You’ve just ruined my day. Good going.
Now I’m going to create bomb-shelter for current games in case of an apocalypse.
The entire website, to file, to program thing is more confusing than Napster. I don’t know what else to say. It’s definitely been improved, but many people I know who loved the hell out of Napster and Kazaa want absolutely NOTHING to do with Bit Torrent.
I guess maybe you haven’t heard of the popular torrent sites which are just an aggragate of all the trackers out there? Almost all of it is public. It’s rare to hit a registration only tracker.
I’ve just been sticking with oink for awhile now, I really didn’t know music had gotten better on general trackers.
Sure. But that’s true of absolutely everything you could possibly name. Nice catch-all argument though!
Yeah. A game can have a bug, or a server can die and render a physically purchased product totally unplayable. The entire proposal only lends itself to spectacular failure.
The problem is this:
If things become centralized enough to be as easy to use as iTunes, they’re attackable legally. While litigative techniques are pretty useless for a nameless/faceless “web” of downloaders, it becomes a lot easier if you have a centralized server that has an iTunes like architecture, and it’s that architecture that allows folks to easily use iTunes. Couple that with the fact that, in general, it will always be at least as easy, if not easier, for legitimate services to get new content in a proscribed and constant quality format, and there’s still reasons to prefer iTunes.
I think you’re a moron if you believe that there’s not a lot of folks floating around with strong enough morals that they’ll pay for things even when presented with an equally easy free alternative whose only drawback is it’s morally wrong, though. There comes a point when you can easily afford to not be a dick and pay for things properly and feel good about yourself and still satisfy your needs. It’s really not that far down the career path, as it turns out.
I think things will be fine because official content providers have the ability to make things convenient and morally unambiguous. I think what needs to happen, though, is that content providers need to realize that as consumers become more savvy, they’ll be less tolerant of “premiums” attached to their content. Apple’s playing around with this by offering DRMless tracks in higher fidelity now. Others should follow suit. I know that I’d already have given the XBox marketplace some cash for movies if the downloadable rentals weren’t at about a 25% premium from my local blockbuster (and the HD rentals are something like a 100% premium which is stupid… no, the extra bandwidth doesn’t cost nearly that much).
If you release a game that needs to get certain code off a server you’ll have public outrage, cracks to emulate that server on a PC, and if you can’t there will be pirate servers for people to connect to.
I’m not sure you’d have public outrage. I’d still heartily support a secure encrypted key exchange process and integral logic to check against that key every time I play instead of having to find the damn game disc and put it in the drive. No I don’t go looking for no CD/DVD cracks because invariably that causes an issue somewhere down the road, subtle or gross. The ability of the pirate sector isn’t exactly as cleanly dilineated as you make it out to be.
You’re taking it a little beyond ‘strong morals’ here. Someone can be perfectly decent and feel that CDs/itunes are far too expensive or bad for the artist. They may simply not want to leave their house. It’s a bit much to associate “purchasing things” with moral superiority.
There comes a point when you can easily afford to not be a dick and pay for things properly and feel good about yourself and still satisfy your needs. It’s really not that far down the career path, as it turns out.
Haha, there were bigger dicks before napster. We’re talking about being such a micro-dick here that it really doesn’t matter. If downloading music makes you feel bad about yourself, fine, don’t do it. If someone else downloading music makes you feel bad about them, then you’re probably the asshole, asshole.
I’m not sure you’d have public outrage. I’d still heartily support a secure encrypted key exchange process and integral logic to check against that key every time I play instead of having to find the damn game disc and put it in the drive. No I don’t go looking for no CD/DVD cracks because invariably that causes an issue somewhere down the road, subtle or gross. The ability of the pirate sector isn’t exactly as cleanly dilineated as you make it out to be.
Oh, well. I guess I’ll believe the guy who never downloads cracks about the quality of what the pirate community produces.
No more so than any other online system. It’s a far less intensive or complex system than your average MMO. Uptime would be an issue, but uptime can be had. You can assume it will lend itself to a spectacular failure, but again, that’s true of any system. And as with any system, if enough research and work is put in to it, it can be a relatively stable and solid system once the kinks are worked out.
And mark my words, this is a much less intrusive system than the things most likely to prevail in order to prevent piracy.
I’m not making an equivalence. I’m saying that there are folks who are just opposed to taking something they didn’t pay for. I highly suspect that lot outnumbers the “I don’t buy through the major record labels because they screw the artist, so I pirate the music and send the artist a check directly!”
Haha, there were bigger dicks before napster. We’re talking about being such a micro-dick here that it really doesn’t matter. If downloading music makes you feel bad about yourself, fine, don’t do it. If someone else downloading music makes you feel bad about them, then you’re probably the asshole, asshole.
I’m not talking about other folks. You were making some high-handed argument that everybody would get things free if it was just easier. That’s simply not true. Some folks are perfectly content to pay for things even though they know how to get them free, because they feel that it’s important to pay for things they like, since that’s how the feedback of “I like this, make more like this.” still works.
Oh, well. I guess I’ll believe the guy who never downloads cracks about the quality of what the pirate community produces.
Hey, maybe the pirates are all super-hackers now, eh? But they didn’t used to be. In addition to putting mutherfucking props screens at the front of my games, there would often be bugs in the crack processes. But that’s still beyond the point. I vaguely trust most of the large software houses enough to run their executables on my machine. I trust Johnny in the basement quite a bit less. And since I buy all my games anyway, all Johnny is offering me is a queasy feeling of not knowing whether or not this crack will be the one that decides to inject a trojan. It’s probably perfectly irrational. I mean, I’m sure every pirate everywhere except one or two is a fine, upstanding youth who just does what he does because he thinkgs the underlying fascist economic system is unfair, and I’m just a stodgy old square and all. But in general, I prefer to have some idea as to where my software is coming from aside from “Lord Kaaa0s”, y’know?
It just seems more likely to be very expensive to be done right. I can imagine someone like EA managing and maintaining it. They already have to some extent with BF2 and 2142. Maybe it’d be something better provided to companies as a service. I just think in relying on individual companies to implement that solution would provide a solution only double checked as well as their video games.
Yeah, I was thinking more along the lines of a set of tools that can be sold to the developer to use to implement the system, which is then run by a third party.
I said most. Especially when that “something” is infinitely reproducible. It’s much more people than those who would steal a product. It’s not as an intuitive moral issue as five finger discount, I don’t see how you can’t admit that.
That’s simply not true. Some folks are perfectly content to pay for things even though they know how to get them free, because they feel that it’s important to pay for things they like, since that’s how the feedback of “I like this, make more like this.” still works.
I never said everyone. I’m sure that people feel that buying the CDs contributes to something greater than them. However, for people who get nothing more from a CD purchase than the music, it’s not much of a bargain.
Hey, maybe the pirates are all super-hackers now, eh? But they didn’t used to be. In addition to putting mutherfucking props screens at the front of my games, there would often be bugs in the crack processes. But that’s still beyond the point. I vaguely trust most of the large software houses enough to run their executables on my machine. I trust Johnny in the basement quite a bit less. And since I buy all my games anyway, all Johnny is offering me is a queasy feeling of not knowing whether or not this crack will be the one that decides to inject a trojan. It’s probably perfectly irrational. I mean, I’m sure every pirate everywhere except one or two is a fine, upstanding youth who just does what he does because he thinkgs the underlying fascist economic system is unfair, and I’m just a stodgy old square and all. But in general, I prefer to have some idea as to where my software is coming from aside from “Lord Kaaa0s”, y’know?
Perfectly understandable. Completely incorrect. Next time you rummage through that 256 CD booklet maybe see how you like more current cracks.
Cracks have been going downhill though. There are so many hoops you have to jump through to get them to work nowadays, that I’ve pretty much given up on downloading games. I only ever did it when there wasn’t a demo to try (I will not purchase a game without having played it), and a few years back it was always easy as hell. Drop the modified exe over your own, done. Now you have to have the crack, a third party program, maybe another third party program. Oh, and you have to mount your image with this particular other program, and so on and so forth.
Fu-huuuuuuuck that.
Screw the technical stuff, this is the funny…
Printers killed books, video cameras killed movies, yadda yadda yadda.
Yeah, demoing is how I always think of it too. Especially since no one allows computer game returns, I’m really reluctant to pick up games that I’m not absolutely sure I’ll like. Most of them still are pretty easy, the drop an EXE and roll with it method still generally works.
I missed that. I still disagree though. I’ve been capable of getting stuff for free for a very long time, and I found that I outgrew it as my ability to be able to afford it increased. The $10-$50 it costs to buy entertainment is pretty moot to me. The fact that I feel any bit of guilt over pirating it isn’t.
I never said everyone. I’m sure that people feel that buying the CDs contributes to something greater than them. However, for people who get nothing more from a CD purchase than the music, it’s not much of a bargain.
Eh… these days I buy most all of my CDs for $7 brand new. I get a case and a physical disc (which makes it easier to take it to my car, for instance). Subtract 50 cents for the price of a blank writeable and a case, and the $6.50 that’s left over is just about the time-value it takes to burn and test a CD. (A little more, but next bump in pay grade for me should fix that.)
Perfectly understandable. Completely incorrect. Next time you rummage through that 256 CD booklet maybe see how you like more current cracks.
Come now, when was the last time you ran across a lookup check? It’s almost always a key disc, and while that annoys me as well, it’s manageable. I’d be all over Charles’ scheme, though, because that would be a 5 second internet lookup that would be more or less transparent to me as part of the loading process.
I still think that as median age and earning potential track up, the appeal of piracy plummets. The only things I have any interest in at all these days are things that I have no way to get otherwise. (e.g. Telivision torrents, especially BBC shows, and the occasional impossible-to-find CD torrent. Though even the latter still leaves me burning lossy music to listen to it on my stereo which annoys me, especially with some of the crappy rips other people make.)
It’d be interesting to see actual demographics of pirated media. I do suspect that the main users are indeed the type who wouldn’t have bought the product anyway.
Yes, all forms of entertainment will eventually be incredibly easy to create, which will allow the masses to produce volumes of mediocre to bad entertainment with a few gems here and there. There will still be a premium on quality. You tube is a good example, people will download videos there for free, but many of those same people will still pay for quality video entertainment like movies and their favorite TV shows on DVD.
Actually, if you look at the whole post and the talk about content filtering services, the context is pretty clear: The media itself is becoming democratized. Clearly it’s a lot easier to make a movie these days than it was in the 50s. You don’t need multi-hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment as an entry fee. (In, y’know, date adjusted dollars.)
Making a good movie is an entirely different proposition.
Though I do think you have a point in that books, distributed movies, etc will continue to exist primarily because that will always represent a pretty stringent quality filtering mechanism. No publisher is going to make a hardback of some idiots Thundercats slashfic, no matter how easily they can distribute it on the intarwebs. Thank god.
Oh sure, just stomp all over my dreams.
The only one I’ve gotten to run in ages, without extra steps, was Stalker. And I played for the five minutes it took me to realize that I probably wouldn’t like the game, then uninstalled and deleted it.
But then again, I’ve had nothing but apathy for the PC space for a while now so there’s a good chance I just got a couple of problem releases and that was that. But it doesn’t matter.
Or alternately, probably wouldn’t play it to begin with. A lot of piracy is as much about collecting as anything. Download it, play it for five minutes, never touch it again.
I find it interesting because a lot of industry piracy bobbleheads decry this kind of stuff as costing the industry money, when the real likelihood is that these people wouldn’t have coughed up the dough for the game in a situation where it couldn’t be downloaded, simply because it’s not really their thing.
Maaaaaaaaaaaan, you pay me 5 bucks a CD to burn those suckers and I will be your favorite CD burning guy ever. I’ll burn them so fast, you might think you’re overpaying me. You’re over estimating the cost of a blank disc, but that really doesn’t matter.
Come now, when was the last time you ran across a lookup check? It’s almost always a key disc
Every game I put my on brother’s computer so he can play the stuff I buy without needing to have my discs has been an exe and supremely easy. There are completely safe websites out there that have quality cracks. Most stuff you download has the keycode ripped out, if it doesn’t there are key generators all over the place. Example: Two Worlds.
I still think that as median age and earning potential track up, the appeal of piracy plummets. The only things I have any interest in at all these days are things that I have no way to get otherwise. (e.g. Telivision torrents, especially BBC shows, and the occasional impossible-to-find CD torrent. Though even the latter still leaves me burning lossy music to listen to it on my stereo which annoys me, especially with some of the crappy rips other people make.)
Ah, if you really stick with the rarities only try to get yourself an oink invite. As for the bit about income, I guess it depends on how much you feel it’s wrong to not dispose of your disposable income.
There are several key points that need to happen.
Whatever system (disk based, central server, etc.) is used, it must be brain dead simple to use for the customer. Easy of use, ease of hassle will always get you sales.
The developer must assume that the above system will fail, will die in the future, will be bought out by another company, will be required to work without a dedicated internet connect, or other level of requirement or disaster.
As well, hard-core, dedicated pirates either want to never pay for anything or just “collect” games and movies. Why do so many people waste so much time on an identifiable group that has no motivation to spend any money?
There’s certainly some truth to this. A lot of pirates are exchanging time for money. College students that pirate for instance are more likely to have a bunch of free time to hunt down a copy of a pirated version than they do money. Once that time starts costing them more than the game (making 20-50 dollars an hour), that ratio changes and it’s just quicker, easier, and cheaper to go to the store and buy it.
Hey, maybe the pirates are all super-hackers now, eh? But they didn’t used to be. In addition to putting mutherfucking props screens at the front of my games, there would often be bugs in the crack processes. But that’s still beyond the point. I vaguely trust most of the large software houses enough to run their executables on my machine. I trust Johnny in the basement quite a bit less. And since I buy all my games anyway, all Johnny is offering me is a queasy feeling of not knowing whether or not this crack will be the one that decides to inject a trojan. It’s probably perfectly irrational. I mean, I’m sure every pirate everywhere except one or two is a fine, upstanding youth who just does what he does because he thinkgs the underlying fascist economic system is unfair, and I’m just a stodgy old square and all. But in general, I prefer to have some idea as to where my software is coming from aside from “Lord Kaaa0s”, y’know?
Actually, I’d trust the hacking groups that release cracked games more than I’d trust the companies that put them out, even more so when talking about business software. I’m sure a lot of these warez hacking groups worry about the reputation of the group. If some group’s releases become known for trojans, no one will download them and then they don’t get the street cred they want.