Piracy is fucking the world over

[McMock]

I'm never buying any software, DVD's, CD's, games anymore, I just download everything. Five years from now everybody is gonna do that. How the fuck are businesses going to deal with it?

I think they're gonna have to find some kind of way to police the internet, check what you're doing with it, stuff like that. But nobody has that kind of authority over the internet. And there already exists a completely free, completely uncheckable version of the internet called freenet that is totally uncontrollable. It's full of child pornography at the moment and nobody can do a thing about it.

Is this the death of intellectual property?

[FS]

Companies that produce music and video material refuse to understand that they can't beat the Internet no matter how many tricks they try out. They can't come out as the winner, but they could break even if they decided to conform. Find a way to sell their stuff on the Internet, in a way that piracy a less desirable alternative. Like selling individual songs from a CD, so that you don't have to pay full price if you only like a few songs.

There's no way to crack down on the Internet because it's worldwide. The only thing possible is what some countries living under dictatorship do, which is blocking off the rest of the world and laying heavy restrictions on their own portion of the web.

And there's still people who buy music and movies on hardware, me being one of them. I think that owning an official CD or DVD has gained a greater personal value due to piracy.

[the_dudefather]

doesnt china have some kind of nationwide filter for its internet? a bit like web-sense, but everyone has it and theres nothing you can do about it?

there are very few dvds/game ill actually buy these days, since ill most likiely be watching a movie on the pc anyway, and since there is little to no advantage to buying an actual game (bar a nice box and an instruction manual and the feeling of a good deed done). the only dvd ive bought in the last few months is red dwarf V and thats because id rather have the shiny disk and extras.

[MetalMilitia]

While i believe Piracy is not doing software/film companies any favours it could be the thing that finally makes them re-think their priceing and distribution methods.

For instace a CD album costs about £15 in a shop like HMV but these days you can usually download the album for under 1 pound a track from a music site. It may not be much of an improvement but its a start and hopefully soon CDs in shops will have their prices reduced.

In regards to games the fact of the matter still remains that if you want to play online you will need a ligit copy. There is not really any way around that unless a warez group are really smart and find some obscure way around the CD key checks (like EMPORIO seem to have done with HL2, via some fancy reverse engineering of steam).
Also i have found that even the most warez savy people will still buy a game if they deem it worthy of the high £35 price tag.

I think valve have had the right idea in distributeing HL2 via steam and having an online verification system which, while not bulletproof, still seems to have eliminated a great deal of piracy at the cost of pissing off a few people who do not have a net connection.
I expect we will start seeing other companies using this method soon.

Films seem to be the only media which really is loosing the battle against piracy, and i cannot forsee them doing anything about it any time soon so they are probably going to have to rely of box office sales more than DVD sales in the future.
But at the same time DVD writers are still not very widespread so people wanting to watch DVDs on their fancy 42" TV in their living room are still going to be buying alot of DVDs.

I guess some really smart person is going to have to think of a new method of copy protection which is uncrackable, but this is a long way off.

[soundtest]

Originally Posted by the_dudefather

doesnt china have some kind of nationwide filter for its internet? a bit like web-sense, but everyone has it and theres nothing you can do about it?

Yea, "The Great Firewall of China". I was living there for a while and we just used proxies to get around it.

[liquidstatik]

Originally Posted by FS

And there's still people who buy music and movies on hardware, me being one of them. I think that owning an official CD or DVD has gained a greater personal value due to piracy.

That's what I do. I'll download full albums, and if I like it enough, i'll usually buy it. Something about having the actual CD is so much greater than a burned disc.

[AChimp]

Originally Posted by MetalMilitia

I think valve have had the right idea in distributeing HL2 via steam and having an online verification system which, while not bulletproof, still seems to have eliminated a great deal of piracy at the cost of pissing off a few people who do not have a net connection.
I expect we will start seeing other companies using this method soon.

Fuck people who don't have the Internet. They count for nothing. They're the same people who whine about having to upgrade their computers every 2-3 years because they think it should be like a car and last for 10.

[McMock]

I don't think any kind of copy protection can work because of this very basic priciple: If the program that was supposed to read the data can read it, another program, using the same method, will be able to read it as well.

I think the whole world will have to change from a distribution-based economy into something else. It doesn't make sense anymore to pay fifteen middlemen to get your cd from the recording studio to the listener if none of that is needed. These middlemen hike up the price and will have to go.

Seriously, I don't know what will happen, but it's going to be severe. I think the consequences will be greater than that of the discovery of the wheel.

I believe scientists have made the very first matter-creater in a laboratory not too long ago, which means they can create any kind of atoms from any kind of base material. That could mean that when you buy a new ikea closet you'd actually be paying for the blueprint, which would be emailed to you, upon which your matter creator would cough one out for you.

Kind of loopy, but not unrealistic, I think.

[MetalMilitia]

But isnt one of the most important physics rules that matter cannot be created or destroyed?
If it exists it must be a matter-changer.. or something.

[McMock]

Well, you know... I don't think matter is all that hard to find

[the_dudefather]

i love to be able to download warez pizzas and coke from suprnova and use my matter-changer/creator to make them appear on my desk

[AChimp]

You could theoretically make anything by sticking protons, neutrons and electrons together in the right combination.

[MetalMilitia]

think thats still a few years off though. Let alone for commercial use.
I sometimes get pissed off that all these fancy pants inventions are not going to be available within my lifetime.

Damn future people get all the fun

[FS]

Originally Posted by AChimp

You could theoretically make anything by sticking protons, neutrons and electrons together in the right combination.

"Tea, Earl Grey, hot."

[AChimp]

[liquidstatik]

[the_dudefather]

what would be the base component of this amazing machine, a dense cube of 'atoms' or something, or could it potentualy break down and object into atoms, then recombobulate them into a new object.

i suppose the density of the intended object determines how much matter it would need. Being able to reuse matter in this way however would be a solution to waste, with 100% of all new items being recycled. landfills could be broken down and the matter creator could spit out a pizza hut or something.

mmm pizza.

[EisigerBiskuit]

There is only one option left: DESTROY THE INTERNET

[Anonymous]

Originally Posted by the_dudefather

what would be the base component of this amazing machine, a dense cube of 'atoms' or something, or could it potentualy break down and object into atoms, then recombobulate them into a new object.

i suppose the density of the intended object determines how much matter it would need. Being able to reuse matter in this way however would be a solution to waste, with 100% of all new items being recycled. landfills could be broken down and the matter creator could spit out a pizza hut or something.

mmm pizza.

Spoken like a man who doesn't know where his towel is.

[the_dudefather]

why do you know where it is?

after all a towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have

[executioneer]

this thread makes me want to see if i can find the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy audiobook on soulseek

[Blackjack]

Hey hey, mind if we dispense with the Star Trek crap for a moment and talk about reality?

Record companies are making more money selling chart ringtones than the actual music. This makes me think that soon, they'll just give up trying to sell singles, and just give the damn thing away. All the money will be recouped on live perfomances, merchandising, or sidelines like the ubiquitous ringtones, not to mention money made on videos such as via text voting on the music TV channels.

I agree with FS, actually owning the CD/DVD/game or whatever gives me more pleasure and satisfaction than getting it online. Two years ago I bought the original Half-life bundled with CS, OpForce and BlueShift for around $20 and had more fun playing it than my burned copy back in 1999.

Besides, downloaded stuff is a pain in the ass - low quality, bits missing and what have you. I do a lot of DJing and whenever I play a track from one of the few burned compilations, my finger always hovers over the mixer with the next track lined up just in case of an embarrassing technical fault. Plus, I'm quite fussy with sound quality and when played over a reasonable system you can really can hear the Mp3 "artifacts" - and reduced low end.

Remember kids - Home taping is killing music.

[Hyper Tonik]

Originally Posted by the_dudefather

doesnt china have some kind of nationwide filter for its internet? a bit like web-sense, but everyone has it and theres nothing you can do about it?

Thats because china is a communist and individual rights don't exist.

[executioneer]

he didn't ask why, dorkface