DRM and Piracy: The Vicious Circle

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You can argue against feasibility.

Can you provide an alternative suggestion that you would not veto and would have sufficient effect to get the publishers on board?

Stardock has tried, and they have a small stable of mostly small time developers, but despite the excellent example they provide, the big publishers still aren't willing to consider the low impact DRM approach.

Steam has a fairly well trusted platform for both consumers and developers and has a decently large stable of good sized developers and small time developers alike, but EA and a few others still do not use them or they include their DRM in their distributions on Steam. If even Steam is not good enough for a lot of developers, what kind of solution would you have in mind that might entice them?
 
Trying to convince someone not to steal is as likely as expecting world peace. It would be wonderful, but it's just not a very likely to happen.
 


Yeah we've been over this before, where you thanked me for my honesty and all that, but I never said piracy in general helps game developers, I said MY piracy does. It's not like it helps them a ton, but there are the few rare instances where it has, and that's better than nothing. I think piracy on a large scale hurts developers, and I don't understand how anyone could possibly argue against that.
 
drm is political :)

no one likes a a law or limitation that only effects innocent people and not criminals

drm needs improvement before it can be accepted

current drm hurts the innocent users more than the pirates

the pirates are simply getting a better/ less restrictive product

if drm was able to make it harder on the pirates but have no noticible effect on the legit user then it would be accepted, but the reason why it is argues politically is because the legit users are suffering and the pirates are not

and as I said before, thats why gun control is under constant debate, because so far all it has done is prevent innocent people from protecting them self from the gun pirates who get guns illegally

all laws that put innocent people at a disadvantage to criminals will always be under constant debate


and currently drm is making the legit users suffer more than the pirates, that has been my argument this whole time for this thread
 
drm is political
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Do you love using incorrect terms, or are you really that unclear on what things actually mean. These debate has nothing to do with anything political. But you keep on dragging in gun laws and foriegn governments. It's simply just a matter of how people see DRM affecting paying consumers versus pirates. We can disagree on those issues, but it's nothing political.
 
I've said it before, but I think Razor just really enjoys hyperbole and horribly exaggerated analogies too much.

Though both Rob and Rat tend to see things as black and white a bit too much as well.

As with all things I feel that the truth lies in the middle, between the extreme positions taken on either side. It just seems to be human nature to polarize any argument though.
 



over the top analogies are fun :)


but the reality is that both sides are wrong

piracy is wrong but drm is the wrong way to treat legit customers

 
As with all things I feel that the truth lies in the middle, between the extreme positions taken on either side.
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Actually I was just reading Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" so I'd like to quote, or at least paraphrase him in regards to you statement.
"Just because there exist two opposite opinions the truth does necessarily lie exactly in the middle. It's not only possible, but probable that one side is much closer to the truth than the other."
When it comes to piracy just because there are people as much in favor of it as I am against it, I would hope that I'm much closer to the correct stance. In regards to DRM I do not favor it as much as others disapprove of it. Whereas they have complete objection of all DRM, I'm hardly in complete favor all DRM. In this case I tend to be somewhere in the middle, which is where I assume the correct answer is. Basically I believe I am mostly right, which I guess is only natural :)
 
I do like Richard Dawkins, but I must disagree with his own extreme stance. I have witnessed first hand the benefits of what he opposes and without going into specifics, I think a path of tolerance on both sides is by far the preferred solution.

The problem with an extreme stance is that it necessarily alienates an entire side of the debate and therefore will not significantly influence them. I have found I can garner far more influence over a person and sway them far more with a more nimble perspective. If you do not take the extreme position then each side will see in your points some of what they believe, so they pay more attention to the things you say with which they disagree. It works with religion, politics, and sometimes even piracy debates.
 
Did Dawkins really get praised for making an obvious statement like that? It's virtually impossible for the "truth" to be in the middle of two opposing viewpoints...is this not common sense?
 
Did Dawkins really get praised for making an obvious statement like that? It's virtually impossible for the "truth" to be in the middle of two opposing viewpoints...is this not common sense?
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You'd think it would be "common" sense. But most commonly people consider themselves to be independents, moderates, centrist, etc. That would be fine if the majority of these people actually thought for themselves. Instead what most do is just assume that the middle is correct simply because it's the middle.
With the issue of Piracy I honestly think I hear more people screaming about how it's not bad, or doesn't hurt gaming than I actually people screaming the opposite. So the 'middle' ends up being tilted towards piracy and you hear a lot of things like "well the type of piracy I do isn't bad because..."
 
Honestly, I'd say anyone who claims that their form of piracy is good is very close to their extreme and nowhere near the middle. It is a bit like the people who recognize that their party has made several big mistakes but still vote straight ticket Republican or Democrat every time. Admission that what you are doing is wrong, but doing it anyway, in practicality is no better than not admitting that what you are doing is wrong.

Any time an issue gets polarized both sides scramble away from what they perceive the opposing opinion to be and in the process move away from the more rational response.

In regards to this issue, taking the hard line position that all DRM is warranted and we should just put with abusive practices that do nothing to deter piracy is just as blind as the position that piracy helps moderate the market. The best position is to look at the companies who are openly stating that the piracy problem is overstated and that the industry is actually quite healthy and see what they are doing right.
 
Who's taking the hard line stance that all DRM is warranted or good? That's just another area were the blind left-right-middle approach distorts the truth. So many people are so offended by even the thought of DRM that not agreeing with them supposedly means you're all for every type of DRM. Here's my actually positions an these matters,

-I think the gaming industry, including PCs is healthy and by no means on a downward trend.
-Piracy, while not neccessarily "killing" PC gaming is by no means good for it at all. Lower piracy is in the interest of both gamers and gaming companies.
-DRM can be, and often is, implemented both effectively and with minimal impact and even benifits to the user. The free market will detemine which forms these are - ie The DRM on Bioshock was lessened whereas WoW thrives with it's DRM.

One sentiment I keep on hearing against DRM is that it hurts the honest customer but not the pirate. Well how fair is it to the honest paying customer to just allow others to have the same thing you paid $50 for, for free?
 

Is locking my front door vigilantism? No, of course not. Although there are laws to protect me from burglars, it is entirely right and proper that I can take actions to protect my own property in the first place. This is how publishers view DRM.
 
The point is though, that if we do not make an uproar on the unacceptable DRM measures, then it will keep getting worse for the consumer without have any appreciable effect on pirates, but a few people have come out saying that whatever the industry tries is warranted even if it doesn't work. Hell that was pretty much the gist of the article that spawned this thread.

Outside of MMOs, there is no such thing as DRM that will be acceptable to most consumers AND will nullify piracy. That is quite frankly fantasy and striving for it is absurd. Look for ways to actively discourage piracy by offering things that pirates will be locked out of and just accept that piracy is going to happen. You can't stop China from stealing your game.

Provide a service that locks anyone who has not registered their software out of patches and updates. Going fully Steam will do that as well as distributing on Impulse. Then publicize new patches that add content and make people want it.

Will the game still be pirated? Undoubtedly, but those pirates will not have as good an experience as those who paid and they may even buy the game to get that better experience.
 


Really? I feel like most of the people on this forum are anti-piracy, and I hardly ever hear anyone condone its use, if ever. You could call me "in the middle," honestly, because I don't condone widespread use of piracy, even though I do it myself.

I think of it this way: I personally wish alcohol was banned because I think it does more harm to society than it does good, however I know that if I had a beer, I wouldn't abuse it. I am different than other people in that regard. I wish the driving age was 18, even though at 16 I got my license and was mature enough to operate a car, and I have never had a wreck. I wish we could live in a world without guns (except in video games, of course!), although I know if I owned one I would not misuse it.

It's in this way that I'm anti-piracy, and yet pirate some games myself because I believe that personally (and ONLY for myself because I can't speak for others) that my piracy doesn't harm, but actually, seemingly counter-intuitively, helps the industry. I don't know of anyone posting here that could be considered completely pro-piracy.
 
Not in this thread anyway. We have had some debates where there are multiple people claiming that Piracy is good for the industry and keeps the publishers honest.... which is a load of unrelenting bull malarky.
 
This forum and Tom's hardware in general is pretty anti-piracy, but you still get a lot of people who advocate it in some form. But if you look around the internet or tech circles in general the sentiment seems to be much farther in favor of piracy. Maybe it was the whole RIAA vs Napster fiasco that swung favor in that direction, but that's where it is. Piracy in general is even pretty mainstream. How many people do not have or ever had at least 1 questionable CD or movie? Hell I even have to check myself sometimes to decide whether something I'm doing is legit or not. And yes it is each our own responsability to do what we think is right, but I believe that in general the center of this debate leans towards 'to pirate' rather than 'not to pirate' which is not good.
No DRM will not "nullify" piracy. Locks on doors do not "nullify" break-ins but they're still not a bad idea.
 
Locks on doors are not bad ideas, Securom and Starforce are.

If you want to reduce piracy then you need to make sure that the paying customers have a better experience than pirates. Without that bare minimum philosophy, you will only feed piracy.
 
In the same way that all squares are rectangles but all rectangles are not squares, Securom/Starforce are certainly DRM but not all DRM is Securom/Starforce. That's what people need to understand and get past. There are people who hate Steam because it is obviously DRM and they simply hate DRM. There's no consideration for how Steam differs from Starfroce. To a lot of people DRM is DRM. That's the problem.
 



either way the legit customer will have the pay for the game, no company can make money giving away their game


but the drm is not doing anything to stop piracy and it is hurting the honest users, has there been any game where the drm has made it so people wont pirate it, it has never happened


any law thats made where the only people being burdened by it are the innocent people have always been under constant debate

and currently the most debated law is the gun control one, when ever there is a school shooting or a shooting in a gun free zone, there is a huge uproar about gun control because there sides arguing that the shooter would never been able to kill so many people if everyone had a gun, and there other sides saying that there is not enough being done to keep criminals from getting guns

but you never hear people complain about the laws that prevent people from having high powered explosives, because the government is able to keep them out of the hands of both the innocent people and the criminals



DRM punishes the innocent but the pirates feel none of that burden so the drm is completely one sided and if only giving the legit customers a problem thats why it is under constant debate


if they made a law that said that no one was allowed to own a car but the police only punished people who had no criminal record
either way the law will be hated but if it was the way i listed it, there would be a huge uproar from the public with people going crazy over only criminals being allowed to own cars


people like equality

in the 60's with the rampant racism that went on, there was a huge uproar with protests almost 24/7 because people were not being treated equally


with drm, people are not being treated equally, the honest are suffering from many limitations and hoops to jump through while the pirates are having a easy tine not worrying about any drm
 
As I said before, Both Impulse and Steam deter SOME pirates. The DRM built into consoles deters SOME pirates. And the DRM built into MMOs deters MOST pirates.

There has never been DRM that deters ALL pirates, but the ones where the legit user has a better experience than a pirate does are at least somewhat effective. Based on that, the focus of future DRM technologies should be to make sure that the legit user has a better experience than a pirate. To say that no DRM has ever been effective at all is to stick your head in a hole and ignore reality.
 
has there been any game where the drm has made it so people wont pirate it, it has never happened
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Have you even been reading this thread or are you just that obsessed with drawing somebody into an argument on gun control? No form of protection is every 100% whether it be against piracy, home invasion or pregnancy (go ask your parent's I'm sure they can attest to that, jk). But there are lot's of cases where DRM works pretty well even if not 100%. I'm not going to reiterate all of the ones I all ready listed, but even simple "Insert CD to play" types work. The average Joe isn't going to go search for a no cd crack and that alone prevents him from just passing his game to all his friends. Sure more sophisticated gamers will figure it out, but how many sales does such a simple thing save from piracy? I'm sure it's a decent amount.
 
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