Some of the pirates posting here almost pee me off

http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2008/02/opinion_casual_games_and_piracy_the_truth_.html

There's an interesting read about improving DRM to reduce casual game piracy followed by a load of pirates brazenly posting their half-arsed self-justifying reasons why they pirate games. Are they just teenagers? I hope so because if they are adults and still think like this then they are screwed.

I posted a comment at the bottom about how it's important to give and receive in life not just take take take and assume that you have a right to get everything for free. I don't even mean free from a monetary point of view, I mean from a moral/ethical/spritual point of view, like: I help you, and you help me. I give something to you and you give something to me. I create value in life and enjoy value created by others (I don't mean monetary value). Not "I take and never give back, sod you" type of thing...does any one get what I'm on about?

Sure, the Internet has changed things big time with file sharing and so on and a new wave of thinking about digital "property" is emerging (or has emerged) and will keep on growing. But what is this sort of thinking teaching young people about the bigger picture in life of sharing and contributing? I don't mean file sharing, I mean sharing love, caring, help, advice, art, music, entertainment, money, property, food, healthcare etc. If my kids grow up thinking they can take what they want and never need to contribute back to society or their family then I'll be very sad. Piracy is just the tip of the iceberg in the world which is all about "me" instead of "we".

That's the important thing, surely?

The morality of people these days is quite astounding. The same people who espouse and rationalize their pirating ways are usually the first to scream bloody murder should someone steal their stuff.

Stealing is stealing. What's the old saying "locks keep honest people honest". Not where software is concerned apparently.

Allan

What really angers me is the number of people in the open source software community who visibly pirate software / music / videos. Whenever I notice them and have sufficient evidence, I make a point of how their actions are both hypocritical and bad for the ideals they supposedly support. Whether they like it or not, one of the most important things about open source software is that it is easy to download and try out without spending lots of money or hunting at those ridiculous retail outlets.

When users of that same free software are seeding torrents for software like Photoshop, or for Windows games, or even for music (when there are some really interesting music stores following the ideals of FLOSS, including free downloads) that important benefit is made irrelevent. If software piracy was defeated, open software platforms would be much, much tastier.

We also would likely not be seeing the XBox... which means a lot less RROD'd things piling up in landfills.

I have some pretty radical views on this sort of thing and I'm sure I won't be agreed with here for the most part. I do appreciate all the hard work and time and genuine desire to give value to others, and I know that you understand the ideal spiritual outlook that you hope others will share with you, but when it comes to how other people behave or how they choose to live we really don't have any say in the matter, and accepting that IS spiritual.

As much as we'd love to be able to have some kind of `rights` or a notion that we `deserve` better treatment or that certain individuals are `misbehaving`, these are all really wishful thinking. You literally can do nothing to change anyone in any way beyond their own free will. For the sake of your own sanity the best you can do is to position yourself philosophically to be okay with other people's seeming madness. They will mistreat you and misrepresent you and steal from you and attack you, but whether you allow this to alter your personal peace is the only real choice you have.

As someone who loves to give, if you are concerned that someone may be taking something from you which you deem them not to deserve, then you are actually the one who is taking something from them. This amounts to you withholding your giving and limiting it. As soon as you place conditions on your giving and start to say that people can only share if they meet some criteria, no matter how spiritual or moral or ethical those criteria are, you are doing to them what you are accusing them of.

I know this is a tender issue and there are probably very few people on the planet who would not feel considerably upset and angry about piracy, and I have compassion for that, but really there is very little we can or should do about it. Acknowledging it makes it real and making it real for your personally disturbs your peace of mind. Would you rather be right or happy?

I do think that there are people out there who regardless of your outlook on life will try to destroy your product and turn it into a cheap fake. Their justifications and reasoning for why they are doing such a thing is on the same level as any justifications or reasons you could come up with for why they shouldn't. The people who don't want to pay for a game and just want everything free will find a way to have that. Those people aren't going to buy your game anyway, so you might as well let them have it for free. The people who, on the other hand, share some of your sense of dignity and equality are the only people who might actually appreciate you monetarily or otherwise, and they really are your only potential market anyway.

You can't force anyone to purchase your product and attempting to counter-attack hackers thieves and cheats is not effective or called for. It only acknowledges that you allow what they do to upset you and doesn't make any significant inroads towards actually bringing you more appreciation from them. Just as the stats in that report show, denying access to those individuals merely reduces their ability to use your product and has hardly anything to do with converting them into paying customers. I would have to agree with many of their viewpoints that if someone tried to force them to pay that would be taken as an affront to their freedom.

What it really boils down to for me, and I keep coming back to this, is that in truth we are all One unified equal community where absolute sharing is the only possible existence. It's built into our very being, in our minds. Our minds are all connected and we all have a will that is completely free. That freedom means being able to share in everything freely. *Everything*. As soon as you attempt to make any assertions that any individual is excluded from, isolated from, separate from, or rejected from this `whole` you will be attacking the innate freedom of their spirit and they *will* quite rightly see it as a crime against them. Now I know this may sound wacky or new-age or whatever but you have to agree that the evidence clearly shows that people really do react to these forms of separatism in exactly the way they would if their primary assumption is that they share in total freedom. The way they respond to such attacks on their freedom is completely congruent with where they are coming from as unified spiritual beings.

I cannot disagree with the hackers/crackers/pirates when they say that they have the `right` to freely access whatever they want to with no requirement that they give or do anything in exchange. That is their freedom, that is the inherent right of their free will. It is no wonder that they perceive developers/publishers to be trying to force them to pay or trying to deny them access or trying to stop them from doing what they want to, because that is what is happening - these measures are all attacks disguised as being `justified` within a framework of `everyone is separate`, which is the underlying mantra of ego, death and destruction. Saying that separate people have to obey each others rules and regulations is not what contributes to a civilized society, it merely glosses over true values and replaces them with an illusion of getting along. How can we be treating everyone as truly equal if we're saying that some people should or should not do certain things, or that some people are wrong to be however they freely choose?

If someone, with their free will choice, decides openly and freely that they like your product and feel that you deserve to be paid for it, they will pay you. That is the only framework within which payment is justified. All of these other measures to force the issue are just attempts to manipulate other people's free will. Shouldn't our own hands be slapped for trying to do that, before we go slapping the hands of those who we wish to manipulate? Just let them be. We actually invite them to crack and ask them to hack and give them reasons to pirate as soon as we say `no you cant` in any way shape or form. We incite them to `digital aggression` every time we offend their spiritual freedom, and that's precicely what we do when we try to `protect` or conceal or hide or deny them the full freedom to access our creations.

And that leads me to ask additionally, why would you want to limit your creation, withhold it from others, reduce its reach or popularity, make it out to be of `special value` that it does not have, or otherwise portray it as something it is not? Just create your product, let people try it out for a while, ask them to pay for it, if they don't want to they don't have to. The product's quality should speak for itself and if they fall in love with it they will more likely genuinely appreciate it and want to reward you for it. Respect where it's due.

Yes I know there's the whole question of putting food on the table and all that other poverty consciousness `fact of life` stuff. How you deal with that is up to you.

I don't really think piracy is as big an issue as people make it out to be. At least not for games.

Let's face it, games are expensive.

When I was a kid even when commercial games were relatively cheap, say $20 or so, I couldn't afford to buy every game that came out. I didn't even have an allowance. So the only time I got games was on my brithday or at christmas. And when I did get some money, I did the most economical thing with it, and used it to rent games, since renting cost only $2, while buying cost 10x as much. The only games which got bought were the ones which I asked for on my birthday or xmas, which were ones I thought I'd get a lot of play time out of. Like Mario Kart.

My point is, those 50,000 illegitimate copies are NOT soccer moms, which are the game's primary demographic. Soccer moms don't know how to pirate games. Those 50,000 users are probably mostly kids who couldn't afford to buy the game anyway, or adults who wanted to play the game but didn't think it was worth the money and so would have found something else to play instead. Because again, let's face it: it's not like there is a shortage of free arkanoid clones out there.

Oh, and I just ran the numbers. If there is a 92% piracy rate on their game, with 50,000 copies being pirated, that means that there were actually around 54,347 copies in circulation. So they're talking about going from 4,347 copies sold to 4,397 copies sold. That's an increase of just 1%.

I'd gladly give up a mere 1% of my sales to have over 10x as many people actually playing my game. I don't just make games to make money.

Btw, for the record, I know for a fact that this month around 10 copies of my texture generator were pirated by a russian website which posted a link to the full version of my software which I'd stored on my website for people who purchase it but can't receive email attachments. And it wasn't even one of my buyers that posted the link, the guy just guessed the filename. But do I think any of these people would have bought the software if they couldn't download it? I doubt it. They were a bunch of russians. So they probably couldn't afford it. And even if they could, I stil doubt they'd have bought it, since I only sell one copy for every 46 downloads.

In short, as a "victim" of piracy myself, I think you're getting worked up over nothing. Even the author of the article you linked seems to think as much.

Well apparently there is no 'higher truth' or God, so piracy is merely a 'point of view'. Do as you please shall be the whole of the law! Won't be too long before Pirates get 'human rights' laws to cover their butts in court and software creators have to pay them compensation because they were 'emotionally hurt' or something equally stomach-churning!

You can't post a thread about piracy on a blog, leave it open for comments and NOT expect to get comments condoning piracy.

Games aren't expensive. They're only expensive if you're one of these sorts who insists on buying the latest games on the day of release. If you're happy to wait a while, for example, I recently saw Tomb Raider Legend for £4.99 ($9).

But even if they are expensive - so what? I can't afford an Aston Martin Vanquish but that doesn't magically make it OK for me to go out and rob one.

Don't touch what you can't afford.

There are two ends of the spectrum on this, freedom (drop all your naivety from the word freedom and just assume it means we as the consumer are being trusted) and restriction. Some would like greater freedom (pirates, open source, etc.), and some would like greater restriction (various industries, developers, etc.). Going to the far end of either spectrum will kill you, this much is obvious.

So, Grey and the like, where on the spectrum do you think is best?

I stand a little away from the middle, leaning towards freedom. Honestly, I can't stop piracy (neither can you, and if you state otherwise then you'd better have mind control powers), so if I were to develop something, I would probably only implement very basic security- a serial key, for example, is the most I would ever use. The common end user, by now, is used to this sort of absurd restriction and I have no problem with the idea of feeding it to them. Beyond that, I'm more or less going to toss it out in the world and expect it to kill and eat the nearest living creature to survive.

You see, my software would not just come with copy protection, but hardware and artificial intelligence. This AI would adapt to its environment and eventually destroy the world, including the processing of us organ sacks for energy somehow... getting off track here.

My point was that I don't think piracy is affecting you as much as you'd like to think it is. I don't know why you'd like to think it is, maybe you just want it to be a huge problem that's killing your sales as some way of proving to yourself that your games aren't terrible. Except they are, and you should be ashamed of yourself for trying to blame other people, pirates or not, for your games being terrible.

Not sure what a god has to do with this. I'd advise keeping religion out of this, considering it will do nobody any good to say your god's cojones are bigger than their god's.

>ImaginaryHuman< You are a very sick individual.

>As much as we'd love to be able to have some kind of
>`rights` or a notion that we `deserve` better treatment or
>that certain individuals are `misbehaving`, these are all
>really wishful thinking.

No rights and everyone can do everything they want to do.

>You literally can do nothing to
>change anyone in any way beyond their own free will. For
>the sake of your own sanity the best you can do is to
>position yourself philosophically to be okay with other
>people's seeming madness.

Don't lock them up, just accept them as they are. Murderers and rapists alike.

>They will mistreat you and
>misrepresent you and steal from you and attack you, but
>whether you allow this to alter your personal peace is the
>only real choice you have.

We can't change others, so we should just sit back and take their abuse, and then adjust ourselves to have inner peace.

>As someone who loves to give, if you are concerned that
>someone may be taking something from you which you deem
>them not to deserve, then you are actually the one who is
>taking something from them. This amounts to you
>withholding your giving and limiting it. As soon as you
>place conditions on your giving and start to say that
>people can only share if they meet some criteria, no matter
>how spiritual or moral or ethical those criteria are, you
>are doing to them what you are accusing them of.

That's like saying rape is ok, because every woman should give herself freely to every man who wants her, and if she refuses, she is the one violating the rapist.

>If someone, with their free will choice, decides openly and
>freely that they like your product and feel that you
>deserve to be paid for it, they will pay you. That is the
>only framework within which payment is justified. All of
>these other measures to force the issue are just attempts
>to manipulate other people's free will.

Because taking what isn't yours is ok, and we should just accept it because forcing the guy to pay for it is violating the other guys free will.

>Shouldn't our own hands be slapped for trying to do that,
>before we go slapping the hands of those who we wish to
>manipulate? Just let them be.

Yep, free the murderers and rapists, we are violating their free will.

>We actually invite them to crack and ask them to hack and
>give them reasons to pirate as soon as we say `no you cant`
>in any way shape or form. We incite them to `digital
>aggression` every time we offend their spiritual freedom,
>and that's precicely what we do when we try to `protect` or
>conceal or hide or deny them the full freedom to access our
>creations.

So every woman should be accessible to every man, and saying no means she is offending the rapists spiritual freedom and thereby denying him the full freedom to access her.

Software piracy isn't theft, it's duplication. I object to the theft of physical copies of software from stores or individuals (because this deprives legal owners of their commodities), but I don't object to the unauthorised digital duplication of software.

Piracy is a ludicrous term for unauthorised duplication. If a traditional pirate were to engage in similar activities, he'd have to sail the seas building copies of other people's galleons, filling them with identical cargo, and doing all this without the permission of the owner of the original vessel.

Theft is a ludicrous term for unauthorised duplication too. If we compare duplicating software to stealing cars (as people often seem to do), it is, again, like seeing someone with an appealing car, constructing a duplicate of the vehicle for yourself and leaving the original vehicle intact and in the hands of its original owner. Nothing has been stolen.

Software piracy isn't necessarily immoral or unethical. Morals and ethics are distinctly personal and subjective concepts. There are no objective truths about these value judgements.

GFK:
I'm not condoning piracy. I'm saying piracy doesn't affect sales much. And this article provides evidence of that.

Also, how is buying used games 2-3 years after release for $9 better than pirating them, from a developer's point of view? You still won't see any money from it!




Piracy isn't theft though. Is it copyright infringement.

If you steal an Aston Martin, then you're depriving the owner of it. If ypu pirate a peice of software however, you're making a copy without the owner's permission, potentially depriving them of revenue. Potentially, because they're only actually deprived of revenue if you would have bought it otherwise.

And there's the fundamental difference: With theft, there is always a victim. With piracy, there isn't.

I wonder if you would have posted this if you haven't done a commercial game.

I think almost all of us have played cracked games when we were young on the C64 or amiga. For most of the people it's a matter of age and time. The older you get, the hopefully more money you have which you can spend on games and the less time you have to play all the games so you also focus on just a few titles which you simply buy (but were you still apply patches to in order to get rid of cd-in-drive-copy-protections) - sigh). It's also a learning process were you learn what happens if you only copy stuff.

It would be nice if buying games would work more in a way like it worked with the latest radiohead album so that people pay for what they value a game and what they can afford. Obviously this only works out if both sides take this serious but i think this could work out after some time and people got used to this system and also felt the bad effects of if they don't buy what they might enjoy.

I don't like DRM, it makes me buy less as i try to stay away from the products which use it.

I guess you have to give some right to the youth to do nonsense as we did but obviously at some point it isn't this funny anymore. Why some people are focused on their own is a) an individual thing, b) due to the economic sytem we're living in (capitalism) and c) the humans mostly work this way (evolution). You can take responsibility on your own in form of what you do and which morals you teach your kids. Or maybe you want to go for president...

I find it odd when people compare property to bytes of data. The analogy simply doesnt work, and this is why:

A download is a replication of data that in theory costs nothing to replicate (unlike property). So that said the actual downloading of the pirated itself software costs the developer nothing. Its more akin to photocopying someones "Free Astin Martin" coupon. This is not stealing. However, it IS stealing if you use it.

In a similar way to copying the coupon, it does cost the software developer if people use the software and dont buy a license to use it.

Personal view:
-I always buy my software but I believe in try before you buy. For software or music that have no trial or if i desparately need to test a disabled feature, i will dowload it, try it and if i dont like it/doesnt work will remove it. If I like it I will buy it.
-If someone inspected my machine they would find everything is licensed including tunes. If there is anything unlicensed then they would also see that the installation date is no longer than a month. Now in my opinion I am not doing anythging morally wrong by this. It may be a legal grey but just because something is a law doesnt always make it fair for everyone (Stoning for adultery anyone?).
-However, people that NEVER pay for anything and think life should serve up everything on a silver plate are in my opinion selfish and disrespectful unless they stick to actual (really) free stuff. These are the people who are spoiling it and making it more of a chore for everyone.

You wonder if I would have posted this if I had NOT worked on a commercial game?

I'm not sure why you think I would have been less likely to have this opinion if I hadn't worked on a commercial title.

I was refering to Grey's first post.

For the last time, piracy has NOTHING to do with stealing. I hope that in the future of post scarcity and technological mastery we won't be slaved by "intellectual property".

Agreed. That's why I used "almost" in the thread title ;-)

Actually I'm not worked up about it, I agree with you and Russell Carroll. My games sell and stopping the pirates would only very slightly affect my sales so I prefer to invest my time in making new games instead of worrying about people pirating my existing games. The point of the post was to examine why some people think it's OK to take and not give, and if they do that with software, do they do it in other areas of their life? And to start a healthy debate, which seems to have worked ;-)

With games, pretty much where it is now I guess. i.e. people that pirate games weren't going to buy them anyway, and there is still a healthy market of people who DO buy games. So that's probably in the middle...

Where did all that come from? It's strange how I didn't say any of that and you just assumed it because you want to fit me into the "perception of me" that you have incorrectly formed. Also I noticed you can't resist the odd dig at my games. Do you feel better now? Perhaps you need to rummage under your bed in order to relax a little more?

Pretty much what sswift said. In the comment on that blog post I explained that I used to pirate games as a teenager (who didn't?) but when I got a job I started to read reviews and play demos and then buy games. I think you are right that teenagers need to go a little crazy at times and rebel, it's part of growing up (just look at Noel), and then hopefully they end up as more balanced adults who regard piracy as no longer necessary in their lives (or they only casually engage in it).

Yeah sure, piracy is COPYING without permission. And in most cases it doesn't cost the creator of the original any money because the pirate wasn't ever going to spend any money, but in some cases it DOES cost the creator a few lost sales (probably not many). However, perhaps it's "rude" to copy someone's stuff without asking them? What do you think? Also, as I said in the top post, what is the pirate giving back to society to balance the original creation of the work?

It still is not needfully stealing. Because No-CD cracks and the like are piracy as well even thought they just allow you to do what you have the right to do according law: Taking local copies.

I'm a notebook user, I use No-CD cracks / daemon disks for all those games not offering an online mode without disk in as I see it as my good right that I use the purchased game (and they are definitely freaking expensive here in switzerland) without the disk after I installed it and entered my legal cd key.

The "pirate" might create further works from the copyrighted work (however, even that is illegal). (S)he might also make other works (like I do, maybe not that much though). I don't think it is required to "give back to society" to make piracy moral though.

..well..while im completely agree with Grey's point of view, I also must adimt, that without use of pirated full version of 3DSMAX (3.0 at that time, no commercial use, pure in depth learning), I will never master that excellent software and finally legaly pay for its license..I do belive some other folks had similar experiances,so, having this in mind, its difficult to describe is it bad or good (in my case for Autodesk, who may loose me as a customer if I never had chance to really use their software, in my case, pirate copy)..

Are we discussing communism here as my grandfather explained it to me?
"In capitalism, man exploits man. In communism, it is exactly the other way round. And in communism, everything that belongs to you also belongs to me. But what belongs to me, does not belong to you."

I blogged about what I think of copy protection, and that I think that copy protection only negatively affects your legal and paying customers, and that therefor nobody should use copy protection in their products.

As for the social aspects of only taking and not contributing back... Well, if all top managers of the world publicly demonstrate that attitude AND get away with it all the time, how can we wonder that our kids behave even worse? I think that the world is running towards a collapse, and it won't be long before everything that we know goes away with one final big bang.

well let's hope it's a social big bang that we can adapt to (humans are good at that), rather than the nuclear kind.

I've made the argument time and time again that while you can argue until your blue in the face that a pirate "wouldn't have bought a copy anyways" you can't say so unequivocally, because a lot of the reason people aren't willing to buy things they enjoy these days is because of this "everything should be free" mentality that is running rampant. If we imagine a developer's (and RIAA's) paradise, where somehow there was such protection in place that it was simply impossible to copy/pirate/duplicate data, whatever you want to call it, how many of these modern days pirates would, perhaps reluctantly, hand over the money for the product.

So yes, you can argue that given the cultural perspective that is invading like a virus, piracy doesnt' have much of an effect, but most of those who are anti-piracy would like to reverse the effects of that invading mentality, which could very well shift the tables enough that the numbers would play out quite differently.

Sadly, this is so true.

Piracy doesn't really bother me, and though it's easy for me to say this as I don't have a commercial game out there... it really wouldn't bother me to see it pirated. Look at the first couple of posts on the blog... they're saying the game wouldn't be worth buying because it's only good for an hour or two's entertainment. Whilst you may not agree with what they're doing, I think that you have to accept that on that basis, they would never have been potential sales.

SculptureOfSoul: Good point. You could be right. Also then, in this theoretical world, perhaps games would be sold for less so that more units could be shifted (there's always an optimum peak for the price versus units sold).

I guess only a few top managers do stuff like that, for example Bill Gates who is quitting microsoft to do charity work!

It's amazing to me how many people have this "you can't do anything about it, so don't worry about it", "one man can't make a difference" attitude nowadays.

If I took the "there's nothing you can do" attitude, when I was younger, I'd still be a poor black guy who didn't have anything, didn't have a 20+ year career making videogames (and counting) and hell, if everybody just took a "fuck it, there's nothing I can do" attitude, we could all just go back to being enslaved warring nations, no internet, no freedoms, no chance for the little guy to overcome and succeed.

It really saddens me. That's not the world I've ever wanted to live in.

Piracy is only a small part of it, but every little bit counts.

I read in an indie gaming blog how a guy was really happy to sell 2000 copies of his game. 2000 copies?!? Where I come from (retail), 2000 copies is nothing, but to that guy, 2000 copies was everything and meant whether he continued living his dream making games or not. You don't think that 1-2% is a big deal, but it could be *the thing* that makes the difference, really.

"Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is *the only thing* that ever has." - Margret Mead

Uh, 2000 copies at $20 a pop is $40,000 a year.

And 2% of that is $800.

$800 would not make the difference between making games and not making games if you're making $40,000 a year.


And it's not a matter of "You can't do anything about it."; It's a matter of "It's not an economical way to spend your time."

Allow me to put it another way:

If you make $40,000 a year, then you make $800 a week. If 2% of people pirate your game, then that's $800 a year you lose.

That means that if you spend just one week working on antipiracy measures instead of writing your next game, you can, at best, merely BREAK EVEN.

If think all this only concerns the people that try and see if they can get it for free, BEFORE they buy. The rest of the pirate, as it has been said many times before, aren't going to pay for it.

The problem is, if the group of people mentioned above, grows in numbers. Where everyone tries to get it free before they buy.

I think people who download applications suchs as 3DMax to learn on, are stealing, because some of them will eventually uses the skills and the application to create something THEY can sell. That translates to stealing, because your making money off of someone's back.

I think there are two levels to how you approach this issue. One level is in terms of what is going on in your mind - your attitude about what happens - and the other is on the level of what you do in the physical world - whether you make your software protected or not. The two levels don't necessarily have to match up.

You could be totally okay with piracy and yet at the same time, on the physical level, implement extensive strict anti-piracy measures. It's that you do not make a psychological problem out of what happens that is important. Just because you take an everyone-shares-everything (which is not communism) approach mentally doesn't necessarily have to mean that you try to implement that mindset physically. The whole reason for having an equality-oriented mental attitude is to be okay with things, at peace with things, within yourself regardless of what happens in the physical world. So the two worlds are not connected.

Obviously this world is set up to look like there is `only so much to go around` in terms of physical matter, which lends itself to inciting competition and ownership issues. So it's not as if you can say ok, everyone can use my car, because you're locked into the fact that the car is physical and limited in its potential for sharing. You can't share objects between everyone because this whole physical world is based on an idea of exclusion. But where software is concerned it's a different matter.

Software actually touches upon almost being completely shareable because you can cause it to exist everywhere, seemingly almost completely defying the limited availability of material objects. You really could allow everyone to share your software and it would not have to mean that anything is being taken away from you. Duplication indicates sharing, expressed in a physically-compatible way. I wonder if perhaps software or digital data is the first thing in civilized history that potentially defies all of the existing laws of content ownership, and as such maybe it requires a completely different mindset to determine its use. If copying it no longer means there is a *loss* for someone else, then it's a whole different ball game. It's kind of like the sharing of ideas - as you share them with others they actually increase instead of depleting their source.

You don't necessarily have to decide either way to implement protection measures or not, because your mental attitude about it is the important thing. You could have really strong protection and still be okay within, or have no protection at all and be okay within. The no-protection-at-all bandwagon is *symbolic* of a spiritual mindset, but you don't necessarily have to act that way in the world in order to be spiritual, and acting that way alone doesn't make you spiritual.

This is actually a trap that I fall into sometimes where I get into martyrdom, thinking that just because I think spiritually, it must mean I should do everything accordingly in the world. The world doesn't allow spiritual behavior and there is no such thing. At best the closest thing in the world to spirituality is forgiveness, which undoes the world. Everything else is based on limitation and lack.

So you can get yourself into martyrdom by saying everyone can share your stuff for free - maybe not even charging for it at all and just producing freeware. And this IS where the physical world can catch up with you by reminding you that you have a lack, and therefore need to make up for it, which you'd have to do by charging money or getting a different job. The world is meant to work against you in this way making it near to impossible to be completely altruistic or to completely express love in everything you do. But so long as you are in the right place in your mind, you can at least do the best that you can to represent your values through your way of life.

What I like to do, or at least try to, is to let my physical behavior be inspired by spiritual ideals, whether they work physically or not, and that means I see no point in trying to prevent something from being shared. Sharing is natural, confinement is not. We're dealing with a new animal here, in software and digital data, because we actually can perfectly clone pieces of the world and reproduce them without any loss of the original content. There is very little else in the world that you can say that about. So this really calls for a whole different way of approaching software, socially and mentally. The rules that we use for material objects are all based on limitation and lack, which does not have to apply to software.

I think the approach to take would be more along the lines of - okay I've written this software, I am wholeheartedly overjoyed to share it freely with everyone, in fact I want to go out of my way to make sure whoever wants it can get it and use it, I want as many people to have as easy-as-possible access to it in its entirety, without crippling or limitation, and I will remind them at some point that I live in the same physical world of limitations they do, I have mouths to feed, and would like them to seriously consider paying me.

I would not make payment or lack thereof a crime or a sin. If they choose the `I dont want to pay for this` button, or whatever, I would say okay, here, freely use this for another chunk of time, and while you do please consider its value to you and whether you'd pay for it. And then when the next time period is up I'd say okay, you've tested it out, what do you think, are you having fun, the author loves that you're enjoying his product and would be very happy if you'd pay for it, what do you think it's worth? Then I'd give them some options, not a fixed price because anything fixed is against freedom. They can then choose to pay what they can, or the full price, or more, whatever. If they then choose not to pay anything you either give them another chunk of time (and each time you do this you are nagging them which is not good), or you just say okay, here you go, continue using this as freely as you like for as long as you like, I'm so glad you're enjoying yourself. And then maybe provide an unobtrusive non-nagging non-awkward non-trying-to-draw-lots-of-attention-to-itself button somewhere that gives them the future option to pay something.

I think I would also make light of the seemingly heavy burden of paying, by incorporating something fun into the game itself pertaining to payment. Payment shouldn't be an interruption of service, it should be a part of the gameplay. Like if you're doing a shootemup, have a spacecraft that comes along at the appropriate time asking you if you want to pay now, and let's you dock with it to go pay, or you see some door which is closed in a room with some kind of payment option needed to unlock it, whatever. I think if you do anything too rigidly or strict or confining then you're really trying to push them into something. You do need to remind them, gently, to pay you if possible, but you can't force the issue.

I did read one shareware article where they did an analysis of the difference between asking people to pay and not asking them. They found that if you reminded them at some time period then they sold more than 5 times as many units than not asking. It's not so much that lots of potential customers wouldn't pay but more than they are lazy or don't want to spend the time and effort, or they are simply forgetful. We don't have to make criminals out of them, just guide them.

If there are enough people out there to buy your product, then you'll get by. If there aren't, we're all doomed. In such scarcity that's where we'd all start fighting to survive against each other, which is a dark road to go down. The only way to avoid that darkness is to BE the light that you want others to be.

Like I've said elsewhere, piracy only exists *after* you've decided to limit your product, and without that limitation there is no such thing. The entire issue is solved by not making it an issue in the first place. Then it doesn't matter if pirates try to justify themselves or not, they aren't guilty at all. Those people who choose to appreciate and pay will do so. You can barely convert a handful of others who are resistant and especially cannot convert those who refuse.

If your product is openly freely available, would anyone have any need to hack it or crack it? You'd never have your game be cracked or stolen if you never put in any protective measures. The only real state of invulnerability is the openness of innocence, not trying to cover it up with false protections which are always flawed and always avoidable. Like swift said, your time and attention are better spent improving the quality and making it so that more people love your product, which in the end is what will instigate a sharing relationship.

I know its only February, but that's the biggest load of nonsense I've read this year.

And I thought mMY posts were too wordy. :-)

So, ImaginaryHuman, would you mind sending me all of your source code for your various projects?

Perhaps if pc / xbox / etc games didnt cost £30 - £40, and if those games spent some of the money they are earning from sales on actualy improving / fixing the bugs and gameplay, people would be less likely to pirate games.

I have in the past downloaded some games .. pirate games. Played them, and 9 times out of 10 hated them. Uninstalled them within a day.

The 1 time out of 10 that I liked the game, I would go and buy it from the shop and keep it.

I am not justifying piracy, but the only reason piracy arises is because people feel cheated by a system that forces a person to pay a price they dont think is fair.

If every game was £20. If every game was readily available. If every game you played gave you an exeperience you thought deserved the money you paid for it, then you would probably see a change in trend of the piracy issue.

Point in example is mp3 piracy. The industry was forced to lower prices for their music singles. Make them available for everyone to gain instant access. Since then online mp3's sales have sky rocketed!

Steam is the future, and steam or services simialr is the way this whole thing will sort itself out.

Saying that, you will never get rid of piracy, and syou really shouldnt even bother trying. You just end up wasting money. It is like a government spending billions of curreny to get rid of drugs in the community. Everyone knows that if a person wants to get some drugs, they are going to. No matter what a politician, police officer, anyone says to them.

The only way to solve it is to play it at their own game. Provide a service that rivals the bootleg services, and then improve on it.

I don't pirate games anymore, but I would be more inclined to buy MORE games if they were slightly cheaper, and were instantly available online.

*Dabz blinks and rubs his eyes*

To be honest, piracy will never end, but its a shite day in the software development world when fellow devs can consider it fine to rip other peoples work off.

Either physical or digital, its still stealing... Someone has to pay people for work done on a project, they dont sit down and scrawl 1000's of lines of code or generate art for nothing. Not to mention all the bills either utility or otherwise... How do you expect companies, even one man bands that do software dev fulltime to pay these!?!

The tax man likes his bit, and if you operate your company on a contractor basis, the UK taxman demands 6 months tax calculated from the previous year in advance, and he couldnt give a toss if you cannot afford it and if you say its down to pirates ripping off your company... He doesnt care and still wants his money by January.

And comparing the physical to digital is a load of nonsense, it was physical tools, either human or machine that created the digital content... So the base of the product is in fact physical!

I'm no angel when it comes to this I agree, I have watched dodgy DVD's, recorded the radio, downloaded the odd album to see if it was any good, even way back in the 80's I was recording Amstrad games on C90 tapes, but as a person, I can recongnise that fact that yes, I was stealing, I had no right to use that content under the law and if I got caught, I should get wrong for it, for the reasons I've mentioned above.

Gfk, the opinion to which you are frequently reminding us you are entitled, is very much bordering on justification for attack. You don't have to agree but that doesn't mean you should disagree with a put-down.

Scupture, I would but I'm not happy that it's in a fit state to be of most use to you. Give me some time.

That surely cannot be. You cannot change people's behaviour. When they attack you and misrepresent you, the only choice you have is whether you let them disrupt your personal space. Remember?

Or perhaps it only applies when it's happening to other people.

@D4NM4N

Your argument is fallacious and obviously ignorant of the terms "intellectual property" and "copyright".

Try this on: You are a professional photographer who makes a living taking beautiful, difficult, photos and selling them to people who want or need beautiful, difficult, photos. You take them to have them developed and the developer makes copies of all of them because he admires them so much that he must have them. They are just pictures to him and they have no tangible value.

Would you consider his actions stealing? What if they showed up on a website for anyone to download due to the thief's actions. Suddenly your ability to earn a livelihood is undercut.

Taking something that does not belong to you,without permission, is theft. It does not matter if it is an idea, manuscript, digital download etc ... If you are taking something without paying for it you are stealing. Any argument contrary to this is wrong headed, regardless of the your abilities at doublespeak or moral rationalization.

You represent the reasons many people steal quite well, and eloquently. You are still WRONG.

I just wish that you could rent PC games like you can console games. Hardly any games are worth spending money on. I don't even consider most games unless they get unanimously good reviews and the vids look promising.

I then play the demo and buy if I want more. It's unfortunate that assasins creed isn't supposed to get a demo.

It's one of the games i was eager for, several months ago. But really don't think its my cup of tea after reading the reviews.

Only games I bought recently are Crysis and Witcher. Other than that I played medieval 2 a little, but havent touched any new games this year. Doubt I will buy another till Mass Effect is released for PC in May :).

It's about time for this. And that's that.

@sledge

Whatever. That had to be the stupidest thing I have ever read on the subject. The author is obviously a pirate, ignorant of the law and so sure of his position that he must call people who hold a different point of view @#$@$-ing idiots.

I would not quote that web page as a defense if the RIAA had me up on charges. I sure as heck would not argue the point using that moron's grasp of law against Disney's lawyers. Then again, I like the idea of staying out of prison.

Rationalize on... Pirates.

Piracy will soon be a thing of the past. There's going to be a paradigm shift with digital content, in fact it's taking place right now.

@ Jeremy.

Excellent point. I think Steam is the pebble that will start an avalanche of similar models.

..i think pirates need some hugz...

...

@Sledge Are you digressing that I am in fact, a ****ing idiot?

I wouldnt mind, but that article points to nothing new in the thread or from a bona-fide source, and as such, my only conclusion is that you must of found that page while looking for self help.

I think I blame retail....
Being allowed to use someone's software is just like anything else; you are agreeing to terms with the owner. "I will give you this if you give me that". Money or not, it is a trade.
This trade works far beyond money, and is often better with other media, such as ideas or - in the case of open source software - contributions.

It is retail that paints an idea of "Product = Money", where thievery is simply taking something without getting the guy at the till to deactivate the security tag. No, the only thing wrong with grabbing something and carrying it out of a store without paying is that the person(s) who created that product have agreed on a trade: You (the owner) can use it in exchange for their livelihood.

In that way, playing Unreal Tournament without pitching in for its master server, getting GDB to compile under Darwin without making the changes available, or even using iTunes to create WMDs, is an act of ill will towards the hand that feeds you. Ultimately, it is the same as "theft".

The definition of theft has been destroyed by national laws that confuse themselves with their own combobulated uses of language, which can only be fully deciphered by armies of lawyers and which have become so immensely long that they warp around each other's gravity, creating huge loop holes permitting the escape of criminals and the destruction of innocents all under the wedge of modern bureaucracy.
In the programming world, we call this "feature bloat", or "kludge". In those scenarios, one word always bobs to the surface: Refactor.

So let's pretend for a moment that a nation has finally had some sense knocked into it and refactored its damn legal system... there is still one thing in the way: Retail. Retail puts an unnecessary cloud between the makers of products and consumers. It is retail outlets who invent all manner of lies for why ink cartridges cost so much more than they should, why old video cards cost more and why a pink computer costs less than a black one. It is retail outlets who cling desperately to a life they do not deserve as direct digital software distribution prices them out of the water. (Oh, and I should mention: Digital distribution can handle software returns. That outside layer of retail can not). It is that same idiotic business model which builds on a bet that consumers are too stupid to realize the superior alternatives, or the near-vendor prices at other retailers. As soon as people get retailers to price match the suppliers, those retailers are toast.
Computer software retail is useless grissle, existing soley to gouge prices so that sales people can have jobs and earn money. Again, thinking of it from a software design perspective... refactor!

Back to the topic at hand, then. With retail, a product is simply a thing in a box on a shelf. The major objects that thieves are concerned about are the people at the store, and they are a bunch of price-gouging lunatics, as I have mentioned. They represent the product; not its actual creators. Think of a chain of people whispering into each other's ears; the message does not stay the same, as we rely on the hearing, clarity, good will and common sense of every person in between. Some companies may be creating ink which costs next to nothing, but no consumer will know because of a complete lack of transparency encouraged by the desperate retailers.
Ah, but we aren't talking about physical thievery. Rather, this is about digital thievery!
I think this same idea applies. Again, I am going to use open source software as an example. If this software was just dumped out there from behind closed doors, I know of at least one person who would then not care about its license, instead likely taking it, complaining about it and / or using it for evil without contributing back. However, because the creators of that code make themselves known, I for one see much more reason to follow their will. This is not just some mysterious entity who speaks legalese telling me to give what I take, but an actual human being --- the very same human being who is the source of what I am taking!
Start adding layers of disconnection. How much would you care if your grandfather broke his wrist? His cousin? His cousin's cousin?

I think Telltale Games is an example of a game developer which has taken the digital distribution model and done a great job with it. They aren't just an online store; they are Telltale Games. They have an active web log, with real humans on the other end who seem legitimately friendly and close to the actual games that they make. VALVe also does a good job in that department. Steam is much like a regular old retail for other company's stuff, but for Valve's stuff it does exactly what TTG's site does; it reminds us who is ultimately at the middle of it all by peeling away some of that unnecessary cruft. Valve themselves have no reason for that occlusion, since it only really exists to hide the fact that prices are not what they seem.

Okay, okay, there is probably a clever marketing guy in there, but these folks do a much better job of it than the big yellow signs touting "Really low prices, we promise! Ink only $50 per 20 mL cartridge!". At least we know, buying semi-directly from Valve or TellTale, that the money goes to the hands that feed us instead of to a hundred other undeserving pockets of decievers along the way.

Can't be arsed to read this.

I have pirated software and *all* the software I have enjoyed I have purchased. Usually the demo's weren't of good enough quality, whatever.

I don't condone Piracy really, however, I will say this:

You go into Gamestation, go up to the second hand stall, buy a second hand copy of a game.

Who makes the money from that sale? Developer sees nothing of it.

So tell me this: What's the difference between an unauthorised copy of a game and a second hand copy you buy? In both instances the developer gets nadda for it! but in one instance some third party gets $?

So then, why is it illegal for me to sell my copy of windows including key?

The only exception to this seems to be Cash Converters where all of the games I have bought from them have come without a software key. bit of a workaround, (or the keys were just removed before they were sold to the shop ;-) )

@Picklesworth
TTG is extremely good at marketing and selling, their line looks like this:

1) Getting money from Gametap for a) offering their game on their platform and b) giving them a time advantage of one day.
2) Selling the games via their webstore.
3) After a season is over offering the game as a DVD to the already existing customers.
4) Producing a DVD (different than the customer DVD) for the normal retail stores.
5) Offering the game via Steam.
6) Going into local publishing deals for foreigns countries which also do the localisation for them.
7) And in the future they will also offer the games for consoles.

They sell through a lot of channels and get a lot out of the money but still i don't see all the money made, beeing reinvested into the games quality. They are okay to good but they could be much better. They can't match a Moneky Island quality yet.

The real question is, is it stealing when you make a Match 3 clone, or when someone clones the Match 3 clone you cloned?

The difference with used games is that you're selling the physical media. There's nothing wrong with that since once you sell your copy of a console game or whatever you can no longer play it.

Doesn't matter- the developer just lost out on a potential sale.

Get where I'm coming from? :-)

yeah I get it. I guess that there's always been a second hand market though for stuff like books, furniture, records etc...so it's viewed as normal.

Grey Alien, where would you prefer we buy your Fairway Solitaire game from? Big Fish or your own website? Seeing as the price is an order of magnitude different ;)

I am just musing here, but then, would it be viewed as normal if I went to an online bargain shop and purchased, say, Freeway Solitaire (or Windows XP for all it matters) for like £1.50? (or £9.99)

End users don't neceseraly know what Piracy is. if you can walk into a shop and buy a cheap copy of a game then the average Joe may also think of doing the same over the internet.

(and it shows by the pure amount of these websites that are appearing!)

Good topic Grey, it always brings up some interesting points. :-)

Isn't that a little condescending? I'm pretty sure that most of the people who download software illegaly are fully aware that their actions can be called "piracy".

ashmantle: The price on my site and BFG is $19.95 UNLESS you have a BFG game club membership when it can be as low as $6.95. If you go via my site, it will simply use an affiliate link (and I'll get a small % bonus) but you can still use your game club membership (if you have it) to get it for the lower price). Does that make sense? I'm glad you feel like buying it, thanks! :-)

You always call it that. Obsessed by cars ;-) So you are saying that some sites are selling pirate copies of games for low prices? If so I certainly think that is worse than pirating for free as they are then turning theft/unauthorised copying (whatever you want to call it) into a illegitimate business! Actually if a free warez site plasters the site in adverts, they too are making money from piracy.

Let's say however that Fairway Solitaire is sold in retail boxes and they buy a valid second hand boxed copy, then that's OK (even though I see no money) as they are not supporting the piracy angle. For example, if a friend who didn't know about pirating saw the game (and box) they might look to buy a copy for themselves rather than finding out about warez (not everyone knows about warez sites you see, or knows how to use them...but if encouraged, they might find out about it). Selling a digital copy (or key) is much more dodgy in my opinion (some people try to do it with Blitz).

What though if the friend BORROWED the game and installed it on their PC? As there is no online element, they could use the same key and then that is basically piracy, but it's akin to borrowing a book or CD or DVD right? (oh except a copy on their PC gets made, so it's a bit different) I guess the idea is that it's smallscale, one or two friends may borrow something, but you are not filesharing it for thousands to download...

hmm, interesting...

They may not, but then, the same people are probably still ploughing fields with a bull.

The FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft) advertise everywhere when it comes to films/movies in the UK, this should provide a little clue to your average joe user that every time they see a (c) symbol or the term 'copyright' that it is a little wrong to in fact divulge in the duplication of such stuff.

If not, they are either blind, or write crappy little articles with swear words in the title thinking it will help justify their actions.

been skimming this rather wordy thread

im not sure if i read the gfk vs posts right up there ^^^ i dont know who posted the original quote


without protective measures their is nothing to hack crack and brag about
if it came as a normal floppy not a wibbled disc format and could be A:>B:'d in the same time as any floppy then it can still be pirated

if it can be copied it will be copied
no copy protection just makes it easier for everyone and not the l337

speccy tapes had little to no copy protection so all you needed was a twin tape and a few c90's on you and you could end up with a "now thats what i call games" within the hour

Disney's grasp of the law would be exactly the same as "that moron's", which is why they'd bring a civil case of copyright infringement against you rather than having you arrested for theft. Nobody would use that article as a defence against such a copyright infringement charge because it doesn't make a single pro-piracy argument; It's pro-using-the-English-language-properly, and if you can't even be bothered to do that then you shouldn't be surprised when folk dismiss your words as idiotic. Use language accurately if you want to be taken seriously -- it really is very good advice, even if the author can't string two paragraphs together without swearing at you (Scottish, natch).

The word you're looking for is "suggesting" ("digressing" is when you go off on a tangent so perhaps you do need to buy a dictionary like the article suggests*) but no, I don't think you're any sort of idiot, just someone who is undermining his own position by making a schoolboy error -- something that leaves you prone to being cast as an idiot by a wily opponent.

Copyright infringement isn't stealing by definition -- they don't even come under the same spheres of law. Get this right when concocting anti-piracy rhetoric or else your argument will be easily dismissed, and that only helps the pirates.


* :P

digress - lose clarity or turn aside especially from the main subject of attention or course of argument in writing, thinking, or speaking; "She always digresses when telling a story"; "her mind wanders"; "Don't digress when you give a lecture"


EDIT: And theres more: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/digressing

Your mind wandered to a fairy tale article by some numb skull, which in turn, implemented as far as I saw that you were in fact calling me a ****ing idiot, whilst digressing.

I'll get you a dictionary for Christmas, not a pirate based one, just a plain old Collins paperback.

i read that as thef**kingdictionarr.com i think that would be a better website ;)
eyes arnt working no more
12 hour shifts suck

but the overtime doesnt :))

Directly addressing the validity of a central claim you made within the context of a debate is most certainly not digression.

On balance of evidence... keep it.

You're wrong about piracy and stealing being the same thing. Either go and argue with the Lord Chief Justice about it or accept it and move on.

> Copyright infringement isn't stealing by definition -- they don't even come under the same spheres of law.

True, but then murder and manslaughter are not exactly the same thing either - but both can get you sent to jail.

Sure, and when one points out that "copyright infringement isn't stealing" it is, of course, NOT to imply that it's therefore okay to go ahead and do it. Respecting (and respectful, though that's another debate) copyright is the fundamental basis for innovation in society and deserves to be eloquently defended.

Just to throw some fuel on the fire, I think Sledge has the edge on this debate, but then I'm Welsh.

Mainly because I understood stealing / theft to be defined as the intention to deprive the rightful owner of it's use.

>piracy only exists *after* you've decided to limit your product, and without that limitation there is no such thing
>You'd never have your game be cracked or stolen if you never put in any protective measures.

Ginger Tea, I believe those quotes originated with me. I am not sure if your following comments were agreeing with me or not but it seemed so.

It was interesting to read about the idea of second hand games where the author doesn't get any money. I would kind of consider those `recycled` products.

What we do when we buy something is we exchange monetary value, it's not really about the product or how many people access it. Monetary value is the thread which runs through all products, kind of abstractly, and we already have systems in place in society to say that it's okay for someone to sell something on to someone else. That's mainly because when you sell something to someone, there are funds exchanged in return for goods but the goods themselves now hold value and are just another `form` of money, easily translatable into money again if they want to sell it on to someone else. We're just switching back and forth between representing the exchange with a product or representing it with money. What we're really trading are values and experiences and there's almost no limit to how many times that can occur as a `thread` of exchange for a single instance of a product. As soon as you put your product instance into circulation you're basically saying that anyone can access it provided there is a consenting value exchange by its current owner. You could technically sell one copy of one product and have everyone in the world trade it and use it. Again this is people exercising their free will.

When you sell something to someone, your getting money in exchange is really only to do with you getting money as a kind of `outsider` to the whole world of `transfer of value`, you only get to dip your foot into it once per product and then that product can be freely moved amongst unlimited people based on the further exchange of value. You can't really say ok, my product has value, so buy it, but once you buy it it does not have value so you can't sell it on to others - unless maybe you're Microsoft. Because to really hone in one making sure that you get full reimbursement for every finite amount of product sold, you would have to basically say okay, now that you've bought it, you may not sell it, and in fact you must buy another product from us because this one is now worthless. That's really quite insane but it maximizes sales for the author. It's really an attempt to say `I'm bigger than money, I say who is allowed to use money`, not you, and quite arrogant at that. It's an attempt to control money and to control people as a side effect. It's also a fragmentation of social fabric.

As to copyright, if the author perceives a theft, it is a theft. If they perceive theft as a result of aligning themselves with copyright law, then so be it. But theft can only be in your own mind.

I would like to hear more about how piracy is going to be eliminated in the near future as a result of systems like Steam, which Jeremy mentioned earlier? Can you elaborate?

Lol.
I bet ur right. The reason people pirate is because they have become emotionally fractured from lack of hugs.

It all makes sense..

Sites like that do exist, and i report them whenever I see ads for them etc.

BTW, Freeway solitaire is a complete typo by me, I still read it as Fairway lol. One of those things your mind misreads. I have called it that before though? lol. Well, that bought a chuckle to my morning!

Looks like you've been having some deep thoughts..



I see your point there. The end user is doing nothing wrong in this instance. If they were to buy from above said websites, they would be indulging in activities that actively cause harm and loss of sales, even if they do not realise it themselves. Going onto cracks.R-US and downloading whatever you need to get whatever you need, is also causing harm (probably to the guys computer too haha.)

I bought Jake's game Framework bcs it looked interesting, and bought the Games Programming for Absolute Beginners-book by Sloane Kelly too. thats the level of my games-programming skills :P. Roll-out my snakes-clone in about 5 years?? hehehehehehe.

There wil always be ppl who copy software no matter the price. If games were totally free without trial versions and no copy protection probably very few ppl will buy. Copy protection prevents the casual copier from copying. And then he most likely will either not copy, or go and buy the game.



Before getting Steam i used to buy about 4 fullpriced games per year. I use magazine reviews for my buying descision and rarely download/install a trial version of games.

Since Steam is installed i really went on a rampage.. Bought about 15 games from steam the past 6 months (Bioshock at fullprice), and the X-mas deals on steam prompted me to buy more. And give steam-gifts to my brother. And besides, many steam games are at ridiclous low prices.. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is still in the shops for 35 EUR however steam has it for $19,95. Dirt cheap and bought it.

Steam is agreat way for me to buy games, easily accesible. Just a few mouse Clicks and i am a happy customer.

Geometry Wars for $4 on Steam, what a deal :)).

My brother bought Viva Pinata for the peecee at 45 EUR past weekend, then, next day we went to another town and it was on sale for 25 EUR. Bl**dy hell! ;).

@Hambone.
Yes I would consider it stealing.

I STRONGLY suggest you read my 2 posts again more c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y. Where did i say that actually exploiting someones copyright is the right thing to do? Please tell me that?
Please explain to me exactly why you think i take the piss out of copyright so much?

You will find you cant because i dont.

I did however say that you cannot compare stealing software to stealing a car which is absolutely true as its a totally different type of crime and is intellectual property not actual physical property. (unless you have some kind of startrek car-replicator). Its like trying to compare murder to stealing (as you are "stealing" someones life) Mabe you think they should implement the old medieval - one punishment for any crime rule.

You know I've always wondered if there are pirate copies of my framework out there...

Very likely. Just wait until you start getting support emails like "My friend gave me a copy of this but I don't know how to do x, y, z, can you help me?". It's happened to me before.

I didn't have time to read this entire thread, but I'm with Grey Alien. How can pirates openly believe what they are doing is moral?

If you think "software is duplicable without cost, therefore pirating isn't like stealing someone's car, because you're not stealing something of material value!", then you're just plain wrong. I'm sure even the most naive computer user understands that a lot of work goes into production of software products, and work time = money in the current world (if you want to discuss alternate fictional economies, then that's a whole nother matter).

Let's think of the car example: To build a car, you put many many man-hours to design and build it. The result of this labor is that you now can mass-produce and sell your new car for a profit (hopefully) to pay for your debts invested in it, which will then support further efforts to produce even better cars.

Now for software: To write a program, you put many many man-hours to design it. The result of this labor is that you now can mass-produce and sell your new software for a profit (hopefully) to pay for your debts invested in it, which will then support further efforts to produce even better software.

Maybe I'm overestimating the reasoning capability of illegal software pirates, but try this: Imagine what would happen to both production sequences above if only the materials of production were paid for by customers. Think about it.

big10p: I'm pretty sure I got some request for a pirate version of one of my games before. I helped them anyway...

Thats actually totally out of context (at least what i said anyway).

The example was figurative.
Software IS duplicable without cost, the act of duplicating costs nothing, its what you DO with the duplicate that costs money. If you copy something and destroy it, then theres no cost to anyone (except your time). However, if you copy something and exploit it by using it for more than simply "checking it out" then that costs the developer a 'virtual' sale, or more correctly stealing their "intellectual property" which while is not a physical thing (so you cannot compare it to a car) it still costs someone money, so is stealing.

I wasnt talking about moral differences they are both stealing, I was talking about logical real-world material differences, for example if you steal someones car and destroy it then I think you could say thats a little different to making a copy of it and destroying that. As i believe (like i said in my post above) if you like it and use it you should pay up. Although an unauthorised trial is technically "illegal" (in the west) it is not nesacarily unethical, immoral or unfair if you are an honest person (ie pay up or get rid of it asap).

So No I don't think piracy is right as it gives "honest pirates" who pay their dues a bad name :)

mmmmmmmmmm :(

> it is not nesacarily unethical, immoral or unfair if you are an honest person

Making an illegal copy automatically makes one dishonest. It is unethical as well - although maybe not immoral.

There are many shades of "honesty".

In fact that what i describe is actually more "honest" than people who buy OEM copies of software, which is illegal too as it is a breach of the licence.
I also believe its more "honest" than buying second hand software as the developer gets nothing there either.

At least I buy what i use for its proper price and to from its official source.

Im sorry but i firmly believe that if I download something and then pay for it or remove it after just seeing what its like then i am NOT dishonest in my book.
I prefer to follow my moral values and common sense rather than 'laws'. Nazi germany had 'laws' too and look what happened.

I have no problem with someone trying a copy of something before buying it - it's just like using a demo without the limitations.

I would have illegally downloaded Oblivion to play it a day early and then bought the product the following day. As long as I pay for it via the intended distributor then nobody loses.

What does this mean?

> Nazi germany had 'laws' too and look what happened.

I could point out that Hitler also ignored any laws he didn't like, but that would be going further then I think is reasonable, then again so is bringing up Nazi Germany.

Here is a more realistic view. If you can't be bothered to read it the bottom line is this: No amount of copy protection prevents piracy. Why? Because if it did, Galactic Civilizations II (which has no copy protection) would not have sold more than 100.000 copies in 90 days. Those are your numbers. If you've sold less than 100.000 copies in the first 90 days, blame your draconian copy protection scheme.

Or your crappy factory-produced game of the year edition.

I agree. When/if I sell software, probably the farthest I'll ever go in terms of copy protection is a simple unlock key.


I wasn't addressing you in particular (sorry if it seemed that way), just the general group of pirates who seem to think that way.

"However, if you copy something and exploit it by using it for more than simply checking it out" then that costs the developer a 'virtual' sale, or more correctly stealing their "intellectual property" ... so is stealing."

Virtual sales do not exist, let them go. It's the same thing as buying a car and they give you a few thousand `instant cash back`. It's was your own money! It's a sales gimmick to suggest that you're saving something on money you have not even spent. Similarly it's a sales gimmick to say you're losing something that you have not sold. You don't own the money until it's in your hand. You can't `virtually lose`, and calling it intellectual theft is just trying to distort what's happening to make it sound plausible or defendable.

There hasn't been any diminishing of `intellectual property` by copying a game, and actually intellectual property is a very alien and awful concept which tries to say that we are not connected at the level of the mind, which is not true at all and is the exact opposite of truth. It's bad enough the horrific state of competition in the world based on the idea of material ownership without it now also attacking the integrity of our free minds.

Theft exists only in the mind of the person who believes they've been stolen from, period. If I do not perceive that you are stealing from me you are not, regardless of what the law says or what you believe you are doing `to me`. If I DO perceive that you are stealing from me, you're still not, because my perception of what you do has nothing to do with what you're doing. Only I can decide I am being stolen from and only I can steal from myself. To think otherwise is to choose vulnerability and victimhood.

If you believe you've been stolen from then you have to believe in theft in general, which means you have to also be a thief. All this suggestion that victims of theft have no hand in being stolen from is a lie. A victim is a passive victimizer wrapped up in a blanket of pretend innocence and justification through fear. You can really only steal from yourself and if you choose not to do that then you will never perceive it happening to you.

As to honesty, honesty means being completely consistent all the time and not adjusting `your tune` in adaptation to changing circumstances. `Sticking to the truth` about sums it up. Honesty is a constant. The world is NOT constant - there is nothing permanent in the world and you cannot behave honestly in terms of your behavior in the world. Being honest means being eternal, beyond the world, and being honest does not entail having to have the presence of dishonest people in order to define it. Honesty is an inherent purity and I don't think you can really talk about acts in the world as being honest or dishonest. If you are consistent in your *mind*, you are honest, regardless of the *appearance* of your physical behavior. `Truth` in this world is usually about who blames who for what and how it is proved based on physical evidence, but this really has nothing to do with justice at all.

Here are the facts. You write your game, you do whatever you want to try to prevent it being used in whatever way people see fit, and you will fail, and they will use it however they see fit, and it will have very little impact on you having `enough` abundance to survive, because as soon as that game leaves your hard-drive it is no longer your controlled property. You only think you own your own stuff within a rather fragile framework of partly agreed-to social structures and this ownership is really an illusion which can change at any time. You can never really own anything, and as soon as you put something in someone else's hands they can claim ownership of it as much as you can. We call this theft only because we think of each other as separate people at war with each other. (I appreciated GreyAlien's comment about having provided support for his product even knowing it was pirated - that's what sharing is about).

The law might say otherwise and people might debate otherwise, but people are free-willed and that will always be stronger than any laws. You can't stop people from exercising their freedom and if you are not comfortable with that then you're setting yourself up for stress.

I said something way earlier which I think was misunderstood, which was that if you do not protect your product it absolutely cannot be stolen or pirated. This *sounds like* I'm saying `okay, open up your product and make it seem like a sitting duck and let everyone steal it`, but that is not what I said. When you open up your product you let go of your belief that copying is theft and then in that mindset you cannot perceive copying as piracy. In fact you welcome it, and to welcome it fully you must NOT protect your software.

Protection is a limitation, period. It hinders, it gets in the way, it is awkward, there is no perfect way to do it, it's annoying, it doesn't work well and never will, it's arrogant and it cripples both your freedom and that of your `customers`. Choosing `no protection` renders your software `innocent`, and with nothing to hide its integrity cannot be compromised. Copying it does not defy its nature, nor pirating it, nor changing it, nor `stealing` it, nor spreading it to all your friends, because what it IS is an embodiment of freedom.

I think there's generally two plain sides to whole discussion - a) there is a right way and a wrong way to behave in the world and if people copy your software against your will to have them not do so, they are a pirate. or b) morals are all made up by people anyway and there is no right or wrong way to act in the world and no way of acting is better or worse than any other so copying your software is not right or wrong.

No, he was head of the ruling party so simply changed them to suit their agenda - its what governments do all the time. It was an extreme example to show laws are not always about what is right and wrong, and nor do they always take everyones interests into fair account.

-Bottom line is all the laws, protection and moaning in the world wont stop it and never has.
-Downloading is morally wrong unless you honour what you use by paying for it (to those that made it/authorised retailer).
-People will always download stuff, and will always push it further underground each time steps are made to try and stop it.
-The further its pushed the bigger the headache for everyone; developers, consumers, pirates and law enforcement.
-Whats legal in one place is not in another, making it even more difficult (unless you want to have a chinese approach to the internet where everything is blocked)

That's a rather worrying reply for Grey, I bet!

mmmmmmmmmmmattisons

mmm mmm mmm mmm
once their was this kid who couldnt copy a game right after he got home from school

when he finally did he found he found it looked just like his daddy
mmm mmm mmm mmm

:p

I don't get that at all...

Sung in the style of Crash Test Dummies "Mmm Mmm Mmm"

Oh... yeah. :)

> Bottom line is all the laws, protection and moaning in the world wont stop it and never has

Your right, to take another extreme example - there are laws against murder and it still happens, and lo and behold most murders don't think they did anything wrong either...

Do most murderers deny they did anything wrong? Where'd you learn that one?

Yep, the same old story.
The killer, blood dripping from a kitchen knife in his hand, stands over the dead body saying :
"Sorry Officer, of course I did it but I really don't understand why you're making such a fuss! It's not as if it's illegal or anything!"

It's not quite as simple as that. Read Crime and Punishment.

Why has this topic taken so long to get onto religion?

Almost bitten my nails off in anticipation.

I didn't realise that it had.

*sigh* I think I can speak for most when I say I highly doubt your framework has been pirated...

> Do most murderers deny they did anything wrong? Where'd you learn that one?


Read any book, any study, anything, about criminal pyscology for the answer.

No need to be rude. I was just imagining that someone could have in theory bought it and given it to a friend who also programmed BMax (or someone who was part of a team), something like that - or even spread it via one of the Blitz IRC channels. I wouldn't be able to do anything about it as it's not protected in any way. Hopefully that's not happened but I just wondered rhetorically, that's all (wasn't expecting an answer). On a similar note I also wondered if sswift has known of any of his tools being pirated.

Precisely my point
Mabe in a book about pathologically insane serial killers perhaps.
Of course many of your basic 'murderers' -know- its wrong even if they may not admit it or try and justify it.

And you know this to be true because...?

Speaking as someone who has written a couple of (freely available) libraries out there, I can say with almost certainty that Jake's framework has been pirated. I know that people have distributed the source code versions of my libraries ( which I send out to thank people who donate x amount ) to other people, and frankly I don't mind because they donated and that was very kind of them. Still, since they do that with a library that you can get (albeit without source) for free, I think it's highly unlikely that Jake's framework hasn't been pirated at least a few times.


Because the police actually have to work to catch and convict them? Trying not to get caught is a sign of conscious guilt on at least one level.

Because many murders involve momentary lapses in reason due to rage, jealousy, drugs alcohol or whatever. People feel very differently when the "fog" clears hence i was dissagreeing with the "Most murderers" part.
But whats that got to do with anything related to piracy?

This thread has gone south.

Gabriel: Interesting info thx.

Yeah that's what I initially thought. Then I thought, that just means they know it's "wrong" from a "LAW" point of view but they may not think it's wrong from their point of view (especially if they are completely nuts OR maybe oppressed in some way)...Some people do know it's wrong of course e.g. the enraged ones who fire a gun and then go "oh sh*t, what have I done", although that's manslaughter...

WARNING: ***We've digressed a bit though and the thread could get locked...

In my opinion, people who seek to victimize others must perceive themselves as victims who are justified in attacking. It's precicely because they perceive themselves as an innocent victim *at the same time as* attacking themselves for some god awful thing they think they're guilty for, that they project this onto others, see other `innocent seeming` people as guilty and thus justify attacking them. It helps them to feel relieved and affirms that they themselves are not the guilty one, which can be a relief if you believe that. They really do perceive themselves as an innocent victim who is justified in serving out justice to those who they think deserve it, in a distorted way. Momentary lapse of sanity and all that. Nobody in their right mind would do that, so people that do that can ONLY be insane. They don't know what they're really doing, so forgive them.

So anyway, swerving the topic back on track, these murderers still murder despite the law in the same way that people will still freely exercise whatever decisions that make regardless of what you do to try to stop them. If it is *absolutely impossible* to stop them, and you let go of trying to make that impossibility a possibility (which is insane), then you can give yourself a lot of relief from guilt, victimizing and victimhood that you would have to experience as someone who holds your product for ransom. Denying something to someone is basically saying `you cant have this unless you meet my conditions`. How about `yes let's all enjoy this together`?

They aien't teenagers.

tu few typ0s

;)

...people who seek to victimize others must perceive themselves as victims who are justified in attacking.

Not necessarily. Haven't you heard of the ubermenche? The idea is that there are great men - super men - who can transcending laws (and that it it is right for them to do so) because they are leaders and heroes who can and must act in ways that other people cannot. Read the work of Nietche or Ayn Rand, or read Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment.

but do those ubermenche believe that the country or system they are part of is a "victim" and therefore their means are justified as a way to improve that country/system? Still off topic. Let's bring it back on. Do some pirates think they are victims of circumstance by not having enough money (for whatever reason) to buy a game and thus feel justified in pirating it. Or in fact they maybe feel they are victims of the "corporations" making loads of money from CDs, movies, games etc and therefore they are justified in getting it for free. However, as someone mentioned about, with Indie games there isn't really any corporation involved and the actual designer of the game really looses out because there are way less layers of distribution with people shaving off money for themselves and pushing the price up etc...

The simplest justification is that many games are not even worth the disk they are deliveried on, at least if EA is written anywhere on the box. This especially includes "fullprice" expansions like any released in the past 2 years or yearly updates to the same game since 1999

Grey,

I reckon that most pirates just want stuff for free. It's as simple as that.

...I will be glad to receive all your source codez , from you guys whos thinking that pirates arent that bad :)

Sure but why do they want stuff for free instead of paying? There's many reasons. Some people like to collect games (so will download as many as they can get, like MAME ROMS that you never play all of), some like to just try out lots of new games (good or bad), some want to say they've played certain games to their friends for social reasons, plus tons more reasons I'm sure.

The answer is in your question - the stuff for free part. People either don't want to pay for the things that they download or they can't afford to. These are the primary motivations for most (but not all) "pirates", but, of course, people give other reasons to excuse and justify their actions.

Well I actually download cracked games to try them out and buy them if they are good or delete them again.
Thats today just a needed step, as the demos are fake or don't exist at all and after the recent going ons at gamespot and the like, any game rating can be/is between unreliable and bought so wothless

Should mention that this does not happen often. I only do it for high price games and only for those I would consider buying at all.

Games that I don't see as beeing worth to be bought are not worth to be played as well.

I wasn't intending to be rude, I apologize if it came across that way.

I think my intentions were to say that most programmers (most, not all, especially indie developers) know that they wouldn't want the same done to their hard work so they tend to buy what they need (even source code). There are those that will 'try' something out and only buy it if they can make a commercial grade app using it. If they fail then they consider the investment null

OK I see, thanks for the clarification. (good job I wasn't rude back haha ;-) and therein lies a useful life philosophy).

I don't think you've actually thought that through. I wouldn't wish the lions share of my source code on my worst enemy, much less some random person on the Internet.

Different poeple have different reasons.

I know there was a time I wanted to screw around with a control that could capture video. The only thing I could find that would even come close to what I wanted was $1000. I just wanted to play with it, maybe make my own little app. $1000 for that is just nuts. I never did find a pirated copy of that control :( Would have grabbed it if I could have found it.

Of course, I would have never produced a commercial product with a pirated control.

I have been known to grab a pirated game every now and then. And when the game deserves it, I buy it. It is very upsetting to purchase a game and find it just isn't hwat you were hoping for afetr paying $50+.

I even used a pirated version of BlitzMax for the first 2 weeks until I decided I liked it and might actually do something with it. I then purchased it.

If I want to just dabble with something for an hour, I may look for a pirated copy.

With XBox 360/Wii games, I rent them and play them for a week or so to get an idea if I want to spend $60. Why is it that just an hour of a demo should give me that satisfaction? Many games get bad after the beginning.

If something is definitely worth the money, I will pay for it. I have no problem with that. In fact, it is almost a bigger compliment when a person who could have your game for free actually buys it. I did buy your Fairway Golf game :)

I guess this question is mainly for Dreamora but also anyone else - if you do download a cracked version of a game and you are apparently not doing anything `wrong`, why do you justify yourself by saying the many ways that you `only` do this or that and that you delete it? If you are okay with it, why even delete it at all? Why even pay for it if you are okay with using the cracked version?

In traditional thinking some people would say that if you get a cracked copy to `test it` and even if you buy it later, you still were stealing the game for a short time no matter which way you paint it?

I'm not saying you or anyone's a thief in my view, but some people would think so. Presumably you do feel some guilt about it which is why you don't just download the cracked game and keep it and never pay for it? Or are you acting purely without guilt and are just doing it for the practical purpose of testing before buying?

I think the days of good customer service are gone now. 20 years ago it was one thing to buy software because usually you got something good for your money. Now-a-days everyone and their brother is pushing out the next modeling package. And Autodesk adds another revision (another $3,500 for you and I) to 3DS Max for adding the ability to use baked textures, or for another nurbs breakdown.

Do you buy the cheap stuff and 'hope' they give you what you need? You could download their trial however they have it so locked down due to pirates that you can't test the features you need to test.

Do you buy the expensive stuff, buy hundreds of features you don't need for a bloated price because you can't go back in time by 7 years and buy the version you can use more efficiently at the cheaper price?

True story: We needed to wrap a texture around a sphere a certain way, found 3 tools to do it, only the cheapest one had a trial bundle (which happen to be a game creators texture tool). We tried it, the texture looked good in the viewer of their tool however wouldn't export due to the lockdown for trialware. We thought 'ok, this will work, looks good'. Purchased it for $90, waited 2 days for the key through email, finally activated the trial copy, exported the texture, and after 9 hours of fiddling with the texture found it wouldn't work the way we needed it...... So there we have 9 hours of my time (billed, thank you) plus the $90 purchase, and time wasted to find out it wont do what we need it to do.

Although I am not one to support piracy, I can see the gray area in "try before you buy" with piracy as a money saver for the little guy. Sorry to say that, but it's just how I feel.

I think I prefer shareware that lets you try everything before you buy, including saving and all that. I don't think disabling features really helps you to get a sense for how useful it is. Time limits of some kind seem more useful.

I also think you have a good point about how apps tend to keep growing when all you really want is some basic feature set or some subset of all the available features. What I'm going to do is try to create software that the user can decide how they want to experience it - how many features they access, etc, and to make it easy to put together sort of `custom interfaces` so you don't have to suffer really complicated bloated crap that you don't need or use. Today's screens are far too cluttered with unused space masquerading as useful features.

Amen (as long as he or she coughs up eventually)

Its still going then.. 124+ :/ (anyone know the site record?:)

I always do if the product is good.

But then I say "The price that some companies ( mostly aim at Microsoft here) charge for their products then they deserve to get ripped off"

It's funny how we flex and bend our morals/beliefs dynamically depending on the situation. Microsoft is really no more or less worthy of being ripped off than anyone else, but so long as we can justify what we're doing based on perceived harmful intentions from them, then it seems to make up for it. Not that they'd necessarily go along with you. If we're saying it's okay to pirate someone is they `asked for it`, then that's a very indirect justification. But such is human nature for the most part.

I guess if we were totally okay with products being copied freely we'd also have to be totally okay with obtaining them for no money at all. If having to pay anything indicates a lack of freedom then it proves to be a hurdle to deny. What it seems to come down to then is we're pretty darn lucky that anyone buys any products at all - if the attitude of the masses did not support it there would be no way such an economy could survive.

What? That's like saying a murderer is no more or less worthy of being killed than anyone else, or that rapists are no more deserving of being raped than anyone else, or that pirates are no more deserving of having their stuff stolen than anyone else. Sure it's still morally wrong, but the idea that Microsoft don't DESERVE to be ripped off is wrong on so many levels. Of course they do.

"they started it" ?

Come on, deserving is a man-made concept designed to replace a prior decision that we're not worthy. You can't hold Microsoft accountable for your decision to steal from them.

I'm not stealing from them -- all I'm getting at is that Microsoft is far from innocent themselves, given their illegal business practices that essentially locked in 90% of the world to their software platform.

Although I agree with you, you have to admit that steal from pirates is funny in itself (IE someone pirating Windows after Mr. Gates and Mr. Jobs had their little spat).

In the same respect though, saying that M$ charges way too much for software (true in my book) is the same as saying the Auto industry charges way too much for a car, let alone the pc industry charging way too much for a pc (also true in my book). I simply base all that on the profit margin they make from each.

especially as windows XP / Vista only costs 120USD to buy (DSP/ OEM versions, sold by different online shops that sell pc parts -> no MS phone support but I've never called them anyway, so no difference)

An OEM is kind of a pirate copy too to some extent.
-Unless it is supplied with whatever it was originally supplied with, because otherwise it violates the licence agreement and so makes it an illegal unlicensed copy.

(Not in all countries tho , germany apparently is one, but the UK and US it is considered a violation of the licence as it is "bundled/subsidised" software... or at least it used to be)

It is a legal license in case of Microsoft Products. The license certificate you get with it clearly specifies that.
The only part you don't have is microsoft support. Company that sold it has to do the support. Thats why they are called DSP and not OEM but for most the term OEM is better known.
As mentioned, as they are officially sold in stores, they definitely are legal (switzerland is no eastern country or the like :) )
Its just that many don't offer it to make more cash from stupid users.

So if you buy a vista at 600 USD, most of it goes into the phone support, not for Vista for example

My 3 WinXP Pro licenses are valid free licenses from MS directly, so I don't care about it. my 2 Vista Business licenses are not used and I wouldn't touch the 64bit ones of both even with a 10 ft pole.

Fair enough i guess,

I think it was the case with Win 98/ME/2K though as it said "NOT FOR RESALE!" on the cd/agreement, and it is like that with most other "oem" software. they must have dropped it for XP/Vista.

My son's favourite word seems to be "BUT ..." when I'm trying to explain about something he maybe shouldn't be doing :-) Also when a kid says "that's not fair" they normally mean "I'm not getting exactly what I want" which is not necessarily a good definition of fairness. With children you can see the raw routes of behaviour that then stays with many adults in one form or another, it's pretty interesting (makes me look at my own behaviour for example).

There's one more catch with the OEM versions of Windows: It's tied to the PC it's initially installed on, and it's not legal to use it on another one... So if you upgrade your PC, you get to buy the OS again even if you destroy the original one.

I use NoCD cracks because I have a vast software collection and cant be arsed keep switching the legitimate software I have because the dumb security systems that publishers use only effect the people who actually buy software. Its about time we got rid of copy protection as it only damages sales in some cases (starforce) and in other just pisses you off when it doesnt read right in your SATA DVD player.

one of my underpaid pc jobs was building pc's with substandard parts being sold for a song
we got OEM w95 cd's from a trade supplier but only shipped them with the pc if the customer paid for it ... we would install w95 thou breaking any and all licence agreements

my self afaik my xp recovery disc is actually a partition on my hdd (unless the CD is around somewhere) ive found the booklet but no serial number
should my drive bork how can i restore using the partition?

now im eyeing up a 1TB from micro direct where my brother gets his bits and bobs from and the section on the OS's says "to be sold with critical parts only"
eg motherboard HDD CPU etc

so if i cant find said CD i might stump up for XP again via oem prices

and speaking of which im running xp home at the moment, is xp pro just as game friendly (when i beef up the gfx to play em that is) or not cos i might go the extra pennies for xp pro if its worth it

I'll admit I use the corp XP at home. I own 5 keys now for XP Pro, however I just hate justifying the reformat every 6 months to them, or the upgrading of a mobo/cpu which usually forces me to reinstall xp again. Each time I used to do it would mean a call to M$ for that lovely long activation code...

So yeah, I use the xp corp disc to get around the activation because I am so sick of calling M$ with every format/hardware upgrade.