[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> cracks are obviously a serious concern if developers like this one would go to so much effort to prevent them.

If your crazy uncle wears tinfoil hats to combat CIA mind-rays, this doesn't mean CIA mind control technology is a concern.

It just means your uncle is mentally ill.

> And I remember Nintendo saying piracy had hurt DS software sales in Europe (understandably: instead of buying several full titles, people would buy a cheap "R4" or similar flash cart and play hundreds of games for free

This is no proof that sales were hurt. It could be true (and almost certainly is) that people who did this would not have bought extra games even if the flash carts had been unavailable. If the 12 yr old pirates $17,000 (retail price) of music, this does not mean the record companies are out $17,000... 12 yr olds don't have $17,000 to spend even if they are prevented from pirating.

You're not being logical, you're just parroting anti-copying propaganda. It's more than a little sick.

[phpnode]

You're not being logical, you're just parroting anti-anti-copying propaganda.

> If the 12 yr old pirates $17,000 (retail price) of music, this does not mean the record companies are out $17,000... 12 yr olds don't have $17,000 to spend even if they are prevented from pirating.

Right, but it does not mean that the record companies are out $0 either. They are probably missing out on at least several hundred dollars worth of revenue for that particular person.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> Right, but it does not mean that the record companies are out $0 either.

I might concede that this is the case, but only if we first agree that this doesn't mean you get to choose some arbitrary number in the middle and pretend that this is the "average loss".

I know of no economic science that can provide a reasonable number, either. You'd be lying if you claimed you knew of one.

> They are probably missing out on at least several hundred dollars worth of revenue

This would be the very extreme edge of the maximum. They're probably missing out on several tens of dollars.

And for this, they've hijacked the criminal justice system with bribes to congresses and parliaments, extended copyright protection so much that it now lasts a duration best measured in centuries, bankrupted innocent people with million dollar judgements, and sent people to prison for what shouldn't even be misdemeanors.

They want us to all pay, through our tax funding of the criminal justice system, for these minor theoretical losses. Why should I have sympathy for that?

Games companies specifically have broken their own works so thoroughly that it's difficult or impossible to get games just a few decades old to run. This is stealing from the public domain. It'd be like burning down your apartment just before the lease runs out, to make sure the landlord doesn't get it back.

Fuck them.

[CJefferson]

As you say, it's very hard to know how much companies are out.

I would guess it was at least $40, else why pay $40 for a flashcart? A new gateway (the only 3DS card I'm aware of) costs $80.

People who buy 3DS flash carts never buy a game again (in my experience), mainly because new non-pirated games require upgrading the firmware, which they can't do if they want their flash carts to keep working (this may have been improved, I haven't looked in a while). Also because they 'paid for piracy' (unlike on PC), they (I believe) feel happier not paying for games in future.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> I would guess it was at least $40, else why pay $40 for a flashcart?

I will concede that this is reasonable for a lower boundary.

However, it's not that simple. Human psychology being what it is, if he couldn't buy the $40 flashcart it's not certain that he would buy say, two $20 games that he ended up putting on that flash cart. Maybe instead he orders pizza. Being blocked from the flashcart alters decision paths that don't always lead back to video games or even entertainment in general. But with that said, again, I'll accept $40 as a rough lower boundary.

> People who buy 3DS flash carts never buy a game again (in my experience),

Anecdotal, of course, but this seems reasonable. I don't dispute it.

In my own personal experience, people who start downloading movies never buy DVDs again. So not only do I agree, I think we can generalize it either to most entertainment, or all entertainment.

> Also because they 'paid for piracy' (unlike on PC), they (I believe) feel happier not paying for games in future.

Morally, they bought physical goods that employed other people and let those people earn a living. Additionally, those claiming to have been wronged here still earned millions and billions in profit.

Who can fault them for feeling as if no bad outcomes occurred?

[gambiting]

As someone who actually works in the game industry - I feel like making an emotional argument. If I write a game, it's released in stores, and then I see someone playing a pirated copy, how should I feel? Elated that they are playing it? Or am I allowed to be upset that they are playing my game without paying for it?

And how is being unable to run games designed for a different system and different time stealing from public domain? Just because tape players are not common today doesn't mean that people who made tapes 20 years ago have somehow stolen from a public domain - you just have to get a tape player. If a game was written for Dos, then well, you have to get a dos system or an emulator. If a game was written for DirectX 7, how can you blame developers that it doesn't run on the latest DirectX 11 system, with the operating system 5 generations ahead? If you are a software developer - how could you predict and counteract this?

[sosborn]

"They're probably missing out on several tens of dollars." * "The large number of people pirating songs"

Yes, they went too far, but for fucks sake, it is really hard to imagine that these acts hurt a company?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I sell doodads.

You've never bought one from me.

Can I claim that you've hurt me? After all, you've never bought any. (I can show you my bank account balance, I really am hurting).

The sticking point, the part that will make it feel to you as if my statement above is non-sensical, is somehow you've managed to attach the idea that they're selling something to the idea that other people have a (very) similar something but haven't paid. So to you that feels like "theft". But it wasn't always this way.

The way you feel has been cultivated, just in the last few decades. And though they've cultivated it for music and movies and video games, I haven't (bothered, been able to, had enough influence) to cultivate the idea that if you haven't bought doodads from me that you've stolen from me.

[mikeash]

Let's say I stand in front of your doodad store (imagining you only sell it in a store, for whatever reason) with a megaphone, repeatedly giving an extremely convincing speech about why people shouldn't buy your doodads. Can you claim that I've hurt you then?

Many of the people I talk to would never buy a doodad anyway. Those result in zero harm. Some of them were going to buy a doodad, were non convinced, and bought anyway. Those also result in zero harm. But some were going to buy a doodad and then decided not to. That's harm.

Piracy is the same. Many pirates were never going to buy the thing anyway. Many people purchase anyway. But some non-zero number of people would have purchased but now don't.

[throwawaykf05]

Strawman: by not buying doodads from you, I'm not getting the value provided by the doodads either. That is not the case with digital goods.

Say you created those doodads using your time, efforts and resources. Your doodads provide people some value. People usually buy doodads as recompense for that value. But if someone "pirates" your doodads, it means they acquired the value without fairly compensating you.

So you: invested time, effort and resources to provide value to others. The pirates: benefited from that value and gave nothing back. Is that not unfair?

What if those pirates further shared your doodads with their friends (or, you know, random people on the Internet) further depriving you of people who should be paying you for the value your doodads provided. Now can you not claim that the pirates are hurting you?

You may focus on the zero marginal cost of copying digital music and movies and video games. However, observe that the value is not in the bits you copy but the experiences they provide to your mind. If they are truly worth zero to you, I don't see why you should be wasting your time experiencing them in the first place.

If I were to guess, you have not "cultivated that idea" because you've never created something that people found useful, something which you'd think you deserved compensation for, but which was taken without giving anything in return.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> Say you created those doodads using your time, efforts and resources. Your doodads provide people some value. People usually buy doodads as recompense for that value. But if someone "pirates" your doodads, it means they acquired the value without fairly compensating you.

Like if they make their own doodad, after seeing mine?

I'm not entitled to compensation for being the first to do something. A society that sets itself up such that people who do something first are entitled to become rent-seekers for all eternity is dysfunctional.

> What if those pirates further shared your doodads with their friends

That'd be awesome. Unless they did a half-assed job of the sharing. I reserve the right to beat them bloody if they release the music as 32k VBR mp3s. I may murder if they're wma format.

No jury in the world could convict me.

Copyright used to encourage the creation of more works that would enter the public domain in less than three decades.

Now it's used to fund bribing Congress to get longer copyrights.

> If I were to guess, you have not "cultivated that idea" because you've never created something that people found useful,

Yeh. You'd like to believe that, because it's easier to see me as some filthy thief than as someone whose ideas might be correct. The former lets you just call me names and move on, the latter would mean changing your mind and thinking about issues like this critically.

Someday I hope that people like myself strip you of all political influence and make this part of the world a better place. You can go live in Singapore with its thousand year copyright durations and felony download laws.

[sosborn]

If I really want or need to acquire your doodad then I am a potential customer and I have three choices. 1) buy your doodad. 2) acquire it without paying money. 3) go without using your doodad.

As a business owner, which would you prefer I do? Would option 2 not result in a loss of potential revenue? Would it not be super-harmful if everyone who wanted to use your product chose option 2?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> If I really want or need to acquire your doodad then I am a potential customer

But are you a promised customer, one that I own as some sort of cow to be milked when I see fit?

Certainly if I repair cars, you don't claim that I get to do all your car work and be paid for it, nor could I sue if you did it yourself. But this is what you're claiming with entertainment...

Think about it. I might make the claim that if you know about how to fix an engine, it was only because I discovered those ideas first. Therefor, even if you fix the engine (or arrange little magnetic islands on a hard drive in a particular sequence), you're still stealing from me.

If you fix the engine the same way I'd fix it, you're just copying my motions and actions.

These are highly comparable, but most people now balk at the idea (even though such absurd restrictions have existed in various times and places throughout history).

Copyright isn't some fundamental human right (time for the weenies to point out that the UN thinks it is). Its formulation was originally a practical matter, so now that it's become impractical it should be abolished or once more limited to reasonable terms.

[ddingus]

Actually, it's more subtle than that.

For the vast majority of ordinary people, entertainment dollars are fixed. People have what they have to spend on entertainment, and when it's gone that month, it's gone.

What happens is the various content producers compete for their share of those dollars.

There just aren't billions out there for entertainment purposes. Wages being flat in the US speaks right to that. People don't have it.

In a perfect no piracy world, people would just consume much less, not spend billions more. Again, because they just don't have it. The money doesn't exist.

So that person pirating a lot of music might spend real dollars on video games instead, much more than they would just spend more on the music.

[rhino369]

I don't think it's accurate to say that the vast majority have a fixed entertainment budget.

But even assuming it's true, piracy would still hurt individual companies or even entire industries. Industries you can't pirate so easily would see a disproportionate share of the spending.

DRM would still be very important. People would pirate the stuff that is easy to pirate, and buy the DRM stuff.

[ddingus]

You probably should think again.

This varies some, but most people are locked in for most of their dollars. They may have savings, and can vary that budget some, but there just aren't the billions of dollars out there often cited.

There is a delta from what is being sold now. But it's not multiples. Perhaps additional fractions.

As for the hard to pirate industries, who says?

They must compete with easier, more flexible options. They might actually get less spending than they would otherwise with a more flexible and accessible scheme.

Apple showed this with iTunes and the removal of DRM actually drove more sales. Why? Sharing.

[mikeash]

I doubt there's a fixed entertainment budget. I could see a fixed maximum, but past a certain threshold of being able to obtain things for free, people will spend less.

Even if it was a completely fixed budget, "entertainment" is a diverse category. Movies aren't just competing with other movies, or even just with TV and books and music, but also with things like cake and vodka. Even if the pie is fixed, is it unreasonable for a movie company to try to take some of vodka's pie?

The idea that piracy causes zero lost sales as is ridiculous as the idea that every act of piracy is a lost sale. At best you could make the argument that piracy is a net zero (or gain) because the advertising aspects of piracy match (or outweigh) the losses. But to just declare that piracy does nothing at all is crazy. It may be small, it may be negligible, but it's not zero unless your product is so unpopular that nobody was going to buy it anyway.

[ddingus]

Those dollars do vary, and yes a movie company will absolutely compete with vodka and cake.

But there aren't the billions of dollars out there claimed as losses.

And yes, fixed maximum, though there are a lot of options, so people do hit that maximum fairly often.

A quick look through the majority of my peers shows this. They make trade-offs each month. The ones who are better off can flex their entertainment budget considerably. Those who are not, center in on a fairly modest amount, and when it's spent, it's spent. They do other things.

I agree with you about it being equally wrong. It's not zero lost sales, and it's not all lost sales.

However, one must also factor in the network effects of sharing. Mindshare is worth something, and those who have it sell more, and getting it happens through sharing and piracy as much as it does other efforts.

And the opportunity to sell continues to exist despite the piracy too. A few are out there working on that premise.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

> If your crazy uncle wears tinfoil hats to combat CIA mind-rays, this doesn't mean CIA mind control technology is a concern.

Why do you assume they have no evidence?

> This is no proof that sales were hurt. It could be true (and almost certainly is) that people who did this would not have bought extra games even if the flash carts had been unavailable.

What makes you think kids with flashcarts wouldn't buy games? Their parents buy them a DS and a game or two for Christmas/Birthday. Their parents would probably buy them future games, too. Or the kid has pocket money. But the kid has a flashcart now, they need not buy more games.

This isn't like computer software piracy. They already had to spend money on a DS and flashcart, assuming they wouldn't buy additional games is nonsensical. Who buys a DS and doesn't play games on it?

It is anecdotal, but the people I know who bought DS flashcarts definitely would have bought games. And, although it is just my reasoning, I think it's fair to say people who owned the Nintendo DS would have bought games for it.