It’s not a matter of the publishers losing money, it’s a matter of pirates not having ANY right to profit from the publishers’ efforts without having paid for it. If I write a book and only allow my family to read it, you hold NO RIGHT whatsoever to read it. If I decide that you gain that right by giving me money, then you ONLY gain that right by giving me money.
The law is the law and breaking it (for non vital necessities) is wrong.
As for the moral question, the more “hardcore” a criminal is, the more morally justified he thinks he is for breaking the law.
It’s still a theft of money too. I don’t know where people get the idea that game devs make a huge ton of money. Sure… there’s the CEO of Capcom and Nintendo or what have you… but they’re not normal within the ranks of game developers by a long shot. Creation of a digital product takes cash. To just outfit ONE programmer takes an average of $5000 in software, hardware, and licenses. If I have 100 programmers for a huge project, that’s half a million right there, just on the equipment the programmer will use. Never mind the $20 an hour I have to pay the man (VERY cheap for a good programmer who knows what the hell he’s doing and I can trust to not sell us out), nor the network infrastructure and support costs. Never mind the artists… or the composer… or the actors… or the orchestra… or sound studio we’ll rent… or the taxes… or the convention fees… etc, etc, etc…
Piracy isn’t ‘theft’ exactly, any more than stiffing your waitress or listening to a street musician for an hour without paying is theft, but it’s an asshole thing to do.
If you don’t believe in tipping - and there are reasons not to believe in it! - that doesn’t mean you should go to an expensive restaurant, monopolise your server’s time, and then refuse to tip and walk off laughing. If you don’t believe in tipping, don’t patronise tipping establishments. Don’t take advantage of the service being provided to you and then refuse to pay for it.
A developer message board isn’t the place for an open discussion of the morality (and immorality) of piracy. It’s like questioning the existence of God in a Christian church. The discussion itself isn’t without merit, but this just isn’t the place to do it. It’s fine to talk about the existence of nonbelievers. Talking about why they may be justified (or not as heathen as typically portrayed) is another story, and such discussion on church premises is unlikely to be productive–particularly when the discussion becomes personal.
On Pirating :
(perfect world theory)
I think pirating software etc should be allowed unconstrained until age 10… [selling or transfering said data to friends through hardcopy is illegal]
Then every 2 years a new tighter restriction on how much is allowed to be pirated until the age of 18. Now you should be able to have a credit card and are expected to be able to purchase your own goods; so amount allowed to be pirated and other restrictions increase exponentially. Then at age 21 and age 24 [max restrictions apply] more clauses come into effect. By 24+ you should still be allowed to pirate… maybe up to 5 things a year.
Also pirating similar products is more prohibited than trying out new types of products…
…
Anyways something like that would be what kind of law I’d have in an controlled enviroment. There’s a chance I’d never have gotten interested in some products if I had not tried them first in the past, including some JAST products. [talking about 10 years ago.] But, repeated pirates of the same company should not be tolerated…! …
ANYWAYS! lol
(My personal history downloading was once colorful as a youth… But, as I learnt about the small business model; of indie games and their tough business; about supporting games that you want more of, and what small business vs big business meant; I came to an understanding and have since spent my money on everything that I really wanted [and on the other hand I’ve stopped supporting/playing most console games completely]. And, I always buy everything brand new that can be obtained new. When you reach a certain age you have to realize you can’t just go around freeloading anymore… Otherwise you’ll just be a burden to the things/people/companies you like/love/want to support.)
As for selling used games…
Personally I think there should be a licence transfer charge. Nothing major (+10$ extra ?), just something that goes directly to the originating company; which they then transfer the licence to the new client. I personally never buy used or give my games away… [and maybe that’s why I keep running out of space… (and money!)!]
Of course, this I suppose would be in a DRM perfect society.
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EDIT: Just read Dark_Shiki’s message and I concur, and have spoilered out my message as it really is far off topic. (you can read it still if you copy and paste it or hit quote)
Let’s pretend in the unlikely scenario, I single-handedly orchestrated the financing of a $10 million dollar game that retails for $50 a copy. For the sake of argument, the game is a 9 out of 10 on customer reviews. When John Q. Public pays $50, he’s not buying my game: he’s paying for a transferable license to play my game. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. In turn I take that $50 per “license to use” and pay back the people who loaned me $10 million dollars to make the game. If John Q. Public wants to own my game, I’ll have to consent to selling it, and it’s going to cost him at least $10 million dollars (more if it’s a success; less if I’m bankrupt). However even if a John Q. Public bought 50 million copies, that combined 50 million dollar sales does not give him a right to my game: just the 1 million “right to use” he’s collected. However I’m sure I’d take a keen interest in what such a buyer would say anyways, so he’d do it again.
If John Q. Public didn’t pay for my game (i.e. pirates it), then he has NO RIGHT to play my game. Playing my game is theft. If John Q. Public sold my game to a friend, but made a copy of it so he can still play it, he has NO RIGHT to play my game. Ownership of the original is the license to play it, his friend can, be he can’t. Playing my game is theft.
Just because John Q. Public can get away with this kind of activity because I lack the means and measures to enforce criminality of the action, does not suddenly make it legal.
The pirate stole the right to use the software. Any individual using the program, without expression permission gained through payment or the direct expressed consent of the creator, is stealing it. It’s like sneaking into a theater to watch multiple movies on a single visit, or breaking into an amusement park without a ticket. The experience itself is the product being stolen.
Want to play it? Pay it. There is no free trail version, unless a free trail version is provided. Not liking how that legal system works, has no bearing on the legality of how the system stands, unless you have the legal system itself changed. Most software pirates are not appealing to their courts for a revision of EULA’s, and those few who have were mostly struck down for a variety of arguments (mostly for the very reason I explained above).
There’s no force in the Universe that demands you have to play Final Fantasy Over 9000 PC Edition or else you’d die. If you want to play it, pay it. If you don’t want to pay it, you don’t get to play it. If you play without pay, you’re pirating, and thus you’ve committed theft of the right to play.
The developer lost money, because they paid for the creation of the game up front - who in their right might would give an I.O.U. of $50 for a game that won’t be out in 2 years? You could say ALL game developers lost money the first day they started, until they make it back through sales. The price charged for the right to play, is to reimburse the fees incurred to get the product on the store shelves. They can’t force you to buy the game (so if they fail to sell enough, it’s their fault for spending so much), but nor can you force them to let you play it for free. It’s your right to pay the fee to experience the game, or not pay the fee and miss out. You are NOT entitled to play without pay, unless the creator explicitly says you do. Playing video games is not an inalienable right required for basic human survival.
People seriously need to stop using the words “theft” and “stealing” when they talk about piracy. (Digital) piracy is (digital) piracy and theft is theft. If actual theft took place, a company would no longer be able to sell their licenses to play a game because someone stole the game completely. Now it was silly for you to use ‘theft of rights’ because quite frankly, it means a right was taken away from someone else. More importantly, you automatically imply that whoever stole the right now HAS the right so it is now legit for them to play (although obtaining the means was not legit). It’s all really just silly nitpicking of language, but language is very important.
This does not change the fact that the experience was stolen however. The theft occurred, so the crime happened. You pay first or acquire it from someone who paid it for you; not enjoy it without payment rendered at any level whatsoever. You are not entitled to a free experience. If you don’t like it, having the said experience without paying, does not suddenly make that unpaying person innocent of any wrong doing… and clearly DISTRIBUTING that free experience is more so outrageous.
Agreed. It is currently technologically infeasible to stop software piracy, with the current hardware and software standards. Doesn’t mean it couldn’t become feasible however, but whether or not pursuing such a course is worth the investment, is beyond the scope of this discussion. Some companies do, some do not. No one knows how it will turn out, but if someone were to figure out something, that be one rich bastard, so there’s a lot of serious work into it for that goldmine of a prize.
I’m not arguing to make a convincing statement, I’m stating the outright truth of how the matter is. I just keep hearing this “software piracy isn’t theft of something” argument, when in fact it is theft of something.
That’s because pirates lost in court, and are trying another tactic (going after the ones who tell the courts what to do). Also winning a handful of seats in countries notorious for lax software laws in the first place, is seriously overstating the “victory” of software piracy. It’s like declaring a victory of human population control, every year China imposes the one-child rule. Noticeable, but overall, not altering the inevitable battle. When pirates win congressional and parliamentary seats in countries that supply most of the world’s software, then I’ll be colored impressed. Not to mention this is predominantly in the EU… where they’re still arguing what standard color an orange should be in a marketplace.
Sorry, but you’re not going to convince me with that.
This is a community that calls things that aren’t visual novels, visual novels… not to mention call girls tsundere, who aren’t tsun + dere to begin with. Don’t even get me started on the whole “free to play” statements about certain MMO’s (because we know that’s an economic oxymoron). Besides… you know what I meant to say, so it doesn’t make the argument any less valid. Plus you’d probably demand me to pay ya, if I forwarded all my posts to you first for grammar revision.
The item being stolen is the software license. The victim being stolen from is the software developer. If stolen/theft isn’t the right word for you, then please feel free to substitute it with something else, but that doesn’t change the fact someone is getting something that they’re not supposed to get, which was created through the efforts of someone intending to only have access to the item via payment on a one-for-one basis.
They used to say the same thing about unbreakable encryption - now that’s pretty much a reality. Not 100% unbreakable of course, but so difficult to break, it might as well be impossible… and yet that doesn’t stop decryption efforts of such things, nor encryption efforts to do better. Indeed some stuff thought unbreakable 10 years ago, is now child’s play for the CIA.
Besides… it’s not a case of making what’s already pirated, unpirateable (yea… I just made that up), but comes up after such a method is found. Also the effort isn’t to make something totally unpirateable, but so difficult or time consuming to pirate, it’s far cheaper to just get it through legit channels. Naturally the entire effort could just be a tremendous waste of time and money. Then again, it may not be. It’s the lure of a prize, that keeps people aiming for something… so people will keep aiming until it’s proven to be a fool’s errand.
If you have a better term for it, I’m all open to hear it. But again: there’s a wrong being committed, so that doesn’t mean there’s no crime happening.
Of course. Not arguing that. Then again, there’s a lot of effort to remove anonymity from the Internets, and indeed if the government [u]REALLY[/u] wants you, and you leave a digital footprint, they [u]CAN[/u] get you if they spare no expense. Ask the geniuses (and I literally mean that in an unsarcastic way), who break into classified military systems. Some of them are damn good ¬ñ they still get hammered. Of course it probably doesn’t help the Internets is literally built on a military system to begin with. The reason they can’t find someone like Bin Ladin, is because he DOESN’T have a digital footprint whatsoever (they used to bomb his cellphone signal, but he got smart on that one after a few close calls… pun!).
Point I’m saying: it’s just too costly, time consuming, and probably gives away too many government secrets to actually go after everyone for every single infraction, so they only go after the big ones, like stealing blueprints for the newest nuclear warhead design. Of course things could change… the whole future of IPV6 is undoubtedly awesome, but then one can see how obvious it can be also used to track things better¬Ö so MUCH better, it’s damn scary really.
It may just be me, but it seems that jdcakes argument is like saying that someone isn’t guilty of committing a homicide because the death was a result of inaction instead of the action of a defendant. Either way it happened, someone has ended up dead because of the choices that have been made. Much like my analogy, the heart of the issue is the same: A thing is acquired through illegal means, resulting in a gain for one party without compensation to the other.
I do hate to be pedantic, but this is incorrect. It doesn’t affect the rest of your statements … mostly. But when you buy a CD, or a DVD, you did not buy a transferable license to watch it. You bought a copy. That copy is yours, to do with as you see fit provided you respect copyright laws (which say you’re not allowed to make copies of it). Game makers have generally attached licenses to PC games, but these are on shaky legal ground (contracts of adhesion are tricky). No such thing is true of console games.
Want to crack it? If the EULA forbids it, you may be violating the EULA. So what? You still own the copy of the game you bought, the EULA which purports to terminate your right to use the software generally cannot terminate your property rights in the disc. (Nowadays, this almost certainly violates the DMCA, but there’s a good chance that since the DMCA does not make exceptions for fair use, significant parts of it are unconstitutional.)
Want to crack it and give copies to hundreds of your closest friends over at [sites which must not be named]? Illegal, of course, because you don’t own the copyrights.
Want to make a backup copy of the media? This is your right. Didn’t make a backup copy of the media, but your copy went bad? Technically, you are SOL, because in fact, you don’t own a usage license or any such thing. You purchased a physical object, which was destroyed.
Want to resell? That’s called the First Sale doctrine, and it means that copyright holders are not allowed to prevent it by claiming it violates copyright. (Some lawyers say that this should mean that EULA clauses which purport to prohibit transferring electronic copies are unenforceable. To my knowledge this has never been tested.) Copyright holders are allowed to control making new copies, but they are generally not allowed to control what happens with those copies afterward.
(This is why grey market importing is 100% legal. Once the manufacturer has manufactured the product, and has sold it, the purchaser’s right to resell is unrestricted. Manufacturers can e.g. deny warranty support, but that’s about it. They have entered into agreements with all the big chains that the big chains will respect their wishes, but small import outfits are essentially impossible to stop.)
Interesting fact: a very long time ago, in an early case testing the limits of copyright, a book publisher tried to use copyright to establish price controls. He attached a notice to a book, saying if it was sold for less than one dollar (it was a long time ago) then it would be deemed a violation of copyright. Someone ignored the warning, they were sued … and the publisher lost.
Out of sheer curiosity, does anyone know how Mangagamer operates? I mean we have a basic idea of who runs JAST and how they acquire their licenses, but what runs Mangagamer? I was told - secondhand and without proof mind you - that Mangagamer is a “sideproject” of (several?) eroge studios in Japan who got interested in expanding their operations overseas. Because of that, MG technically doesn’t go through lengthy negotiations, because they just ask (or get told by) their providers if they can translate it or not.
So is MG a child studio that siphons off a much larger parent company ¬ñ or is MG a totally independent entity on its own? What’s their staff like? Are they predominantly Japanese? Are they mostly Europeans?
Can we please stop using the word ‘theft’ when we have a perfectly fine, uncontrovertial word to describe this? It is misappropriation.
Because every time someone argues over the semantics of the word “theft” in this thread, the Bishoujo goddesses smite a pair of twins. Don’t you want to save the twincest?
Your argument largely stands between two realms: as courts have ruled that you are correct, and courts have ruled that you are incorrect. EULA have won as many cases as they have lost in licensing battles not related to piracy, and part of the reason the matter has been so painful across the board is because the mechanics of what’s “hard set” and what’s not are still being fought.
However it doesn’t matter if you bought a disc or not – the software developer has many rights over the software itself. Ownership of a disc is not nine-tenths of the law. If I make a software program, and explicitly state it’s not to be use for certain purposes in the EULA, then someone goes and uses it for the specific reason I said it could not be used: it is my right to revoke their right to own and use the software, and I have every legal authority to take them to court over it and ensure that it happens (that they comply or cease and desist). Of course they may challenge that as well. However I can name companies from Adobe, to Blizzard, to Microsoft, to vBulletin that have WON challenges ¬ñ in and out of court ¬ñ over matters like this.
EULA are a binding contract ¬ñ this has been supported in many cases battles. The issue of how far they can bind you is the question, but that they bind you to certain limitations, is a legal justified matter. Furthermore, EULA’s have not been systematically proven as contracts of adhesion ¬ñ that’s what defendants claim they are. Since even companies are innocent until proven guilty, you have to PROVE to the court they’re constructed as such ¬ñ not the other way around.
If you want to be technical, you can own that plastic disc and box that came with it all you want… it’s the data that’s on the disc that you DO NOT own.
Pishaw… every time the Bishoujo goddesses smite a pair of twins, she gets viciously tentacle raped into a coma by an angry demon beast that wanted to violate the twincest first, so she won’t do it more than once.
MG was the initiative of CIRCUS. They roped in companies like OVERDRIVE (who seems to have hired internal staff to take care of the programming/text insertion end) and Nexton to help support and finance the project. Ultimately, MangaGamer represents their efforts to expand overseas.
However, the Japanese companies aren’t directly involved in managing the operation. That’s handled by someone in the US, and he set up the Dutch arm (server, billing, etc.) through his contacts in Europe. Translators and editors work on a freelance basis, and I assume that they’re hired through the American guy (or his associates).
The Japanese companies also have their own volunteers (unpaid), one of whom edits games and hosts the official forum.
I asked EvoSpace (the forum host) once if he was a paid “volunteer.” He said he was. Based on what I’ve gathered, the “volunteers” from the Japanese companies work for Mangagamer on company time. They’re not paid by Mangagamer, but they’re on the payroll nonetheless–just not Mangagamer’s payroll. The rest of what you say confirms a lot of suspicions I’ve had though. Where’d you find this all out?
when you buy a title, you are not paying for the title… you are actually paying the developer for the next title. I know it sounds strange but that how I feel about it. The next title can be a squeal or a fan disk or a title that have the same theme* as the current title. The only motivation that the developer will get to make the next title is through the sale of the current title.
why should MG release the fan disk of Edelweiss if the actual title didn’t sale?! All the positive feedback that Edelweissmight get won’t translate to “people want to see more of this”. If the title doesn’t sale then it would be seen as “people don’t like this kind of stuff”, plain and simple.
theme is important… if Suck my dick or die outsold D.C. then you can be sure what the next title theme is going to be (assuming that both cost the same to translate… and no matter how you look at the 1st couldn’t have required the same cost… so it will boil down too “a title that cost less to produce and a very high chance of selling” vs “a title that cost a lot and most likely won’t sale” as a businessman/woman which one would you give the go ahead to as your next product?)
