Valve Get Heavy

That's no different than being proud of being among the criminal elite ("At least when I pirate stuff I ain't deluding myself about what I'm doing, I KNOW what I'm doing is wrong but I do it anyways") instead of being one of the delusional petty thiefs. At least the petty thiefs seem to have some conscience left that forces them to become hypocrites.

 

Nope, I guess it isn't. Good point.

 

Well I think there's more than just piracy going on to account for the financials. As the computer games business follows the models set by the movie and music industry, we are seeing all of those associated problems. Sales and profit are going up (they tell us every year how much bigger the gaming market is getting), but these are concentrated into the triple A quality titles like Halo, HL2, Far Cry, UT2K4, etc.

There's a lot of games (just like moves and albums) that fail because they are lowest common denominator trash pushed out the door with minimum of effort and no marketing in order to cash in on whatever the latest fad is. Next time you are in an EB, look along the shelves and think about what games you would bother spending your time and money on - I'd be surprised if it's as many as one in a hundred across the whole year.

Just like how movie and music companies complain about the lack of sales for a lot of their dross, so too do the software publishers complain as if just putting something on the shelf somehow guarentees them a big profit.

Quality titles do very well - poor ones do not, and that is not the fault of broadband or piracy or anything except the games companies themselves.

 

John I bought the games I played this year, all of them, yet I still think it is stupid to lock peoples games that they have legitimately bought because they warezed one out of four games. It is not Valves right to decide that in my opinion.

And there are many very valid arguments that have been in this thread not for saying that it is good to warez games, but for elucidating where it actually fits in on moral scale. Anyone that has children must understand that there are degrees of wrong. I think it makes those who say that everything is balck and white look stupid.

 

This is the same Eidos that published profits warning because their prime titles weren't finished on time or of high enough quality, ran one of their main intellectual properties into the ground with poor games and worse films, and threw away millions in cash on Ion Storm's playboy lifestyle and incredibly bad games while closing down the likes of Looking Glass Studios?

Now they are producing dross and "playing safe pandering to 14 year old focus groups" despite the fact we know the big gamers with money are the 20-35 year old group. Yet Eidos still manages to point to piracy as the cause of their problems rather than anything *they* are doing wrong?

 

In this instance it is binary: either you break the law or you don't, its as simple as that. How you try and justify that to yourself is where you are trying to paint inbetwen, but it is still fundamentally, and actually illegal. There are lots of shades of grey in many decisions in life, but usually these revolve around far more important things than whether or not to pay for a game - if people can't teach their kids something as simple, basic and fundamental as the paying for what they want to play with the society is far further down the crapper than I had expected!!!

 

Dave I cannot believe you do not understand this simple concept.

No one is arguing it isn't illegal. If your kid steals a grape and the grocery store and eats it, it is illegal, if you kid robs a bank at gunpoint and kills someone it is illegal, I would say one is worse than the other.

 

If the majority of all people do something, it cannot be wrong. It is just how it is. Some people might WANT it to be wrong, but that is just wishfull thinking. If you want it to be wrong, you first have to make sure it is only a small minority who does it and prosecute those people. It's really that simple.

You can take the moral high ground, or point to the (clearly outdated) law or whatever, but that won't change things. Holding on to those old beliefs and proclaiming them to be as it should be is just stupid. Just change the law, think of new ways that can be enforced and be done with it.

See it as democracy in action.

 

Good Lord.

Of course one is worse than the other, but they are both still wrong. When you bring up kids you don't start from the low moral standpoint, you start from the high. If they don't understand that its not right to eat the grapes in the supermarket how are they to know not to do it? Likewise, if people don't understand that piracy is theft, but instead have these willy-nilly arguments that warez isn't really all that bad for the developer and nobody is really going to care about it, then what moral compunction are they going to have to replicate your actions of buying the games?

Fundamentally the law is binary - either you choose to stay within it or you don't. I would have assumed that most responsible people would want to teach their kids to stay within it.

 

Well perhaps you are suggesting if I understand you correctly, that "we have to inform folks of how bad it is so they do not do it in the future"

If that is kind of where you are coming from I can at least understand and agree, I was simply saying that when people suggest there is no difference in stealing an ipod from bestbuy and stealing a game by downloading it, it is rather disingenuous. Personally I just think that the punishment valve decided to hand out was not proportional (if indeed they banned all previously bought items as well). That is why I brought up kids, parents punishing them for offenses is what I was implying, and that the punishment varied with the severity of the wrong.

I am just suggesting that it seems that some people go into histrionics over something that should be reasoned about instead.

I think it is more like
1) Warezing/piracy is bad and illegal
2) Physicalling stealing a game is bad and illegal
3) 2 is worse than 1, but both are illegal.

I don't see why people are unwilling to concede what is a simple fact, it seems they have the same slippery slope argument as gun nuts, "if they take away my m60 I won't be able to hunt deer with my .270"

"If we admit that piracy is not as harmful on a per download basis as theft of a physical game from a store, then we justify it"

I simply do not think that is the case.
And while piracy is bad, look up some info on shoplifting it is also quite bad and rampant.

P.S. does anyone know if you will end up being able to sell your steam content? I doubt it, but to me that is one major drawback, with how expensive games are and their limited replay value is offset currently by being able to sell them used for 1/2 the price of a new purchase.

 

Fundamentally they amount to the same thing though: resource has gone into making something and you have obtained that without giving the manufacturer the stated recompense.

Personally, I don’t see the difference in these particular two things – one may be physically more tangible than the other and its easy to see there is a bill of goods there, but software can still cost just as much if not more to actually produce than something else (just look at the number of development houses that are going under at the moment). Who are you to decide that a developer is deemed less worthy of receiving your money for something you want to use than a manufacturer of something? Do you have a full analysis of costs involved?

Realistically I would guess it comes down to one thing: its much easier to copy a disk off a friend or download warez from the net than it is to risk shoplifting or stealing some item; hell, you don’t even have to leave your own home to do it. Because of that I suspect that people are much more willing to apply their own justifications to it. I’m not saying I haven’t done it on occasion, but I still know that I’m depriving the developer what is rightfully theirs if I played it.

Are you in government? That what you may think its like, and that’s how you may have justified these things but in actuality its not your decision – it’s the decision of the society and judicial system that you reside in.

That was not a fact, that was an opinion. It is my opinion that obtaining something by illegal means is tantamount to theft; whether you walked into a shop, took something off the shelf and legged it out the door or downloaded warez software from the net. In both cases resource/costs have been put into making that item and in both cases those costs have not been fully recouped by the rightful people (in fact, in the case of shoplifting at least there is likely to be insurance involved, which isn’t the case for warezed software).

 

I agree both are theft, but stealing the actual physical product no matter how you slice it in your moral way is still a more expensive theft and therefore worse.

You have the cost of packaging, you have the cost of shipping, you have the cost of printing, you have the cost of the CD, even if it is only 25 cents more for all that ( I have no idea the exact number) then it is still worse that is why I said it as I did. Not to mention when people are stealing a physical product from a store there is more likelihood of collateral damage to other merchandise if the person goes crazy when caught.

Piracy and shoplifting can both logically be blamed for the increase costs to those that actually buy games. I do not see a point where pirating a single copy of a game can be construed to be as costly to society as shoplifting it for the above reasons.

However, I am fully aware and believe that it is likely that shoplifting is overall a less severe problem due to the reasons you described above, such as pirating is easy and therefore more people do it.

I am simply saying and still believe that an individual copy pirated is less of a blow than an individual copy shoplifted.

P.S. I am off to thanksgiving dinner at the inlaws, but if I may say it was nice to have a civil discussion even if we don't agree, and though you do not celebrate it (to my admitidly incomplete knowledge) happy thanksgiving anyway.

 

How about countries where
1) Warezing/piracy might be bad but is still legal?

 

Theft

For those confused people who think copyright infringement and theft are one and the same.

There are two parts to theft, a gain for the perpertator and a loss for the victim, copyright infringement, however, only involves a gain for the perpertrator but no loss for for the victim ( other than the hypothectical loss of future profits. which is very debatable) Its pretty certain that most downloaders intent is not to deprive, but rather to gain for themselves.

The content production industry (and thier lobbying groups, eg FACT) has spent many years convincing people that copyright infringement is theft but why not just call it what it is, copyright infringement. I can only conclude that the content providers think theft sounds more illegal to Joe Public.

Of course in the UK making a backup copy of a CD is illegal, it is copyright infringement but not theft, giving a copy of that CD to a freind is also illegal but it is not theft, setting up a market stall selling copied CDs is illegal but it is not theft, downloading a CD from P2P is illegal but not theft.

For those who think there are no shades of grey here, is making a backup DVD in order to stop the kids ruining it, or making a copy of a purchased CD for the car not a shade of grey? In the UK (where DaveB is) these things are illegal, but are they "bad"?

I can think of loads of examples where something is illegal but, arguably, not "bad" in the UK just in the present copyright context, for instanced I produced a 2 min video clip (non commertial) and wanted to use the BBCs broadcast of "under milkwood" starring Richard Burton from the 1950s as a narrative. I own the CD and have repeatedly e-mailed the BBC asking if I could use the 2 mins, absolutely no response (other than an automated reply). If I was to use the section anyway would that be "bad" or "wrong", it would certainly be illegal but there is no easy, legal way for me to access the content. Just sticking a popular music track on your home movies is illegal in the UK, but does that make it "bad"?

My point is that in the UK homosexual sex, abortion, to speak Welsh in schools were once illegal but do we consider these things bad? The law evolves in democracys, after all things like copyright are rights granted by the democratic state (ie the copyright producers peers) in order to ensure some potential renumeration and to encourage more content.

IMHO there are certainly shades of grey here and people who think that just because something is illegal is "bad", ie its black and white, need to look around the world where many rights we take for granted in the western world are illegal in some states.

FWIW, I have no illegal software at all on any of my PCs (except Nero which I have installed my retail copy on two PCs ), although by the UK stds I have a lot of illegal CDs copied onto my hard drive ( which I own) and about 20% more CDs that by most countries stds are illegal (and by my own admission are "bad", copied off friends, downloaded). In the software world there is almost no excuse to "pirate" as there are good open source or cheap alternatives to almost every package, and games are almost always £5 or £10 within 6 or 12 months of release and they are bloody cheap anyway. All IMHO.

Nowhere, have I said that downloading software, music ect from the internet is right, nor have I said it is better or worse than theft (consider the potential volume of copyright infringement for instance compared to the likelyhood of walking out of HMV with 5000 CDs up your jacket). I am simply saying it is not theft (if anyone can find a UK (or anywhere for that matter) case of someone being charged with theft for downloading, copying ect, I am all ears). My other point is that there is certainly a "grey area" with regards copyright infringment in the UK and possibly elsewhere but IMO the downloading of copyrighted limited content is not in that grey area, even if you claim you are "trying before buying", you hardly get to try anything in life before buying it, you rely on reviews, friends, your own judgement ect, why should games be any different?

Sorry for the long winded post.

 

But then, if you look at other games you'll see some of them have the same requirement...
Taking MOHAAeluxe Edition as an example (as I found it right beside me), it says under reqs: Internet: 56.6Kbps. with 2-32 players in a box below it. Or take UT2K4 which lists Internet as a req for Multiplayer.

Now take a new look at the HL2 box. On the right-hand side (at least on the European version) you'll see an image of to CT's with the captions:
"Also Includes: CounterStrike Source"
"The next installment of the world's #1 online action game!" (my emphasis)

Would it really be so farfetched to believe that the internet requirement was for the online game CS:S, or a multiplayer part of HL2, as other games lists Internet as a req for these too?

If you steal a boxed game from a store, you are depriving not only the developer, publisher and the store from cash, but also depriving the store of a copy they could sell to a customer.
If you steal the game from the internet, you are depriving the developer, publisher and store from the money the game costs, but you are not depriving the store from a copy it can sell to a customer.

Both cases are(/can be argued to be) stealing, both cases costs developer, publisher and store money in lost income, but only the latter case gives the publisher and store an added expense.
(And I think that's what the example was meant to show)

 

Having worked in a shop for many years I can tell you the above statement is, in my experience, incorrect.

When you steal from a shop you deprive the retailer of the trade value of the goods, he then either makes do without the stock( in which case he had already decided the product was not going to sell, at least at the price he was asking) or more likely he replaces the stock. In this case the producer and the wholesaler actually get *extra* business, only the retailer loses. The exeption to this is when more stock is unavailable or a customer turns up before he has chance to replace the product, in which case the retailer also loses the profit from a missed sale.

If you "steal" off the internet (P2P) then the producer, wholesaler and retailer only lose a *potential* sale. ie they lose nothing they ever had and who can put a price on what they have lost ie the "stealer" may have waited for it come out cheaper or bought it second hand if he had not had the oppertunity to download it. EDIT; missed the obvious, he may not buy it at all.

EDIT; should say that I replaced developer, publisher in the quote with producer, wholesaler as my comment is pretty general (and I did not work in software retail)

 

Copyright is the protection of someone’s intellectual property. By the definition you supplied, unauthorized copying of software is theft since it is both property of someone/something else and gained through illegal means.

You might also want to scroll down that page to the "Also See" section, which links to "Software theft" – in fact, its worth copying a large chunk of it (If you'll excuse the infringement!). So, thanks for pointing it out!

This is a cop out. You could argue that theft from a shop, or burglary is only about gain for yourself, but the very act deprives someone. Had you gained the software via the only legal means then you would be giving to those who are allowed to supply it to you – by not doing so you are depriving those that have the only legal means to supply the goods/software.

Backing up of software that you have license for is perfectly legal, and isn’t copyright infringement.

As I said, you are perfectly entitled, under copyright laws, to backup software (and other media) – caveat being that you don’t intend to use the backup and the original at the same time.

 

This is legal where I live.

Also legal. The law gives a limited right to copy a copyrighted work for private (broader than personal - we have case law stating that this also includes close friends and family) use. Software, however, is explicitly excluded.

Very much illegal.

Legal. The law does not currently make any requirement that the 'original' that the copy is made form be legal. This will very likely change soon. The new law might also include making it a requirement that the 'original' be an _original_ to be legal. A copy of a *legal* copy might also become illegal. Again case law states here that the illegal act is making the copyrighted material available outside the private sphere.

We are also explicitly allowed to circumvent and/or reverse-engineer any protection that hinders legal use for which the comyrighted material was obtained. This includes but is not limited to: Making a copy that removes, say Cactus DataShield from audio-CDs that will not play in my car; Using a no-CD crack for a game that refuses my laptop DVD; Using software that incorporates de-css for my Linux-box and so on.

I guess we are all a bunch of thieves.

To put this into context: If we were to follow the letter of the law - unless my employer pay the copyright holders organization the fee they ask - it is illegal for me (or actually for my eployer, if I...) to:

– Listen to the radio at work.
– Listen to a CD in a company car (even if the CD is mine).
– Listen to streaming internet content at work.
– Watch TV in the break-room.
– Listen to a CD at my desk (even if the CD is mine).

As far as I know this is 'formally true' for many coutries in europe, as it is a 'performance' of a copyrighted work outside the private sphere. They wisely doesn't push it that hard though, as they know it would probably cause a backlash against them. They do however routinely send out letters urging companies to cease their illegal activities, sign the enclosed contract and accept to be billed based on the number of employees.

I listen to the radio every day at work, and thus I am making my employer (formally) a thief, end by extension I am making one of myself. Even though, AFAIK, no fee has ever been requested from us, we should have voluteered it.

I am a thief. There are no shades of gray...

Edit: Spelling