

Thoughts on Piracy and DRM from AI War Creator - GloryFish
http://christophermpark.blogspot.com/2009/07/thoughts-on-piracy-and-drm.html

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krig
He is close to arriving to the conclusion I generally have reached when
thinking about piracy issues when he says this:

> People have been violating copyright and pirating and plagiarizing since
> long before the modern era. There's just something, deep down, that makes
> people believe that these sorts of ethereal products, or knowledge, can't or
> shouldn't be protected.

To me, the real issue is this: No one spontaneously thinks that sharing
something freely sharable with friends and family and fellow humans is
inherently wrong. "Intellectual property" is an unnatural and learned concept.
If I had an infinite supply of food, I would not think twice about handing it
out to others. I didn't use to, but now I do think that the problem is largely
one of future shock and legislation: we simply have to come to grips with the
reality that digital information will be copied, and that someone possessing a
piece of digital information will expect it to be copyable.

So where does that leave him? I don't know. Maybe there is no decent business
model for selling games like AI War in this age. Just like other business
models have disappeared or, for that matter, appeared with the digital age.

I don't think the problem is that people in general view piracy as a
victimless crime. I think the "problem" is that, deep down, people don't think
it's a crime at all.

~~~
jcl
Well, it's not _quite_ that black-and-white. DRM and copy protection has
always been broken and copyright laws have always been hard to enforce, so
people have always been able to get what they want for less than the asking
price. Every IP-based enterprise's business model has been broken for years;
Bill Gates' Open Letter to Hobbyists shows his company's model was broken even
before it started.

If people had no internal motivation to pay for something freely sharable, all
these companies should be begging on streetcorners. And yet Microsoft, Disney,
and Warner Bros. are far from charity cases.

I think that while people are aware that copying is not the same as stealing a
physical object, they are also somewhat aware that it deprives the creator. In
this sense, it's not unlike how people guiltily shuffle off as a street
performer passes the hat around: they are aware of the expectation of payment,
of the social obligation to reciprocate when someone gives you something of
value, even if that thing is intangible and cost little to produce. This
social obligation is enough to cause some people to pay.

Software benefits from other unwritten social rules as well. For example, it
is less socially acceptable to pirate software that you use to make money.
Likewise, it's less acceptable to give pirated software as a gift. I think the
strength of these social rules varies among cultures, which would explain why
piracy is more popular in some countries than others, even when the goods are
affordable.

And software further benefits from the unknowable costs associated with
piracy. If a pirated product doesn't run, has a bug, or installs malware, you
have no recompense. And, of course, there's the fact that piracy _is_
illegal... If someone can prove you pirated software, it will cost you (it's
admittedly hard to prove for individuals, but easy for corporations with
disgruntled employees).

So the software business model is tenuous in that it relies mostly on social
norms, but it is viable.

~~~
krig
I agree with your point, but let me clarify what I mean: I don't mean to say
that people are averse to paying for content they want. On the contrary, I do
think most people are happy to pay what they feel is a reasonable price for
things.

The thing though, is this: Once I've bought something I wanted and I have it,
and it's infinitely sharable - why not share it with my friends, or even just
anyone who might want it? That's where I think the real issue lies. I don't
think most people see anything wrong with sharing something when it costs them
nothing to do it. To the contrary, I think people in general are social and
caring, and even _desire_ sharing with others when possible.

Also, I think people are happy to pay someone for creating or providing goods
they want. I don't think many people want to pay for copies of digital
content, because single digital copies truly are worth nothing.

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cninja
Park mentions people might think piracy is "a victimless crime against rich
fat cats and celebrities who don't really need the money". I wonder what would
happen if instead of a fancy logo of the development company at the beginning
of a game, there was an picture of the developer/development team with
his/her/their names. With a picture, the faceless corporate entity becomes an
actual person with a name. Has this ever been tried before? I suspect if it
ever became too persuasive, then the crackers might just remove the picture,
but it is a thought.

~~~
idlewords
I think the WROX series of programming books (and nearly all tech blogs with
thumbnail photos) make a compelling case against showing developer headshots.
There's a reason we became computer nerds.

~~~
cninja
And I think you are making my point for me. Which would be a more personal
website: a blog with some computer nerd's face on it, or a blog with a
corporate logo on it?

If a person's profile picture on a blog doesn't reduce the readership, then
why would it on the splash page of a game? If the looks of a person mattered,
the only popular blogs with profile pictures would be hot girls.

~~~
randallsquared
You only talk to hot girls in person?

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cunard-n
This recalls to mind what I think is a very compelling argument found at the
beginning of "Freakonomics." Namely that people are not stupid, and they know
that if they stop paying for the bagels, the bagels will dissapper. In the
book, they examine the pay-rates and stealing rates of a service operated by a
guy who just left a can for people to put their payment in and collected it
each day when he dropped off the fresh bagels. This was in an office
environment. In the book it is very clear that most people, most of the time,
will pay if you make it easy for them to. Essentially, isn't that the insight
behind I-Tunes? Just enable people to pay, and voila! They pay. I suggest (to
the OP) that maybe a better way of thinking of the way forward is to see
people as people and make paying you as easy as possible. I definitely applaud
your principled stand on DRM and open standards. Bravo.

~~~
jfno67
I could not agree more. Now that iTunes has dropped DRM, I have paid for all
my music since then. The last time I copied something, there were no non-DRM
version on iTunes and Amazon was not selling the non-DRM version in Canada. So
as a last resort I took a Torrent. Give me an easy way to pay you for what I
want and you'll get my money.

~~~
cunard-n
It's such a tiny country. We must know each other!

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tom_rath
Long-term piracy concerns aside, the author can take that listing on
NowTorrents with a pinch of salt.

If you try entering any garbage text in the 'search' you'll see auto-generated
results (soon to be search-engine indexed) which claim to have that item
available for download. All you need to do is sign up for an account to see
'em! Yeah... It's an old scam and probably ropes in more worried developers
than it does pirates.

Keep an eye open for pirated copies and adapt as you can, but don't freak
about every piracy notice you receive on Google Alerts.

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jfno67
Interesting and I'm happy he doesn't see adding DRM as a solution. I wonder if
he thought about long term effects of this piracy.

In the context of one game you can see piracy as lost sales, but in the long
term those are people that were exposed to your product and that you may
convert later. I know that I did copy a lot of games before working, but then
for a couple of years I bought a lot. Now I play rarely, but most of the games
I bought were from developers I had previously copied.

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garply
I feel like, fundamentally, the problem of piracy with digital goods is
something like this:

I'm a wheat merchant. My store is located 10 minutes outside of town and I
give people a fixed amount wheat in exchange for money. But one day there's a
huge pile of relatively undefended wheat that people can just take for free
(even if illegally) in the middle of town. Suddenly my wheat is no longer
worth as much.

Seems pretty simple to me.

~~~
randallsquared
I think a better analogy is:

You're an apple merchant. You sell apples, which are generally better quality
apples than the ones people can get elsewhere. However, some of those people
have now begun planting apple trees from your apples' seeds, and thereby
getting more of your apples without paying you for them. These apples still
aren't quite as good on average as your apples, since sometimes they come with
worms.

This situation wasn't terrible until recently, when someone invented a way to
make apple trees grow faster, and now the time to grow an apple tree in
someone's backyard from one of your seeds is halving every few years.

~~~
garply
I like that analogy.

It's interesting that we focused on different aspects of the quality of
pirated goods. You assumed illegal copies are of worse quality than the
original - and this can be true: that copy of Photoshop you grabbed illegally
may well be carrying a Trojan.

But I don't think it's always that simple: A person can watch new TV episodes
faster off of torrent sites than he/she can see them on Hulu, and without ads.
I'm pretty sure the faster, ad-less version is more valuable than the
original. Likewise, DRM-less MP3s are probably more valuable than locked ones
from the original CD, etc.

~~~
randallsquared
I only added that in to be a bit more accurate; in general, I only think
illegal copies are worse _on average_ (meaning more of them have problems than
"approved" copies have problems). I could continue quibbling by talking about
movies copied via camera in the theater, but I won't bother; I actually do
agree that in many areas the pirated copies are better all around than non-
pirated copies.

The reason I felt compelled to give another analogy, though, was a another
difference: the ease of making more apples / wheat / copies, in one's own
backyard (or computer, as the case is). I felt that that was an essential part
of the picture, missing from the wheat scenario. :)

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dschoon
Thoughtful, fair, interesting discussion. I'd love to see Park hang out here
and comment (does he?). I personally agree with everything he wrote, but I
imagine there are positions out here he didn't consider.

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sethb
What keeps piracy alive is the fact that it's almost impossible to get caught.
If people could shoplift in physical stores and there would be no consequences
associated with it, I imagine that there would be more shoplifters.

I think it's essential for the future of digital products to come up with a
viable ID system for the whole web, so people are more responsible. In this
regard Facebook seems promising...

