Anti-piracy or anti-customer ?

[Yorick]

Originally Posted by Luvian Again I have to ask if you read the link. I count 115 books up there on that website. That's without counting the books they published for free on dvds archives, or the books that might have been cycled out over time. And here again I refer to you to the answer of the company with the 115 exceptions and counting. They have been offering free books for nine years and they're making more money out of it. Seems to me like they know what they're doing. I do too. I agree fully that the authorities are in the right in prosecuting criminals. Yes. It is a good thing the law protects intellectual property. What we are discussing here isn't that theft should be legalized. It isn't that art shouldn't be protected. What we're saying here is that Video Game companies are being assholes. Nothing you say can or will ever change our opinion on this. You're not even having the same discussion as us, really. Piracy is bad. This isn't what this is about.

Ok granted 115 is more than 1 book. My apologies.
I did go to the website, and immediately found 3 things

1. He's wrong about the couple of dollars issue, as per proved by the Donut story in Freakonomics, and Olorin's firsthand account.

2. He's riding a wave of publicity because he's one of the first authors to do something like this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Flint
While he may be able to make a living doing things this way, how will things look in 50 years if every author does this? There will be no notability from giving away work, so less publicity from doing so. How much of his publicity from the quality of the actual books themselves and how much from his method of distribution?
Certainly I only visited his site because he came up in a debate about piracy. And I read science fiction and buy books and frequent bookstores. I'd never heard of him.

3. People aren't actually getting the book for free, they're getting a download.
This is not the same thing, as he said, he's relying on the idea that people prefer to read a book, a paper, bound book, than read onscreeen, or printout the work (which has ink and paper costs of it's own).

With an mp3 the experience is the exact same whether you buy it on itunes, or get it from P2P. You hear it out of the same speakers whether legal or stolen. Same with a hacked game. Same computer screen, same mouse... the feel is the same.

So my question still begs "who would pay for something they already have for free?" for in his case, they are paying for something they don't already have - the printed book.

[Yorick]

Originally Posted by Chewbacca You definitely do not treat all your customers like they are going to steal! Common sense and respect.

Putting locks on your store doors, and electronic magnets on the CDs is not treating your customers like they will steal, but is a universally applied measure to prevent those that will, from stealing. DRM follows the same principle.

[Yorick]

Same with having prepay gas stations.
You're not presuming everyone will drive off, just preventing those that will from doing so.

[Micah Foehammer]

Originally Posted by Luvian You are misinformed on the subject, Micah. A handful of pirated games do run into a couple of problems on the first couple of days they get pirated. But those gets fixed in a matter of days. Now if the version of the game in question is an early beta copy that is different, but it as simple to fix for a pirate as waiting for the retail version to get out and download that. Just go to megagames.com. All these no-cd cracks? That's the hacks. There is nothing more, nothing less. Go install one for Neverwinter Night 2 and see if you get any new bugs. You won't.

Sorry Luvian but YOU are misinformed. I said that not ALL of the hacks were bug free and while it may be possible to find hacks that do work properly it is a well documented fact that some of them do NOT. I know in fact that some of the no-cd cracks for NWN2 DO IN FACT cause problems and introduce new bugs. I deal with users who experience them all the time.

I really don't care if you believe it or not. I know it's true.

Originally Posted by Luvian Tell me. How at all is a limited number of installations going to have any effect in stopping piracy? Give me one example where it will prevent a pirate from downloading a no-cd crack. And how about online activation? How is it preventing anyone from using a crack?

Let's see, Customer A installs the game burning ONE installation, upgrades his system burning a second and plans a second upgrade for a third installation. With a normal three activation copy protection, he's DONE. Do you think he's going to give the game away to a friend to burn one of those activations?

Online activations check the system where the game is activated, no cd cracks do NOT circumvent that. And some requires an ACTIVE internet connection which cd-cracks won't circumvent.

Can you tell me how many of those no-cd crack users already own legit copies of the game? Didn't think so. It's more than you might think. I don't have a problem with people who already own a legitimate copy of the game resorting to a no-cd crack if they so choose even though I have NEVER personally had any disc damage from ANY drm and I seriously doubt that it's a major issue. The problem with No-cd cracks is that a number of unlicensed users resort to them to get pirated copies to run.

No snappy comeback on the EULA and second sales issues? I'm disappointed.

Trying to justify Piracy for ANY reason is just silly. Whether it's because of perceived issues regarding damage to discs from DRM, limited activations, or whatever. You're an informed consumer - go to the game websites and check out what is being planned for the game BEFORE you buy it and ask in the game forums - then decide whether you want to buy the product or not. Some game designers have even started putting software protection information on their game packages to help you out. Just quit bellyaching about it.

[Luvian]

Originally Posted by Yorick 3. People aren't actually getting the book for free, they're getting a download. This is not the same thing, as he said, he's relying on the idea that people prefer to read a book, a paper, bound book, than read onscreeen, or printout the work (which has ink and paper costs of it's own). With an mp3 the experience is the exact same whether you buy it on itunes, or get it from P2P. You hear it out of the same speakers whether legal or stolen. Same with a hacked game. Same computer screen, same mouse... the feel is the same.

Digital bookreading is getting really popular, just like mp3 players are. For example the Amazon Kindle is really picking up steam, that's all I hear about in the literature blogosphere. And it's not the only one.

I also see authors bitching on their blogs all the time about how review copies of their books end up on the net before release and it's affecting their sales.

You've never heard of BAEN books? Poul Anderson, Robert Asprin, Lois McMaster Bujold, David Drake, Robert A. Heinlein, David Weber, Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, Mercedes Lackey etc. all have had books published by them. You probably own a couple of BAEN books and never noticed.

Originally Posted by Micah Foehammer Sorry Luvian but YOU are misinformed. I said that not ALL of the hacks were bug free and while it may be possible to find hacks that do work properly it is a well documented fact that some of them do NOT. I know in fact that some of the no-cd cracks for NWN2 DO IN FACT cause problems and introduce new bugs. I deal with users who experience them all the time.

I said already that some cracks do have problems. But they get fixed and re-released. I played NWN2 without problems using a crack.

You say the majority of people having the problems are from Asian countries. Over there they tend to buy their pirated games from burned DVD. It is possible a local pirate store is still selling games with the old crack. All they'd have to do is drop by megagames.com to update it.

Let's see, Customer A installs the game burning ONE installation, upgrades his system burning a second and plans a second upgrade for a third installation. With a normal three activation copy protection, he's DONE. Do you think he's going to give the game away to a friend to burn one of those activations? Online activations check the system where the game is activated, no cd cracks do NOT circumvent that. And some requires an ACTIVE internet connection which cd-cracks won't circumvent.

That's funny because I've played both Spore and Sacred 2, still have them installed in fact, and I have never registered mines. In fact as far as their server is concerned those games were never even installed, yet I am playing them.

Trying to justify Piracy for ANY reason is just silly.

No one is trying to justify Piracy. Go ahead and try to point me to a post where I said Piracy was a good thing.

This isn't about piracy being a good thing, it's about publishing companies being idiots.

To quote the original poster:

While I'm not opposed to software companies making a fair return on their investment, I'm not a big fan of onliine activation, or the installation of invasive, buggy DRM software. If a company wants to protect their rights, fair enough, but I expect them to tell me so *before* I hand over the folding.

I don't see any pro-piracy sentiment in that. Maybe you guys should consider getting off your high horse?

[SpiritWarrior]

Originally Posted by Micah Foehammer Sorry Luvian but YOU are misinformed. I said that not ALL of the hacks were bug free and while it may be possible to find hacks that do work properly it is a well documented fact that some of them do NOT. I know in fact that some of the no-cd cracks for NWN2 DO IN FACT cause problems and introduce new bugs. I deal with users who experience them all the time. I really don't care if you believe it or not. I know it's true.

Well mate, i'd like to point out that this seems to be different to what you originally said, and I think Luvian took it that way in the beginning. Taking what you say here, of course there are buggy hacks and cracks around, it is the case for all games.

This is the nature of piracy. You may get a buggy POS, or a virus-filled game or something different entirely. I can personally say, that every NO-CD crack I have used for NWN 2 (and for NWN 1 hotu) has worked perfectly and I still use them to this day simply because I tire of messing with DVD's. While a crack may be buggy, it is very rare for one to cause in-game issues like you are describing (this is the first i've heard of it). A NO-CD crack either works or it doesn't (don't you remember the tons of us who used them for BG2?).

If it's doing something else, like messing with scripts or causing bugs in-game then the bottom line is it ain't what it's supposed to be.

[Luvian]

Originally Posted by SpiritWarrior If it's doing something else, like messing with scripts or causing bugs in-game then the bottom line is it ain't what it's supposed to be.

A couple of games, like the Sims 2 for example, have a secret hidden script that double check if the exe is legit and if it isn't instead of just shutting the game it secretly sabotage it. In the case of Sims 2 it disabled building mode if I remember right. (EDIT: I think I remember Titan Quest having one too. Got drama over it.)

Those secret protections gets found and and pirated eventually. But in the meantime the net gets inundated by bug reports and bad reviews. The sabotage being secret none of the people looking into the game knows it is due to piracy, and so the company is really shooting themselves in the foot by basically sabotaging their own release hype with bugs, hurting their sales numbers.

There's also horror stories of these scripts sometimes flagging legit users as pirates for a reason or an other and ruining their game experience, but it's hard to prove if the guy is actually legit or not. Anyway that kind of "protection" really sounds like a bad idea to me.

[SpiritWarrior]

Originally Posted by Luvian A couple of games, like the Sims 2 for example, have a secret hidden script that double check if the exe is legit and if it isn't instead of just shutting the game it secretly sabotage it. In the case of Sims 2 it disabled building mode if I remember right. (EDIT: I think I remember Titan Quest having one too. Got drama over it.) Those secret protections gets found and and pirated eventually. But in the meantime the net gets inundated by bug reports and bad reviews. The sabotage being secret none of the people looking into the game knows it is due to piracy, and so the company is really shooting themselves in the foot by basically sabotaging their own release hype with bugs, hurting their sales numbers. There's also horror stories of these scripts sometimes flagging legit users as pirates for a reason or an other and ruining their game experience, but it's hard to prove if the guy is actually legit or not. Anyway that kind of "protection" really sounds like a bad idea to me.

See, this i've seen. This is the intentional kinda bug manufactured by the develepors. Boobytraps, basically. It happend with Mass effect, IIRC and I recall everytime someone came to the official forums reporting a particular crash, they were banned immediately by the moderators. I thought it was funny at the time that freeloaders came to the official forums for technical-help but ultimately I was surprised at how many of them there were wanting help with their pirated version. Not sure if it was eventually bypassed or if they still cannot play, as I used the physical DVD for that one because of the issues with NOCD/DVD cracks for this title.

[Luvian]

Well I got Mass Effect on the 360 so I didn't play it on the PC, but I followed that bit of drama to see if they'd manage to beat piracy. As far as I know they did get a good crack working eventually, but it took a while.

But I'm not sure it was deliberate sabotage, I think it was just hard to crack.

[Yorick]

Originally Posted by Luvian Digital bookreading is getting really popular, just like mp3 players are. For example the Amazon Kindle is really picking up steam, that's all I hear about in the literature blogosphere. And it's not the only one. I also see authors bitching on their blogs all the time about how review copies of their books end up on the net before release and it's affecting their sales.

The point still stands that his self professed business plan is based on believing that enough people will prefer to read a paper, bound book than on a screen or printout.

If and when people stop buying paper books altogether he'll need to find another way to monetize or he'll no longer be a "professional author".

However, I read some things on my iphone. I read on computers. My eyes prefer I read on paper.... or they start protesting.

You've never heard of BAEN books? Poul Anderson, Robert Asprin, Lois McMaster Bujold, David Drake, Robert A. Heinlein, David Weber, Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, Mercedes Lackey etc. all have had books published by them. You probably own a couple of BAEN books and never noticed.

Never heard of them.. sorry. Piracy, not their work alone, is how I first found them.