When I talk about piracy here, I'm not talking about pirates that go "yarrrrrr, shiver me timbers," but actually piracy is based on the act of copyright infringement of intellectual property such as software/games, music, books and movies. Any time we share a game online or in-person, we infringe on the copyright of the owner and that is illegal in the United States and many parts of the world. There goes one sale that the producer will never make and the cost of development for anything they make becomes a higher risk as piracy increases.
So why would you care if they loss a little bit of money when a full release video games costs $60, not to mention any Down-loadable Content (DLC) they release that is also over priced, right? Well the harsh reality is that many people just don't care about downloading digital content and at least for video games, there has really been no motivation to not pirate the game. The thing that has made it a more obvious issue for users ever than before is the incorporation of Digital Rights Management (DRM) software into a game, that can limit the use of the product if they can identify that you don't actually own the product legally. DRM has become a valuable tool for game companies to motivate players to buy a product. DRM includes simple things as having the user register the product once, login to a games online server, or in the worst case scenario, be connected to the internet at all times.Despite the use of DRM, people still find ways to bypass the restrictions put on the game to ensure that it isn't pirated. With this constant struggle between the user and the game developers, the restrictions are increased in an effort to ensure that the product is actually legal and users will create a bypass for it and then distribute it to others.
As I continue this blog, I will take a look at the continuing struggle between users and developers over the use of the product. The goal is to show the arguments for both parties and in the end to find a solution to the problem. There will always be those who don't want to pay for something, but it needs to be made clear that just isn't the way to go and create incentives for legally obtaining a game.
Read Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement_of_software
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/01/splinter-cell-conviction-future-ubisoft-pc-games-to-use-intern/
I don't know if inviting a friend over to play a game, or even allowing a friend to borrow a game would be considered copyright infringement. I mean, I can understand that being the case(sometimes) for software copies of games like for the PSPgo, but if I buy the hardware copy, the disc and case and whatnot, then don't I have the right to do whatever I want with it? Saying otherwise would be kind of like saying someone's girlfriend wasn't allowed to borrow their old college hoodie because it's use was only intended for the original buyer.
ReplyDeleteoh and if I am wrong about this in-person sharing thing I'll eat my hat, and promptly yarf it up all over the print outs of every EULA I've ever agreed to.
ReplyDeleteIdeally I think that's something companies want to avoid. For example if I buy something on Steam, you can use my copy of the game unless you sign in as myself. This isn't a physical copy, but this shows how they would prefer it to be. This can also be seen with some disk based games that only allow one person to register an online account with it.
ReplyDeleteIdeally, yea I'd definitely say you're right. I was talking with someone else about this and it seemed like this issue used to be covered fairly well since most games besides consoles, which weren't as popular back in the day, had to actually be installed, therefore associating it with that device(even though now this is easy to bypass in some cases in spite of the DRM issue you brought up, which I think will play a much bigger role in the near future). It will be interesting to see how companies choose deal with the issue of hard copies. One of the examples I brought up in my talk with my friend was that if you take your CD to a house party and play it for everyone the record label or publisher can't walk in and tell you to turn it off since others are listening to it, unless you're charging admission I guess. One of the only ways around this for a company might be to add write only software to the disc that identifies a music player the way an IP address does for a computer. Maybe making it possible to use said disc on only three or so identified players since no one only has one anymore, sort of like software licensing. Could also keep people from changing their IP addresses all the time and thus cut down on the uploading side of piracy. Anyways sorry these comments are long, but it's a very significant and applicable topic to almost everything I do electronically haha.
ReplyDelete