General Discussions

The thing with copyright though is that the holder of the copyright must file the complaint. If you are not the copyright holder nor represent them in anyway, you cannot tell the company to take it down and it is there to stay (if you don't believe this, go on YouTube and look through the thousand of videos telling you have to get [software name here] for free and try reporting them). When they do, some user can simply upload a new set of episodes to Megaupload and none would be the wiser. Companies would have to send people into the deep internet where these links to those downloads may be held and hidden from the majority of people (and I mean very few know about it).

I've attempting to bring the company EA to alert about a copyright infringement before and I searched their website everywhere for support links and selected one. The response I got was "You have the wrong support, you need to contact EA legal support [provides a link to a webpage with no input form nor e-mail address] and due to limitations cannot do transfer your notice ourselves." This is bureaucratic hell at its finest and actually supports pirates even more than it does themselves.

Look at CHU, you can create/log into your account and PM PWizard about a trainer being leaked and it gets taken care of. That is simple. I do not see any other company making it this easy to submit information about piracy (the closest I've seen is Microsoft's piracy department).

[Edited by Neo7, 1/21/2012 10:23:41 AM]

I think it won't happen as long some big players are against it.

There were several tries of similar laws also in Germany and they failed after short time.It is not possible to control the internet, and i believe if it could one day, it would be really bad for everyone.

SOPA & PIPA is just first step to censor everything and we saw what happens, if someone try to do it. (riots 2011)

Not ignorant at all. People will always see the grey clouds in anything, because people are that way since they were able to think rationally.

As for the Apple example, if an apple symbol is exactly the same shape and of course the bite out of it etc is the same, then that is copyright infringement.... so yeah its a protected trademark so the perps do have to get hammered for it.

Now if its a different sized apple, with no bites in it, and a similar name, then its not copyright infringement. And they cannot be touched.

Where you came up with this internet to be ruled by US legislation is beyond me, not once did I mention that, but SOPA and PIPA would be representing companies that are indeed US based, and would enable them to have power to directly shut down illegal sites that are providing direct links to illegal content, without the long boring 2+ years of collecting evidence etc while the site may or may not make money from the illegal content.

They have been suing and taking people to court for years, latest example is with Megaupload, just because they are based in New Zealand doesn't mean they are exempt from US law, especially when a company has grievance with them like in this instance hosting copyrighted material of a US company.

Just like a UK company can do the same, or an Indian company, etc.

As said it has been massively blown out of proportion, you think SOPA/PIPA would close down Google because they search for meta-tags that may or may not contain illegal words? No they wouldn't as that would be dumb, and illegal since Google hosts no illegal content.

As for referring to written work, if you don't give credit to the original author or claim it to be yours, then you will be hit.

As for this flow chart, that is a typical pro-warez chart...

No matter what you do, if you download a game or movie etc and then even if you decide to buy it or not, you have committed a theft (or as the pro-warez monkeys like to call it "copyright infringment" because its less nasty sounding and they can hide behind it).

Another myth is the I wasn't going to buy it anyway so they wouldn't have got my cash, doesn't matter, you didn't have the right to play, watch or listen to what you stole. And the "Well they make millions anyways I am not hurting them" is probably the most short sighted excuse ever, yeah you may not have paid $50 for a game vs $100,000,000 but you are not alone you are part of a massive group who have also done the same as you. Enter the 2 million plus warez users who got the same game, 2,000,000 x $50 = $100,000,000 ... yeah interesting ain't it.

But then again they will cry "But I am not like those other people".. yes, yes you are. You have just been part of a group who have cost the publisher/developer a potential $100m loss.

The same can be said for music, movies, literature etc.

And people wonder why publishers and developers sell out or go bankrupt, projected sales are made based on previous title sales, and they make for an example 4 million copies, only 1 million is sold, the other 3 million nobody bought cause they got it for free from various sources. Massive loss.

The company has to pay wages, rates, taxes, advertising, costs for servers, costs for warehousing and company buildings/habitats, cost of paying for media protection, cost of hardware new/replacing and of course manufacturing costs for mass production. All these things do come to a big amount of money needed to be paid, something nobody understands.

Ascaron is an example, they made the sacred titles, but due to low selling figures (when the predicted higher) they went bankrupt, and had to get Deep Silver and Koch Media to buy the rights for Sacred titles. Great game, but never did get to complete the full story with a 3rd sequel.

JoWood, ok not everyones favourite cup of tea, but they did publish Gothic for Piranha Bytes. Again projected figures for Gothic 3 didn't turn out that good, but yet close to a couple of million were playing the game for free. They couldn't afford to pay Piranha up front for the 4th game, so of course they left, and then that horrid Gothic 4 title came from another developer, never sold well. Bankruptcy.

So if you sit there feeling smug you are playing something you don't have the right to play, think about how you are contributing to a larger problem with similar people like yourself, and how some people have lost jobs through it all.

That is why SOPA and PIPA are needed, to protect companies, maybe once decent profits come in and projected sales targets are met, then you will get quality titles since the developers won't feel like they are designing a game that will be stolen.

So yes warez users you may think its not happening, and I will always say it, the PC market is dying, and you have contributed to it. Enjoy when the PC becomes a silly flash game and MMO platform.

dabhand- you took the words out of my mouth

@Dabhand

I'll refrain from including a quote, for my sake.

The PC games market is not dying, not entirely at least, so long as quality games are being released. It will never turn into a "silly flash game and MMO platform."

(Now, forget about the fact that piracy is (most certainly) affecting/killing many companies, I'm not denying that obvious truth.)

Bioware, for instance. Are they dying? No. Are their games being pirated? HELL yes. Most likely even more than those games you mentioned.

Activision, are they dying? No. Call of Duty MW3, the latest, is currently being played by about 500-600 pirates on a certain VPN whose name startes with a T. So don't give me the good ol' "yeah 'cause the game has good multiplayer" excuse, it won't work for this title.

Blizzard? They're fine, and Starcraft 2 the same as above. WoW? Private servers. Though WoW is becoming slightly less popular simply because it is slowly showing age.

Same for Epic games, though they tend to stick to consoles, where the games are also being pirated. Especially the 360. Less so than PC, admittedly.

There are a couple of others I could mention, and while I agree that it is very hard for a new gaming company to actually start off strong on PC because their first game MUST be a great success otherwise it will just be pirated and forgotten.

While many pirates simply download a game and play it for as long as they like, some of them actually download the game, try it, then buy it when they like it, but many warez-haters are wearing red sunglasses whenever they talk about pirates and just won't believe that. Not ALL pirates do this, but MANY do.

Edit: I think I made it obvious, but I'll say it again: Piracy isn't good. But it's not the ONE AND ONLY reason why the PC market is suffering.

[Edited by Monkey007, 1/22/2012 11:21:17 AM]

Actually, in some ways the PC is its own worst enemy.

Piracy is certainly a factor in the whole mess, but the fact that PC developers have to cater one game to so many different configurations of hardware and software that it's just easier to create a game for a console, since their hardware configurations will almost never change, and the software is fundamentally the same for its entire life cycle (changing the UI and all those bug fixes you get with most updates aren't changing the core of the console OS, like the different iterations of Windows do).

Better to develop for consoles than face the backlash from gamers and review sites because the game doesn't work on their system.

The perfect example of that is my own experience here. I suggested that a game was buggy and/or didn't work on a few peoples PC's because of the hardware/software configuration, rather than the game itself, because only a handful of people had experienced the bugs they were complaining about while others, including myself, hadn't even heard of the bug let alone experienced it. Susequently everyone participating in the thread decided to ignore everything else I'd written and my reasoning (and proof) behind my statement and flame me for that sentence alone. I can only imagine what dev's have to put up with.

But then again, some games really are released just plain buggy as hell.

Anyway, I've derailed enough I think.

SOPA/PIPA isn't what anyone needs. At all. The principle, yes. Everything else, no. People just need to start using their heads for anti-piracy methods, not strangle everyone with DRM, or have the right to shut down a site because you used a screenshot which Person A took, Person B, C and D shared, and person E decided to use in a review.

There are some games that never get pirated, not because they're not popular, but because it's just too difficult and not worth the time and effort of trying further, and they don't even include obnoxious DRM which hurts the legitimate players more than pirates -coughUbisoft-.

Which actually brings up another point, which is that there are a number of people who will pirate games purely because the pirated version does away or circumvents the DRM, which has been known to stop people who have legitimately bought the game from playing it.

Consider console piracy. Sure, it exists, but the piracy scene for console games is so much smaller than for PC games. I think one of the reasons for this is because the method of getting copied games to work is just too convoluted and confusing for the average console owner. The hardest part of pirating a PC game is waiting for it to finish downloading (from the players point of view, obviously). Sure, consoles use dedicated, custom made Operating Systems on, but there are things which could be transferred to PC games to combat piracy which don't hurt players and doesn't try to control content on the Internet.

I think I'm starting to repeat myself now so this is as good a place as any to shut up 'till next time.

I'd like to note though, that re-reading what I've written it sounds very pro-piracy. I'd like to reiterate my previous posts and say I'm actually very much anti-piracy. I can just see and understand arguments from both sides of the fence rather than being blinkered to "It's wrong" or "It's right".

[Edited by Skyheart, 1/22/2012 1:10:47 PM]

Just a small added note about the flowchart; it's not about whether it's pro or con anything - it's about the fact that it makes sense, and actually (believe it or not) is true.
And I'm sorry if it came out like I immediately judged you as a "US laws apply to all" proponent - unfortunately a lot of people that support legislations such as these believe that US legislations should apply to every being on our planet. (Since that's what SOPA/PIPA are for - being able to... "protect" US Copyright interests on the Internet.)

I can definitely see the point about that companies should be paid for their work - but if a person doesn't have any money to pay the companies, but are not causing a loss to the company if they download the game, there is zero loss to any part in the example, the only difference is that the downloader gains a cultural experience. I would gladly pay the companies that made the best games I know some extra on the side if they had systems set up for that, just because I can afford that little extra, and to alleviate for any potential pirates. The hours of entertainment they have provided me are worth more to me than the $50 I paid for their game(s).

That is what makes me utterly mad - people denying others an experience, just because they can afford it whereas others may not. Of course, going to the 'no control' extreme generates a lot of cases of the farthest down on the scale. I.e. people who can afford a product, enjoy it, but will not buy it nonetheless. This, I feel, is equally wrong, of course.
Problem is that a "limiting piracy" 'full control' would cause harm to so many, in so many ways (as mentioned, an accidental mention of a brand, an accidental display of a logo) - this could *EASILY* be abused by copyright holders to force Internet content providers to back off or even shut down. (And has nothing *at all* to do with the fact they're, again, competing with them for publicity, ad revenues, support etc. Sarcasm alert there btw.)
However, just because one extreme on the scale is wrong, don't go to the other - there are so many things in between; again, the world isn't black or white, not 0 or 1.

It's a bit like punishing an entire group for the faults of some, which feels pretty ****ty. Unfortunately, there'll always be people who try to get the most out of any system they live in and use, legally or illegally. But you don't see any countries increasing taxes on a whim, because there are a few tax offenders, right? Of course, seeing what person on the mentioned flow-chart you are will be extremely hard, and thus an easier (but extremely prejudicial) method is chosen.

An effect of all this I find interesting is the development of new paying methods - micro-transactions and monthly plans for example. Interesting concepts that might alleviate the problems somewhat, and it feels like progress in that department rather than legislations and laws are the way to go. (Even if it's not a perfect solution - people's ability to access the game is suddenly limited by the companies' ability to keep servers up.)

The Internet is an interesting phenomena, and I doubt you or I have the solution to limit the loss of money for inventors, content creators, artists - legislations aren't the way, neither are a lack of control. I'll sit by and watch it develop, it's an interesting world we live in (as our ancestors did, and our children will) and an interesting little thing, this 'Internet'.

Sorry for drifting away a bit, got a tad philosophical.

What Monkey007 has wrote i totally agree with, But here is the catch,its not only PC Gaming here its Music, Movies,and these company's WANT every Dollar,pound along with any other currency for their Games Music,and Movies,its like a dripping Tap or Forcet if you don't stop the drip it gets worse and eventually it will run.

Today more and more people are becoming PC savvy and they know how to get downloading,but a great deal of these people are GREEDY they are downloading and selling games and Movies for the PC,XBox and that is happening on my Estate where i live in Yorkshire, no wonder it needs stopping, its also happening World Wide, Piracy is Big Business and sooner or later they will eventually control it via Censorship. so its the dripping Tap syndrome and this is the reason for the aggressive move on Piracy,as i have said before $$$$$ thats all that matters and these $$$$$ come before anything else in life that matters to us on this website.