarily a soulless baby-killing, which is an honour that LE has claimed for himself, though it would have been cooler to have been a soulless baby-killing ninja space pirate). Why unnecessarily inflate the popularity of warez sites because you’re not patient enough to wait the extra few days?

The idea of a ‘pre-order’ right is nebulous. Would it be sufficient if I told myself ‘I’m certainly going to buy it’? If I decided not to pick up my copy and let BB/EB keep my $50, did I ever get the rights to the game? Where did that $50 go? Does a pirate who never intended to purchase the game but downloads it ‘unpirate’ himself if he buys an actual copy?

Sophistry? Perhaps, but these are rights-perspective approaches to this issue that most people don’t think about when they have a pre-order. Certain people, of course, get defensive when the issue is addressed this way. I would think that LE’s admission that he’s a baby-killing pirate is correct. However, having paid his $50, he would likely be a baby-killing pirate against whom a lawsuit for rights infringement would net only nominal damages.

Okay, that’s just stupid.

I just have to call bullshit here. If someone couldn’t download it so easily, even a college student, and if that someone wanted to play the game, they’d buy it themselves or simply wait til they had the money to either buy it themselves or wait for Christmas/Birthday, whatever. They have a PC. They’re going to college. Both things indicate a non-trivial amount of wealth for entertainment purposes too.

It’s just too easy for them and they have no concept of intellectual property so they steal it. Remember when you were a kid… like six years old? How did you get new toys? Holidays. Before the Internet and BBSes, if I wanted another Atari 2600 game, I had to either beg mom to buy it for me or pray that somone bought it for me as a gift. Allowances would add up too. The money for these games is in these people’s pockets or their parents’ pockets. Because it’s easily obtainable and because those same parents condone it or do it themselves, they break the law and download.

The argument that people wouldn’t buy DOOM 3 anyway is just another pitiful way of justifying the theft.

–Dave

I know this isn’t the P&R forum, and I’m really not trying to extend any of the Doom 3 threads, but having a PC in college indicates there is money for entertainment purposes? Are you serious?

What many failed to realize in this thread is that there are ways that a student can get the money for a computer and tuition (scholarships, funds, grants) that will NOT include the amount of a game. I am not siding with pirates, but the idea that anyone in college with a computer can afford a game is fucking ludicrous. One example among many: Dell sells university-ready (middle to low range) computers to students at my alma mater for something like 70% of retail, when purchased through university programs including having the money sent from your “school account” (i.e. where scholarships are deposited until used) directly, like a purchase order. They don’t include games.

Jesus.

Cite one study, from anywhere in the world, which concludes that a majority of criminals would buy the items they steal if theft was not an option.

So, have we now whittled the field down to college students who have a computer and broadband supplied to them by the college itself? Okay. Let’s accept that. Do these people spend any money on leisure and entertainment? Based on my admittedly hazy memories of being a student, unless they’re ascetic hermits living hand to mouth, yes, of course they do. Over the course of a month or two, can they cut back on their entertainment spending enough to save up the $50 it costs to buy the game? There are probably a handful of students at any given college who truly couldn’t, but I’m willing to bet a copy of Doom3 that those aren’t the ones who are downloading pirated copies of Doom3 in the first place.

Finally – and this applies to everyone who pirates a game with the excuse that they can’t afford it – what’s stopping them from taking a few hours that they would otherwise spend playing the game and getting a part-time job to pay for it? Sorry, the ‘can’t afford it’ excuse just doesn’t fly.

Being able to afford something has to do with perceived worth too. For example, I couldn’t afford spending $1000 for a new pair of pants, but I could afford spending $1000 for a new computer.

Even if we assume all warezing was impossible, I doubt a huge portion of student warezers would buy their games (even high profile games like Doom 3) if it meant saving up for months.

[quote=“dinsdale”]

Cite one study, from anywhere in the world, which concludes that a majority of criminals would buy the items they steal if theft was not an option.[/quote]

Irrelevant.

Stealing in the privacy of your own home with virtually no consequences (i.e. downloading a game) is far far different than breaking into someone’s home, stealing from a shop, etc. where you can be confronted by the home owner, store owner, police, etc. I.E. Risk and reward are a factor for any thief. Which is why theft most of the time is done when there is not much risk for the thief. Burglary vs. robbery, if you will.

In this case if the person in question had to literally WALK into Best Buy and lift the game off the shelf, stick it under his shirt, and attempt to walk out do you think that these numbers would be the same as for downloads? Reality. Do you speak it?

Downloading games --> Almost zero risk, good reward. Thankfully in real life there are far more consequences but certainly even those don’t deter everyone or crime wouldn’t be what it is.

It’s amazing to me that in the subject of criminology, a field which has ample expert study, people will often just assume that their assumptions are correct and that their beliefs universal.

While logical and full of common sense, your observations are still incorrect. Outside of immediate detection there is no agreed principle that consequences ever play a role in criminal behaviour. That’s why it’s never been proven that the death penalty is more a deterrent than imprisonment, or to take a more relevant example, that punishment will prevent IP theft:

In the month following the RIAA’s well publicized crack-down, P2P usage increased 10%. Here at last was a consequence for pirating music, but instead of heeding that, the increased publicity simply increased the number of people prepared to indulge in downloading.

Criminology is not voodoo, and IP theft is not a new issue, what appears to be completely missing from the world is expert opinion that criminal behaviour is substantially different between traditional and online crimes. So while the internet is bringing new opportunities for crime to a wider audience, there’s no evidence that criminal behaviour itself is substantially different.

Put a man in an unguarded warehouse and he won’t pick what he needs, he’ll pick the closest items, or the most items he can carry out without heed to what he’ll do with them. It’s not even challenged any more that crimes of opportunity are prompted by need, or desire, but through lack of self control.

About the only accurate statements regarding piracy the last few days here, have been those which dispell the myth that IP theft is commited by those who cannot afford products. There are so few crimes of necessity in fraud or theft, that not even the bleeding hearts try and expouse that myth anymore. People rarely steal because they have to or need to, they steal because they can.

So while it’s tempting to be swayed by you playing the irrelevant card, I’d rather see a work by someone more experienced in criminology explain why this form of criminal behaviour is notably different, and as such would result in markedly different revenue streams from those who steal.

Let me see:

5 cases of beer vs Doom 3

I don’t know what college you went to but my money is on the beer. Of course, I went to Texas A&M so YMMV.

Just because pirates can’t afford the games doesn’t mean they’d have bought them.

They can afford to buy a game a month or so, of course; they just can’t afford to buy more than a couple of the many titles they pirate. “10% of pirated games would have been bought” sounds like a useful starting point.