SEIV is being Pirated

[BeeDee10]

One moderating factor to keep in mind is that not every warezed copy of SEIV is a "lost sale" for Shrapnel/Malfador; the vast majority of the people who download these things still wouldn't buy a legitimate copy if they _couldn't_ get it for free. There's an idiot I know who keeps pestering me to give him a copy of the full game since I recommended it to him. I keep on refusing, but he hasn't gone out and bought a legitimate copy as a result. He hasn't even bothered to expend the effort to find a warezed copy elsewhere.

I'm not condoning the practice, of course, but one shouldn't panic when one reads things like "10,000 copies of Program X that normally cost $50 each were pirated, therefore Company Y 'lost' $500,000." The actual reduction of potential income is probably much less.

[Dravis]

Yes, but I still think those Pirators SHOULD GO TO !*#@ !!!

[Saxon]

Couple of issues that I would be interested in hearing people’s thoughts about:

1. I, as a teenager and university student, was a regular pirate. Then I got a job, and realized what it meant to earn your money. I stopped pirating and started paying, as I would expect the same from others. Are most of the pirates “kids” or is this a big thing across all ages?
2. Where I used to live, there was a used bookstore, that also bought old games. They would then sell the games at a lower than retail price. Some people bought, burned copies, then sold it back. Others would play the game till they were tired of it, then sell it back. Where do these two activities fall in the eyes of the law and of people on the forum? Is it different than buying and selling used books?

I am interested to see what you all think.

[tesco samoa]

For the number 2. The license follows the software. When you sell it to the the book store they are now the license holders. When they sell it to the next person they take over the license. Now since royalities and anything else were paid with the first initial buying of the product I believe that the life of the product and where it goes should not generate more royality payment.
To me this is fine. It is the way it should be.

I think the question here is the actual question of intellectual property.

I personaly think that the system under its current model does not work.

I think their should be a time limit set on the property. Say 20 years then it becomes public domain no matter what. And that for those 20 years that intellectual property must be protected to the fullest extent of the law and all money generated from it should go to what ever the contract on that said item gets. (really bad wording sorry)

The problem with this issue is that it has become like a debate about the existence of God. Either you believe or you don't and their is no way of changing the other persons opinions.

Right now copy right laws are being revamped. And what happens in the next 10 years will shape the future of intellectual property for the next 50 years. This is occuring in all fields ( just look at the radio transmission laws or even the RIAA )and I personally believe that the governing bodies do not hold the consumer in the best interest.

Copy right is not a moral debate. But people argue on that stance ( look at my Last sentance from the previous paragraph).

I think this gets in the way of the real issues.

Public domain should be protected. Open license agreements should be protected. Intellectual property should be protected. And the law should be protected.

It is a balancing act. But one area should not remove the idology and protections of another area.

Question.

In Canada we have the home Users agreement. It allows us to record music , tv and radio for our personal enjoyment.

But we pay royalites for purchasing blank media.
And devices are being introduced that break the home Users agreement.

The question I ask is:

What should be the home Users rights be now and what should become?

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[tesco samoa]

Topic Topic Starter Replies Last Post
SEIV is being Pirated Atrocities 10 24 August 2001 14:52
A pirates life for me... WhiteHojo 365 24 August 2001 14:32

top two threads right now.

Made me laugh

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[disabled]

In case you are wondering, it was I who closed those topic on 'CollegeParty' and then got him Banned from ezboard completely for his actions.

I cannot tolerate people like that.

Ezboard also is looking into legal action because he has done this in many other forums as I'm told.

I also think Microsoft is searching for him because he has a hotmail email account and that would count as severe email abuse.

He seemed to be a fairly sad person.

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HADRIAN T. AVENTINE
admin@spaceempires.org
Administrator | SpaceEmpires.org

[This message has been edited by Hadrian Aventine (edited 24 August 2001).]

[Argh]

Well . . . hrmm. I must admit, I'd think that an all-Online gaming company would actually have far FEWER problems with piracy. . . if they used proper security.

A typical example would be the Pixels 3D software company. I've bought several revisions of their incredibly powerful(and relatively cheap) 3D animation software, and they have effectively locked every install by using the following method: they have a key generator that creates a unique key string tied to the serial number of the BIOS. Whenever I install the software, I'm unable to use it at all until I've gone Online and registered the software. . . whereupon a matching string is sent to me.

This works much better than either:

A. Trusting your customers not to make copies with their burners and simple cracking tools.

B. Sending out a serial/registration code on the jewelbox and locking the CD to the game. Again, it's too darn easy to break the code if you have both strings and can watch the registers. . . you don't need to be very good, either

Anyhow, Pixels' copy protection sounds like a royal pain in the rear for end-Users, right? Well. . . no! Since Pixels sells all of its software Online, and distributes through one supplier(sound familiar, Richard?) . . . all of the Users already have the expectation of having to deal with the software publisher's website, so having to take the extra step of registering to recieve their serial number(which can be generated from the seed provided by the machine's BIOS or any number of other unique identifiers) would provide fairly complete protection from warez hackers for a very reasonable price in terms of time and effort. Just a thought