Piracy in general

[shiv]

So here are some questions that popped into my head, a simple yes or no will suffice.

a)If AAA title DVDs like Iron Man, Transforms, etc were priced at R75 would you buy more DVDs than you do now?

b)If you buy pirate DVDs now, would you buy originals if they were R75 instead of the current R150+?

c) Would you be happy with an AVI of your favourite movie when the original itself costs only R75?

(a) yeah

(b) cheaper will always attract more buyers....... . . . . . . .

(c) depends how it is ripped... i have seen truly awesome rips. . . . i remember seeing divx movies for rent. my dvd player has a divx code, not entirely sure what it is for though... and besides you can fit many movies on one disc.

[lancelot]

So here are some questions that popped into my head, a simple yes or no will suffice.

a)If AAA title DVDs like Iron Man, Transforms, etc were priced at R75 would you buy more DVDs than you do now?


Yes

b)If you buy pirate DVDs now, would you buy originals if they were R75 instead of the current R150+?

Never go near pirate stuff, will not allow it in the drive.

c) Would you be happy with an AVI of your favourite movie when the original itself costs only R75?

No buy the original

[RiaX]

So here are some questions that popped into my head, a simple yes or no will suffice.

a)If AAA title DVDs like Iron Man, Transforms, etc were priced at R75 would you buy more DVDs than you do now?

b)If you buy pirate DVDs now, would you buy originals if they were R75 instead of the current R150+?

c) Would you be happy with an AVI of your favourite movie when the original itself costs only R75?

a - definitely

b - nope i dont buy fake dvd movies

c - depends on the movie if its an ok movie that i wouldnt buy but would watch then yeah. if its a top movie then no i would buy it

[Anakha56]

I only buy originals...

[Jonboy]

OT

I would really enjoy it if the DVD producers could include a high quality AVI version of the feature film as a feature on the second disc so one could simply copy it over to a multimedia player, although I do understand that this would then be easier to pirate because you could just copy it over to all and sundry. I think that this largely happens anyway nevertheless.

/OT

Fake DVDs are a waste. You pay what, R40 for something that's been filmed in a cinema, ripped to an AVI, uploaded, downloaded here by some less than scrupulous chap who then expands it to a DVD and prints some covers. You watch the thing and cannot possibly enjoy it!

A lot of the DVDs I buy are originals which are a few years old when they end up on the "Buy 3 for R200" bin at Musica or Look and Listen. Otherwise I buy new releases that I really want from Kalahari who are normally R129. Most stores are now charging R150 for new releases!

[GDI_Lord]

a)If AAA title DVDs like Iron Man, Transforms, etc were priced at R75 would you buy more DVDs than you do now?
Yes.
b)If you buy pirate DVDs now, would you buy originals if they were R75 instead of the current R150+?
I currently don't buy DVDs.
c) Would you be happy with an AVI of your favourite movie when the original itself costs only R75?
That's what I may or may not be doing now, except the price isn't R75 right now.

[maestro_za]

I buy DVD's of titles I want to watch, especially if I went to the cinema and watched it there first.

Unfortunately, I go less and less to the cinema these days. So I rent DVD's. Many video stores have R1 imports, often times of movies currently on circuit. Great for a night in

Pirate DVD's are redundant seeing as bandwidth prices are falling all the time and you can get AVI's from the nefarious parts of the Internet.

My 0.02c

[Zana]

Discussion continued from http://forums.pcformat.co.za/viewtopic. ... 7&start=15 as no one seems to understand certain things on ethics of sentients where the human law itself is a flawed in regards to commercialism which is resulting a lot of greed and is based or created to produce potential greed.

From Prime "If you buy a music cd, you can't freely distribute copies of it because you bought it, without permission from the original artist and publisher. Its their intellectual property, because someones brain power was spent on it. (even those really annoying artists with no brain cells or dignity)"

yes you are right there, but can you make up back-up copies yourself ? Or compile a CD with the best songs from your CD collection on to one disk for personal play back, since you are doing it for yourself and no one else, It would be unethical to sell your mixed CDs, and extremely unethical to sell them. Then you must have a the original copy of your best CD in your collection, you dont want to even use it encase you sit on it etc, or get it scratched, so you make a copy and you keep original in a woodernbox under the bed providing that no monsters would get hungry and eat it up. Where you can scratch and be careless with your copied copy and when it brakes... "whew, thank heavens it wasnt the original".

From Ryan_Cooper the simple answer is it can be done as the hardware in a apple mac is the same as in any other PC (i know I have worked on them already and have OS X running on an older machine) but its not allowed and we cant say how.....end of discussion

I do not see the logic of functionality of improved self computing in this
and dont understand why its not alowed, and from what I gathered it is created by the coporations to hinder creativity and developement for the own personal space, not you understand that i mention personal space and not public space which are two different things.

Ron 2k
Right.

You don't own the software, you only own a licence to use said software - and you are therefore bound by the terms of the licence agreement. If Apple states in their EULA that you can only run it on Mac hardware, then running it on your Windows box breaks the terms of that licence agreement, which has obvious legal ramifications. The fact that you can get it to run on standard hardware is irrelevant. As an example - anyone can go out and rape and murder someone, but is it the right thing to do?

Right yes and here you are using bothe softwares which are operating systems on one machine. And I do not see the point of not allowed to run the MAC OS on any hardware, it doesnt mae sence when it is possible to run it on Other types of hardware, you have baught the items which are the hardware and software and put it one one machine, why is it wrong in there eyes? Its because they want more money out of you. Why by two sets of hardware when you only have one? Unless you specificaly want two then its a different story, but if you specifically want one set of hardware and have two sets or even three sets of operating systems on one machine you have improved and evolved your personal computing space, giving you more complexity and elasticity. I do not see the connection of rape and murder where lives are harmed and threatened and destroyed, and unethical in terms of sentients, where here is a different set of rules which favour the corporation only and very little favours the user which enslaves the user to the corporation rather than getting involved or even improving the system with other systems of other corporations which could form unity and a better computing system for the planet rather than different types. Onme thing I have observed, Compare the windows XP Help and Support center with the MAC OSX Tiger Help and Support Center... they odly resemble each other just colours and fonts are different... or they been designed that way for ease of use? Or one stole from the other trhe design, you decide.

I suggest you take up a few law courses if you still don't get the point that we're all trying to make here.

I have seen alot of your laws and many of them are flawed especialy in regards to finance and commerce... since commercialism is the what humanity feeds off and cannot survive without it... but its a system that becomes unstable when to much greed circulates the system, is what you are all seeing now.

Locking. Please use the piracy thread ...

I am using the piracy thread to discuss this
Love and hugs

[IcePick88]

It would be unethical to sell your mixed CDs, and extremely unethical to sell them.

huh?

[Zana]

It would be unethical to sell your mixed CDs, and extremely unethical to sell them.

huh?

lol sorry made a boe boo there.. hmm was in a do self loop..
It would be unethical to distribute your mixed CDs, and extremely unethical to sell them

[Siemens]

Unethical or illegal?

[Zana]

Unethical or illegal?

Hmm that is a good question , however originaly laws were designed to make the unethical illegal,to preserve life, prevent pain and hurt, since humanity did not listen to the warmness and glowing light from within, however things have changed where things are legal to make unethical causing pain and hurt and even possible death in the future from the result of greed.

[Siemens]

I suppose taking aways someones bread and butter is unethical. but in a situation like DRM they want us to buy them 3 loafs of bread and leaving us pour and without a game. Thus taking away that bread and butter from us.
So purchase game. And give them what they deserve but make sure you can play the game as much as possible to make a balance in the light.

Some rules are now as you say ... as a result of greed.

[hamin_aus]

[Zana]

I suppose taking aways someones bread and butter is unethical. but in a situation like DRM they want us to buy them 3 loafs of bread and leaving us pour and without a game. Thus taking away that bread and butter from us.
So purchase game. And give them what they deserve but make sure you can play the game as much as possible to make a balance in the light.

Some rules are now as you say ... as a result of greed.

You very right there, and there was write up about this in December's issue and the limits on games, and proccesses to to play the game and even hog your system resources. I noticed alot of new software seems to have a little resource hog running on your system. This happned when my father got software to program IC circuits, and wanted me to go through it and then teach him, it was a Siemens program. The Install took 45 minutes on this pc and 30 minutes on mine (seperate install disks with separate keys, keys loaded off a flash disk that appear hidden, but not to the resource hog program that starts up with pc once installed. He got impatient, and perplexed about the activation of the software, he said uninstall and return the software, where I suggested he could have got an open source one that runs on CD. The problem lies is security vs program functionality as well. When uninstalling it took ages as well, and rolled back pcs to get rid of registery clutter which was about +- 130 key entries in registry. The one computer that was connected to internet rolled back fine since the activation was also internet based. And computer was identified. My computer i had to search for every entry manualy to remove it, since it was activated off disk, and not registered online. It flushed the system restore completely so that reg keys would remain if ever (but never) I never would want to install that bloated soaftware again. All its task was to program ICs... why such complex security measures for a simple task ?

The problem is each student would be given a legal copy each, but they dont have a manual to help with installation and activation processes. Each student has no PC, but wuld have to use PC in PC labs, and will they are forced to use the same PC due to liscence each time is another story. Then will they look after there own disks? even flash disks with regestration keys? Or these would get lost and fall into the hands of pirates.

I feel the system should have been made simple, where CD is copy protected and program runs off CD of the student which they do not have to stick to the same computer entirely and also other students of other subjects use pcs and could mess up with the settings of the programs, who are wondering WTF these programs do. Then the student must look after there CD and if if its gone or lost then they have to buy one, since they get this stuff free, and learn to look after what they have.

Piracy in general have made or resulted in more bloated unfreindly, unflexible software..with programs that run during startup just to check for piracy etc.. Yes its all becasue users had taken the bread off the table, but somehow its now forced that you have to buy and maybe caugh up more more money (such as once a month) to continue playing... I stay away from software like that.

Even music CDs for example have a program that forces to install when you insert it into your PC... which could render some CD players to not even play the CD at all and display "unknown track" on the display LCD rendering the CD completely unplayable on that specific CD player model (especialy older designs 1990s to 1996's). I use the CD play button and play it through sound card which its connected to rather than the PC itself. So if i do get the blue screen of death or boot in linux, CD plays without knowing ...

Yes its greed .. then again how many pirtated versions of software exist compared to legal copies doing the rounds, thats when it is survival ... fighting for that bread on the table...(but then some do not only want bread, they want cake too!!) and also the tightness of money in general, because of some corporations taking it all resulting in an endless snowball situation... which is resulting in the planet wide depression... and it sure cannot keep up with the greedy richy ones hording the money in swiss bank accounts instead of buying stuff with it to return it into the economy , If money was in more circulation, people would buy more than steal, the things happening today would only have started at year 2031. By then Mars would have been halfway in its terraforming project.

[Siemens]

Zana, that is too long to read so I'll just agree with you.

[shiv]

Zana, that is too long to read so I'll just agree with you.

lol

[endev8003]

Zana, that is too long to read so I'll just agree with you.

I agree with it being too long , but I'm not yet agreeing with Zana. Not without a summary at least.

[shiv]

here's my summary:

companies are losing money, not cos of piracy, but cos they produce rubbish.
and they sell their rubbish at a high price (note the word "their").
they blame piracy for everything.
if a great product comes out, it will sell well, regardless of piracy.

agree or disagree?

[endev8003]

I agree with that. Some of the reason for the rubbish is that some of the games are created for console, and then ported to PC. Before anybody starts flaming, I'm not saying that console games are bad. It's that the games get simplified to work fine on consoles, and that means they do not take the full advantage of pc's.

Also, a lot of the newer games are short. As in extremely short. I finished Crysis in 2 evenings of play, while older games like Quake or Doom took more than a week of playing every evening.

Another issue I have is replayability. I like taking an old game out and playing it again. When I was a kid, I didn't have a lot of games, so I would play the ones I have repeatedly. But with today's games you finish it once or twice and then there isn't anything else worthwhile to do with the game.

[Zana]

I agree with that. Some of the reason for the rubbish is that some of the games are created for console, and then ported to PC. Before anybody starts flaming, I'm not saying that console games are bad. It's that the games get simplified to work fine on consoles, and that means they do not take the full advantage of pc's.

Also, a lot of the newer games are short. As in extremely short. I finished Crysis in 2 evenings of play, while older games like Quake or Doom took more than a week of playing every evening.

Another issue I have is replayability. I like taking an old game out and playing it again. When I was a kid, I didn't have a lot of games, so I would play the ones I have repeatedly. But with today's games you finish it once or twice and then there isn't anything else worthwhile to do with the game.

Your words are very true I always thaught and wondered why new games played short, I wondered if they reserved the space for improving the graphic details rather than the gameplay itself since people like me sometimes like to find a sweet spot in the game, where I can sit undetected by game mates and enemies and watch the view of the level, if it has one. Hmm you did get more game play out of the money in the past.

I personaly dont like consoles since you are limited to , that is playing stuff and not doing stuff. It is also a method so that people are forced to buy consoles and console games, and have more control of the customers users yes as a pro against piracy, but a con against creativity and flexibility. But surely there are or must be better methods of copyprotection that doesnt load on your PC to slow things down or render things non-functional.
((hugs))

[Samaya]

Where do I report a company that is using illegal software? I can't seem to find anything like the BSA's website

[doo_much]

BSA Hotline number 080 0110 447

Dunno if it still works though

*Edit
Apparently it does:
For more information on piracy and ensuring your company is legally compliant, please contact the BSA at the following details:

Hotline: 0800 110 447
E-mail: info@bsa.co.za
Website: http://www.bsa.co.za

[Anakha56]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news ... canada.ars

2009 piracy watchlist names usual suspects—including Canada

A content-industry group issues its wish list for countries that need US encouragement to crack down on piracy—replete with the usual array of dubious statistics for domestic IP losses.
By Julian Sanchez | Last updated February 18, 2009 7:10 PM

Each year the office of the US Trade Representative releases "Special 301" watch lists, identifying countries that it believes "deny adequate and effective protection for intellectual property rights," in order to pressure trading partners to strengthen IP laws or step up enforcement against piracy. The US-based International Intellectual Property Alliance—a consortium of copyright industry trade groups that includes the Business Software Alliance, Entertainment Software Association, Motion Picture Association of America, and Recording Industry Association of America—released its own humble recommendations for the lists this week, naming 38 countries that it believes need to do more to crack down in IP infringement—and once again singling out China, Russia, and (yes, really) Canada for special attention as "priority" offenders. The USTR must produce its final "watch list" and "priority watch list" by April 30.

The IIPA's 2009 report recommends 13 countries for the "priority" list: Argentina, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, and Thailand. A further 25 are nominated for the plain vanilla watch list, including Israel, which the group suggests downgrading from the priority list, as well as new additions Sweden, Bulgaria, and Kazakhstan, due to "recent troubling legislative and/or enforcement developments in their respective markets." Taiwan is dropped from the proposed watch lists entirely for the first time in a decade—though it remains on a shorter list of honorable-mention countries deserving "special monitoring."

To justify its recommendations, the report also includes industry-specific breakdowns for purported dollar losses to US industry attributable to each targeted country. All told—and including both the recommended watch-list countries and those named for "special monitoring"—IIPA claims member groups lost some $18.4 billion due to lax IP enforcement or insufficiently stringent laws in 2008, down from $20.1 billion in 2007—though much of that decline is presumably attributable to the exclusion of the movie, book publishing, and video game industries, for which current figures weren't provided: Video games claimed $2.7 billion in losses for 2007, books $529 million. The current number, then breaks down as $16.4 billion in claimed losses for business software makers and $1.97 billion for the music industry.

Though a precise 2008 number isn't yet available, video game makers did attempt to gauge the scale of piracy abroad. In December alone, they claimed that 13 popular titles were downloaded 6.4 million times—with just two titles accounting for 4.7 million of those. Italy and Spain alone were named as the top downloaders, together accounting for nearly a third of the illicit copying, with France, Germany, and Poland following close behind.

Not everyone takes industry loss estimates at face value, of course. As an appendix explaining the methodology behind the numbers makes clear, the Business Software Association is in the habit of counting every pirated copy of software installed on a computer abroad as a lost sale at full market price—a plainly invalid inference that Ars has criticized with depressing frequency, to little avail. The RIAA appears to follow the same model, though the appendix is somewhat vague, while in the past the movie and video game industries have at least attempted to adjust their figures by estimating the proportion of pirate customers who might otherwise buy the legal product.

Countries that find themselves on the list have raised their own objections in the past. Canadian officials have complained that the "Special 301" process "lacks reliable and objective analysis" and is "driven entirely by U.S. industry."

The USTR's 301 lists may have added significance this year, thanks to the passage of the PRO-IP Act which creates a federal copyright "czar" charged with developing a coordinated, interagency IP protection plan, including aid to help pirate-friendly countries step up enforcement and special liaisons to piracy "hotspots."

[Fanatic-X]

Yaaarrrr, me harties... Being a pirate is mighty fun. Being chased by the law everyday, Yaarrr.

If someone has pirated stuff... well, if you really want to convey the message to a friend, pm or e-mail them. I like this forum, please don't let this forum be scrutinized