Don't Worry About Copy Write Protection!

[Jack Simth]

KlvinoHRGA said:
Fruthermore, you say that laws prhibiting the number of backups you can make is unrealistic, but explain to me how many backups does it take to become unrealistic. Let's suppose you backup SE4 10 times? What possible reason would you have to do that? I can understand two or three, I myself make a backup of all my program disks every couple years and keep the originals safely stored and exclusively run off the backup copies and destroy the old backups once I'm done - I love my sheds-anything Snapper mulcher.

Oh, a reason for making 10 backup copies of the original CD? That's a little trickier; a reason for making arbitraty X+1 backups of the software (where X is the legal limit, of course)? Not difficult; suppose you make regular, full backups of your computer. Suppose that you put these backups onto write-once media (such as CD-R's or DVD-R's). You don't have any particular need to destroy the old ones, and, in fact, older backups are sometimes useful if you get hit with a sleeper worm, virus, trojan, or what have you, or just need to recover a file you thought you'd never need again five years ago. Well, if you're making routine, full backups, that copywrighted software that's on your machine gets copied to the backup. You never go through and destroy them (pointless, after all, and occasionally useful to have an ancient copy) so after an arbitrary X+1 number of full backups, you've exceeded the legal limit of X. If you happen to have a full copy of the data on your hard disk (for whatever reason - perhaps the CD is in a network drive, and it was worth the space to cut down on the traffic; perhaps the game runs more smoothly when it doesn't have to reffer to the CD every level, but just the hard disk (it's rather common for Hard Disk load times to be much shorter than CD load times); perhaps you just want to be able to plug your own music CD's into the player while playing the game - why is fairly immaterial) then those backups include a full copy of the CD data.

[David E. Gervais]

P.S. Software 'Protections' do not prohibit piracy, They like a challenge. Only by making it more costly and or less profitable will piracy finally be slowed to a crawl and let the PC Software industry florish again.

I never said my idea would stop piracy. (See above quote)

The problem IS that making copies is rediculiously cheap. And Software protections do not change that in any way. As it is, the Software industry's only solution has been to raise the prices of games to offset the loss of sales due to piracy. Well,.. the industry WILL die if that continues. No matter how good a game is, $89 for a game is way over budget.. I just wait for it to hit the bargain bin then buy the game.

I laughed out loud when I read an article about 'Bargain Bin Sales' where they said the 'budget/old' game sales were quickly becomming a large chunk of the industries total sales.. (I believe it was approaching 20%) That's allot. What I see in those numbers is that $19.95 is a price people are willing to pay, and not that people have a fondness for 'Retro Gamming'...

Anyways, since none of you are pirates, discussing ways to curb the growth of piracy will always feel like 'YOUR' rights and liberties are suffering for the sake of fighting piracy.

The ultimate solution (which publishers will never adopt) is to lower the prices of the games to 'reasonable' levels. If you could pick up the latest games at $19.95 would you? I would. If the answer is yes for the vast majority of game players then THAT would make a difference. What the publishers lost in single unit sales would be gained in volume of sales.

The reason the prices will never drop that drastically? No Publisher is willing to take the risk. Imagine going to the bank and saying "We have a great idea we want to sell our next product at $20 instead of our usual $89. We feel we will make much more money in volume sales." LoL the banks would laugh so hard and spit them out so fast it would be funny.

Bottom line,.. Piracy is getting cheaper while Software is geting more expensive,.. That can only lead to one destination. The fact that nobody sees that, and in fact would rather the industry collapse than take the 'risk' and lower the prices of their games. This spells Doom. 'PERIOD'

My first post was a failed attempt at pointing out that the 'gap' between the cost of piracy and the retail game is getting further and further appart. Close the gap and piracy will slow down.

Nuf said.

Cheers!

P.S. At my local Block Buster renting a movie costs $5 (so what if I can keep it at home for 5 days) a 'previously viewed' DVD costs from $6.99 to $16.99. Care to guess if I rent or buy? (throw $5 out the window or make a $12 purchase and 'Own' an original DVD for life... simple choice imho.

[Atrocities]

Back ups are only good if you have a safe place for them. There is no reason to make a back up and then leave it laying about the office without ever using it again. I have back ups of many of my important software in my safe. But I do not have back up disks for any of my Operating Systems. My XP, Win2k, and Win98 disks are safely stored in a draw where they can be stolen at a moments notice.

I have a safe but fear that it would be the ONE thing that any would be house burgler would spend time stealing. So anything important is not in it. I have however placed a small neutreno bomb in it that will detonate 30 minutes after the safe as been removed from its mountings without the use of the proper disarm code.

Seriously, I can see no reason to have more than one back up of anything and only then if you properly take care of the original and use the Back up for day to day use. Keep the original safe.

I have back ups of all my money. I keep my real money hidden in shoe box under the water bed. Its a ***** to get too, but at least I know its safe there.

[Saber Cherry]

Atrocities said:
I have back ups of all my money. I keep my real money hidden in shoe box under the water bed. Its a ***** to get too, but at least I know its safe there.

Money is safest in a bank. What are they going to do, loan it to Ethiopian warlords then write it off? That's about as likely as them freezing your account at the request of the IRS, until they figure out how to do subtraction and realize THEY owe YOU money. This isn't like the old days when the Mafia was the lender, and they broke the kneecaps of borrowers. That was very inefficient, since the lender had to hire thugs. Whereas nowadays, banks have the police, paid for by the borrowers

[Atrocities]

LOL - Very good.

The IRS fails audit after audit after audit, totalling billions of dollars. Yet they come after me, tooth gund and nail for a $14.00 paper work error on my 1989 tax return... WTF?

Certified Letter Arrives From The IRS
"You owe us $450.01 as a result of fines, penalties, fees, and collections costs for a $14.00 error on your 1989 1040 Tax form. Please remit this sum in full no later than last week."

So I sent them a black & decker skill saw and told them to keep the change. (They were not amused.)

[Saber Cherry]

Wow. That's pretty bad. Grossly bad, in fact. "I've been obsessing over you since we were in elementary school. You never noticed me, I sat behind you. Now pay me $450 for hiring a detective stalk you, cuz I have nothing better do do with my time than read his reports."

[Xrati]

Nice point!

Getting back to the original topic. All the countries in the world have jails, penal facilities and other such places for people who break the law. You are on your honor to follow laws put in place, to form a line that's not to be crossed. When/If you cross it, you violate that trust and these facilities are there as punishment. ANYONE know of an empty facility (not closed down but EMPTY). The point is there will always be someone who will cross the line. Not everyone will and certainly never would ‘no one ever cross it!' Society is here to raise a better generation then the one before. WE are regressing as a society and rules and laws mean nothing, to more people, on a daily basis then ever before. Are our children learning something by watching what society is teaching them. As we continue this path, less and less people will be willing to put out product that they cannot recover their costs to market. We will put an end to the industries and companies that produce products (Software and Recording mostly, but there are others). We have a choice to follow the rules/laws or to ignore them. IT IS AN INDIVIDUAL CHOICE that we all must make.

[Slick]

The ultimate solution (which publishers will never adopt) is to lower the prices of the games to 'reasonable' levels. If you could pick up the latest games at $19.95 would you? I would. If the answer is yes for the vast majority of game players then THAT would make a difference. What the publishers lost in single unit sales would be gained in volume of sales.

The true answer finally comes out.

[Fyron]

Xrati said:
We will put an end to the industries and companies that produce products (Software and Recording mostly, but there are others).

Actually, an end to the music recording industry would be a great boon to society. Its pretty cheap to record an album in a studio these days. The bulk of the cost is in getting the music on retail shelves and supporting the losses from the huge number of bands that fail to sell enough albums to be profitable for the publisher. As digital distribution grows, it is eliminating much of the need for a big publisher. I don't know the exact figures, but it doesn't really cost much at all to get your music on Itunes and its ilk. It costs Apple virtually nothing to host a song. That song being downloaded is where there is some cost, and that is passed on to the consumer.

As the cost to enter the music market drops drastically, there will be more and more artists that can churn a profit off of there music, even at vastly reduced volume of sales. No longer will there be a need for dry, repetitive pop bands being manufactured to sell as much as possible just so the colossal publishers can afford to take a risk on new, innovative acts. Those new, innovative acts can much more easily just self-publish digitally, or join a small "publisher" that is pretty much a group of artists, as it should be.

In the retail world, your music won't be prominently featured (or carried at all) if you are not signed with a big publisher. In a digital store, there is little difference between a title published by Sony-BMG and Jqhn Doe, precisely because there is no concept of shelf space. In retail, shelf space costs money (either in terms of charging the publisher money or in terms of customers not seeing other, potentially more profitable albums). In the digital world, nada.

The other big hurdle is advertising. But really, when is the last time you bought music based on an ad, or seeing some random artist whoring themselves out in a Pepsi ad? After hearing it on the radio or seeing it on MTV/VH1/CMTV/etc. (when they deign to play music), sure. But they will in time look to digital sales as well as retail sales figures to see what is popular, so any self-published artist that sells well will still be able to get radio and TV exposure.

The same will happen to the game industry at some point, though it will take longer since it takes more bandwidth to quickly download 3 GBs of game instead of 50 MBs of album. Companies like Shrapnel, Matrix, and Valve are on the forefront of this.

[David E. Gervais]

Atrocities said:
LOL - Very good.

The IRS fails audit after audit after audit, totalling billions of dollars. Yet they come after me, tooth gund and nail for a $14.00 paper work error on my 1989 tax return... WTF?

Certified Letter Arrives From The IRS
"You owe us $450.01 as a result of fines, penalties, fees, and collections costs for a $14.00 error on your 1989 1040 Tax form. Please remit this sum in full no later than last week."

So I sent them a black & decker skill saw and told them to keep the change. (They were not amused.)

AT,.. Contact the media about this and say "Have I got a story for you".. After the IRS stops blushing at the inapropriate persuit and fine of an honest citizen,.. who knows they may just accept the B&D as payment afterall.

or, sue them for charging you for their slow processing of your 1989 tax return.. After all you handed it in on time. Taking/waiting 17 years to process the return is just so wrong on many levels. If you have the 'return' for back then where you paid or recieved a tax due/refund. then the error is theirs not yours. If the IRS has no deadline on cold cases and can retro fine someone they are robbing the public.

A Similar story happened with an overdue book in a library.. when someone died their child brought the book back to the library. They Had no idea the book was lent out,.. they had to search through their records to find that it had indeed been lent out and said $300 in late fees were due. He went to the media,.. the library accepeted the book back and did not charge anything.

With the IRS Logic,.. when they see a person has tax due $14 or $14,000 all they have to do is ignore it and wait 16 years then say they owe $450/$450,000 due to an error. (even if the error was theirs)

Sick, it's just plain sick. Come to Canada, we are not as bad here.

Nuf said, Cheers!