Piracy prevention (or at least assessment)

[quasius]

It's just good, old fashioned stealing, no matter how anyone tries to rationalize it. Plain and simple.

No, it's not stealing. It's copyright infringement / software piracy. Stealing necessarily deprives someone of property, piracy does not. (In the case that they were not going to buy it to begin with.)
Someone who pirates software, uses it for an hour and then deletes it is not a thief. Now if you want to say that someone who pirates Eschalon (or whatever) and then uses it as if they paid for it is stealing, that's different.
But even in that case, it's still a bit different since such piracy should always be a civil matter. Unlike actual theft which is generally far more invasive to persons and is criminal.

[AstralWanderer]

What you listed was justifications for using the products of piracy. Your second paragraph listed the way to not use piracy. Don't buy the product if the license agreement doesn't allow you to do what you want with it.

1). Using a crack is not piracy - it does not involve making an unauthorised copy of a program. Every crack I've seen requires the program concerned to be installed first.

2). License agreements - When was the last time you saw a game (or any other software for that matter) that displayed the agreement on the case so you could view it prior to purchase? And where can we find a store that will take back a game that has been opened, on the grounds that we objected to the agreement displayed when the install starts?

Advocating a boycott of virtually all commercial software, which is really what your suggestion comes to, is hardly a practical option except for those that take the Linux route (while this has merits, games availability is not one of them).

Think about it, what does "supporting piracy" mean? There are 2 different entities in piracy, those that create the pirated copies, and those that consume them. If you are either one, you support piracy. If you consume the goods and justify the use for whatever reason, that's up to you, but it is still supporting piracy.

Again, you are confusing the use of no-CD cracks with piracy - they are not the same. I support cracks wholeheartedly to deal with anal-retentive publishers (and to make the software I buy useable) but I don't condone downloading commercial software without paying for it. Feel free to review every post I've made above to see if you can prove otherwise.

If everyone stopped buying games with DRM, then companies would stop using them. Buying the game with DRM and then using a crack doesn't help the situation at all. It doesn't send a message to the company saying that you don't like DRM, and it doesn't send a message to anyone saying that cracks aren't used.

Not buying doesn't send a message either (most likely the publisher would blame "increased piracy" for poorer sales). Complaining to the publisher does send a message though, and that is what I do - and what everyone else affected should do too. The "Boycott Starforce" campaign was undoubtedly the reason for games like X3 and Beyond Divinity having updates to remove the protection, and for Heroes of Might and Magic V being released without it.

[SuicideBunny]

Everyone pirates. Right now, everyone reading this has some ripped music, a cracked game, or a downloaded movie sitting somewhere on their hard drive. People who pirate are not evil or bad, they are just normal people.

ripping music is legal in germany, even copying it from a friend as long as that friend owns the original. no piracy there.

cracking isn't pirating, it's circumventing copy protection, and even with the recent trend of laws against that, it's a grey area at best.
but yeah, almost everyone on this planet is a pirate/thief in one way or another.

btw, i am too lazy to read through all that piracy threads, but how about having people mail you their orders and incorporating some custom title/confirmation in the forums?

[Aganazer]

Anyone here ever lived in an Asian country? I lived in Thailand for 2 years. I could take a 10 minute bus ride to a computer mall. The entire top floor was dedicated to small vendors selling pirated games. The normal stores didn't even sell software. The ONLY way to get games was to buy pirated software. You would pay per CD at an average of $5 per CD. It didn't matter if it was Adobe Photoshop CS3 or a CD of demos, it all cost the same. The police knew about it, but they were payed off by the vendors.

Sure, we all know petty thiefs that torrent everything that they can get their grubby hands on. There is such a huge difference between the Asian piracy scene and the petty torrent thief. There are hundreds of millions of people using pirated software in Asia. Most of them don't even have a practical alternative to piracy.

I don't have much of a point by saying all that, but it does put software piracy into a more world perspective.

[Rollor]

Let's all try to be adults about this subject, m'kay? There is no legitimate excuse for it. Not the "try before you buy" excuse. Not the "it's unfairly expensive" excuse. Not the "any copy you make is piracy, so piracy is OK" excuse. Not the "everyone does it" excuse. None of them. It's just good, old fashioned stealing, no matter how anyone tries to rationalize it. Plain and simple.

To me being adult about it is NOT saying my opinion is the right one, all you others are wrong

cracking isn't pirating, it's circumventing copy protection, and even with the recent trend of laws against that, it's a grey area at best.

I know for atleast some stuff it's legal to make a backup but it's not legal to break the copy protection


All that don't support piracy is a bit weird to me. Isn't most of the games and movies ripped by groupes who doesn't give a rats ass or even dislike the common downloader?

[RezoApio]

Feel compelled to say something on that post. Read almost everything (there is a lot in here) and I feel in need to say something.

Want to remark the good point about world piracy, never been much to asia but I have friends there, so I know it is like that. Also been lots of time in South America and you can buy anything for probably less than 5 bucks and it is almost considered legal business. The point to see is that in these country 30$ means probably a month of food (ok let me exagerate to make my point or translate that to africa)

Secondly, I agree with BW comment on self responsiblity. Piracy is your responsability. If you like it, buy it else it will never happen again. This is why I am against anti piracy tricks which are all more or less unfair to real customers and totally ineficient to pirates. (Agree also with the comment about the diference between pirates and thieves. Even if not accepting the zero pirated copy would have accounted for one more sale, piracy is not depriving you of something, it is at the most preventing you to gain further).

I have played on some pirated games myself. Generally never finished them because they were bad. I have also bought quite a lots of game and did not even need to grab the demo of Eschalon, just by reading the forum, I knew I would love it and would support BW for taking the risk of doint it. I proud myself to be in the first batch of buyers and I will also buy again the Linux version as soon as it will be available.

The point I want to make is that if I could pay some 60€ games that I did never finished for which more than half the amount was lost on marketing, selling channels and so on why not buy twice a 30$ game for which I know probably 90% + will go directly in BW pocket.

As a final word here, I would like to recommend to BW not to lose time and energy on anti-piracy methods. You are doing a great game, you are giving an hell of a good attention to your gamer community, you will put just enough energy in merch and marketing to be visible in the internet bush and the gamer community will help raising sale, if only because some of us want to finish the trilogy...

Thanks again and back to my amulet quest (I found out that I am a slow gamer when I see people having already finished twice or more the game)

[realmzmaster]

Software piracy/copyright infingement is a nice word for theft. I do not care if the person only use it for an hour and erased it. The person stole it for that hour. It was not theirs! They did not pay for it. It does not matter if they used it for one hour, one minute or one second. The demo is for that purpose so that you can sample the game. If all a person did is use it for one hour the demo would have sufficed. The Eschalon demo runs for more than one hour. Most demo run for more than one hour. The point is to get the feel of the game.

[realmzmaster]

Actually, Infocom had some of the best copy protection. Infocom used feelies. Actually physical components that were crucial to game play, Deadline had a newspaper and other items that had to be referenced to complete the game. Even the gold box games had a code wheel that you had to use to decipher some of the symbols in the game or you could not go further. No copy protection method is fullproof, but these methods were the least intrusive and actually added value to the game. When the gold box games were re-published they gave the codes away because they wanted to keep costs down in the remakes (They did not want to reprint the code wheels.) One Mac game called Citadel used a code wheel for you to enter the dungeon. The game would allow you to make a character and approach the dungeon, but to enter you have to decipher the riddle on the entrance, which would be a random combination of three symbols. No code wheel, no enter.

[Effidian]

1). Using a crack is not piracy - it does not involve making an unauthorised copy of a program. Every crack I've seen requires the program concerned to be installed first.

It occurs to me that you and I may be arguing over semantics. Let me be more clear, replace my previous uses of "piracy" with "breaking the software license agreement". It seems as if you are using a definition of piracy which is limited to distribution of media, where I am using a broader defintion of breaking the license agreement (and cracking software is against most license agreements).

Downloading a shareware package and using a crack on it would be piracy by my definition. It seems as if you would call that something else (not saying you think that is fine, just pointing out that we are talking about different things).

2). License agreements - When was the last time you saw a game (or any other software for that matter) that displayed the agreement on the case so you could view it prior to purchase? And where can we find a store that will take back a game that has been opened, on the grounds that we objected to the agreement displayed when the install starts?

Advocating a boycott of virtually all commercial software, which is really what your suggestion comes to, is hardly a practical option except for those that take the Linux route (while this has merits, games availability is not one of them).

This is really close to a justification I've often heard for pirating music, the "If companies would make it easier for me to ..., then I wouldn't pirate it". And it comes down to just that, a justification.

Again, you are confusing the use of no-CD cracks with piracy - they are not the same. I support cracks wholeheartedly to deal with anal-retentive publishers (and to make the software I buy useable) but I don't condone downloading commercial software without paying for it. Feel free to review every post I've made above to see if you can prove otherwise.

See definition comment above...

Not buying doesn't send a message either (most likely the publisher would blame "increased piracy" for poorer sales). Complaining to the publisher does send a message though, and that is what I do - and what everyone else affected should do too. The "Boycott Starforce" campaign was undoubtedly the reason for games like X3 and Beyond Divinity having updates to remove the protection, and for Heroes of Might and Magic V being released without it.

I actually meant to put "Write a letter to the publisher" in as something to do, but didn't. Complaining to the publisher about issues (either yourself or as part of a group) is certainly one way to get your point across.

[Effidian]

Disregard my last post. I got distracted during it and it ended up going off topic. I'll just reiterate the point I was trying to make before letting myself move off...

Cracks are certainly products of pirates. Cracking a game you have bought isn't pirating that game (it does break the license agreement in most cases, but that is another topic altogether, and where I got off this topic in the last post). However, downloading that crack supports piracy. Supporting piracy is just the act of downloading cracks or pirated copies of games, you don't have to pirate the game to support piracy.

What is it that authors of cracks get out of doing it? In most cases it isn't money, so that leaves a sense of accomplishment for being able to do it and/or recognition for doing it. How do they get recognition? Knowing people are downloading their crack is certainly one way. If no one ever downloaded a crack, you think they'd keep posting them? I doubt it.

[AstralWanderer]

Disregard my last post. I got distracted during it and it ended up going off topic.

Good, that saves me from going on an equally OT diatribe on the basic unfairness of many EULAs.

Cracks are certainly products of pirates. Cracking a game you have bought isn't pirating that game (it does break the license agreement in most cases, but that is another topic altogether, and where I got off this topic in the last post). However, downloading that crack supports piracy. Supporting piracy is just the act of downloading cracks or pirated copies of games, you don't have to pirate the game to support piracy.

This whole "supporting piracy" by disabling an irritating check is a total non-sequitur for me. I also would not consider those producing such cracks to be pirates, unless they also involved themselves in actual unauthorised duplication. "Crackers" would seem to be a more accurate term.

What is it that authors of cracks get out of doing it? In most cases it isn't money, so that leaves a sense of accomplishment for being able to do it and/or recognition for doing it. How do they get recognition? Knowing people are downloading their crack is certainly one way.

Doesn't the obvious reason make sense here? They wish to enjoy games they paid for without the hassle of CD-checks or online verification - and are happy to pass the benefits onto others. There are certainly those who get an ego trip (the size of any accompanying .nfo file gives a pretty good idea) but as you note, there is no financial incentive.

Presumably you would consider commercial products like Game Jackal or CD-drive emulators (Daemon Tools, Alcohol 120) which have a similar goal as piracy support as well?

[JOG]

Usually I have a rather liberal position to pirating, those who pirate a game and even more so an expensive program like Photoshop or 3DSMAX, most likely aren't potential customers in the first place, you can pirate ten games per month but most of us can't afford to buy them. So in reality there is much less damage done than *they* try to make us believe.

But here things are different, playing this game is a statement: I WANT REAL RPGS.
And everyone who pirates this game is a hypocrite - no exceptions.

If you don't like the game fine, but you can decide that from the demo, no reason to become delinquent.

If you like the game, and would like more games of this sort then show your support, show *them* that it's worthwhile to make a real RPG.

[Effidian]

Good, that saves me from going on an equally OT diatribe on the basic unfairness of many EULAs.

That's exactly the discusion I didn't want to get into. It opens up a whole can of worms and I don't have the energy for that discussion.

This whole "supporting piracy" by disabling an irritating check is a total non-sequitur for me. I also would not consider those producing such cracks to be pirates, unless they also involved themselves in actual unauthorised duplication. "Crackers" would seem to be a more accurate term.

It isn't disabling the check that is supporting piracy, it is downloading the crack in the first place. To the author of the crack or the site where you download it from, what is the difference between someone who downloads it to crack a pirated version of the game, and one that downloads it to crack a version of the game they purchased? None.

Doesn't the obvious reason make sense here? They wish to enjoy games they paid for without the hassle of CD-checks or online verification - and are happy to pass the benefits onto others. There are certainly those who get an ego trip (the size of any accompanying .nfo file gives a pretty good idea) but as you note, there is no financial incentive.

I very much doubt that the authors of cracks are doing it for paying customers of the game. Do you need to provide proof of purchase to download the crack? Obviously not. You seriously believe that people that write cracks are doing it with the intention it should only be used on games you pay for?

Presumably you would consider commercial products like Game Jackal or CD-drive emulators (Daemon Tools, Alcohol 120) which have a similar goal as piracy support as well?

It certainly wouldn't automatically fall into that case based on the criteria I've already given. I don't really have an opinion of those products. I suppose I could think about it, but since it isn't directly related to the point I was making, I'd rather not...

[Aganazer]

What is it that authors of cracks get out of doing it? In most cases it isn't money, so that leaves a sense of accomplishment for being able to do it and/or recognition for doing it. How do they get recognition? Knowing people are downloading their crack is certainly one way. If no one ever downloaded a crack, you think they'd keep posting them? I doubt it.

It is money. Every game I ever bought in Thailand had the crack burned onto the CD with the game. Those CD's would never pass the copy protection so you need the crack. There is money in cracks.

Piracy for the other half of the world (the non-western half) is a completely different situation than what we see in western countries. Here it is a moral decision, for millions though, its a perfectly normal and accepted way of life.

Whenever I buy a music CD I can't help but think... "How much of my money went to the band?". And... "If such a small portion of my money is going to the band, then where is the rest going?" Was it that jerk in a brand new Porche holding up traffic while talking on his mobile phone? Maybe it was the same guy that increased my cable TV bill from $30 to $50. I wish Metalica would have simply let me mail order their CD for $5 rather than force me to pay $15 from the retail store. They would have gotten more money for it anyway.

Corporate greed is an easy to understand motivation for normal folks to support piracy. That is why I love to buy indie-anything. I know that the majority of my money is going where it should be going.

[Rollor]

I very much doubt that the authors of cracks are doing it for paying customers of the game. Do you need to provide proof of purchase to download the crack? Obviously not. You seriously believe that people that write cracks are doing it with the intention it should only be used on games you pay for?

Support the companies that produce quality software! If you enjoyed it, buy it! Software authors deserve support!!

Razor is an old release groupe ..

@Aganazer: Are you sure the folks selling is actually the ones who made the crack ?