SecuROM

[Yaka]

I also download US TV shows and I don't really have any excuse for that. I would ask though - do people who believe downloading TV to be piracy also think Tivo/sky+ are? Both allow you to skip adverts...
I still remember how shocked I was when Lost came on TV at just how much advertising they squeezed into it...after watching it for a year with ads editted out it was apalling.

!

i would not place tv as piracy. most peeps pay TV licence and subscriptions on thier sky/ntl/freesat boxes. youve already paid for some of em and we should have everyright to watch eps same time as usa. tv chans ere have a habit sticking stuff on shit time slots or months later. or in the case of sky and ntl us being denied their services.

we should have the ability to watch eps when we say spooks began last week. but we should the option of watching the remining eps soon as we want or as late as we want

 

[Chilly]

Excuse me? You think you have a RIGHT to watch television? You get to watch what you get sold or buy directly, no one has any obligation to sell anything to you. TV is driven by advertisements, until the business model shifts, behaviour wont.

 

[`mongoose]

Piracy is piracy tbh.

I agree with many people on here, however. If they want to stop it they should make it more attractive to own the game.

I hope that the internet see's a rise in accounts where we can register the games we own online and then just download them so we never have a "hard copy".

I see Steam as a way forwards there tbh. My games follow me where I am because I can only log on once.

DRM pisses me off in a big way. it#s not that I may ever be effected by my "3" activations of spore, it's just that I shouldn't have to worry about it. I bought the game - I'd have been better off pirating it - and that's wrong.

M

 

[Tom]

Theres a distinct difference between theft and breach of copyright, of which software piracy is clearly the latter.

World of Goo is completely unprotected. It downloads as an exe file which you install. As a result, it would be piss easy for me to get it from anywhere else - but I didn't. I paid up and downloaded it.

Interestingly, many of the people here comparing software piracy to theft have avatars that are clearly a breach of copyright.

 

[Belgerath]

I could change my Avatar to a pic of myself but then I would lose all my online friends

 

[nath]

Excuse me? You think you have a RIGHT to watch television? You get to watch what you get sold or buy directly, no one has any obligation to sell anything to you. TV is driven by advertisements, until the business model shifts, behaviour wont.

Except when it comes to the BBC. As long as you're paying the license fee, it could be argued that you have every right to download the latest episode of Heroes given that it's currently airing on the BBC too. Plus, given that it's not funded by adverts, there's no lost revenue by you not tuning in to watch the actual broadcast.

 

[Rulke]

Excuse me? You think you have a RIGHT to watch television? You get to watch what you get sold or buy directly, no one has any obligation to sell anything to you. TV is driven by advertisements, until the business model shifts, behaviour wont.

No, the monthly fees I pay to the BBC and Virgin Media give me a right to watch TV. I download programs so I can watch them months ahead of when they'd be shown over here, at the times I want and without 20 minutes of Ads in an hour long show.

On a related topic, it always annoys me when I watch a DVD I get the unskippable FACT screens warning against piracy - but watching a pirated version of the same film you dont

 

[rynnor]

On a related topic, it always annoys me when I watch a DVD I get the unskippable FACT screens warning against piracy - but watching a pirated version of the same film you dont

Aaaaaarrgghhh!!!!

One of my pet hates - that really pisses me off that I have gone to the trouble to buy my dvds and for my pains have to put up with this shite!!!

Making it unskippable is unforgiveable - we should start an online campaign!

 

[Ch3tan]

As a few others have said steam is the way forward, but there needs to be some process for offline activation, or only having to log-on to activate and check once in a while, not everytime you play.

 

[Talyn]

After about 15 mins of reading, I got bored. I've heard all the arguements for/against, stealing & piracy are different forms of theft, and all that stuff.

Now, I do the crazy thing... I download and install the cracked copy of the software, but still buy the game, usually leaving it sealed.

A while ago, xkcd (which to be honest, i'm not a fan of) came out with a very good comic explaining the arguement nice and simply. xkcd - A Webcomic - Steal This Comic (It covers music rather than games, but the principal is the same)

 

[phazey]

I'd like to throw my own 2p in this thread.

1) Say software developer "A" releases a game that gets 100,000 legit sales, and 100,000 pirate downloads. IF the products was "uncrackable", does anyone think they'd get 200,000 sales - and claim (on the previous scenario) piracy would have cost them 50% of their profit?

2) downloading is not the big picture. I can walk down the road tomorrow (in asia) and pass maybe 2 dozen stores (proper shop front affairs) who's only product are walls and walls of copied apps and games. I once asked for the xbox 360 section in a shop in Thailand, and was handed a catalog of covers - where one simply points at the numbers and 15 minutes later, a guy comes along with a bag full of warez. I think THIS is the piracy that should be stamped out, the mass production stuff. There are *factories* knocking this stuff out....

 

[Sar]

Also I want to give "some" mention to Bethesda and Fallout 3, even after the game got leaked to the 360 16 days before official release, they didnt punish the PC players with retarded DRM, just a simple CD check.

Yeah, and the CD check only kicks in when you run the launcher, and press play there. Run the executable directly and there's no CD check.

At least not for me

Oh and you can use cheats and still unlock achievements oddly. Not that I am, because I feel cheating is pointless tbh, because half the point of playing a game is to challenge yourself. Some of my best moments in Fallout 3 so far have come when I've been low on health and ammo and need to take out 4/5 feral ghouls.

VATS-powered headshots to the rescue!