“Over half of PC users worldwide have admitted to using pirate software last year, according to a study by the trade group Business Software Alliance. BSA’s ninth annual Global Software Piracy Study has shown a sharp increase in software piracy, especially among emerging economies. In the UK, more than one in four programs users installed in 2011 were unlicensed.” If people decide en masse not to adhere to a law, said law is worth about as much as the paper it’s written on. Laws become functional not because of the Queen’s signature, but because the people decide to adhere to it. It’s becoming ever clearer that as far as digital goods go, the law is not functional – for better or worse.
Sometimes it’s the only way to get the software working. I’ve had too many issues with DRM, including having software locked out after too many activations (having rebuilt the PC or reinstalled the OS a few times).
These companies wage war against legitimate paying customers, who are the only ones affected by the increasingly problematic DRM. But download an illegal game or film, and you don’t get the “activation failed” message, or “failed to verify authenticity”, or unskippable warnings at the beginning of every DVD. Instead, only paying customers see those, exactly the people it isn’t targeting.
I wouldn’t call it war, they are not trying to get rid of customers or create all this DRM hassle to annoy users.
To me it does seem they don’t really care about their product. Perhaps the creators do, but not the other departments. For example if you make a great movie you want you audience to enjoy it. Other people put these warnings in front of the movie, trailers of other movies. It’s annoying enough if you just want to watch the movie, but even worse if you quickly want to jump to a scene to look something up or show it to someone. Or perhaps worst of all the inability to transfer the media to another device.
It either ruins the experience or it at least makes it less enjoyable than it should have been.
If you download a movie you can watch it on any media without all the added annoyance.
Well said. The thing that aggravates me to know end is picking up a movie on physical media or heading to theater and before the movie plays, I’m forced – literally given no option to bypass – a PSA talking pontificating how wrong it is to pirate movies… a movie I just PAID to watch.
I don’t get angry at the producers, directors, cast members (okay, maybe a little angry at the stars that garner double-digit millions in salary for a few months of work where they’re treated like gods the whole time); I fully realize it’s the studio execs, marketing departments, etc. But it doesn’t make it any less reprehensible.
Anyway, back on the topic of software…
The same thing is true in the software world. It’s rarely the tech staff that want DRM; it’s almost always the distributors/publishers/etc.
Reminds me of Lemmy: Go out and steal the album, I dont care. I just want you to hear the fucking songs.
(Somewhat paraphrased, I haven’t watched Stage Fright in a while)
It is funny that music cds don’t have any warnings or commercials on them, while dvds do. To me it seems it’s much easier to copy a cd (to another cd or medium) than a dvd.
Probably because that would REALLY cross the line of acceptance.
Still, if it’s just an annoyance thing and not an effective anti-piracy method why bother to do it with dvds? Insert any warnings and commercials on a piece of paper and put it in the dvd case. They do so with Nintendo Wii games for example.
Don’t give them any ideas… (hm, actually, it could be a nice “statement project” – grab some public domain or commons music, and master from it a CD with the typical DVD warnings and commercials treatment …nah, better not to give them any ideas)
Yeah try running older games and software on a 64 bit OS, just TRY to do so without piracy…good luck with that! I have been 64 bit since XP X64 came out and i can tell you THANK GOD FOR PIRATES because without them frankly a lot of stuff simply wouldn’t work. things have gotten better now for NEWER software but the old stuff? good luck.
Oh and a bit of a warning for those that may not have gone 64 bit yet…DO NOT install older versions of games with Starforce or SecuROM DRM on a 64 bit OS and try to run them without cracking first! if you do they will try to embed 32 bit kernel hooks into your 64 bit kernel and that is B.A.D as your stability will go right down the toilet, I’m telling you the BSODs will be like Win95 all over again! And the best part? their DRM uninstaller DOES NOT WORK on a 64 bit OS! So if you end up like this you had better have a dual boot with another Windows so you can go in and hack the junk out, otherwise its reinstall city.
So I can totally understand why many pirate, i mean if you are gonna have to pay for it and STILL have to crack the stupid thing just to get it to run why pay for it in the first place? I don’t know if this will parse but this video (warning: Language NSFW) really nails it, watch as the guy (who has a HUGE gaming collection behind him) can’t even get his game to run without cracking it.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-mt4BpnfAN-o/how_anti_piracy_screws…
bassbeast,
“this video really nails it”
Wow, what a temperament! But really, who of us haven’t been in the same predicament? This year I was bitten by rosetta stone DRM, which isn’t cheap but it was rendered useless without a crack. It’s pathetic that companies think so little of their paying customers that they are willing to put them through this mess. The DRM they force upon us takes away fair use rights that we are legally entitled to (like simply running the software on our machines).
Software retailers (like newegg & staples here) explicitly deny refunds on opened/downloaded software that fails to run, so once you buy it your out the cost of the software whether it works or not.
Though I freely share films/music/books I can’t remember when I’ve last pirated software. I manage fine just using the free alternatives for work and the drm-free games from gog/humble bundles.
I think that the problem with free alternatives is that they are not used in workplaces, for example if you use microsoft office at work you don’t want to use openoffice at home because you don’t want to learn two different things or even the other way around if you learn to use microsoft office at home it’s a bonus when finding a new job, not many will care if you know how to use openoffice
same can be said for an artist that use photoshop instead of gimp/paint.net, a video editor that use premiere/finalcut/sony vegas instead of windows movie maker or a 3d artist that use 3dsmax/maya instead of blender
these softwares usually cost hundreds of euros that can’t be afforded by home users so people just pirate them
The market is not functional, the law is fine;
just because people feel more self-entitled to things they don’t own now than they did before does not mean that the law is lacking. Copyright has not ceased being copyright, but the market has failed to sell to people effectively.
Taking something that — let’s face it — is not necessary for survival, because you object to how the owner chooses to sell it to you is childish and immature. That behaviour being common is not justification neither. If people in general lack any fortitude these days (myself included of course) that’s not a legal matter, it’s a moral one.
What’s ownership anyway?
The real problem is how to explain for people that they should pay for something that could be replicated infinitely for almost free.
Common people doesn’t care for development cost or production cost, they only cares for the final product. They are used to pay for physical things. I really doubt that someone commonly ask themselves how much money was toasted in developing their car or their TV set, they pay for the final product, and usually they can’t copy that product with a mouse click. But intellectual products like music, movies and software has a final product that is free to make copies.
Yup, there is only one kind of ideas that can be owned – secrets. The term Intellectual Property is one big misnomer.
You can own the carrier of the idea (e.g. a CD), or a copyright (another misnomer: it should be called “copy-monopoly”, as without it everyone has a right to copy). The first is a physical object, which can be damaged or stolen, the latter is a privilege granted by the government, which can be infringed upon. But, ideas don’t have to be bound to physical carriers, and the copyright is just another legal trick we chose(?) to have.
Think about the bargain bin at Wal-mart, if current releases only had that movie on a single sided DVD (4.7Gb) and was priced at $4.99(insert your currency here) I would buy more movies.
I wouldn’t call it immoral if you download a movie. I would compare it to walking on the grass instead of the stone path. If you would make a stone path on the exact same place as the dirt path you would solve the problem.
Ahoy! We’re swashbucklin’ the DRM
Laws become functional not because of the Queen’s signature, but because the people decide to adhere to it.
This is both true and not. Laws obligate people to act in certain ways, since otherwise the order will be gone, and anarchy would rule the world. Therefore, laws are usually prohibitive, forbidding citizens from some activity. And yes, this is good, since it equals citizens – well, at least it should, – and leaves them more time to spend on other, legal activities.
However, since laws are prohibitive, people always will be unhappy with them. No matter how good or bad the law will, there always will be someone not happy. Even if the next law will cease all other laws, allowing citizens to do what they like to, there will be many people (including myself) who will rightfully claim this situation leaves them unprotected.
Overall, laws are good. If they don’t suit, they can be changed – in legal ways. But while a law is in action, citizens absolutely must adhere to it.
This is a flawed assumption, because it is based on the premise that the people can change laws. The reality of the matter is that they cannot. Not everybody is created equal in a democracy, and we see this every day – companies with large amounts of money and experience in Washington/The Hague/Brussels/etc. wield far more influence than the people do, to the point of the people’s power being negligible.
The most powerful tool of the people when it comes to influence is to simply ignore bad laws. It happened with soft drugs in The Netherlands, it happened with segregation in the US, it happened with gay rights in The Netherlands, and god knows how many other things.
This ability to ignore laws is the most powerful tool the people has at its disposal. Claiming the people must always adhere to a law just because it is a law is a very dangerous and scary thought indeed.
Spot on!
It is also why juries have the power of nullification.
That way they can find someone to have done the crime, but deem that the punishment is likely too excessive to warrant a conviction – or outright to deem the law as unsound. It doesn’t set a legal precedent, but it can cause a chain reaction nevertheless.
Most Americans don’t know of this because it is against the rules of the court to inform the jury of their rights if you are the defendant. Problem is that means NO ONE informs the jury of their rights and so jury nullification only occurs very sporadically.
Then, you have two competing ideas as to what jury nullification means. In one train of thought, the judge can over-rule it… which, to me, seems to completely defeat the purpose of a jury!
Judges are fighting for the prior train of thought, of course, because they don’t like the idea of having to 100% accept that the people (represented by the jury) have the power to over-power their laws, rulings, and legal precedents…
If I were in charge, I’d create a video to be shown to each and every jury of each and every size to inform them of all of their rights, powers, and privileges. I’d also permit & encourage the defendants to argue directly in favor of the use of jury nullification.
We would see FAR fewer cases where uploading a single CD lands one with even just thousands of dollars of penalties!
–The loon
Good point. However, under English Law at least, nullification works a bit different from that.
The jury does not have the right to nullify a law, and they cannot find someone guilty whilst refusing to see him penalised. The latter would be the judge’s call. They can, instead, find him or her innocent of a crime even when it is overwhelmingly clear that he or she is innocent. Even when the defendant puts in a guilty plea.
It is technically illegal for a jury to do so, but as the judge is forbidden from punishing the jury or interfering with their decision there’s nothing to stop them. In a very real way — the way Thom was describing — they ignore the law, and thereby change it.
Because this does set precedent under common law, the law in question is considered to have been nullified, i.e. rendered unenforceable, useless. Only an act of parliament can over turn this.
Personally I’m in favour of customary law such as the Xeer, which is much like common law except it takes into account a common consensus of what the law has always meant de facto. Would seem to address many of the flaws in our current systems.
Edited 2012-05-23 10:15 UTC
I remember these lines from the movie Gandhi (1982):
Walker: “But you will obey the law?”
Gandhi: “There are unjust laws, as there are unjust men.”
There’s nothing sacred about laws. But if you don’t like them you must try and change them, not simply disobey them. Although sometimes it works best when you make a point out of disobedience. Because in modern democracy what is good for the people rarely prevails. Whereas Gandhi achieved so much under a hostile occupation. Go figure.
As opposed to non-modern democracy or other widespread non-modern systems?
(sure, our systems have some issues …but don’t talk about them in a way which implies mythologising the past – back then it was generally much worse)
Never heard of civil disobedience, have you?
I don’t believe that it’s half the PCs worldwide. I think it’s much more. I live in a country where vast majority of home-owned PCs run entirely on pirated software. And when it’s pirated, the tendency is to have as much as can fit on your hard disk. I have friends that have 3D Studio installed without being used at all. Or Photoshop being used only for image rescaling. And games, lots of them.
However, the biggest fallacy is to think that if there was no way to avoid paying for software they would buy every application that they pirated. I mean, software is fucking expensive even for a first world country (and mine isn’t). MS Office Professional alone is more than the average monthly salary. If you make a living you could justify the cost even if it’s many month’s salary, but not for home use.
Our government buys expensive licenses for MS software, many more that are actually needed and at prices that are higher that if you go to a computer shop and buy individual license. It’s fucking disgusting. I guess that’s the price we pay for having widespread piracy outside of government. And for having corrupt and self-serving politicians.
In any case, I think this is a missed opportunity for free software. Pirated software is free and usually works better for most people (not for me – I use only free software although I can pirate commercial software, but unfortunately I’m not a majority). If pirated software was difficult to obtain or could put you in jail, free software would have a big advantage.
…and software piracy is an integral reason – if not THE reason – why software companies has flourished so successfully the way that they have. It is not as simple as copyright infringement = loss of sales or simply a question of morals or law. We have factors such as mass distribution, market dominance, penetration and competition that play a significant role. Piracy has also been a means to leveling the playing field between customer and manufacturer.
BSA … their numbers are mostly artificial. Why “half” of the PC users? because “half” means there is something to do, there is someone to fight. On the other hand, “half” means, that the existence of BSA is justified, because “we have so many pirates left”, and “you can always come to our side”. In other words, it is still reasonable – in their point of view – to fight “pirates”.
Well, we have half of the world that admit being a pirate, and another half who lies about it. =)
Well, I don’t necessarily feel a pirate, although I have to admit I had some “copy-that-floppy” episodes in the past …
However, I am no longer redistributing paid, copyrighted materials. I restrain myself only to use Free Software, Open Source tools. It is also helpful that I have rather extraordinary taste when it comes to movies/music, so I don’t have to pay hundreds of dollars to hear my favorite, small band, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_Against_Software_Theft
I used to read Zzap!64 ( http://www.zzap64.co.uk/ ) which sometimes featured FAST “advertisements”. There were on comic form and were actually very creepy.
One time these 2 kids found a stand in a market where they discovered the bloke was selling ILLEGAL software. The kids called FAST and the bloke was arrested. The kids were very proud.
A quick search found one, creepy or what:
http://www.ntk.net/2002/11/29/elspa.gif
“Creepy” …WTH, that gif feels like something I would expect from Red Guard slogans (“Parents may love me, but not as much as Chairman Maoâ€) and actions, or how Cheka and its successors sometimes encouraged “reporting” neighbours.
I’m one of them and I’m proud about that.
The result of all of this is that commercial apps and games in the future will be at least partly (or completely) server-side.
The main argument against DRM is that it does nothing to prevent piracy. However, Diablo 3 has some of its code base on the server, and, to my knowledge, has yet to be cracked. I wouldn’t be surprised if games in the future are entirely streamed off the server, OnLive-style. So how are you going to pirate that? Answer – you can’t.
While music and movies/tv will probably never be uncrackable (since if you can see it or hear it, you can copy it), but the same is not true for apps and games.
Bad idea. Depending on some server requires constant connection. That’s a ridiculous requirement for a single player game.
Fail.
Edited 2012-05-22 16:17 UTC
I don’t think that any big corporation will bet on a service that could disappear overnight, or has unwilling updates that makes their current data unreadable after some years (like 10 ou 20 years in the future). Not to mention that doing monthly payments for every single software that you need in a PC will be a blow.
And if you tries to solve that by having all the data server side, after two or three crashes with massive data loss, the world will remember, the hard way, why we abandoned decades ago the “dumb terminal-mainframe” model.
The greatest problem with anything online lies in the persistence of the service. If i want to play my two decades old Doom, i just need to install and run. If i want to run some very old commodore junk, i just need to fire my emulator. Could you do that with a single player game streamed online just because the company are afraid of pirates?
If i pay for something that does not need a server for anything, i want to be able to use it anytime. I would not pay for a single player game that by the end of day can vanish without a trace.
They’re already doing that now. Most Microsoft products and other ‘industrial strength’ apps like the Adobe CS stuff already require some sort of server-side authentication to install and keep running. I don’t know if any of this stuff is uncrackable yet, but I’m sure it will be, once more and more of it is on the server. Not necessarily the WHOLE thing, but enough of it such that it would be impossible to pirate. Nevertheless, they’ve already got people trained to accept the fact that their apps have to ‘phone home’ to the mother ship in order for them to run.
You wouldn’t, but a lot of people will, and they already have. Diablo 3 is a prime example. When it comes to games, I wouldn’t boycott them for this reason. I mean, if a really hot chick wants to get together for a night of monkey sex, I’m not going to turn her down just because I might not be able to shag her again. So if there’s a game I really want to play that requires server authentication, I’d probably buy it, but I’d also wait until the price drops. Unlike apps that I really need, if a game does go away at some point, it’s not the end of the world, plus I’d probably be done playing it by then anyway. That being said, I don’t personally play a lot of games, so it would be a ‘once a year’ kind of thing, and it would be like a $30 purchase (or ‘rental’), so I could live with that.
Edited 2012-05-22 18:05 UTC
That’s funny. I didn’t buy Diablo 3 because of that DRM. I however did buy Torchlight 2 and Grim Dawn.
Yeah, and guess which of those games is destroying the two other in sales…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_III#Sales
…actually, all other, more or less.
Edited 2012-05-29 17:48 UTC
Take anything they say about piracy with a MINE of salt.
Argh! Pirates we be! Pillage and plunder be the life!
We have met the enemy, and he is us!
What a sad, sad world we live in when half or more are crooks.
Which one is the crook: the one who does things as he has always done, or the one who later on comes and tells the first one that he has to start paying the second one for what he has always done or face consequences?
I just run Linux.
Hell, I rarely download any copyrighted music, and even more rarely, movies. My entertainment and curiosity is satisfied by just trying out the latest Linux distros. I break Google’s YouTube terms of service by downloading the good videos, and I also never see any commercials on their site because I have NoScript active at all times blocking content from unnecessary services, and I cannot browse the Web without AdBlock these days.
But… I rarely see any reason to “pirate” anything.
How can this be? I can remember many a times when we have been told on this very site that the only ones pirating are those hairy, unwashed OSS freaks. What, you mean that Windows users are not the paramount of honesty? Either that or Linux has a much bigger market share than we thought.
As long as their silly prices for relatively common software is sky-high, nobody in their right mind will pay through their nose for something which clearly isn’t worth what those companies ask for.
I can certainly understand software for specific purposes or security etc. may command a premium price, and this is justified by what that software is capable of. But for the rest of them, if they want to stay in business, either lower the prices or go bankrupt. Easy.
BSA is a lobbying organization that only thrives if they claim piracy thrives. Taking this “study” seriously is about as dumb as taking every TV commercial as truth.