RGE said:
I equate software piracy with sneaking in to see a show for free, or even more appropriate; watching a show from a nearby tree or window. Not quite stealing, but it does remove potential business.
So does holding your own show for free, or telling people that the show isn't worth money. Removing 'potential business' from a show is equal to removing 'magic' from a magic act; the only one who'll know the 'magic' has been removed, is the magician himself, or at least that's what he'll say has happened, when in reality we all know there is no such thing as magic.
There is no sneaking, or peeking in from trees / windows needed to make a proper reflection on piracy. The more appropriate analogy would be that a 100 people went and saw the show, and after the show they went on to the streets to mingle with a 100 people each about the show they saw, but their description of the show was so vivid and lifelike that there was no real
need for these other people to go and see the show for themselves. Even so a percentage went and saw it anyway, and this percentage will always be X, in no way reflecting either positive or negative influence.
Xi said:
Well, you could steal the binary code in the functional executable game format, as far as the game's development assests, well this would require more than a simple connection to your local bittorrent client. This is also why no one is doing it!
Correction: Why no one has done it
so far. Obviously plenty of games have 'leaked out' and surfaced on the internet, available to the public, before their release or completion.
Xi said:
The difference here is that on one side you take a mass distributed piece of property at extremely minimal risk. On the other side you are hacking into Bethesda headquarters in an attempt to locate, download, and then play with the original code, art assets, etc. Both are theft, but one is simply more traceable/enforceable.
The actual difference is the break-in, not the data stolen. Breaking into private database servers is much what it sounds like and common law is applicable to such endevours. Numerous pieces of computer identification leave a trace of themselves in communication packets with target servers, allowing authorities to trace them back to the hacker with relative ease, if he has been sloppy.
Having an illegal copy of game source code is, however, no more inflammatory than having an illegal copy of a compiled game; actions taken against such perpatrators occur nearly always as a result of idiotic direct distribution methods or equally idiotic moneymaking schemes.
Xi said:
Yeah, the impact is so negligible in terms of individual abuse, but you are still a slice in the entire pie of software piracy and the effects do compound as more people do it.
Naturally, but the assumption that it is a resoundingly negative impact is alarmist and illogical. Piracy is, historically, one of many near identical movements heading the cause for a global liberation of information distribution, and while obviously the largest bulk of it's contributers does not realize that this is the case, they contribute to the cause nontheless and as these numbers grow constantly at a very high rate, the idea of putting a lid on piracy once and for all is as futile as it is stupid.
The obvious solution (which will only become obvious to the people in charge through a long period of these futile attempts of supression) is for companies to, not only co-exist alongside of piracy and accept that there in fact is such a thing, but also attempt to work together with pirates in re-forming the market. There is, for instance, a major distribution cost one could factor out with releases over a bit-torrent system, which in theory could allow smaller companies to prosper without needing to rely on distribution giants.
Just as an addition; if you were interested in acquiring, say, a bible or a leaflet of news in the 1500's, being a man of some education and submoderate wealth, you might find what you are looking for in the hands of a street reseller. The small sum you would pay, would put a minor profit in the resellers purse, while the residue went to fight a war against the government over the rights of all free men to purchase a copy of a literary work; essentially a piece of information. Police, or standing armies, in the event that they discovered any such reprint in your possession would likely as not have you shot you down on site.
I'm talking, of course, about the printing press, being the symbol of piracy for that era, just as bittorent is today, and the resoundingly positive results it has had on humanity as a whole; a high number of scribes were out of a job, and human population became harder for the government to control, but just think of books as a means to entertain ourselves, made more easily available, and news travelling far and wide, reaching a much broader percentage of the population, all thanks to newspapers. If you really fear for the games and developers of the current generation (of which a
mere fraction deserves any real praise) just imagine the leap we are likely to make, when we've moved past this bickering and into a more united future.
RGE said:
That is not the "property" though, that's just what they've done with it. The property is all the games and the setting and the name and so on. It's not so much the data itself as the recognised legal rights that come with owning it. The only way to 'steal' that would be to somehow remove those rights from Bethesda Softworks and give them to me (or whoever).
To "remove" intellectual property, at least as it is right now, you would either have to purchase the property or prove that Bethesda (and I would assume, in this particular case, Interplay as well) had no right to the Fallout 3 property, or that they have somehow broken these rights and that all rights should therefore be removed. (What these actual rights are is probably made public somewhere, but I would not know where to start looking, or, for that matter, why.)
To act within your legal rights on the property basicly means that:
1) You cannot distribute selfmade/stolen property which adheres to the Fallout 3 trademark/universe/artset etc, and this goes double if you are accepting money for the distribution of this property.
2) Free distribution of self-made property which is similar, or even a total rip-off of Fallout 3, is unlawful based on random variables, such as, for instance, the judge assigned to your case should it happen that Beth takes you to court. As you make absolutely no money in ripping off a franchize, there's seldom any hostility from 'sane' development companies. Mods, revamps and tc's are usually o.k'd for instance, simply because they may attract more customers.
Fyi.