This article is interesting to read and think about from a theoretical perspective. Practically, though, it is completely and utterly useless.
Fact 1: Pirating is possible and fairly easy across the board.
Fact 2: Some content creators try to limit access to maintain "exclusivity" or to keep margins high. These guys get destroyed by piracy.
Fact 3: Other services strive to make it as easy as possible to get their products legally - Steam, iTunes, the Louis CK experiment. Their stuff is pirated a lot less and they generate a bunch of goodwill on the side.
These are facts, and no appeal to morality is going to change that. You can't just tell someone to suck it up and say it's not their "decision". Of course it's their decision - everyone decides whether or not to pirate! It is ABSOLUTELY their decision. The way to curb piracy is not to appeal to people's morality and tell people they SHOULD or SHOULDN'T do something. It's never going to work.
Curb piracy by making it easier, safer, and more reliable to purchase legally rather than pirate. Articles like this do nothing but reinforce the author's sense of moral superiority.
As creators, we can curb piracy by making it easier, safer and more reliable to purchase legally. As users, shouldn't we curb piracy by not pirating things?
As users we should, wherever possible, purchase media from the easier, safer and more reliable LEGITIMATE sources, and carry on pirating wherever the opposite is true ("locked down" content such as DRM, rootkits, cumbersome convoluted registrations and ages-long anti-piracy messages on legal media!)
To put it another way, it seems we need a "carrot" (legally purchasing) approach to the 'good guys' creators/developers and "stick" (illegally downloading) approach to the arseholes who put rootkits on music CD's etc.
From a long-term perspective, it's probably more effective, as a user, to pirate everything that's not easily available for legal purchase, with the intent of making outdated, overpriced distribution channels unprofitable.
I'm not trying to make the argument that this is ethical or anything, but purely from the perspective of solving the "piracy problem", I believe it would be the most effective.
This is the kind of thing that boggles my mind. World of Goo was a huge success! How the piracy rate fits into the relative success or failure of World of Goo is not at all clear. I don't see how anyone can believe that there's a possible reality where World of Goo would be just as successful as it was with a 0% piracy rate, and where information exchange is free. You can't have both! If World of Goo had made a pittance and its developers had died in poverty, maybe there would have been an argument to make there. But as it is, that piracy figure is just a number that has no tangible connection to the number of possible sales in a world where piracy is either morally abhorrent to everyone, or technically impossible. And that world is something for dystopian science fiction to explore, not one that I would ever wish to experience.
I've paid for World of Goo twice (When I first bought it when it came out, and once for the iPhone version).
I've also pirated World of Goo three times. When I switched from PC to Mac; when I gave my iPod touch to my sister and installed it on my new iPhone as well (does this count as piracy? I have no idea. Its the same iTunes account running on two devices now...). And once on my Linux box when I wanted the linux version.
Does this count as piracy? Probably. I think they even have platform-free redownloads. I can't be arsed. I've paid for it. When I want it in a different version, I'll get it from the most convenient distribution channel that happens to be the pirate bay.
I also own like 4 Windows 7 licenses. But my Windows 7 computer is running a pirated version because:
1. I lost 2 of the license keys (the sticker at the bottom of the laptops burned out from heat). So much for that. I liked my home-premium install, too. But that's a non starter because the keys can't be recovered. I'm supposed to write down keys in case of this problem? What is this? 1999?
2. There are numerous version incompatibilities. 2 of my Windows 7 licenses are "academic versions" of Windows 7 unlimited because they ran some promo when it first launched that I bought. Apparently, despite being Unlimited, if you get the ISO off the pirate bay for the unlimited version, it doesn't work unless you have the academic version of the ISO. I have no idea how to get the academic version of the ISO, because the ISO downloader on MSDN academic is a Windows-only program. (At the time I had no Windows computers --- I was trying to get my first Windows 7 install up!). SO I got the same ISO from the pirate bay (the only place to get hassle-free ISOs). It's important to note that I have Unlimited-edition licenses. It's not failing because I paid for Home-premium and am trying to run Unlimited. This is different versions of Unlimited. It makes my ears bleed just how many different incompatible versions there are.
It's just a confusing mess. I'm sure I count under the piracy statistics as a pirate user. But in reality, I have 3 computers, two of which have Windows 7 installs, both "pirated". The fact that I own 4 licenses, none of which I could manage to get activated, won't come up on the statistics, will it?
Blizzard deals with the redownload and key issue well, you can login to your account and download the game or any platform and access any key that you need.
I'm not saying that they missed out on 90% of their revenue (though it's fair to say they lost out on some revenue). Rather, they did everything right: a fun game that anyone can play, great press, broad distribution through multiple channels, and no DRM. And yet a huge audience still saw it fit to pirate their game.
It'll be interesting to watch the evolution of game distribution. Xbox and iOS are massively growing platforms that also bring built-in DRM that's significantly harder to circumvent.
Your point is valid, but it is still worth noting that a huge audience also did buy their game. They just sold their millionth game on the App Store alone.
http://2dboy.com/2012/01/09/one-million-downloads/
Yes, and the price is dramatically lower as well: $2.99. I paid $19.99 on Steam three years ago. I'd be curious if they could do it all over again today, if they would do iOS first.
I think any game is still going to have the issue of kids not having access to the means to pay for it. Do they wait for heir parents and hope they decide to buy it for them or do they get it for free right now?
I couldn't agree more. Complaining about the piracy rate of a successful game is like complaining about the "people who didn't buy it" rate. Just think of all the people who didn't buy World of Goo! There must be billions of them!
But were they able to make a viable living from selling their game? 90% piracy does not equate to 90% loss of revenue. Not every pirate is a potential customer. Far from it. Were sales of the game higher because of the publicity due to the piracy? I don't know for sure and neither does anyone else. An instance of piracy is not necessarily something bad. Classical piracy is. But not digital 'piracy' necessarily. And by extension, high amounts of digital 'piracy' is not necessarily bad. Just some food for thought.
Why would it have been a better outcome if the same number of people had paid for the game and only 10% as many people got to play? It wouldn't have been better for the game-makers and it would have been far worse for the population.
The fundamental argument for anti-piracy is that at least some of the pirates would have paid for the content if piracy was not available. It's not all the pirates, and it's not none of the pirates. Nobody would care about pirates if they were 100% unmonetizable.
I'm making numbers up, but let's say 10% paid as usual, 1% converted to payment because piracy wasn't available, and 89% didn't want to pay and didn't play. The publisher gets 10% more revenue if piracy wasn't there.
Your example ignores the potential positive effect of piracy on sales. It's likely that at least some of the pirates purchased the game because they liked it. It's also likely that all the extra people playing it contributed to the publicity.
I've seen the most data from individual authors. Every report/experiment I have seen had the author making more money off books that were available for free.
Sometimes the HN, Reddit and other crowds forget they're not the only ones on the planet and in fact seem to make up a tiny minority—the enlightened ones. Sure, you/we may be willing to pay for an easy-to-use service though for now, because we're tech-savvy, we'll use a conglomerate of services and have it work on all our devices, etc while the mere mortal, common man struggles to avoid downloading smiley packages.
Why do the common people pirate? Because they want something without having to pay for it which is done primarily out of selfishness, laziness and wanting to pretend our actions have no consequences. On my Facebook feed, in conversations, etc they'll speak of BitTorrent or whatever and smile with an evil glint in their eyes and think they're awesome because they're getting all this content without paying for it.
The other funny thing is, you and others speak of needing to make it easier but for the common people pirating is so usually much harder—they have to keep their computers safe from malicious people and files, they need to figure out how Kazaa and BitTorrent works, they need to have the right codecs for Windows Media Player or Quicktime to play whatever the latest favourite container is, know which crack for Windows is reliable, etc. I know someone who proclaimed to be able to download torrents and she spoke of it as some great achievement and the people around her clamoured for her to download TV show x and music y.
Going down and hiring out a movie is easier for them, the majority. Going to a cinema is easier. Buying software which comes with a license is easier. Buying a CD is easier than them trying to download the whole album (Why is it do you think these people usually never download a full album and instead end up with a poor copy of popular song x and all these unnamed .mp3s?). There is the majority. Sure, the amount of people who use Steam and that is certainly relatively large but in comparison is still small.
It's nothing new to man to want something without having to earn it. Why else are 'get rich quick' or 'get amazing abs now' successful, or rather, even exist?
The post may reinforce the author's sense of moral superiority (And maybe he does have a superior sense of morals) but many of the counter-posts are simply doing the same thing for themselves.
Fact 1: Pirating is possible and fairly easy across the board.
Fact 2: Some content creators try to limit access to maintain "exclusivity" or to keep margins high. These guys get destroyed by piracy.
Fact 3: Other services strive to make it as easy as possible to get their products legally - Steam, iTunes, the Louis CK experiment. Their stuff is pirated a lot less and they generate a bunch of goodwill on the side.
These are facts, and no appeal to morality is going to change that. You can't just tell someone to suck it up and say it's not their "decision". Of course it's their decision - everyone decides whether or not to pirate! It is ABSOLUTELY their decision. The way to curb piracy is not to appeal to people's morality and tell people they SHOULD or SHOULDN'T do something. It's never going to work.
Curb piracy by making it easier, safer, and more reliable to purchase legally rather than pirate. Articles like this do nothing but reinforce the author's sense of moral superiority.