Pirate sites seized. And so it begins...

[bluestarultor]

http://www.mail.com/Article.aspx/tech/0/APNews/Tech/20100630/U_US-TEC-Fighting-Movie-Piracy?pageid=1

Well, that discussion about ACTA? If this is any indication, it looks like we're in for a long period of crackdowns and general mayhem.

The story for those who may not be able to see the article:
Feds disable movie piracy websites in raids
AP - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 12:16:02 PM By RYAN NAKASHIMA
Feds disable movie piracy websites in raids Photo By AP

U.S. officials on Wednesday announced a major crackdown on movie piracy that involved disabling nine websites that were offering downloads of pirated movies in some cases hours after they appeared in theaters.

Officials also seized assets from 15 bank, investment and advertising accounts, and executed residential search warrants in North Carolina, New Jersey, New York and Washington.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials worked with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and other government agencies. The investigation involved about 100 agents in 11 states and the Netherlands.

Officials wouldn't say how many people were suspected of intellectual property theft, but said the penalties could include prison time.

The raids were the first actions in a new "Operation In Our Sites" initiative to combat Internet counterfeiting and piracy.

The government only seized domain names for the sites in question, however, meaning the computers that run the sites could still be used under a different name.

Acknowledging the slippery nature of online piracy, John Morton, the assistant secretary of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said government agents would have to be persistent in chasing site operators.

"If a site reappears, so will we. If the criminals move overseas, we will follow," he said at a press conference on the studio lot of The Walt Disney Co. "Take it from me, I don't think that we've stopped Internet piracy in a day, but this is going to be a sustained effort."

The domain names seized were: TVShack.net, PlanetMoviez.com, ThePirateCity.org, Movies-Links.TV, FilesPump.com, Now-Movies.com, ZML.com, NinjaVideo.net and NinjaThis.net. All the sites' domain names were registered in the U.S., although one was physically based in the Netherlands.

The sites had about 6.7 million visitors combined every month, and at least one had about a 10-fold increase in traffic from a year ago. They made money from advertising or donations.

Officials said the sites would be disabled. As of Wednesday afternoon, several of the sites checked by The Associated Press were still functioning. The ICE said it would take about a day before all the sites would show a banner saying the domain name had been seized.

Morton said there were hundreds of similar websites infringing on copyrights.

The conference was also attended by executives from Disney, Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures, the Directors Guild of America, Motion Picture Association of America and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which covers behind-the-scenes workers in the movie industry.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement that money lost because of copyright infringement translates into lost jobs. The MPAA said film and television production supports 2.4 million American jobs and contributes $80 billion a year to the economy.

"That's why we took the actions that we did," Bharara said in a statement. "If your business model is movie piracy, your story will not have a happy ending."


I'm by no means in support of piracy, but these methods scare me. And it sounds like ACTA moving into action from the talk of stepping onto foreign soil to do it. This comes off as desperate and nearly lawless, given there's no mention of any process involved.

[Loyal]

So wait... two websites dedicated to pirating are named after ninjas?

[Jagos]

My post at Techdirt:

tvshack.net is still up...

nowmovies is down...

thepiratecity.org is down...

thisninja.net was completely removed. (Maybe made up...)

Basically I don't see how this was effective when out of some of these, I know of at least a few extra alternatives to watch movies if I want to.

It's just more fear mongering along with added enforcement from boys on high to make it seem as if something is being done to combat infringement.

As it stands, I had thought the 1930s had already happened once. Seems we need a refresher in it.

To make matters worse, DISNEY (http://www.thewrap.com/movies/article/feds-seize-domain-names-pirate-sites-18895) reported this!

We really need to free Mickey Mouse.

[Pip Boy]

U.S. officials on Wednesday announced a major crackdown on movie piracy that involved disabling nine websites that were offering downloads of pirated movies in some cases hours after they appeared in theaters.


in some cases hours after they appeared in theaters

hours after they appeared in theaters

Is it just me or does that sound kinda slow? Most movies are available several days before the theater release... is what I heard somehwere.

[Preturbed]

TVShack.net, PlanetMoviez.com, ThePirateCity.org, Movies-Links.TV, FilesPump.com, Now-Movies.com, ZML.com, NinjaVideo.net and NinjaThis.net

Who the fuck are these guys?

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

Who the fuck are these guys?

The idiots that set up their servers in countries where it's possible they'll get caught.

[Aerozord]

only thing that worries me is the possibility of jail time. I think this should be kept a purely civil matter. Sue them into oblivion fine but dont put them in the same catagory as people that steal cars and wallets

[bluestarultor]

only thing that worries me is the possibility of jail time. I think this should be kept a purely civil matter. Sue them into oblivion fine but dont put them in the same catagory as people that steal cars and wallets

Alternatively, treat it like actual theft and prevent the companies from being able to sue them into oblivion. Actual thieves get off a hell of a lot easier than pirates because nobody's making an example of them.

[Pip Boy]

The only thing here that surprises me in this is that the federal government is getting involved. Usually the only people who would ever give a shit about internet piracy are the law firms and record companies that get their shits and giggles by suing you into oblivion for it.

[Jagos]

...

You realize that before Tvshack.net went down, it was serving to show a lot of TV shows along with other movies?

I see no way that they actually caused damage to the industry, Especially when they can't give data to the government in the first place (http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2010/04/13/gao-piracy-report-questions-entertainment-industry039s-data)

Well, Megs, they have to serve as the industry's secret police. That way we respect their copyright when no one really does at this time.

[BitVyper]

Alternatively, treat it like actual theft and prevent the companies from being able to sue them into oblivion. Actual thieves get off a hell of a lot easier than pirates because nobody's making an example of them.

Seriously, this is the equivalent of petty theft. If these people were stealing actual DVDs and they got caught, there's a decent chance they'd just get kicked out of a store and not even be arrested.

[bluestarultor]

Seriously, this is the equivalent of petty theft. If these people were stealing actual DVDs and they got caught, there's a decent chance they'd just get kicked out of a store and not even be arrested.

Well, not in the Middle East. If you steal something there, they cut off your hand, so in the logic of removing what you used to commit the crime, it makes sense to cut off a pirate's Internet like people are advocating these days.

[Jagos]

...

Blues, do you really believe that will change people's behaviors for good? I can see nothing positive from trying to have a "three strikes" ruling as France has.

[bluestarultor]

...

Blues, do you really believe that will change people's behaviors for good? I can see nothing positive from trying to have a "three strikes" ruling as France has.

I was trying to make a point. The punishment is way out of line with the severity of the crime.

[Mondt]

You are not stealing DVDs.

You are not stealing CDs.

You are stealing royalties. You are stealing the money out of their pocket by copying the CDs and DVDs. Don't say stealing DVDs, because its not true.

[Kim]

And stealing DVDs and CDs isn't stealing the "money out of their pocket" because... why?

[bluestarultor]

You are not stealing DVDs.

You are not stealing CDs.

You are stealing royalties. You are stealing the money out of their pocket by copying the CDs and DVDs. Don't say stealing DVDs, because its not true.

Sorry if I was misunderstood on this. No, I know we live in a digital era. I just disagree with data's worth suddenly jumping tens of thousands of dollars because it's not something you can hold.

By all means, if they handed out ten thousand copies of a song, they should be charged for those ten thousand copies. In fact, those things are incredibly easy to track. But I think that those ten thousand copies should be treated the same as physical copies in terms of cost instead of valuing each instance at the price of a motor vehicle.

As a guy whose profession is going to lead to his work eventually being pirated, I totally dig making people pay for this stuff. Trust me, it's going to happen eventually unless I end up writing custom applications in-house. If you sell it, there will be people who don't want to pay, and that puts a damper on my future employer's ability to pay me. On the other hand, realism says that there's only so much money in the world and exceeding a pirate's ability to pay it isn't helping anyone, just fostering resentment of the general public. My belief is that by integrating piracy into the existing legal system, you don't give them a banner to march behind and justice gets served to the fullest extent possible.

[Mondt]

And stealing DVDs and CDs isn't stealing the "money out of their pocket" because... why?The concept of stealing a DVD to steal money from them means you are denying them money twice; once by not buying it and once by not allowing anyone else to buy it.

Copying it only denies it once. It is different.

Maybe we're misunderstanding each other.

[bluestarultor]

Just to rein this in before it snowballs, both are still theft. It's like Doom and Yahtzee are both games. You can treat them similarly without treating them the exact same and you can acknowledge the differences without going overboard.


But back on track, what does everyone think of the methods being used in this instance?

[Loyal]

By all means, if they handed out ten thousand copies of a song, they should be charged for those ten thousand copies. In fact, those things are incredibly easy to track. But I think that those ten thousand copies should be treated the same as physical copies in terms of cost instead of valuing each instance at the price of a motor vehicle.No, no, no. Physical copies != digitally distributed copies. They are not the same. Stealing a physical copy costs money in that the company who produced it must buy or create the disc, and then pay shipping charges and the like to distribute it to stores. Data that remains at a digital level can be copied infinitely and at no charge.

If there is going to be a monetary penalty associated with this sort of thing, make it a flat fee for doing the act at all, rather than trying to charge for each file copied and distributed.

As far as the company's assets can be provably concerned, a man who distributes 1000 copies of a file is no different from a man who hands out 1,000,000, simply because there's no way of proving that the one thousand or one million pirates would have gone out and legitimately bought the media otherwise. Trying to act as though each pirated copy directly harms the company's bottom line is bullshit.

Furthermore, I can easily see a scenario where a company, knowing about an illegal distributor, deliberately downloads hundreds or thousands of copies from this distributor (through whatever means that can't immediately be tied to them) prior to taking them down so as to jack up damages awarded when the distributor is taken to court.

But back on track, what does everyone think of the methods being used in this instance? What methods? I don't recall reading anything about how they shut these sites down, merely that they did so at all.

On a different note, I imagine that a media push, to show that there is a cracking-down being done, would involve some more high-profile piracy sites and known venues of piracy in general. As it stands I have never heard of any of the sites being listed, and so those names have no significance to me. That article would read no different to me if every one of those websites had been made up on the spot to put up a good front.

[Hanuman]

Who the fuck are these guys?
Agreed, this serves as no real loss to the piracy community.

I am 100% behind supporting entertainment media, but I am also 100% behind knowing wtf you are supporting before you support it.

[Kim]

The concept of stealing a DVD to steal money from them means you are denying them money twice; once by not buying it and once by not allowing anyone else to buy it.

Copying it only denies it once. It is different.

Maybe we're misunderstanding each other.

Ah, right. The way you phrased that made it sound, to me, like you were saying that piracy was somehow worse than stealing the actual DVD or CD from the store.

[Azisien]

Stealing harms the retailer in question, not the makers of the DVD/whatever. Unless the retailer is like an avid fan of RMAs, which I guess is possible.

[bluestarultor]

No, no, no. Physical copies != digitally distributed copies. They are not the same. Stealing a physical copy costs money in that the company who produced it must buy or create the disc, and then pay shipping charges and the like to distribute it to stores. Data that remains at a digital level can be copied infinitely and at no charge.

Loyal, I don't think you get what I'm saying. When you have a physical copy, most of the cost of that copy goes to the media it's on. The cost of the song itself IS an actual cost. If they're going to be going after pirates under the flag of fighting for the songs, that would be the logical cost to use.

If there is going to be a monetary penalty associated with this sort of thing, make it a flat fee for doing the act at all, rather than trying to charge for each file copied and distributed.

There is no such thing in modern law. It just doesn't work. First off, you have examples of old laws that are hilariously outdated, like the law where you're not allowed to charge a politician more than $20 a night to stay in a hotel or whatever. Back in the day, the cost was extravagant. Now it's peanuts. Or, less hilariously, the maritime law invoked to limit liability for the oil spill. Fixed charges are abusable.

Second, it encourages businesses to fight for as high a flat rate as they can, so even one song can cost thousands. So there you have abuse on the other end, and in a much more immediate and unjust manner.

Clearly, at least a graduated rate would be beneficial. Charging the value of the song is just easier. If you want to be fair, you can do it by some reasonable percent. Even if you do it by 10%, that's still an extra 10% that the companies wouldn't otherwise have gotten.

On the other hand, that's also assuming that companies are willing to be equitable to pirates, which, in light of RIAA, isn't happening.

To sum up my feelings on this, I'm looking for a kinder solution to replace one that's an atrocity. If they're going to be doing this stuff, it should at least not make the world hate them, and if the terms SOUND fair, that's less fuel to the fire.

As far as the company's assets can be provably concerned, a man who distributes 1000 copies of a file is no different from a man who hands out 1,000,000, simply because there's no way of proving that the one thousand or one million pirates would have gone out and legitimately bought the media otherwise. Trying to act as though each pirated copy directly harms the company's bottom line is bullshit.

We can debate all day about lost sales, but I'm not going to. I'm sure we'll agree that it's not as big a problem as the industries say. Simply put, there is a percentage of people who would have otherwise bought the stuff, and companies are not backing down on that. They, being corporations, whose first purpose is to pursue every red cent they can, are going to be aggressive, and, because nobody's doing individual download surveys, assume that all of it is lost profits. Flawed? Incredibly. Good at inflating numbers? Definitely. Fair to providers? No, but they're the ones breaking the law, so the courts are going to be less sympathetic.

I'm not saying I'm totally in bed with the way things are being done. I'm trying to offer a way to make flawed practices slightly better. They'll still be flawed, but at least they won't be as ridiculously flawed.

Furthermore, I can easily see a scenario where a company, knowing about an illegal distributor, deliberately downloads hundreds or thousands of copies from this distributor (through whatever means that can't immediately be tied to them) prior to taking them down so as to jack up damages awarded when the distributor is taken to court.

And that would be illegal under some law, I'm sure. At the very least, it's obstruction of justice. Being a computer guy, I can tell you that anything can be tracked if someone wants to hard enough. Hell, Wikipedia even can do it. They keep tabs on corporate employees who go around changing articles. This includes software corporations such as Microsoft.

All that needs to be done is an IP trace and all roads lead to Rome. If a small handful of addresses are seen as having performed mass actions, that's plenty of evidence that it was deliberate, even if it's not, for some reason, able to be traced back to a source.

If you track MAC address, this is even easier.

What methods? I don't recall reading anything about how they shut these sites down, merely that they did so at all.

On a different note, I imagine that a media push, to show that there is a cracking-down being done, would involve some more high-profile piracy sites and known venues of piracy in general. As it stands I have never heard of any of the sites being listed, and so those names have no significance to me. That article would read no different to me if every one of those websites had been made up on the spot to put up a good front.

The methods in question are stated in the article, in that there WAS no process involved. They just seized the domain names.

Also, I agree that I've never heard of any of these and I think they're just throwing out names for the uninformed. Showing examples of places they did it to shows that they've done it, regardless of whether it actually made a difference.

[Hanuman]

Stealing harms the retailer in question, not the makers of the DVD/whatever. Unless the retailer is like an avid fan of RMAs, which I guess is possible.
I see it from the other side of the coin; if a movie tricks me into seeing it and it's a piece of crap then really they've stolen my money.
At least with seeing the movie first and then formulating an opinion it gives you the choice AND the entertainment either way.

It's not like you can literally steal a movie online, like put a forum post down and a bunch of thugs break into a shipping truck and get a crate of them and one arrives slipped through your window next-day.
It's more like copying down a recipe #####'d handed from someone who invented a marvelous cake of some kind, passed down by people who liked the recipe but didn't want to pay for it.

It does not directly harm anyone, it harms the industry for future generations, all the people who put their work into the movie have already been payed in full, the people now making money on it are the investors, the ones who will make all of the money once the movie breaks even, and will get payed more money than all the actors combined regardless of your individual piracy or not.

[bluestarultor]

Just to comment on this, Lev, but really, that's what reviews are for. If all the reviewers, who are actually paid TO see the movie, say it's shit, then chances are you can save your money. Rotten Tomatoes is free, after all.

[Hanuman]

Just to comment on this, Lev, but really, that's what reviews are for. If all the reviewers, who are actually paid TO see the movie, say it's shit, then chances are you can save your money. Rotten Tomatoes is free, after all.
Having to take the trouble to track down a bunch of obscure movie reviews so I can get an opinion with more insight than an average youtube comment so I can go gamble my money on a movie.
vs.
Assured entertainment either way, is easier, if I enjoyed it I can now buy a DvD and everyone is happy, if I didn't enjoy it then I wouldn't have payed to go see it knowing what I did now thus no one loses and everybody's happy.

Personally, that's a no brainer.

[BloodyMage]

Reviews aren't always correct, or in fact useful. For instance, I read reviews that Shrek forever after was pretty bad and wasn't worth watching, but yet I've heard of children who went to see it and enjoyed it, so obviously there's a disparity there between the opinion of the reviewer and the reaction of the target audience. So, it's not as if reviews are completely reliable.

[bluestarultor]

Maybe it's just me, but I don't have any trouble finding a rating. (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/)


I'd try to push this back on topic, but I guess there wasn't enough to discuss.

[BloodyMage]

Again it's still not reliable. RT gives Last Airbender a rating of 8% and Twilight has 50%, yet I know that I would enjoy even a bad adaptation of something I like than a bad adaptation of something equally bad, so I'd enjoy Airbender over Twilight, but given RT's scores, one would be expected to enjoy the latter over the former.

On the point of the sites seized, I've heard of a few of them, but it's not really a huge blow to the pirates.

[Hanuman]

Point is blue, pirating allows you to see tons upon tons of movies regardless of how much you are willing to spend on them in the first place.
You are happier, good movies get their monies if there are monies to be gotten, everybody wins.

Don't fight the corp's battle.

[bluestarultor]

Point is blue, pirating allows you to see tons upon tons of movies regardless of how much you are willing to spend on them in the first place.
You are happier, good movies get their monies if there are monies to be gotten, everybody wins.

Don't fight the corp's battle.

Um, no, not really. Movies that are box-office failures might go to DVD, yes, but then you're crapping on the theaters, who are pretty much shat on by the entire industry because of how much money the studios demand of them and having their hands tied to play movies for a certain amount of time no matter how badly they fail to bring that money in. They have to sell tickets to try to pay off a flat rate that makes RIAA look downright generous for movies they can't even get rid of if they're doing poorly.

Piracy is never without a victim.

Also, talk about big, faceless corporations all you like, but piracy also happens to little guys like me in the indie market. I've poured the last four years of my life into making the resources and planning the workings of some of my projects and, if my future employers wouldn't fire me over it, releasing them for a nominal fee might be nice. I'm not speaking for "The Man" so much as I'm speaking from the perspective of a man who's in the industry as a profession and as a hobby both. Maybe piracy would help get the word out on my projects and help me, but then maybe also people will figure because I'm heavily into retro as a stylistic choice that I just shat it out in an afternoon and don't deserve the $10 or whatever I might like to charge, which, really, amounts to a matter of thousandths of a cent per hour per copy.

Saying I'm fighting for the corporations is insulting. I'm holding out for a bit of human decency because theft is still theft, no matter who it hurts or how little it hurts them. I shouldn't have to listen to arguments about how people don't deserve money for their work just because it's not good or that it's impossible to determine if it's good or not until you try it for yourself. Those are bullshit excuses to justify something that our society as a whole recognizes as wrong in all other cases. What, killing a guy because he pissed you off is wrong, but killing his dog is A-okay? Cut the crap.


I'm done here.

[dementedmongoose]

I have to agree with Blue. I don't like the way they treat pirates, it's inhuman to charge US $20,000 for pirating a copy of Earthsiege 2, which is currently selling exclusively on Amazon.com for US $1.99! What the hell is that? 10,000% interest for one copy? Madness, I say! Utter madness!

Flipside of that, pirating a game or movie does take money out of the developers' pockets. It may only be 15% for actors in movies, 20% for directors, or 17% for video game producers, but it's still money from their pockets, and they have earned it.

But honestly, I can't see how seizing these domain names is stopping anything. Probably slowed the sites in question down for a week, tops. This is a scare tactic and a bluff. Nothing was accomplished by this except to show that the US government has finally stepped in to fix a problem and is mucking it up.

I'll tell you how to really slow piracy. Have developers upload shareware versions that allow you to get so far. Or single view movies.

[Hanuman]

Um, no, not really. Movies that are box-office failures might go to DVD, yes, but then you're crapping on the theaters, who are pretty much shat on by the entire industry because of how much money the studios demand of them and having their hands tied to play movies for a certain amount of time no matter how badly they fail to bring that money in. They have to sell tickets to try to pay off a flat rate that makes RIAA look downright generous for movies they can't even get rid of if they're doing poorly.
Point taken, I know little about the intricate sales marketing of movies and post-sales figures, I'm mostly connected in the pre-sales connections like wardrobe, performers, makeup artists.

Piracy is never without a victim.
You have X dollars to spend this month do you:
A) See 5 movies and pay for 1
B) See 1 movie and pay for 1
C) See 0 movies and pay for 0
D) See 5 movies and and pay for 0 and buy an additional 20L of kerosene
^ I hope this makes it a little clearer

Also, talk about big, faceless corporations all you like, but piracy also happens to little guys like me in the indie market. I've poured the last four years of my life into making the resources and planning the workings of some of my projects and, if my future employers wouldn't fire me over it, releasing them for a nominal fee might be nice. I'm not speaking for "The Man" so much as I'm speaking from the perspective of a man who's in the industry as a profession and as a hobby both. Maybe piracy would help get the word out on my projects and help me, but then maybe also people will figure because I'm heavily into retro as a stylistic choice that I just shat it out in an afternoon and don't deserve the $10 or whatever I might like to charge, which, really, amounts to a matter of thousandths of a cent per hour per copy.

Saying I'm fighting for the corporations is insulting. I'm holding out for a bit of human decency because theft is still theft, no matter who it hurts or how little it hurts them. I shouldn't have to listen to arguments about how people don't deserve money for their work just because it's not good or that it's impossible to determine if it's good or not until you try it for yourself. Those are bullshit excuses to justify something that our society as a whole recognizes as wrong in all other cases. What, killing a guy because he pissed you off is wrong, but killing his dog is A-okay? Cut the crap.
The last indie movie I pirated was the movie that STALKER shadow of chernobyl was based on, and it was out of print and about 40-50 years old.
If they were publishing copies I would have bought it TBH since it was a present anyway and would have looked nicer, if I bought it now it would be off ebay.

But yeah, whens the last time people here have even found a stream or torrent to an indie movie?

how people don't deserve money for their work just because it's not good
I do not spend money on things I do not like, why should I?

[Aerozord]

the corporations would get alot further if they were fair. Like calculate the number of times a movie was downloaded or viewed, multiply it by retail value, then deduct that from their assets. Most likely suing them to oblivion anyways, but then atleast people would look at it as reasonable compensation then overly harsh scare tactic.

I for one do think they are entitled to that money, and not a cent more. Its how copyright issues would be handled in any other situation, should be how its done here

[bluestarultor]

Just as a final note now that I've cooled off some, I'm not in the movie industry, Lev, I'm a programmer and was talking about game projects. The example stands, because the same excuses are thrown across the board.

I'm now going to step out again until at least morning.

[Yumil]

The scary thing is that many of the sites on that list that I knew about did not actually host any of the videos. I'd suspect none of them did.

So, is linking a movie on another distribution site you distributing it or is it the distribution site itself distributing it?

Quick Edit: Basically, it's legally gray. If this continues, one may be sued for linking a funny clip on youtube that is copyrighted. While pirating is bad, you need to shut down the distribution directly. They need to work more with the sites that they were hosting on(megavideo, zshare, veoh, etc...) in order to prevent it. They can go after the sites that host it themselves, but meh, theres not really much they can do on linkshare sites.

[Jagos]

Sorry if I was misunderstood on this. No, I know we live in a digital era. I just disagree with data's worth suddenly jumping tens of thousands of dollars because it's not something you can hold.

By all means, if they handed out ten thousand copies of a song, they should be charged for those ten thousand copies. In fact, those things are incredibly easy to track. But I think that those ten thousand copies should be treated the same as physical copies in terms of cost instead of valuing each instance at the price of a motor vehicle.

As a guy whose profession is going to lead to his work eventually being pirated, I totally dig making people pay for this stuff. Trust me, it's going to happen eventually unless I end up writing custom applications in-house. If you sell it, there will be people who don't want to pay, and that puts a damper on my future employer's ability to pay me. On the other hand, realism says that there's only so much money in the world and exceeding a pirate's ability to pay it isn't helping anyone, just fostering resentment of the general public. My belief is that by integrating piracy into the existing legal system, you don't give them a banner to march behind and justice gets served to the fullest extent possible.

...

Blues, I have something for you to look at.

Trent Reznor model (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Njuo1puB1lg)

Watch it, find your own niche and find a way to make scarcity out of the goods. But complaining about piracy is where I'm going to disagree with you constantly.

[bluestarultor]

...

Blues, I have something for you to look at.

Trent Reznor model (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Njuo1puB1lg)

Watch it, find your own niche and find a way to make scarcity out of the goods. But complaining about piracy is where I'm going to disagree with you constantly.

Just finished watching through the entire video and, yes, the model incorporates good things. In fact, it incorporates things I already had planned with my own projects, such as demos and keeping open channels and freeware.

When I talk about piracy, I already have a good idea of how to prevent it, because I've stumbled across that model before.

On the other hand, I will never believe piracy is right. If a case goes to court, which creators are in their rights to do, I believe they have a right to just compensation. I don't, however, believe current compensation is in any way just.

Would I drag people to court? No. No matter how big I ever get, I will never be that petty. I'm anti-DRM, pro-demo, pro-shareware, pro-freeware, and a look at my words on the matter will show that I care about the customer in general. By giving the customer the best product and treating them like people, you gain more customers. On the other hand, other people don't share that model, and when they do drag people to court, I'd like to see actual justice being served, not lives being ruined just because the creators feel like being nasty.



I realize my views on the matter are complex, but they're reasonable. They favor everyday people a heck of a lot more than the current system does. Companies are going to charge music piracy by the song anyway, so isn't it better if they can only charge the value of the song instead of tens of thousands of dollars each?

[Ryong]

There is, however, a funny thing you're not considering, Blues, specially within the gaming industry.

Sometimes, stuff is pricy. Really pricy. It's specially worse in some places - Brazil is a good example for games, since xbox360 games cost US$130 on average. So people pirate. A lot. But the xbox360s are getting sold. The PS3, however, can't be pirated - as of now, that is - and I'm pretty sure a lot less people own one here, even if they cost nearly the same. Now, had the xbox360 the same strength of anti-piracy as the PS3 has currently, its sales would never have been high. No, piracy isn't good, but there are a lot of people who wouldn't buy your game or your albums in the first place. People who think "Should I buy it? Is it really worth so much?" and either wait forever to buy - when there's a sale - or simply say no to themselves and don't. Not everyone that pirates is this, but there's a lot of them. Piracy gives them an opportunity to have a go at it - they lose on some things like support or some such sometimes - and it's entertainment for them and probably praise for the author - but hey, they didn't pay for it.

[bluestarultor]

There is, however, a funny thing you're not considering, Blues, specially within the gaming industry.

Sometimes, stuff is pricy. Really pricy. It's specially worse in some places - Brazil is a good example for games, since xbox360 games cost US$130 on average. So people pirate. A lot. But the xbox360s are getting sold. The PS3, however, can't be pirated - as of now, that is - and I'm pretty sure a lot less people own one here, even if they cost nearly the same. Now, had the xbox360 the same strength of anti-piracy as the PS3 has currently, its sales would never have been high. No, piracy isn't good, but there are a lot of people who wouldn't buy your game or your albums in the first place. People who think "Should I buy it? Is it really worth so much?" and either wait forever to buy - when there's a sale - or simply say no to themselves and don't. Not everyone that pirates is this, but there's a lot of them. Piracy gives them an opportunity to have a go at it - they lose on some things like support or some such sometimes - and it's entertainment for them and probably praise for the author - but hey, they didn't pay for it.

Look, I'm not saying parts of the system aren't broken. Brazil is a prime example of everything gone terribly wrong. But Brazil's case is a horrid mess that was basically that way from the beginning. With poor market support, people pirated just to get stuff. Then when stuff started coming over, the high prices didn't encourage them to stop. The piracy in turn made producers question the market. It's a horrible death spiral which will probably never be fixed, and it's not representative of the rest of the world.

I have no idea why the prices in Brazil are so out and out ridiculous, but poor availability and high prices are driving market forces that need to be addressed by the industry, and they just aren't doing it.

That doesn't excuse the rest of everyone in cases like the Humble Indie Bundle, where more than a quarter of people are willing to steal from small indie game developers even when allowed to set their own price down to a cent and there's no DRM (http://www.cracked.com/article_18571_5-reasons-its-still-not-cool-to-admit-youre-gamer_p2.html). Remove the three biggest excuses for piracy and people STILL pirate out the wazoo.

In short, it's not just price that makes people pirate, nor is it companies implementing security that's a hassle or the companies being faceless monoliths that make for an easier argument that it's a victimless crime. A lot of people, over a quarter, pirate regardless.

[Jagos]

Blues, it's not that I'm attacking you but I look at piracy differently.

I look at it as an opportunity that is lost.

Think about if Nintendo put their older games on a platform for the PC. Would we need various emulators if we could play these games on that platform?

The best analogy I can think up, other than Trent Reznor's, is Wal-Mart. It's amazing what they do when you really look at it. Inside a store they have a few items that get you in the door. Once you're in, you're hooked on other things to take your money.

When I think of all of the games that have been made, all of the entertainment of the past, not only are you competing with that, but you're also competing to get heard as an independent.

IMO, the legal system shouldn't even be involved with the process. If people want to pirate, then you should focus on making your product a more valuable (and scarce) commodity. It's not justice to try to make an example of people if you are holding the big guns. Hell, what's right for the business, may not be right for the individual.

The problem is that once you release your data, you have no further control over it. Who knows? It may just become popular enough for the Wii. (http://www.cavestory.com/)

I'll get into what the Humble Bundle could have done better. Firstly, they should have given their items more value. It's something they didn't do.

It's great that they said "we're doing this for charity" but damn... It's a market. I gave them 10 bucks for the value.

As I've been saying, something scarce would have worked. Something that is a memory of WHY we should care.

Remember Trent? Well...

A limited edition black CD case of the games when you donate 2500 bucks.

A visit from one of the developers if you donate 1500 bucks.

Signed card from every programmer and lead if you donate 1000.

The list goes on and on. It's the reason so many people torrented the thing. There was no difference between the "pirated" good and the commercial. More than likely, there should have been a torrent of the game. It's the only way to reach a few markets. Other than that, I could go on all day about what they could have done.

[Ryong]

Look, I'm not saying parts of the system aren't broken. Brazil is a prime example of everything gone terribly wrong. But Brazil's case is a horrid mess that was basically that way from the beginning. With poor market support, people pirated just to get stuff. Then when stuff started coming over, the high prices didn't encourage them to stop. The piracy in turn made producers question the market. It's a horrible death spiral which will probably never be fixed, and it's not representative of the rest of the world.

Actually, it started pretty well and at some point just before Playstation 1 and Nintendo 64 were released everything went crazy downhill. At some point, TecToy, the main company involving gaming, responsible for bringing the Sega Genesis and, as far as I know, the only one that actually had support if you had some trouble, crashed and burned. They tried making their own game system, I think, and the playstation one came out and it was easy to pirate and, well, both losses combined were too much.

On the humble indie pack thing: No one pirates without a reason.

Just remember that being a dick can sometimes be a reason for anything.

[bluestarultor]

I guess we do see piracy differently, Jagos, because as a producer myself, I know what goes into making this stuff. It's a lot of time that could be spent doing other things. Instead, it goes into planning all the math, all the events, all the systems, all the characters, making all the graphics, music, and sound, programming, and extensive testing to make sure it all works, over and over and over again, doing everything you can to break it and then having it sent back to the drawing board when you do. You can ask Nikose about that last bit. It makes you hate games. And there WILL be changes. I have a policy of never deleting resources I figure I won't end up using in case another change means they're needed again. It's served me well more than once. Things are done and redone in a cycle. The software needed to program the stuff costs hundreds of dollars a pop. Even being able to put it out on the market can hold a fee, like how Microsoft requires a monthly membership or whatever to put things out on XBLA.

To make an indie game, you have to really, REALLY love what you're doing, or else you'll probably end up shooting yourself. There have been points in my projects where I have seriously considered just giving up. When people see an indie game, they don't realize the sweat, blood, and literal tears that have gone into it.



I'll just address the rest of your edited post with a question. Why is it the producers' faults? Saying "if you make us actually care about you, we might not rip you off" is akin to saying "well maybe if she hadn't been wearing such a short skirt, it wouldn't have happened." It's victim-blaming. Yeah, maybe it works in this case. Maybe if you give people free candy, they won't break the windows of your corner grocery. But saying it like they need to appease you or it's A-okay to do whatever you want is, dare I say it, criminally entitled.

[Jagos]

Uhm... No?

But people are going to share your work. Example (http://vodo.net/pioneerone)

You can choose to donate or you can choose to just download and enjoy it. But within ~2 weeks, they have enough for 3 episodes. That's $20000 dollars.

To make an indie game, you have to really, REALLY love what you're doing, or else you'll probably end up shooting yourself. There have been points in my projects where I have seriously considered just giving up. When people see an indie game, they don't realize the sweat, blood, and literal tears that have gone into it.

... You're not making your audience see this stuff. You're not showing them what goes into a game. All of these parts can be used to make you more money with a finished product. All of this could be used to do as the business says "connect with your fans."

Yes, there's a fair amount of customers you will appease. Not everyone can be appease. You have to have a marketing strategy that is more than "give it away and pray" and less "lock it up and leave it.

It's great that you don't have DRM. But you can't forget about all of the avenues presented to you. You aren't EA. You aren't Activision. You have the advantage of making your voice heard in that corner market. You should be competing with yourself to make the best product. Give up a torrent and spread it. Disable high scores, but give people a taste.

Have a torrent with two snippets of artwork. Get people excited about things. Feel excited about it. You aren't going to change the entire world from piracy. I just feel that you'll do even better when you take those examples and utilize them to keep people talking about your series. Hell, if you do just that little bit, I'd be surprised if you didn't find people that would want to work with you. It's how a lot of mod work gets done.

Why is it the producers' faults? Saying "if you make us actually care about you, we might not rip you off" is akin to saying "well maybe if she hadn't been wearing such a short skirt, it wouldn't have happened." It's victim-blaming. Yeah, maybe it works in this case. Maybe if you give people free candy, they won't break the windows of your corner grocery. But saying it like they need to appease you or it's A-okay to do whatever you want is, dare I say it, criminally entitled.

It's a paradigm shift, that much is certain. The producer and director catch a lot of flak for not knowing their customers. No one's omnipotent. But if people aren't shopping at your store, there must be a reason. Finding the goat in the corner and saying "it's your fault" doesn't solve the problem. What does is recognizing your voice, putting out your product and finding enough of an audience to say, this is good. That is the responsibility of a producer. Look at all avenues before deciding that some aren't worth looking into. That's money, fame and opportunity left on the table.

[bluestarultor]

I... really don't think you've been listening to what I say. Believe me, when the opportunity presents itself, I'm going to do what I can to do things the way you're describing. I have demos planned. If I had anything real to show, I'd make a site to show it on, but everything I have for the most part is already posted here on NPF. Or at least the graphics and music are. I'm constantly bombarding you guys with my stuff. XD


I'm just going to leave the rest of this alone, because, honestly, I've said all I can think of to say, and being reasonable isn't convincing anyone of anything. I'm in a surprisingly good mood at the moment and repeating myself isn't going to do anything for it. I guess I know where people stand now and as much as it logically should make me lose all faith in humanity, someone must have slipped happy pills in the water supply, so I'll quit while I'm ahead.