[blablabla123]

It's very strange to think about this in the current context. Anything P2P used to be the Anti Christ of the Software Industry. The lengths Microsoft and game vendors went to prevent copying is insane. Installing Windows as well as various Higher End software is a huge pain because of this.

On the other hand Microsoft is very much leading with OpenAI in vacuuming any content, stripping effectively copyright claims.

That being said, nowadays the only use case for me to use Pirate Bay is when I cannot get a movie elsewhere. I'd pay for it but it's not possible - because of copyright...

[ronsor]

The software industry mostly gave up when they saw it wasn't working.

Even the music industry (of all of them!) mostly gave up.

Only Hollywood and the wider film/TV industry is so stubborn.

[tsss]

The software industry certainly didn't give up. Most smaller game studios outsource their copy protection to Steam. Larger studios use Denuvo which works better than ever. Some Denuvo games stay uncracked for years. Non-entertainment software mostly moved to SaaS with a subscription model which is essentially uncrackable or, where that was not feasible (CAD and video editing), use extremely invasive copy protection measures. For example, Dassault can catch your Solidworks cracks even on an airgapped computer. They taint every file you create as pirated and when you give that file to a licensed user, their legitimate copy will phone home and have their lawyers force the legitimate user to betray you.

[somenameforme]

Steam's DRM is completely symbolic. There are widespread cracks available and Steam is AFAIK not even bothering with the cat and mouse game, and Denuvo games released this year are being cracked in < 24 hours.

I would never underestimate the lengths people are willing to go to to 'crack' games. Countless online-only games have been cracked with users reverse engineering the network protocol and writing their own servers. LLMs will probably greatly ease that process as well.

[B3L]

The SteamDRM wrapper tool itself, freely distributed through the Stramworks SDK, used to straight up ship with a feature to strip the DRM from any exe.

[vitally3643]

Steam effectively solved game piracy as far as I can tell.

The solution is: make purchasing legitimate copies an easier and better experience than piracy. That's it. That's all you need to do. There will, of course, always be piracy by those who can't afford to purchase the software or have other ideological goals, but for the vast majority of users, making it easy and pleasant to fork over cash for goods is how you stop them from stealing.

Meanwhile music, movies, and TV have decided to sprint in the exact opposite direction. It's now so onerous and expensive to even find let alone watch something that normal users are flocking to piracy. Not because it's cheaper, but because the experience is better in every conceivable way. To most people, the fact that you now own a real copy forever is merely a bonus. The real killer feature is that if you want to watch something it is always available. You can search for anything and get a result. Torrents don't usually go away on a rotating weekly basis. If you want something, it's available, and nobody gets in your way (if you do it right).

[rascul]

> The solution is: make purchasing legitimate copies an easier and better experience than piracy.

They didn't.

[allarm]

But they did it. Buying, installing, and updating the game is incredibly easy. That’s exactly why I haven’t downloaded pirated games for at least 15 years.

[gk--]

> Some Denuvo games stay uncracked for years

this era is well and truly over. you've got pre-release hypervisor bypasses and then a conventional crack a couple weeks later.

edit: i might've misinterpreted your comment, i expect some older denovo titles might never get the modern treatment

[hollow-moe]

Oh wow that's really smart of them, now you have a reason to send your hacked version along the cad file so the user on the other side can escape from their spyware :D

[ronsor]

> They taint every file you create as pirated and when you give that file to a licensed user, their legitimate copy will phone home and have their lawyers force the legitimate user to betray you.

Can this be manipulated to frame arbitrary users for piracy?

[indoordin0saur]

Recently wanted to watch Troy and could not find it for streaming anywhere, nor a pay-to-rent on the streaming platforms like youtube. You can "buy" it but as we've learned recently these companies don't really let you own a copy and reserve the right to remove your access in the future. So I just went ahead and pirated it.

[whateverboat]

It's not strange at all. It is all about power. At that time, power was obtained by opposing P2P and opposing piracy. Today power is obtained by piracy so they do piracy.

[lenerdenator]

They're organizations run by people who may or may not have something that could be described as narcissistic personality disorder.

It's not particularly strange; the rationale for organizations like Microsoft and OpenAI is to be immune to any and all rules that could possibly foreseeably impact shareholder value. If you're not paying for their wares, you're impacting shareholder value. If you're asking them to actually license out content that they're training an AI on, you're impacting shareholder value.

Rules for thee, not for me, especially when it makes me - the special person who charitably graces society with my presence - a rich person.

[marysol5]

Companies "went to lengths to stop copying" because copying is so rampant.