7 ms·

Are people who go outside and drink from a stream (through a filter/firewall, of course), stealing? What about people who take in the scenery, or people who bre

Are people who go outside and drink from a stream (through a filter/firewall, of course), stealing? What about people who take in the scenery, or people who breath? Is nature a starving artist? I'm not for dumping toxic waste in the river, or stealing property, but the Internet is my environment, and copying data is not only cheap, that's what I pay my ISP to be able to do. IMHO, that makes copying as moral as breathing. That said, I do support artists and research, etc, only I do it after I evaluate them and feel like I got something - similar to how I choose to upvote/downvote on HN, only there is no way to downvote a game producer after you have paid for something you didn't know in advance that you would like. FWIW, I do think that "sharing is caring" is a higher level of intellectual honesty than "trust me - you'll like it," especially when the former does nothing to damage attribution.

Sandman 13y ago
That said, I do support artists and research, etc, only I do it after I evaluate them and feel like I got something - similar to how I choose to upvote/downvote on HN, only there is no way to downvote a game producer after you have paid for something you didn't know in advance that you would like. And luckily, a lot of games (this one included) come with a free demo, so that you can try them before buying them. So fortunately for all of us as customers, we don't need to download a cracked copy. We can play through the demo, see if welike it, and buy it if we do.
- claudius 13y ago
  The demo for Linux said something like ‘coming soon’ earlier (the page seems a little slow at the moment) and I was unable to find any information whatsoever regarding hardware and software requirements before being asked for my credit card details.
eropple 13y ago
> there is no way to downvote a game producer after you have paid for something you didn't know in advance that you would like I'm not going to fisk your post, which is largely self-serving rationalization. But I am going to touch on this. The choice is not "pirate it" or "pay for it". You can also--shocker incoming--not pirate it and not pay for it. Don't like that a publisher doesn't have a demo? Don't buy it. Don't like that the demo's not long enough? Don't buy it. But that's hard, and you can just take it for free. So, under the guise of "evaluating", that's what you do. And, yeah, I'm assuming some bad faith here, because the next person who actually compensates creators, without exception and at the price they ask for the content they pirate and use will be the first.
- vy8vWJlco 13y ago
  "I'm assuming some bad faith here, because the next person who actually compensates creators, without exception and at the price they ask for the content they pirate and use will be the first." In your own words, you say copying is human nature. It sounds like the "pay-before-evaluate" model is hoping to change that. I'd say expecting human nature to change is unrealistic. Isn't it easier to just exploit human nature? I mean, isn't that good capitalism? (Everyone's rationalizations are self-serving, including your own, otherwise thinking would be a liability...)
  - eropple 13y ago
    "Taking shit for free because I can" is the nature of a certain audience, yes. Relying on attacks of moral conscience from people already willing to do this is not a workable business model, and because of this, we as a society have evolved a system of copyrights to incentivize content creation[1]. (Tchotchkes with a free game attached is, likewise, not particularly viable.) [1] - No, this is not a defense of Disney at al and ever-growing copyright lengths, but neither is it an allowance that running roughshod over the little guy is acceptable either.
    - GhotiFish 13y ago
      a system that makes absolutely no sense for data. no sense. none. Do not try to shoehorn a model where it doesn't fit, and for data: It doesn't fit. A different standard has to be adopted, and piracy is merely a symptom of that.
      - eropple 13y ago
        Whether it makes "no sense" to you is, to be honest, pretty much irrelevant. It is a societal construct and you are a member of society and you take the "bad" (it's not, but, whatever) with the good. Copyright exists because we, as a society, want it to. We want people to make things for us to consume and so we enact laws to make it so they can do so and still eat. Don't like it? Feel free to try to change the law. But that's hard, and hard things aren't fun, so let's just go pirate Game of Thrones, yeah?
jiggy2011 13y ago
Problem is , for everyone who will happily compensate the artist if they feel they got value there are probably ~100 people who will just keep it for free even if they feel they had value.
- vy8vWJlco 13y ago
  That's only a problem if you consider a copy as damage. (I haven't seen a convincing argument.) There are also lots of factors in a financial proposition. Some people give away free samples, others invest in an education. It's interesting that iTunes is doing so well, without mandatory DRM, while copying has only gotten easier...
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    It is damage in the sense that you are consuming a product without "voting" for it in the marketplace. This can lead to products that are in fact popular being less economically feasible to produce under certain business models if the piracy rate is too high.
    - vy8vWJlco 13y ago
      At the same time, popular copies - paid or otherwise - become more well known and potentially much more profitable. One may not be voting with money, but one is voting with time (and "time is money") by accepting it, using it, and sharing/promoting it to others. Microsoft used this strategy in China (Gates said something like: if they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours...). They have done less well recently.
      - jiggy2011 13y ago
        If you are a game developer, the fact that several hundred thousand hours have been spent playing your game isn't helpful to eating or financing your next game if you have no way to monetize those hours. There are of course business models that are aided by copying (such as those based on open source software). The difficulty is how the video games industry can adapt to this. The route they seem to be increasingly taking is to sell games as a service rather than a product but then this is decried as "always on DRM".
Isofarro 13y ago
> there is no way to downvote a game producer after you have paid for something you didn't know in advance that you would like. A 30-day money back, no questions asked, guarantee would offer this. Then you can take a risk on a game, evaluate it to your heart's content, and if you didn't like it then request a refund. That would be a useful downvote indicator. For the recent SimCity, a stream of refunds would show as the product not being fit for purpose at launch, and as the refunds taper off and the sales continue to grow, that's a confidence indicator that the game has reached an acceptable playable standard. Though, it would be more useful for unsolicited/open-ended feedback as to why the refund, so a company could do something to improve their games. Granted, that system can be initially gamed by serial refund-requestors - but those people are further along the spectrum of "will not pay" anyway, but at least they've taken the step of purchasing, that's one step closer to making inroads into the pirate instead of purchase segment. By making the refund rates public, and some sort of identifier, it should be easier to target the non-regular refund-requestor with special offers and promotions. A company should have the ability to reward loyal customers too. From the company's perspective, people will be less inclined to ask for a refund after they've purchased a game that works and provides a decent gaming experience. That's just the nature of people who believe that they have received value on their purchase. That is one improved step beyond the "need to evaluate before purchase" mindset. I guess this will mostly prove that the "evaluate before buying" mindset is a self-rationalisation for piracy. The Radiohead "name your own price" album is unsurprising in that it was heavily slanted to as close to free as possible, rather than reflecting a demand versus supply equilibrium.
- vy8vWJlco 13y ago
  "A 30-day money back, no questions asked, guarantee would offer this." That sounds a lot like the "copy-first, pay later - or receive a public shaming" de facto standard used by cautious patrons today (only ATM people receive their shame from other pro-copyright HN readers).
- admax88q 13y ago
  This is actually a technique that retail stores discovered a while ago. They used to make it very difficult to return products, and rarely would you get your money back. But then they realized that if you make returns simple and painless people stop second guessing their purchase since there's less risk if the product doesn't work out later. So more people are buying the product and those that do return it are not left feeling burned, making them more likely to purchase again from the same store. Nobody wants to feel ripped off, and taking that risk away from customers helps remove that mental hurdle they face thinking "but what if it sucks?" Game developers on the other hand have a bad track record. Returns are basically impossible, even with everyone's favourite Steam. With paid reviews, gaming social media and relentless hyping. People are tricked into buying a game that's not as good as its made out to be and are left feeling scammed. Not a great way to treat your customers.
cykod 13y ago
The fallacy with this argument is that if everyone behaved if you did there would be no games. If this stuff is "free" it's the tragedy of the commons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons - except in this case it's developer resources that are "common" and will be depleted as there wouldn't be money to pay for them. I think at this point everyone understands that there's piracy out there and it's not going away. The thing that irks me is the moral argument like yours (provided it's not a troll, I can't be sure) - I just wish people would admit that they're taking something for free that they shouldn't - no one is saying "trust me - you'll like it," don't give me that "after I evaluate" stuff - you can read dozens of reviews and watch full play-through movies on Youtube. I wish people would just admit that they are scumbags. Extremely tiny scumbags in the grand scheme of things - less than folks taking a candybar from a corner store as digital goods, as you noted, are freely copyable without cost, but scumbags nonetheless as you are the leeches that make things worse for folks willing to pay for stuff. If you're a student and have no cash but want to play every game that comes out, you're probably going to pirate, but don't create this entire moral structure of justification to compensate for your being a freeloader. Just accept a the tiniest twinge of moral responsibility as you play your free game and become a better person down the road. As someone who enjoys playing large-scale single player games on PC - Skyrim and the like - I'm upset because more and more developer resources are going to switch to F2P and "always online" games because those are the only ones that "beat" piracy and there are going to be less titles out for the PC and more that just are on console the next generation of locked-down consoles.
- vy8vWJlco 13y ago
  "The fallacy with this argument is that if everyone behaved if you did there would be no games." > In the past artists (and scientists) had patrons but today we have kickstarter. It is possible to fund the creation of large projects (movies, TV shows, games, hardware, research, etc) without as much risk to the people carrying it out. There would most certainly be games, IMHO. I am also not trolling. I have been trying to rationalize copyright for over a decade. I just can't justify it anymore (and don't think that should mean I should have to ignore what my peers are talking about, and what tools are current, either).
- 13y ago

Sandman 13y ago

That said, I do support artists and research, etc, only I do it after I evaluate them and feel like I got something - similar to how I choose to upvote/downvote on HN, only there is no way to downvote a game producer after you have paid for something you didn't know in advance that you would like. And luckily, a lot of games (this one included) come with a free demo, so that you can try them before buying them. So fortunately for all of us as customers, we don't need to download a cracked copy. We can play through the demo, see if welike it, and buy it if we do.

claudius 13y ago
The demo for Linux said something like ‘coming soon’ earlier (the page seems a little slow at the moment) and I was unable to find any information whatsoever regarding hardware and software requirements before being asked for my credit card details.

eropple 13y ago

> there is no way to downvote a game producer after you have paid for something you didn't know in advance that you would like I'm not going to fisk your post, which is largely self-serving rationalization. But I am going to touch on this. The choice is not "pirate it" or "pay for it". You can also--shocker incoming--not pirate it and not pay for it. Don't like that a publisher doesn't have a demo? Don't buy it. Don't like that the demo's not long enough? Don't buy it. But that's hard, and you can just take it for free. So, under the guise of "evaluating", that's what you do. And, yeah, I'm assuming some bad faith here, because the next person who actually compensates creators, without exception and at the price they ask for the content they pirate and use will be the first.

vy8vWJlco 13y ago
"I'm assuming some bad faith here, because the next person who actually compensates creators, without exception and at the price they ask for the content they pirate and use will be the first." In your own words, you say copying is human nature. It sounds like the "pay-before-evaluate" model is hoping to change that. I'd say expecting human nature to change is unrealistic. Isn't it easier to just exploit human nature? I mean, isn't that good capitalism? (Everyone's rationalizations are self-serving, including your own, otherwise thinking would be a liability...)
- eropple 13y ago
  "Taking shit for free because I can" is the nature of a certain audience, yes. Relying on attacks of moral conscience from people already willing to do this is not a workable business model, and because of this, we as a society have evolved a system of copyrights to incentivize content creation[1]. (Tchotchkes with a free game attached is, likewise, not particularly viable.) [1] - No, this is not a defense of Disney at al and ever-growing copyright lengths, but neither is it an allowance that running roughshod over the little guy is acceptable either.
  - GhotiFish 13y ago
    a system that makes absolutely no sense for data. no sense. none. Do not try to shoehorn a model where it doesn't fit, and for data: It doesn't fit. A different standard has to be adopted, and piracy is merely a symptom of that.
    - eropple 13y ago
      Whether it makes "no sense" to you is, to be honest, pretty much irrelevant. It is a societal construct and you are a member of society and you take the "bad" (it's not, but, whatever) with the good. Copyright exists because we, as a society, want it to. We want people to make things for us to consume and so we enact laws to make it so they can do so and still eat. Don't like it? Feel free to try to change the law. But that's hard, and hard things aren't fun, so let's just go pirate Game of Thrones, yeah?

jiggy2011 13y ago

Problem is , for everyone who will happily compensate the artist if they feel they got value there are probably ~100 people who will just keep it for free even if they feel they had value.

vy8vWJlco 13y ago
That's only a problem if you consider a copy as damage. (I haven't seen a convincing argument.) There are also lots of factors in a financial proposition. Some people give away free samples, others invest in an education. It's interesting that iTunes is doing so well, without mandatory DRM, while copying has only gotten easier...
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  It is damage in the sense that you are consuming a product without "voting" for it in the marketplace. This can lead to products that are in fact popular being less economically feasible to produce under certain business models if the piracy rate is too high.
  - vy8vWJlco 13y ago
    At the same time, popular copies - paid or otherwise - become more well known and potentially much more profitable. One may not be voting with money, but one is voting with time (and "time is money") by accepting it, using it, and sharing/promoting it to others. Microsoft used this strategy in China (Gates said something like: if they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours...). They have done less well recently.
    - jiggy2011 13y ago
      If you are a game developer, the fact that several hundred thousand hours have been spent playing your game isn't helpful to eating or financing your next game if you have no way to monetize those hours. There are of course business models that are aided by copying (such as those based on open source software). The difficulty is how the video games industry can adapt to this. The route they seem to be increasingly taking is to sell games as a service rather than a product but then this is decried as "always on DRM".

Isofarro 13y ago

> there is no way to downvote a game producer after you have paid for something you didn't know in advance that you would like. A 30-day money back, no questions asked, guarantee would offer this. Then you can take a risk on a game, evaluate it to your heart's content, and if you didn't like it then request a refund. That would be a useful downvote indicator. For the recent SimCity, a stream of refunds would show as the product not being fit for purpose at launch, and as the refunds taper off and the sales continue to grow, that's a confidence indicator that the game has reached an acceptable playable standard. Though, it would be more useful for unsolicited/open-ended feedback as to why the refund, so a company could do something to improve their games. Granted, that system can be initially gamed by serial refund-requestors - but those people are further along the spectrum of "will not pay" anyway, but at least they've taken the step of purchasing, that's one step closer to making inroads into the pirate instead of purchase segment. By making the refund rates public, and some sort of identifier, it should be easier to target the non-regular refund-requestor with special offers and promotions. A company should have the ability to reward loyal customers too. From the company's perspective, people will be less inclined to ask for a refund after they've purchased a game that works and provides a decent gaming experience. That's just the nature of people who believe that they have received value on their purchase. That is one improved step beyond the "need to evaluate before purchase" mindset. I guess this will mostly prove that the "evaluate before buying" mindset is a self-rationalisation for piracy. The Radiohead "name your own price" album is unsurprising in that it was heavily slanted to as close to free as possible, rather than reflecting a demand versus supply equilibrium.

vy8vWJlco 13y ago
"A 30-day money back, no questions asked, guarantee would offer this." That sounds a lot like the "copy-first, pay later - or receive a public shaming" de facto standard used by cautious patrons today (only ATM people receive their shame from other pro-copyright HN readers).
admax88q 13y ago
This is actually a technique that retail stores discovered a while ago. They used to make it very difficult to return products, and rarely would you get your money back. But then they realized that if you make returns simple and painless people stop second guessing their purchase since there's less risk if the product doesn't work out later. So more people are buying the product and those that do return it are not left feeling burned, making them more likely to purchase again from the same store. Nobody wants to feel ripped off, and taking that risk away from customers helps remove that mental hurdle they face thinking "but what if it sucks?" Game developers on the other hand have a bad track record. Returns are basically impossible, even with everyone's favourite Steam. With paid reviews, gaming social media and relentless hyping. People are tricked into buying a game that's not as good as its made out to be and are left feeling scammed. Not a great way to treat your customers.

cykod 13y ago

The fallacy with this argument is that if everyone behaved if you did there would be no games. If this stuff is "free" it's the tragedy of the commons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons - except in this case it's developer resources that are "common" and will be depleted as there wouldn't be money to pay for them. I think at this point everyone understands that there's piracy out there and it's not going away. The thing that irks me is the moral argument like yours (provided it's not a troll, I can't be sure) - I just wish people would admit that they're taking something for free that they shouldn't - no one is saying "trust me - you'll like it," don't give me that "after I evaluate" stuff - you can read dozens of reviews and watch full play-through movies on Youtube. I wish people would just admit that they are scumbags. Extremely tiny scumbags in the grand scheme of things - less than folks taking a candybar from a corner store as digital goods, as you noted, are freely copyable without cost, but scumbags nonetheless as you are the leeches that make things worse for folks willing to pay for stuff. If you're a student and have no cash but want to play every game that comes out, you're probably going to pirate, but don't create this entire moral structure of justification to compensate for your being a freeloader. Just accept a the tiniest twinge of moral responsibility as you play your free game and become a better person down the road. As someone who enjoys playing large-scale single player games on PC - Skyrim and the like - I'm upset because more and more developer resources are going to switch to F2P and "always online" games because those are the only ones that "beat" piracy and there are going to be less titles out for the PC and more that just are on console the next generation of locked-down consoles.

vy8vWJlco 13y ago
"The fallacy with this argument is that if everyone behaved if you did there would be no games." > In the past artists (and scientists) had patrons but today we have kickstarter. It is possible to fund the creation of large projects (movies, TV shows, games, hardware, research, etc) without as much risk to the people carrying it out. There would most certainly be games, IMHO. I am also not trolling. I have been trying to rationalize copyright for over a decade. I just can't justify it anymore (and don't think that should mean I should have to ignore what my peers are talking about, and what tools are current, either).
13y ago