Compromise in Piracy

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Compromise?

So we've seen what the increasing rate of piracy has caused developers to do and the case of Ubisoft adding always on DRM through the internet connection is a great example of how desperate they have become to protect their property. What contests with this though is that many people believe that once you have purchased a game, it becomes your property and at that point you can do anything you want with it and as a society, anything to the contrary isn't clarified to us. So at this point, either side will always have an argument against each other. In the end it's obvious to almost everyone that piracy is wrong, but it's hard to resist when it's so easy to do so and so hard to pay for everything.

For those interested in creating content for different forms of digital media, at some point they will need to purchase software similar to photoshop or any software that requires a license. The initial problem though is that these licenses can cost several hundreds or thousands of dollars and that initial investment in order to be able to even make money is too steep for some, so pirating the software becomes the logical conclusion. For those that want to make a living off of their work though, it's best advised to obtain a legal copy of the product, but first its common to download the program and then purchase it later. The same holds true for people who download a game first and then buy it. Some studies have shown that people who pirate tend to the "content industries 'largest customers'." What this means is that those who pirate actually spend more money on games, music, live events and other forms of media than non pirates do. Partially this could be theorized because those who pirate have a greater desire to experience more forms of media and will purchase things more frequently. This report came from Sweden, which is often considered to be the piracy center of the world, especially with "ThePirateBay.org" being hosted from the country, but either way, their population of pirates purchase more things than others. There are many reasons why people feel entitled to sharing their property or simply getting things for free, but in the end that just won't work.

The awkward agreement

As more companies begin to adopt new DRM policies, it will become common practice for users to have to authenticate their games and possibly jump through other hoops in order to play the game. The truth is that DRM will not go away and will only become more complicated and Ubisoft among other companies believe this will allow them to "invest in the development of creative and innovative games." So if developers are able to invest more money into a game to make it truly innovative and an experience you couldn't have anywhere else, people would be more motivated to purchase the game, but the moment people feel slighted, the cycle will repeat itself.

With the direction that DRM and other anti-piracy policies are going these days and the constant increase in piracy, there is a clear sign that for a solution to come up between the two parties, things will end up getting much worse before they get better. At some point though as things change drastically, people will get used to the concept of buying products that they feel truly deserve the purchase and companies that spend too much time defending their products instead of focusing on making unique content will suffer because people will be more likely to pirate their products. People want to say that they own something they really love and enjoy, so that's what developers need to strive for. It needs become apart of our culture to focus on making products the best the can be and for consumers to only have what the can actually afford. There will always be a large group of people that will continue to download digital content illegally, but I see it becoming increasingly common to legitimately purchase games when services such as Steam create great incentives to buy games such as lowered prices and extra content that motivate people to be responsible.

Monday, May 3, 2010

The Industries Dilemma

Piracy has always been an issue for developers of software, games and all other forms of piracy, but only within the past couple years have developers been able to take a more active role in controlling how their products can be distributed and used. The use of digital rights management (DRM) has I have mentioned before allows companies to put restrictions on the use of a product and allow for authorization of purchased or illegal products. Prior to the use of DRM, companies had to be very smart about how they would release their products to stores or they would have to just simply accept the fact that there would be people that would end up distributing their products in unwanted ways. With physical media it was all but impossible to control what happened to a product after it left a store, except for direct intervention on part of authorities. As computers became more popular in the late 90s, the rapid spread of all physical media into digital form made things even worse, but as mentioned, recently DRM technology has offered a solution to the problems of piracy, whatever the cost may be.

There are many types of methods of using DRM on games and it has become a necessary evil for many games. While it's usually only found in PC games, increasingly so, console games have begun using DRM as well. An interesting example of DRM being used in a non PC game would be the recent release of SOCOM Fireteam Bravo 3 and it's inclusion of an online mode that is accessible only upon activating the game with Sony's Playstation Network, which behaves similar to Apples iTunes, but for games. The strategy here is that only people who have purchased the game will be able to receive a code necessary to enable to online mode and those who have downloaded the game illegally would have no way of obtaining a code. The developers of SOCOM aren't the only ones to take measures like this. Capcom recently released Final Fight for the PS3 and it will only work if the player is connected to the internet at all times so that the game can be authorized as belonging to them. In this case though, Capcom apologized for doing so, because while DRM is becoming more common for games, many still see it as a slight against consumers, especially when it affects those that have purchased it legitimately.

When we see these things happen, we wonder how companies could justify this, but the numbers showing the rate of piracy give us an insight into how bad the problem really is. It is estimated by the Entertainment Software Association that around 10 million people around the world were pirating games in December of 2010 alone. This is also seen as being a very low estimate as it cannot accurately trace all users and other forms of downloading digital content. While most of the piracy was found in countries that have poor regulation against piracy and defending intellectual property, this relates heavily to the United States as well. With this extreme rate of downloading for just video games, developers have every right to be concerned with the amount of revenue that is lost by piracy of their games. So now that is acceptable for DRM to be pushed on to games more so than ever, this also creates a reliance on digital distribution of games, so with everything being digital it ends up being easier for people to pirate games once they have found out how to circumvent the existing DRM. With all of these conflicting issues, it's important that we find a compromise for both parties and find the most pain free solution to the problem.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Deterrance

International Law

With the proliferation of new software and video games being used by all nations, an ethical conflict can arise from how different cultures view ownership of intellectual property (IP). It is necessary for the nations of the world to come to agreements in order for their to be a shared movement against the distribution of copyrighted software. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) which was founded in 1947 had created laws for the international community on intellectual property that has been taken over by the World Trade Organization (WTO) that replaced the GATT in 1995. While international IP laws exist, the relation of the WTO's agreement on IP rights to software has been heavily disputed as to whether software can be considered an invention worthy of protecting as intellectual property (Wikipedia). Despite this the WTO strives to establish "minimum levels of protection that each government has to give to the intellectual property of fellow WTO members" (WTO).

Despite the wide spread of international laws across the globe, many countries still have a very high percentage of piracy, dwarfing the amount of piracy that takes place in other parts of the world. This correlates heavily to the countries concept of ownership and their economy. While the rate of software piracy has gone down because of international laws, it is very hard to stop piracy as a whole and eliminating piracy involves reteaching everyone the value of copyrighted property and convincing people that a product is worth their money.

Deterrence

With the knowledge that sharing copyrighted software is so widespread and easy to do, people have little to deter them. Realizing this, software industries and law enforcement agencies now look to crack down on this behavior to prove a point and make an example of offenders. Companies such as Microsoft and Adobe have their own efforts in place in order to make people aware of what piracy is and the ramifications of it. They make the consumer aware that by purchasing software they do not own anything; rather they become a licensed user of the software, thus sharing software "is [sic] illegal and punishable by law" (Adobe). With many restrictions on the use, some consumers switch to using open source programs that have no licensing restrictions as an alternative.

There are many anti-piracy organizations in place to prevent and investigate those who commit piracy. Individuals can be found by tracking their activity or by being reported to groups such as the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA). The SIIA "is the principal trade association for the software and digital content industry" (SIIA). Much of their work is dedicated to protecting copyrights and spreading information about the illegality of software piracy as well as representing businesses in lawsuits against accused pirates (SIAA). Businesses also practice the use of copy protection and digital rights management (DRM) to protect their software. These methods often prove useless though as determined users will get past these restrictions.

With little legal disincentive to refrain from piracy, many people will continue to download digital content. There is relative safety in knowing that by keeping a low profile there will be no repercussions for you actions. Those that tend to see repercussions for their actions are individuals that attempt to distribute content for profit or have a high traffic of copyrighted material being downloaded to their IP address. The same can be seen with seven individuals who created copies of Rosetta Stone and sold them that were arrested by law enforcement agencies across many different states (Forbes). In regards to video games, rarely are there news stories about someone facing punishment for downloading only one game, but those that download multiple games and spread them to others and build hacked consoles that allow for piracy are usually caught. Until real legislation is made to create definite consequences for piracy and awareness of these laws is spread, many will continue to participate in this activity.

Sources:

Adobe. (n.d.). Anti-piracy initiative. Retrieved November 29, 2009,

from http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/antipiracy/piracy.html

Forbes (2009, Oct. 19). Rosetta Stone Commends Law Enforcement for Seven Piracy Arrests. Retrieved November 29, 2009, from http://www.forbes.com/feeds/businesswire/2009/10/19/businesswire130360658.html

SIIA. (n.d). Software Anti-Piracy Information. Retrieved November 29, 2009, from http://siia.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=334:anti-piracy-information&catid=162:anti-piracy-articles&Itemid=371

Wikipedia. (n.d.). Software Patents. Retrieved November 29, 2009, from

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_TRIPs_Agreement

WTO. (n.d.). Intellectual Property: Protection and Enforcement. Retrieved November 29, 2009, from http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/agrm7_e.htm

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

The Pirates Prerogative

Justification
Attempting to justify piracy is really an act of futility, you just simply can't find a foolproof reason for why it's alright for someone to illegally download a product. Having said that, there are many reasons why people will attempt to explain why they believe pirating is OK. The most simple reason stems from the fact that it is too expensive to purchase all of the products that consumers want, so for the lack of funds and/or being unwilling to pay for something, it would be much easier for them to decide to download illegal content. As I've heard from some people, "It's too easy to pirate and I don't think it's wrong." This is the mindset of many people and it just becomes a habit to download something when it's so easy to do so. On the other end of the spectrum we can find those that will take a higher ground approach to pirating saying its alright, because they are just testing a game out. These people view pirating as a form of rental because the player would much rather find out if a game is actually good or not before they would waste about $60 to buy a bad game. So these people will still buy the game or other content, but not before testing it out first for free.

One of the biggest arguments that is usually made about piracy is that it is a form of sharing. While this makes sense when it's just one or two people, through the use of the internet it can then reach thousands of people. Torrenting sites such as the PirateBay and other sources allow for this to happen and they have become the focus of the debate. When the internet was still in it's infancy and the first boom occurred, many people were using the program known as Napster to share music and it was very common for people to use it. Once the program was shut down though, many people became more aware of the consequences of piracy. Despite the removal of Napster, the ability to pirate digital content is still relatively simple and painless compared to the price of purchasing something. No matter what the methods are or the rationalization for pirating, there will always be those who find a way to obtain digital goods for free.

The concept of ownership
Throughout the world, the concept of ownership is viewed differently from each nation. The United States, being a striking example of capitalism has a large contribution to the thoughts of ownership of property and in Europe, the mindset of having rights over what you have created is closely aligned to the U.S. Where things become complicated is when you look at huge countries such as China and realize that their concept of ownership is much different than ours. Despite the governments push in China to prevent piracy, the culture still believes that what you have created ought to be shared with others. In the Soviet Union there was so way to establish copy rights, so this explains why the creator of Tetris initially didn't get much credit for what he created and so many people where able to copy his game. For many countries outside the U.S., capitalism is more loosely defined and only as the rate of production increases does the need to protect intellectual property increase as well.

Endless Cycle
It feels at times as if it were impossible to find a solution to this problem, because what starts initially as a person defending themselves from piracy because of products that have poor quality and are too expensive, when the value of a product increases, the pirate will still obtain the product because they actually will admit that they are too cheap to buy something. It varies greatly from one pirate to another what their motivations are, but more often than not, it’s based on a refusal to pay a sum of money for a product that they believe is too much. Companies will try to add value to a product, but this doesn't change much so then they begin to result to other methods. These other methods involve increasing prices and limiting the ease of use of their products in order to prevent those who pirate games from using it to its full extent. There are many examples of this in the past and recent examples as well.

In the world of PC gaming, where piracy is most prevalent, any sign of an implied threat is seen as a form of betrayal from developers. PC gamers have many expectations of what a PC game should have and standards having been made with pricing and the core features of a game such as having dedicated server support for online matches. One of the most alarming changes that players have seen for PC games is Activision's choice to price Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on the PC for $60. This pricing choice goes against the expected price point of new blockbuster PC games being only $50. On top of that, many features that are viewed as being standard in a PC title were removed in order to make it more similar to the console version of the game. More value was removed by not offering any collectors editions for the title on the PC and this would add up for more reason for people to pirate the title, making it the most pirated title of 2009. When ever players feel betrayed by developers, their response will be much worse than normal.

Response
In response to the increased rate of piracy many developers are taking on more extreme practices in order to protect their games from piracy. The methods they are using could be described as draconian in nature because the methods being used severely punish even the users that have purchased the product and have obtained the game legitimately.

Publisher and developer Ubisoft has shown the level of desperation that has come out of the battle to fight off piracy. With the release of Assasins Creed II on the PC and other future titles, Ubisoft has decided to use a new form of Digital Rights Management (DRM) that allows the game to operate only when the user has a constant internet connection and the servers from Ubisoft are online as well. This of course means the moment anything goes wrong with the internet connection, everything will cease to function and the player will even lose their current progress since they have last saved their game. This kind of strict protection has actually lead those who would normally purchase a game to pirate the game in order to avoid these issues.

Pirates have of course found a way to circumvent these restrictions by disabling the always on DRM that is found in Assassins Creed, thus enabling even more people to pirate the game pain free and also helping those who have purchased the game to be free of the DRM issues. All of this goes to show that no matter what you do to prevent the piracy of a game, dedicated groups of people will find a way to circumvent these protection methods and release these tools to the public. Noting this, it's very important for the industry going forward to find ways that promote the legal purchasing of games and at the same time may gamers aware that piracy is not acceptable.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Further explantion and identifying some of the suspects.

Infringement

Software License Infringement or piracy, are popular topics of discussion, especially with how widespread it has become. The word piracy contains so many negative connotations while simultaneously captivating people’s minds with images of common people finding ways to circumvent governments and laws. A quick Google search of "software piracy" results with the popular digital content sharing website thepiratebay.org, as one of the top results (Google). The key issue with piracy is that when software is purchased, one becomes a licensed user rather than an owner. This fact is then either unknown by the user or the user is aware, but still considers the software to be their property and thus feels free to share it. Software companies argue the ethics of this and seek legislation to clearly define software as copyrighted material.

Infringing Organizations and Individuals

Organizations that take part in aiding the distribution of pirated content often defend themselves based on the rights to share digital content in foreign countries, but these websites can be used by anyone around the world and with that the issue arises. The Pirate Bay is a Swedish website that indexes Bit Torrents, a sharing protocol used to distribute large files, and the creators defend the site by referencing local laws and that the only information being stored on their servers are the links to the digital downloads stored in individuals computers. Though The Pirate Bay defends itself from the law, its approach is often juvenile (Neij). Other services allow users to pay a subscription fee in order to host digital content on their servers where it cannot be tracked. Within the countries that these websites are hosted, copyright laws do not prohibit the sharing of this content and in the event that the laws change, the servers for some are hosted in multiple countries with loose copyright laws (Libbenga). These groups have all found a way to make a profit off of sharing others software.

While peer to peer sharing networks get most of the attention, the main issue lies with the peers, the individuals seeking and sharing content through these networks. Without the existence of the networks, individuals will still find their own ways of sharing software with others. Perceived ownership of software is cited as a reason for sharing, but part of it is the selfish desire to save money as most pieces of software costs hundreds of dollars to purchase. Knowing the inevitability of piracy, Bill Gates references the piracy of the Windows operating system in China, submitting to the idea by saying "As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours," in the hope that users would license the operating system the next time (Grice). By this logic, the more individuals that are exposed to pirated software, the likely hood of them purchasing a license in the future increases.