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My appeal to reconsider copyright

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by forestjohnson, Mar 13, 2012.

  1. JRavey

    JRavey

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    Honestly, I don't care much about the opinions of piracy from those who haven't actually created anything; however, I'm always interested in the opinions of those who have distributed things.
     
  2. bgivenb

    bgivenb

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    ^this
     
  3. Starsman Games

    Starsman Games

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    Possession of child pornography is a heavily prosecuted crime. It's monitoring online is extremely extensive and has nearly surgical precission. Sure, once in a while one case comes up of a guy's door being knocked down because it was his neighbor downloading the material over his open wifi network, but even those cases end up clearing up and prosecuting the right guy at the end of the day.

    The technology is there, and has been in place for years. It's just not used for things like these due to privacy rights. Anti-child pornography laws tend to have larger powers acossiated with them than anti-terrorism laws, so no one can say no to an agent that is in the midle of such a pursuit.

    As noted above, an investigation's first step would be to get their hands on your router to look at router logs.

    And where you get the torrent file from? ISPs monitor that stuff. It's relatively easy, depending how much the ISP logs. Example:

    1. Look at a guy's ISP side log
    2. He went to the pirate bay at this time...
    3. He got this torrent file at this other time...
    4. Heavy P2P traffic inmediately started up...
    5. We go back and look at the torrent he downloaded....
    6. We connect to it ourselves...
    7. We see his IP address is associated with it...
    8. We look at logs to see if his computer has been signaled by an outside machine to do anything remotely (like a botnet being signaled to downlaod and then seed a torrent)
    9. We file an ocurrence, once 3 or more equal incidents shows up for this same user, we trigger a real world investigation.

    What is most, ISPs can (and most do) log every single URL you visit, every single file you download, in a huge history that makes Google look like a privacy advocate. ISPs tend to keep it short, though, delete it within a month or so (if they see no reason to retain it, I heard of ISP employees that were able to see a year worth of their own home browsing history.) It's all indexed in a database and easy to search if the FBI shows up asking for a specific users data.

    All this is easy to automate too, so a report can be spit out daily on suspicious activity, if law demanded it.

    Depends how throughout the forensics team goes. Even in cases where the data is only retained short term, routers do not zero out with multiple passes old logs. With the right equipment, the data can be recovered and you can get exact time of action, MAC address of the computer that opened p2p connections and match it against the above data.

    At that point they can go further deeper into it and confiscate the specified computer, should they decide to go that far.
    Again: we already do this for incidents of child pornography possession.

    Part of the point, although you should be paranoid already if you know what ISPs know about you :p

    For one, you should be a bit more responsible about who you let into your network. Second, after checking, the Mac address may never be found in your household so the only inconvenience you will suffer would be going through the entire investigation. Also remember, this is not an “this or that” proposal, I would never agree to this level of pursuit without a requirement for minor fines or small claim court treatment for such cases.

    Separate topic, but as a copyright owner, it should be up to me if I wish to allow free distribution of my product or not. Also, although I heard this theory a lot, I known plenty of pirates that do the opposite: mock those that pay for anything. They recommend, yes, but they psychologically bully others for doing the right thing and pay.

    Perhaps, but again, same holds true for child pornography yet we don’t see it happening. Even so, at that point piracy becomes so hard, that it’s more of a hazel than it’s worth, and a lot of people will just skip on it or buy.
     
  4. Filto

    Filto

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    I remember the first game I worked on. When we found it on piratebay we cheered. "Wohooo people see and play our game!" :)
     
  5. JRavey

    JRavey

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    That's probably how I'd feel because my first one only made a few thousand and my 2nd (which is OSX only) only made a couple of hundred in the last month and a half. I suppose if I had been involved in something that sold hundreds of thousands of copies, I might feel differently, but I've never been there so I wouldn't know.
     
  6. Morning

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    Actually it's already happening. It's called TOR network. It has CP, Drugs, weapons and many more illegal things that make me shrug by just thinking about it. And worst part is, it's anonymous so unless you post your name there, there's pretty much no chance of getting caught.
     
  7. Starsman Games

    Starsman Games

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    *cough*

    As long as the network has a way for non-tor users to access it (sort of required for piracy to be easy to use,) it will have a huge back door.
     
  8. Morning

    Morning

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    Anyone who uses TOR for torrenting is not right in the head anyway. The speeds are comparable to dial up.
     
  9. stimarco

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    Most selfish counterfeiters fit this old load of USENET tosh I posted many moons ago.

    Ultimately, it boils down to people thinking they are entitled to the fruits of another's labours without paying anything back at all. Counterfeiting (let's call it what it is) doesn't harm the publishers and record labels one whit: it harms the creators, because it means nobody in the value chain gets paid! How is that any more "fair" than what the publishers already do? At least publishers actually pay the artists some money. Even if it's not as much as many creatives would like, "some" is still greater than "nothing".

    Those who wish to give their work away for free are more than welcome to do so—there's even a term for it: "Public Domain". (Note: Richard Stallman has gone out of his way to keep that term out of the public consciousness in favour of his own flavour of "freedom", but I don't believe gifts should have any strings attached. Nevertheless, you can choose one of the flavours of "Creative Commons", GPL, BSD or other licenses if you prefer, although only Public Domain has ever been tested fully in court—and it's the only concept that is supported in almost every jurisdiction.)

    Copyright laws may need tweaking and updating to meet today's needs, but the notion that Copyright—as a core concept—is "obsolete" makes no sense at all. China, for all its cheap labour, does not rank high in creativity. Neither the iPhone nor the iPad were invented there. They didn't invent the home computer. They have some good research labs and universities, but the nature of Chinese society, culture and politics means most of the really good Chinese researchers tend to go to places where creativity is held in much greater esteem. And that isn't China.

    Kill intellectual property rights and you'll kill most Western economies, which are mostly based on tertiary, not primary or secondary, industries.
     
    Last edited: Apr 23, 2012
  10. Noisecrime

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    Sorry not to have replied sooner, got tied up with work, then I wrote a massive post that just continued the same old points, so tried to cut it right down.

    Interesting, this reply really shows me that we are pretty much at opposite ends of the spectrum in regards to consumerism, what it means and where its going. As such I doubt we'll ever be in agreement and will just have to wait a decade to see who was right ;)

    I do take issue with this first comment and the assumption that all pirates 'don't have the money' and are therefore lazy. Whilst I'm sure there are some who fit that bill, I'd be massively surprised if the actual breakdown isn't spread evenly across all walks of life. Pretty much just how those who took part in the looting last year in the UK.

    I have to agree about sense of entitlement and that it is hard to 'justify' pirating, which I don't, I just accept it happens and don't beleive the majority of it actually impacts content creators and can if used right be an advatage. So I can understand you point of view better now, but to be honest its one that I think is destined for failure. Its interesting that you bring up capitalism and that 'this is how its got to be in order for capitalism to continue'. Have you not considered that capitalism, at least how we know it might not be a dying breed and that media content is just the first to fall?

    I admit I am concerned that my stance comes from someone who grew up without the feeling of entitlement and as such that I see the value in supporting and purchasing products. That this generation might be missing that and so its a downward spiral to nothingness, but I don't think that will happen. People will always have money (until we have a moneyless society ;) ) and a percentage of it will be disposable, but its up to the content creators to get them to spend it on their goods and not to concern themselves with those who pirate and the majority of which would never have bought the product in the first place.

    I have all manor of links, articles, video and other stuff to give some support to my viewpoint, though far too much to post here and I doubt you'd be interested in shifting through it all. I will however post this interview with Cory Doctorow which has some very interesting opinions presented through out, especially towards the end about copyright, pirating and how to make a living in the new world. Its 28 minutes long, but you can have it on in the background and just listen.


    Edit:
    Just realised why i'm so keen to argue against your point.

    The problem is that with this obsession towards pirates (companies not you) we end up getting closed systems and DRM, every day we seem to be more and more limited in what we can do with our purchase and moving ever more towards a pure licensing model.

    That in itself might not be too bad, but then you have the closed systems, can I move my Amazon kindle ebooks to my iPad (i'm guessing not), can I move my App store movies from my iPad to my my Windows 8 phone? No. These type of restriction I feel increase peoples exposure to pirating too, so in many ways its important to understand the breakdown of why people are 'technically' pirating stuff, even though they may already own a version.
     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2012
  11. _Petroz

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    The seems to be many topics covered in this thread and I have strong opinions on all of them, for everyone's benifit I will try to keep them brief. :)

    SOPA/PIPA/CISPA
    I think first and foremost, the internet has been the most important cultural change in society in the past century. It has connected people all across the globe and does not discriminate based on race, class or socioeconomic factors.

    It was designed from the ground up to be open and distributed and does not lend itself well to censorship. Any attempt to restrict it will involve drastic changes which put in place the infrastructure to further restrict freedom. There are plenty of arguments for and against piracy but regardless of whether piracy is bad, it's not as bad as censorship.

    The world has changed and so has the market. The industry leaders are doing everything in their power to reverse that change because it makes business sense. It is not what is best for the people.

    Patents
    I agree with Hippo that patents should go. They are an antiquated notion and their current use is so far divorced from their intended purpose that they are now nothing but a red tape barrier to entry.

    Copyright
    I had not heard anyone try to make the case to completely abolish copyright until seeing this video. While I think the points made could be better articulated, and it doesn't go into great depth, the case made is still quite compelling.

    One argument against it was along the lines of "i put in work, i deserve to be paid". This is the same attitude that is driving big business to lobby for changes like SOPA. To me it boils down to something along the lines of "I built my business around the current market conditions on the basis that those conditions would not change, for that reason they should not be allowed to change". Abolishing copyright would not mean that everything is suddenly free. As the OP pointed out in the video adapting to the market with free-to-play or subscription models is an effective way to ensure profitability.

    I think someone else said it but, laws are to create boundaries based on morals of society. As can be seen with the changing of laws for same-sex marriage. The majority of people don't see piracy as a crime and therefore it should not be one. It does mean the business models that worked pre-internet for selling cars and umbrellas will not translate. It does not mean that there is no money in it.
     
  12. Noisecrime

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    @Petroz: Nicely put, I guess we did get a bit side tracked, although I think its difficult to look at any one part in isolation such as purely the issues with copyright.
     
  13. npsf3000

    npsf3000

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    Sorry... but I don't follow?
     
  14. TylerPerry

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    Subscription based games wouldn't work ether(at least MMORPG's) private severs would be perfectly legal meaning people would just play these for free instead of the real game, and sense its legal the companies would be hopeless to stop it and sense it is no longer an underground operation the private servers would likely become far more profitable then the actual game.
     
  15. npsf3000

    npsf3000

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    Much appreciated. I have a slight addiction problem to fighting meaningless fights... so I'll try to do the same :)

    I have no problem with capitalism dying - even though it's apparently been a relatively effective system. What I do have a problem is with people breaking simple laws to get a product that *they want* but can't be bothered to play fair to get. Kinda like that douche bag in soccer who picks up the ball and starts running.

    If you want to pick up the ball... play Rugby... or Baseball or Basketball etc. There are co-ops, volunteer organisations, opensource software, freeware etc - all of them screaming out for people!

    I honestly can't see those types of arguments as nothing but silly drivel - the truth generally is that the people involved love capitalism, love the power of one man who could bring hundreds of millions of dollars of investment to create a film, love the investors who risked their own and other peoples [pension fund anyone] money on the film, love the hundreds of millions spent on advertising to inform them and their friends of it... but are too cheap to spend $20 on it. Yes, this particular example is Avatar... pick any you choose.

    That's nothing to do with copyright, but a few big companies reaction towards poor policing by governments and poor morals of the people. The solution is to either support alternatives, increase policing, or maybe try petitioning the big companies. Piracy does none of these things - it only justifies the DRM in the first place [in a sad, ineffective self-fulfilling prophesy.]

    Remember - there are tens of thousands of great games out there without DRM problems - so how could any drm-hating pirate EVER justify spending even one minute on a DRM'ed game - pirated or not? It simply doesn't stack up.

    Piracy is the problem, not the solution. It circumvents well tried and tested problem solving mechanics fundamental to our civilization, leading to a worse place for all.
     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2012
  16. Noisecrime

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    Lets not bring Avatar into this discussion, that's a whole other argument and a product that I feel should follow into the same landfill as Atari's ET ;)

    Although I can understand your stance on thinking piracy is the problem and could agree to a degree (but only a slight degree, I think you are clumping all pirates as the same), is it not that the actual problem is digital technology itself circumvents tried and tested problem solving mechanics, such as its ability to produce perfect copies, easy transmission of data etc and that actually those tried and tested models were only suitable for their times and possibly not that great afterall?

    I mean it used to be we had fixed price points due to sale/demand/quantity graphs, there was generally a limited amount of materials/transport and all, so thus a limited amount of products, on top of what prices the market would bare etc. That is no longer the case, in fact with digital content normal economics goes out the window and actually provides a mechanism for dealing with the issue of pirating, in that you embrace it :)

    I can't argue with piracy (taken as a whole) providing some justification for DRM, but at what point do we admit it failed and move on? Which to my mind it certainly has and is getting more and more preposterous, it may be starting with computer games, but its preposterous nature has spread to all media (see BMG Sony rootkit debarkle) and yet 'pirating' continues at pace. Is it not time to take a different direction, not one which encourages pirates or condones them, but one where the business model no longer cares if they are there or not?
     
  17. npsf3000

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    Regardless of your own personal opinion, it was a huge endeavor that required vast sums of capital to be invested on a risky project that was judged to be very successful. Remember - no-one said you had to watch it :)

    Because there are perfectly good business models out there that require their intellectual property to be maintained. Without such property, many of these would [at least by any rational guess I've heard] completely fail.

    Unless someone can demonstrate a copyright-less business model that not only works, but only works in the absence of copyright laws I don't see the argument for piracy. Some models do exist - e.g. ISP's may gain more revenues, but at the cost of much of the creative industry and potential long term degradation of the ISP industry.

    Now, I do agree that many business *must* learn to live in the world we are in - if they ignore the fight for their rights they may in effect sanction piracy, with the long term consequences of such. Throughout history crimes have become near commonplace, and in the short term benificial until strong actions were taken against them - I'd bring up some classics - for example slavery - but I think that might derail this thread :p
     
  18. _Petroz

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    I don't want to derail but I think in many way changes in slavery laws strengthen the case against copyright. The end of slavery was not brought about by corporate interest. It was bad for industry, bad for companies and bad for capitalism. It was done at the expense of corporations for the greater good. Industry has done everything in it's power to reinstate slavery by outsourcing overseas and paying wages that would be considered slavery in their home country.

    The case that subscription models don't work without copyright suggests that copyright is currently preventing this. There is plenty of private servers around for games, the majority of people choose not to use them. I think people would rather use official servers because of value added by the developer such as regular updates, not because of the consequences of breaching copyright.

    Policing copyright is completely impractical at the moment, for that reason it serves very little purpose. I don't think there are many people who respect copyright solely because of the law and potential repercussions. I think most of the people who do the "right thing" are doing so out of choice. I don't think many of those people are going to suddenly jump on TPB if the law changed.

    I don't think anyone was making an argument for piracy, only against copyright. Providing an example of a copyright-less business model is clearly impossible because it would require a copyright-less environment to release it in, which does not exist. The case I am making is that copyright laws which cannot be policed serve no real purpose.
     
  19. npsf3000

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    At the same time all slavery was/is is people stealing other peoples rights for their own gain. Making it legal did/does not help the fundamental issue of its wrongness and long term negativity.

    I don't follow that sentences logic.

    Under a world with NO copyright [as proposed by OP] who is to say the developer is the one who provides the most benefits? The original developer is saddled with the costs of creation, what's to prevent someone from hijacking the product and providing more benefits?

    Often initial creation is the costly process - copying is cheap.

    Real world example: We just spent a ton of money on concept art for a project - 90% of it is wasted cash now that we know which particular styles are wanted. Why not simply copy us and spent a fraction of that 90% bettering us? I expect you'd need about ~1/20th the cost and 1/80th the time invested.

    Which is false. Copyright is policed today, and with great effect. Seriously - go try sell some fake Rolex's in a store! There is a small subset of digital copyright that is poorly policed - not because of technical challenges but because of government/law enforcement.

    I seriously suggest you sit down and think about what exactly copyright is - because it's starting to sound like you've gotten tunnel vision.
     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2012
  20. AdrianC

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    I don't think you understand what copyright is. The reason private servers are not anyways the most popular is because they are generally made by only a few people, and lack features and stability.

    Now if you had a world without copyright, we can take Halo as an example. Halo can currently only be played on Xbox. Sony may decide that they want to have it to. So they hire a small team who ports the entire game over, using all the original assets. Sony's costs would be minimal, and since they are such a huge company they could easily match the quality of the Xbox version, if not exceed it. Plus, since Sony's costs were so low, they could also sell the same exact game at half the cost. And even if you're talking about a subscription based model, they could offer that for a smaller monthly fee as well.

    The current abundance of piracy proves that people generally don't care about the game developers, so you can't really say that they would buy the original version for moral reasons.
     
  21. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Try replacing copyright abolishment with abolishing software patents and we might get somewhere.

    Take apple's abuse of the bounce back when scrolling. Did you know that's patented? That's the stupidest abuse of patents I've ever seen. You can't scroll past and have it softly move back if you go too far. Words have abandoned me.

    Take another place where patents kill stuff: shadows for free and possible mobile. That unity asset store package is a fair bit slower because he won't integrate depth fail since it's patented.

    Software patents are bad because they're heavily abused, for example ui behaviour or even colours. It's getting real stupid.

    Get rid of software patents, keep hardware patents.
     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2012
  22. npsf3000

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    Yep. Software patents [at least in my uneducated opinion] should be abolished or greatly restructured [I'm thinking short terms and strict requirements].
     
  23. _Petroz

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    My bad, the sentence I wrote made no sense :)

    What I was trying to say is that I don't think that copyright is the main thing keeping MMOs in business. WOW has been a run away success despite the fact that there are many private servers. People prefer to play on official servers and are willing to pay the subscription. I haven't heard of any people being dragged through the courts for running private servers or for using them, so I don't believe that the main factor is Copyright law.

    This is an interesting point, but it relies on a number of assumptions. Firstly how would Sony get the source code and original assets to port? Assuming they did some how gain access to them, porting a game with the source code and assets is a major undertaking. Particularly a platform exclusive because they wont have abstracted things in a cross platform manner. Secondly assuming that it was feasible for Sony to do so, why would Microsoft release a platform exclusive title in such market conditions. Microsoft have the opportunity to port the game themselves and release cross-platform so the worst case scenario is an end of platform exclusive titles. I would chalk that up as a win for the consumer.

    To some degree I agree with what you are saying but it depends largely on the scale of the project. Small scale project with a high level innovation are the biggest victims of this. If a small studio makes a game which hinged around a unique gameplay mechanic then copying is viable. For AAA titles on the other hand inovation is low and the majority of work is making the assets, and copying them is not viable.

    Focusing on the small-scale high-innovation case, that seems to accurately describe the current landscape of iOS/Android development. There are *many* copies of good games which actually have more market success than the original. Current copyright laws only protect the studios who are big enough to afford to litigate. I know I am reluctant to reveal anything about the iOS/Android title I am developing for this very reason.

    I agree 100 percent.
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2012
  24. AdrianC

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    I think I've needlessly included the porting of games from one platform to another in my argument. How about this instead. Companies don't even bother porting the game to a different platform. They just sell the original. No need to modify the code or anything. Just copy some DVDs, Blurays, or host the games on your own server. Big companies would profit from this the most since they could just steal the work of smaller studios, and use their massive marketing budgets to promote their own game services. Small studios sell nothing, go out of business.

    And yeah stupid patents like that suck.
     
  25. npsf3000

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    Dude, you need to read up on some of the basics... because so much of what you just said is wrong.

    Which is just plain silly - imagine if that was a rule of thumb for law? People don't seem to raping people much, and I don't hear about related court cases often... then I guess we don't need that law. I believe some US republicans recently tried same similar logic regarding workplace breaks or some such to the dismay of the people.

    Err what? Even ignoring the real fact of both 'leaks' and the fact that the content can usually be easily decompiled - it's generally much easier to copy art assets than it is to create them in the first place. As I said in my own post we spent 90% of the concept budget on concepts that didn't make the grade... all you have to do is get a semi skilled artist form a third-world country to copy what worked - and leave us with the burden of cost.

    Once again wrong - copyright protects everyone! To pretend otherwise is simply false, and based on some very erroneous understandings.
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2012
  26. _Petroz

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    I see two sides to this, physical copying as you pointed out and digital distribution. There are variants of both in existence currently due to the lack of policing. The primary form of copyright infringement under the current system is digital distribution via peer-to-peer networks.

    The law has practically no way to police this at the moment, however technical innovation such as Steam has had massive success. See the success of Steam in Russia: http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/10/25/gabe-newell-on-piracy-and-steams-success-in-russia/ . I think that the answer to piracy is technical innovation over legal measures. It is still possible to pirate Steam games, however Valve games are still hugely profitable.

    As much as I am against restricting the freedom of the internet, and Steam does exactly that. They do it the right way, by limiting the restrictions to the service they provide. Other services such as Google and ISPs are unaffected.

    Getting back to the case of DVDs and console games, the rumors of the next gen consoles say they will have built in server side validation to prevent piracy completely. They have learned from the success of Steam and recognized that the law is powerless to protect them.
     
  27. _Petroz

    _Petroz

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    http://www.inquisitr.com/wp-content/2012/01/tiny-tower-zynga-owned-by-nimblebit-386x1024.jpg
    http://toucharcade.com/2012/01/30/creator-of-triple-town-focuses-legal-lasers-on-yeti-town/

    Bearing in mind that is just in the international market including the US where copyright infringement is policed the most actively. If you were to look at China, the number of copied games outnumbers the number of original titles by an order of magnitude. I went to a presentation by the guys who made Fruit Ninja who told us an interesting story. To summarize: when he first went to China their business manager handed him what looked exactly like an iPhone, on the desktop was a Fruit Ninja. He played it and it was almost identical to the real game. He was then told it was an Android Device running a Fruit Ninja clone, the clone was actually being shipped preinstalled on the devices. This is quite standard practice over there, there are a huge number of different manufacturers making heaps of different devices. It is very common from them to come with preinstalled pirated software. in additional to the massive amount of digital distribution for pirated software.

    The statement "copyright protects everyone" seems quite erroneous.
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2012
  28. npsf3000

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    You'd note that there is not straight copy - in the world the OP imagines, and you appear to be defending - the game wouldn't merely look similar, it would be the same. Zynga certainly push the limits of what is acceptable - but that is exactly what the legal system is for.

    And? If you want to set your laws by what happens in china....

    Only to the ignorant. Tyring to use other countries [with renown problems] or specific cases as an argument against a general rule is plain silly - should I use OJ Simpson or Iraq to prove murder is perfectly standard and that the laws and actions taken against as completely worthless?

    Common, try to give some reasonable arguments.
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2012
  29. AdrianC

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    Ok, so Steam is a massive success. Great!

    I'm Sony now. I want to offer a service like Steam. I'll take ALL the Steam games, market them as my own, and sell them for half the price on my own game service. Since I'm selling everything 50% off, nobody will buy from Steam.

    The law is not powerless to protect them. Last time I went to Best Buy, I didn't see any illegal copies being sold there.
     
  30. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Copyright of chinese products are protected under chinese law. You can't copy a chinese game if you're a chinese developer. Part of the problem is china are aggressively expanding. They aren't remotely fair but that is to be expected from a country that is developing at a frankly stunning rate.

    Plus we sell (typically, for most western companies) quite badly over there. Even world of warcraft got hit badly by chinese lobbying and had to restrict their hours, their pricing and more, while chinese MMOs didn't suffer the same pricing restrictions.

    So that means copyright still protects the markets we do business in, and that is what counts. You can't build straw man arguments, Petroz.
     
  31. Starsman Games

    Starsman Games

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    The MMO hour limitations are not specific to WoW, they apply to all MMOs that are published in China (and btw, Chinese get their own servers for wow, with a different code branch)

    From the Wiki on the law:


     
  32. _Petroz

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    This started out quite civil but seems to have taken a turn for the worse.

    You accused me of "erroneous understandings" and when I provided specific evidence support my of my case you chose to completely disregard it. You cannot ignore one of the major economies of the world (far bigger than Australia) just because it doesn't conveniently fit your argument.

    It was not a straw man argument, just because you choose not to do business in all major markets that does not exclude them from the debate. As an iOS/Android developer you're missing out on quite a bit of possible action there. While piracy is a problem there still ways to do good business in China for mobile games. I haven't released anything myself but when I do I will definitely look into doing business there.

    For a look into the local market refer to the Tiny Tower and Triple Town clones that I linked to in my previous post. They differ enough in the art style, but the essence of what was made by those developers was stolen. In the Triple Town case the developer SpryFox is actually suing the maker of the clone, not all developers can afford litigation. That is why I say that copyright does not protect everyone.

    Right that is one area where current copyright laws are effective. However with the new consoles, you wouldn't see any copies regardless of the law because they would not work with server side validation. Here in Australia I know there are places where you can buy pirated games on disk such as the local markets on Sundays. However my main point here is that you were looking in the wrong place, if you wanted a copy you could have easily downloaded it. Accessibility is not a problem.
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2012
  33. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    It's not that I don't choose to do business in markets (I think you are arguing for arguments sake) - we sell a few copies to china every so often for example - but it's pretty clear that china are protecting their interests outside our laws, which include copyright laws. As china develops this will change.
    I know the hours are restricted to all. Sorry I wasn't clear enough - china forces blizzard to accept their pricing schemes/fines/bans while competing mmos there are not forced. I have a friend over there in china right now and he tells me the state of how things are. I will have to dig for more information and links to it if I can.

    In short:

    Doing business in china where there is local competing business will quickly put you out of business or even suspended for a while. They do whatever they can to promote local businesses - often completely unfairly. But I think this is good for china (not good for the rest of us!) :)

    Wow was also copied. They copied almost everything about world of warcraft and launched their own service. It even has almost the same logo, was from the same company that was running blizzard's service and more. They then suspended wow for a while as well.

    As for apple, they seem to be immune from this because they are heavily investing, and using chinese workforce. So it is a different matter.

    Back to the topic:

    I don't consider this unfair, I consider it just the nature of the beast. But regardless it means that the US and europe are currently markets where copyright really does make sense, because if china copies your game, they can still only sell it in china. That fruit ninja copy would be quickly removed from stores in the west.

    You can see it happening all the time. Far east developers steal a concept and sell it on the appstore. Apple finds out, and removes it. Then they dance again. Without that protection, the livelihoods of thousands of developers are under serious threat.

    Remember that spanish dude's neat flash game? they even ripped his original artwork and sold it on the appstore :) got nailed though thanks to our copyright laws.

    Moral of the story is: copyright protects the little guy far more than the big guy. Isn't that what you want?
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2012
  34. AdrianC

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    But since there is no copyright, they could just decompile the game, make it connect to their own servers, and now it plays fine. Then they can go back to Best Buy and sell it for half price.
     
  35. npsf3000

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    I can ignore it because China is not Australia and our laws do not apply over there. Unless you wish to make the argument that because china does something one way, other nations should follow suit?

    Whoa, who stole what? Let's wait for the courts to decide - remembering that neither of these companies are even close to having the 'original idea'. Arbitrarily pointing at a case and then asserting facts that simply aren't so to make some general statement is hogwash.

    A suit of Armour 'protects' a knight. However that doesn't prevent the him from having to fight nor does it guarantee he'll come out unscathed or even alive. Pointing at some bruises does not however prove that the Armour is ineffective as you'd have us believe.
     
  36. Haledire

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    As an amusing aside:
    http://taw.soup.io/post/230881375/Obama-Fried-Chicken-and-Starfucks-Chinese-fast
    (The dairy fairy one is kinda stretching it, only because I don't see some altered logo in there)

    Especially amusing is the multiple listing of the KFC clones all using similar "styled" logos. This is where you see the results of someone else going through the exercise of looking for a graphic that works, and the copies just tailoring it to their own needs.

    Remember now, the copyright for these companies is in the US and the copies are in China.
     
  37. _Petroz

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    Had you actually read the Spry Fox case you would see that 6waves had actually signed a NDA with Spry Fox and where still under that contract when they were developing their clone. The games are identical except for the art, it's very bold to jump to the defense of 6waves here.

    If you want to get all meta, no idea is truly original. Doesn't that support my case? If nothing is original then copyright serves no purpose. The Triple Town clone crossed the line where the derived work differs so little that it is significantly different to borrowing elements from other games. The only recourse available to Spry Fox is costly litigation.

    You have identified another shortcoming of copyright law, it's inability to cover international markets.

    You are trying to put words in my mouth. The point I made was that China and Russia and other large potential markets are largely unaffected by copyright law. Where copyright law has failed to protect developers, technical innovation has been far more effective.

    No it doesn't. It would be at best equal if it weren't for the costly litigation, which means it provides far less protection for the little guy.

    I don't exactly understand what purpose this analogy serves. I have demonstrated where the laws are ineffective and where technical innovation has overcome the problems. Technical innovation such as Steam came about because of the inability of the law to be effectively policed.
     
  38. npsf3000

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    I'm not jumping to anyone's defense - but all you appear to be pointing at is the legal system working.

    Nope - the whole point of copyright is NOT to protect idea's but the implementation of said idea's from copying. Anyone can make a game about a futuristic soldier killing aliens - what you can't do is get a copy of Halo and sell it as your own.

    And in some countries wife-beating is allowed. Oddly enough though, copyright does have a fairly international coverage - even in china there are *some* efforts being made.

    Technical innovation only helps compliment copyright laws, but by itself isn't of much use.

    Can you show some examples of this?

    Does not in any way negate the need for the laws in the first place - how successful do you think steam would be if the big business in Russia started pirating?
     
  39. _Petroz

    _Petroz

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    What I am pointing out that to make it work it requires costly litigation. So it does not protect people unable to pay for such litigation.

    Care to back that up with some evidence?

    See Spry Fox point above.

    Equally successful.
     
  40. npsf3000

    npsf3000

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    Which is simply wrong. I'm sorry - but who is telling you this? If someone pirates your stuff - particularly if they are a business - the slightest hint of legal action in many cases will force them to remove the offending material. I've even had to do it once on these forums [to a rather obnoxious troll] and within the hour it was removed IIRC, and watched the same happen several times in artists blogs. Particularly today, where you have DCMA and similar - there's no absolute requirement to have a lawsuit.


    Steam + Russia :p

    Unless you provide evidence that there are no legal negatives for piracy in Russia...

    Shows the legal system working... next?

    LOL
     
  41. Starsman Games

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    OK I sort of stopped reading this a while ago, skimmed through what has been discussed now, few things I want to note:

    Every country has it's own version of copyright law. In the US, we CANT advocate or worry about other country's implementations simply because we have no vote in those countries.

    There are trade agreements between the biggest countries that make each other respect their copyrights, some, like China, are the reason that some companies wanted to force SOPA over (to get the ability to digitally kill the online presence of any foreign copyright violators.) The biggest problems with SOPA were excessive power grants, where just suspicions or requests or whims enabled someone to kill anybody’s online presence without any due process.

    The Triple Town case: it is actually an example of the copyright law in action, but not for piracy. Is it expensive? Usually it is, but should you think you have a solid case, with enough evidence and the thing isn't frivolous, then you can gamble with high odds of getting those legal costs covered by the infringing party.

    I got to admit, I would love there to be a special committee to work copyright violation cases, one that would just audit the claims and determine if a violation seems to have occurred. Would be more accurate than the current court system and less costly for all involved pockets: prosecution, defense and taxpayer; we all end up paying a bit of those courts costs, at the end of the day. Something similar to the ICT does for patents, but forced to only go that path.


    Edit:
    Also what is the deal with Russia? From my understanding they enforce copyright law there. Sure, there is a lot of piracy from end users, but it's my understanding it occurs mostly on non-russian language software for two reasons:

    1) They hate to pay for software they can barely understand
    2) No localization tends to mean no local distribution, so no way to buy legit.

    Russia it's a horrible example for anti-copyright arguments. Heck, best argument is China and even they tend to prosecute heavily any large business that engages on infringement, and wrist slapping smaller business when they come up to a spotlight.

    Apple was able to get faux Apple stores closed rather quickly once they came to attention by informing the right authorities. I heard of large confiscation raids going on in some areas in China, too. Not focused on arrests but on removing pirated content out of flea-market-like operations.
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2012
  42. Starsman Games

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    BTW, statement on Russian piracy by Steam's Gabe Newel:
    Of course: this would also be impossible if any company was able to walk copy Steam's library and resell it for half the price, should they have no copyright law stopping them from doing it.
     
  43. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    While it's been a fun discussion, copyright isn't going to ever get removed. It's proven to be functioning perfectly and 99% of people are happy with the fact if they upload a picture of a dork they drew, it's their picture.

    On the other hand this thread should have all been about software patents, which are truly abused on a constant basis. Only got to look at Lodsys with their absolutely (and I mean absolutely) ridiculous patent that really doesn't have any bearing on reality. It's a patent that is based on a physical store done electronically. Who the F- can't think that up? patents are supposed to protect unique inventions. Obviously, it's gone batshit crazy.

    The problem with digital patents, are that they're being widespread abused, while copyright can't be abused.

    I thought Forest was bright but I don't think he's too smart with this one. It is being an activist for activist's sake. Regardless, this argument is now cyclical and we're all just drawing lines in the sand now.
     
  44. stimarco

    stimarco

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    The problem with your example is that you have provided no actual evidence for said breach of copyright. Only an implementation of an idea can be copyrighted. That means, unless you have cast-iron proof that 6waves copied and pasted actual source code from the original game, you don't have any evidence that copyright has been violated in that way.

    There is no "copyright for a gestalt" at present. It's only the individual components that matter. If you change the graphics and build a game that plays identically to another, but without using any of that other game's source code whatsoever, you can't be sued for breach of copyright, because copyright does not apply in such cases.

    However...

    Where 6waves may be in trouble is if their own game design specification documents include obviously plagiarised elements from that of the original Spry Fox game. As 6waves were working with Spry Fox under NDA, there is a possibility that this is what Spry Fox intend to use as their "smoking gun", because any document is automatically covered by copyright, and that includes design documents. Derivative works would therefore also be affected.


    This is something that probably needs to be addressed: perhaps a "Registered Gameplay Rules" system, whereby the game's rules and mechanisms are formally listed and registered with a suitable neutral third party—rather like a Registered Trade Mark—as proof of getting there first. I would advocate a relatively short time limit—say, five years' worth of protection—after which anyone can use the same rules.

    This would be analogous to a tabletop or board game, where the rulebook it comes with is covered by copyright automatically. As players never get to see many of those rules in a computer game, traditional copyright fails to protect those adequately from rip-off merchants.

    (Note that the short time limit would mean newbies could still make their own Tetris, R-Type or Pong clones for their own education as all three fall way outside those five years.)

    I am therefore not against copyright reform. I am against copyright's elimination as I do not think it necessary to throw the baby out with the bath water.
     
  45. Starsman Games

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    Both can be abused, the thing is that a jury is more likely to understand that a bomb spitting hippo sitting in a green chair is not really a copyright infringement on a bomb spitting cat that goes about eating burgers.

    Patents are too technical and the language full of semantically arguable points for any jury to effectively decide upon. It ends up becoming a circus on who can impress the jury better.

    Patents, just like my proposal above on copyright claims, should be handled also by a dedicated agency, with staff that can understand it. This agency should be able to accept cheap submissions for invalidations (over obviousness or previous art) and moderately expensive requests with solid R&D budget attachments to the patent so you are forced to fair compensation, not absurd ones, should you win an investigation procedure.

    As far as software patents in question go... software is already protected by copyright and the dual protection is redundant.
     
  46. npsf3000

    npsf3000

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  47. Starsman Games

    Starsman Games

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    That's why low level DRM, something not too obsrusive, is really needed in softwrae. It does not have to be a draconian online only mode, expensive essoteric service requirements, or online activations (although that last one is not that bad.) All you need is something that, uppon first run, verifies for a valid license, either via a single key, or a mass key that somehow counts how many copies are deployed (for enterprise use.)

    The goal is that every time activation comes, you inform the user piracy is illegal, and actually stop them from going further in a way that would require them to conciously hack to circumvent the protection. At that point, you can't claim ignorance for piracy.
     
  48. jashan

    jashan

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    Hey Forest - are you still there? It was really nice to read / watch from you! I like the video - now make a cool game out of it! ;-)

    In my opinion, copyright is fine but the insane greed that basically has caused some sort of global mafia to take over the world is not. Just like patents, copyright can be abused and I believe that's where the trouble starts. And that's not about jealousy - it is about sustainability:

    I'm fine with people having lots of money, living in cool places and driving cool cars. Where it crosses the line for me is when individuals controlling companies that are supposed to produce cures value profit over health and will suppress actual medicine just because they can't make profit off it because it cannot be patented. Or when individuals hiding behind big corporations try to gain control over the world's food supply or the world's energy supply. Or when individuals have their companies create products that will intentionally break or become obsolete for other reasons just so people have to buy new products (look for planned obsolescence). Or when individuals try to push laws in place in order to take away people's freedom just so that their corporations can make more money.

    All of that works fine for a little while - until the greedy monster has consumed the planet and human life in dignity is no longer possible for most of our species.

    Oh wait ... I just described the reality we already live in.

    Fortunately, more and more people are becoming aware of what's going on and pull their support out of destructive systems and push it into sustainable, life-supporting systems. I guess that's one of the messages of the video, isn't it?

    I'd just be cautious with "stuff that comes for free": Quite frequently, there is a hidden cost that you wouldn't be willing to pay if it was properly labelled. Like: If you use this cool Web service, your life becomes a product we make profit of.
     
  49. Starsman Games

    Starsman Games

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    @jashan,

    Other than the music industry, and the dying newspapers going after Google (who has money to defend themselves) what cases of greedy Copyright abuse can you quote?

    The biggest evil I have seen related to copyright is in the form of draconian DRM schemes, and this is precisely due to the gaming industry attempting to ignore or bypass copyright litigation in favor of something that prevents copying at all.

    Without copyright, every large corporation would invest billions on insane DRM schemes.
     
  50. jashan

    jashan

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    With DRM, I believe it's also the greed for control and the fear of losing control. If people were in it to create great books, great music, great films and great games, they wouldn't care about DRM. They wouldn't want to waste their time with such BS. There are creative approaches to DRM, and those I find noble and worthwhile (like figuring out someone is using a cracked version and then playing funny games with them - this obviously only works with games, of course). But the way it's usually handled stinks. Well ... I'd rather not get into the DRM discussion because I think the issue has been discussed to death.

    My main point was to broaden the perspective beyond copyright. I really liked Forest's video, I think it has nice production value and I think at it's core it has a really important message - but I find its focus on copyright a bit of a problem because I don't think that copyright really is the problem. To stay with copyright and the music industry: In Germany, it's seemingly more profitable right now to scan for IP-addresses of people sharing music and sueing them than actually selling them the music. Now, if the music industry was about music, that wouldn't be an issue at all because no one in the music industry would even care. They would focus and creating great songs and sharing them with as many people as possible. But as the music industry is purely about profit, scanning for IP-addresses is what they currently seem to focus on (at least where this is the most profitable business model). And they don't mind spending a lot of money to lobby politicians into creating laws that would make this model even easier or more profitable.

    And there's another aspect to copyright being used in a greedy manner and while it may appear as if that had to do with the music or film industry, I strongly believe there's something completely different going on: It's greed for information on people and greed to gain control over the Internet. I don't really think it's the music or film industry having an agenda with that (except for the reasons mentioned above). Those industries - and copyright itself - can only be conveniently used as an excuse.