5 ms·

This article is interesting to read and think about from a theoretical perspective. Practically, though, it is completely and utterly useless. Fact 1: Pirating

by yangez 15y ago

This article is interesting to read and think about from a theoretical perspective. Practically, though, it is completely and utterly useless. Fact 1: Pirating is possible and fairly easy across the board. Fact 2: Some content creators try to limit access to maintain "exclusivity" or to keep margins high. These guys get destroyed by piracy. Fact 3: Other services strive to make it as easy as possible to get their products legally - Steam, iTunes, the Louis CK experiment. Their stuff is pirated a lot less and they generate a bunch of goodwill on the side. These are facts, and no appeal to morality is going to change that. You can't just tell someone to suck it up and say it's not their "decision". Of course it's their decision - everyone decides whether or not to pirate! It is ABSOLUTELY their decision. The way to curb piracy is not to appeal to people's morality and tell people they SHOULD or SHOULDN'T do something. It's never going to work. Curb piracy by making it easier, safer, and more reliable to purchase legally rather than pirate. Articles like this do nothing but reinforce the author's sense of moral superiority.

Skroob 15y ago
As creators, we can curb piracy by making it easier, safer and more reliable to purchase legally. As users, shouldn't we curb piracy by not pirating things?
- Tim-Boss 15y ago
  As users we should, wherever possible, purchase media from the easier, safer and more reliable LEGITIMATE sources, and carry on pirating wherever the opposite is true ("locked down" content such as DRM, rootkits, cumbersome convoluted registrations and ages-long anti-piracy messages on legal media!) To put it another way, it seems we need a "carrot" (legally purchasing) approach to the 'good guys' creators/developers and "stick" (illegally downloading) approach to the arseholes who put rootkits on music CD's etc. ...thats my humble opinion anyway
- burke 15y ago
  From a long-term perspective, it's probably more effective, as a user, to pirate everything that's not easily available for legal purchase, with the intent of making outdated, overpriced distribution channels unprofitable. I'm not trying to make the argument that this is ethical or anything, but purely from the perspective of solving the "piracy problem", I believe it would be the most effective.
chaz 15y ago
World of Goo launched on Steam and still saw 90% piracy. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/12/my-software-is-being-pirated.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/12/my-software-is-bein...
- krig 15y ago
  This is the kind of thing that boggles my mind. World of Goo was a huge success! How the piracy rate fits into the relative success or failure of World of Goo is not at all clear. I don't see how anyone can believe that there's a possible reality where World of Goo would be just as successful as it was with a 0% piracy rate, and where information exchange is free. You can't have both! If World of Goo had made a pittance and its developers had died in poverty, maybe there would have been an argument to make there. But as it is, that piracy figure is just a number that has no tangible connection to the number of possible sales in a world where piracy is either morally abhorrent to everyone, or technically impossible. And that world is something for dystopian science fiction to explore, not one that I would ever wish to experience.
  - chaz 15y ago
    I'm not saying that they missed out on 90% of their revenue (though it's fair to say they lost out on some revenue). Rather, they did everything right: a fun game that anyone can play, great press, broad distribution through multiple channels, and no DRM. And yet a huge audience still saw it fit to pirate their game. It'll be interesting to watch the evolution of game distribution. Xbox and iOS are massively growing platforms that also bring built-in DRM that's significantly harder to circumvent.
    - lena 15y ago
      Your point is valid, but it is still worth noting that a huge audience also did buy their game. They just sold their millionth game on the App Store alone. http://2dboy.com/2012/01/09/one-million-downloads/ http://2dboy.com/2012/01/09/one-million-downloads/
      - 15y ago
dorian-graph 15y ago
Sometimes the HN, Reddit and other crowds forget they're not the only ones on the planet and in fact seem to make up a tiny minority—the enlightened ones. Sure, you/we may be willing to pay for an easy-to-use service though for now, because we're tech-savvy, we'll use a conglomerate of services and have it work on all our devices, etc while the mere mortal, common man struggles to avoid downloading smiley packages. Why do the common people pirate? Because they want something without having to pay for it which is done primarily out of selfishness, laziness and wanting to pretend our actions have no consequences. On my Facebook feed, in conversations, etc they'll speak of BitTorrent or whatever and smile with an evil glint in their eyes and think they're awesome because they're getting all this content without paying for it. The other funny thing is, you and others speak of needing to make it easier but for the common people pirating is so usually much harder—they have to keep their computers safe from malicious people and files, they need to figure out how Kazaa and BitTorrent works, they need to have the right codecs for Windows Media Player or Quicktime to play whatever the latest favourite container is, know which crack for Windows is reliable, etc. I know someone who proclaimed to be able to download torrents and she spoke of it as some great achievement and the people around her clamoured for her to download TV show x and music y. Going down and hiring out a movie is easier for them, the majority. Going to a cinema is easier. Buying software which comes with a license is easier. Buying a CD is easier than them trying to download the whole album (Why is it do you think these people usually never download a full album and instead end up with a poor copy of popular song x and all these unnamed .mp3s?). There is the majority. Sure, the amount of people who use Steam and that is certainly relatively large but in comparison is still small. It's nothing new to man to want something without having to earn it. Why else are 'get rich quick' or 'get amazing abs now' successful, or rather, even exist? The post may reinforce the author's sense of moral superiority (And maybe he does have a superior sense of morals) but many of the counter-posts are simply doing the same thing for themselves.

by yangez 15y ago

Skroob 15y ago

As creators, we can curb piracy by making it easier, safer and more reliable to purchase legally. As users, shouldn't we curb piracy by not pirating things?

Tim-Boss 15y ago
As users we should, wherever possible, purchase media from the easier, safer and more reliable LEGITIMATE sources, and carry on pirating wherever the opposite is true ("locked down" content such as DRM, rootkits, cumbersome convoluted registrations and ages-long anti-piracy messages on legal media!) To put it another way, it seems we need a "carrot" (legally purchasing) approach to the 'good guys' creators/developers and "stick" (illegally downloading) approach to the arseholes who put rootkits on music CD's etc. ...thats my humble opinion anyway
burke 15y ago
From a long-term perspective, it's probably more effective, as a user, to pirate everything that's not easily available for legal purchase, with the intent of making outdated, overpriced distribution channels unprofitable. I'm not trying to make the argument that this is ethical or anything, but purely from the perspective of solving the "piracy problem", I believe it would be the most effective.

chaz 15y ago

World of Goo launched on Steam and still saw 90% piracy. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/12/my-software-is-being-pirated.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/12/my-software-is-bein...

krig 15y ago
This is the kind of thing that boggles my mind. World of Goo was a huge success! How the piracy rate fits into the relative success or failure of World of Goo is not at all clear. I don't see how anyone can believe that there's a possible reality where World of Goo would be just as successful as it was with a 0% piracy rate, and where information exchange is free. You can't have both! If World of Goo had made a pittance and its developers had died in poverty, maybe there would have been an argument to make there. But as it is, that piracy figure is just a number that has no tangible connection to the number of possible sales in a world where piracy is either morally abhorrent to everyone, or technically impossible. And that world is something for dystopian science fiction to explore, not one that I would ever wish to experience.
- chaz 15y ago
  I'm not saying that they missed out on 90% of their revenue (though it's fair to say they lost out on some revenue). Rather, they did everything right: a fun game that anyone can play, great press, broad distribution through multiple channels, and no DRM. And yet a huge audience still saw it fit to pirate their game. It'll be interesting to watch the evolution of game distribution. Xbox and iOS are massively growing platforms that also bring built-in DRM that's significantly harder to circumvent.
  - lena 15y ago
    Your point is valid, but it is still worth noting that a huge audience also did buy their game. They just sold their millionth game on the App Store alone. http://2dboy.com/2012/01/09/one-million-downloads/ http://2dboy.com/2012/01/09/one-million-downloads/
    - 15y ago

dorian-graph 15y ago

Sometimes the HN, Reddit and other crowds forget they're not the only ones on the planet and in fact seem to make up a tiny minority—the enlightened ones. Sure, you/we may be willing to pay for an easy-to-use service though for now, because we're tech-savvy, we'll use a conglomerate of services and have it work on all our devices, etc while the mere mortal, common man struggles to avoid downloading smiley packages. Why do the common people pirate? Because they want something without having to pay for it which is done primarily out of selfishness, laziness and wanting to pretend our actions have no consequences. On my Facebook feed, in conversations, etc they'll speak of BitTorrent or whatever and smile with an evil glint in their eyes and think they're awesome because they're getting all this content without paying for it. The other funny thing is, you and others speak of needing to make it easier but for the common people pirating is so usually much harder—they have to keep their computers safe from malicious people and files, they need to figure out how Kazaa and BitTorrent works, they need to have the right codecs for Windows Media Player or Quicktime to play whatever the latest favourite container is, know which crack for Windows is reliable, etc. I know someone who proclaimed to be able to download torrents and she spoke of it as some great achievement and the people around her clamoured for her to download TV show x and music y. Going down and hiring out a movie is easier for them, the majority. Going to a cinema is easier. Buying software which comes with a license is easier. Buying a CD is easier than them trying to download the whole album (Why is it do you think these people usually never download a full album and instead end up with a poor copy of popular song x and all these unnamed .mp3s?). There is the majority. Sure, the amount of people who use Steam and that is certainly relatively large but in comparison is still small. It's nothing new to man to want something without having to earn it. Why else are 'get rich quick' or 'get amazing abs now' successful, or rather, even exist? The post may reinforce the author's sense of moral superiority (And maybe he does have a superior sense of morals) but many of the counter-posts are simply doing the same thing for themselves.