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Message started by Rad on Jun 22nd, 2008 at 11:09pm

Title: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Rad on Jun 22nd, 2008 at 11:09pm
I have reviewed threads recently which claim(ed) to contain links to pirated software, or some version there-of. Then these threads claimed the offending links were removed.

If there are links I need to delete, pls post them here, as I can't patrol every thread. I mean, I read a few threads, and it's not clear whether the bad links have been removed. Guides we like. Links to pirated software, we don't.

In the registration agreement, I make it clear that the only rule we have here is » no links to pirated software.

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?action=register

Thanks.

Rad
22 June 2008
(I will sticky this.)

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Rad on Jun 22nd, 2008 at 11:27pm
In particular, I was pointed to this thread:

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1211223513/0

Does this thread contain links to pirated software? And if so, which/where? (Pls be specific.)

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jun 23rd, 2008 at 12:41am
That particular thread (and the problem link in one member's .sig) doesn't have the problem any more, that was all resolved. I had sent Pleo a PM back at the time and he just today replied to it - so I suspect we're just experiencing a little time warp :-).

Always good to reaffirm the policy though!

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Rad on Jun 23rd, 2008 at 11:00am
Thanks Nigel. Yes, I also received a PM from Pleo.

Being a software developer, you likely have strong views on the subject, and more developed than those of the ordinary, run-of-the-mill guy-on-the-street. Do you view piracy as black/white (right/wrong)? Or do you also see gray areas?

College students, for example, are probably the biggest pirates, I'd imagine. Mainly because, they can't afford pricey software. (They can barely afford pizza.)

Is student-piracy condoned? Or somehow viewed differently from other piracy? (I admit my thoughts on the subject are not very well thought-out.)

If a student wants to learn (say, for example) how to edit images (a cool thing), most colleges teach a course on Photoshop. If he (she?) can't afford the purchase-price of ~US$300 for a student-discounted copy:

http://www.studica.com/products/product_detail.cfm?productid=53050

it's not like Adobe is going to lo$e any revenue if that person pirates. They could, one might argue, go GIMP, which more people seem to be embracing:

http://www.gimp.org/windows/

.. since open source software has become such a force.

http://www.osalt.com/

Obviously piracy is *always* wrong, but like the mother who steals a loaf of bread to feed her hungry kids, the motivation seems more understandable. No?

Which do you feel Adobe thinks is better?:

A. Student-A, who learns/uses GIMP instead of PS cuz they can't afford the latter.
B. Student-B, who learns PS on a bootleg copy he got from his roommate, with the hopes he purchases a copy in the future .. when he *can* afford a copy.

Is there an Option-C I missed? Or 'D'?

Seems to me (the admittedly unenlightened) that Student-B is better, cuz they at least have a *chance* of contributing to Adobe's coffers, while Student-A doesn't (especially as they become increasingly familiar with GIMP).

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jun 23rd, 2008 at 6:29pm

Rad wrote on Jun 23rd, 2008 at 11:00am:
Do you view piracy as black/white (right/wrong)? Or do you also see gray areas?

I take a quite nuanced view of the whole picture of property rights; remember you have to view them in quite a large context. It's not just computer software but all kinds of creative works, and there are the competing interests of the creative folks, the business models of publishers, individual consumer rights, business contract law, the interests or archivists and historians, dynamics of secondary markets - all of which need considering and balancing.

There absolutely are grey, or at least off-white areas, particularly where there are business models evolving in parallel with technological change. Broadcast television versus on-demand versus hard-disk recorders and time-shifting, for example.

Unfortunately, though, the nature of things is that the legal and regulatory frameworks society has set up for business and technology to work within evolves at a very slow pace compared to the technologies and business models themselves.


Rad wrote on Jun 23rd, 2008 at 11:00am:
Or somehow viewed differently from other piracy?

Well, it certainly is different, if we compare an individual student (or, for that matter, consumers in other countries which have a different purchasing power available to them; consider anti-retroviral drug licensing in sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, which of course leads to the question of why drug companies don't seek to develop treatments for third-world illnesses - that's absolutely a related situation) compared to a business committing piracy which a) can easily afford to pay, b) which pirates or counterfeits on the scale of tens of thousands of copies.

In software, almost all the enforcement activity is directed at the latter, for good reason. What gets done about the former is really mostly in the nature of doing enough to keep the honest people honest (and the nature of things is that it is necessary to do that, unfortunately - you often see, as in the thread that started this, people who really have the world-view that if you can get away with it, it must be legal despite the fact that's not the way either the law or simple common decency works anywhere in the world).


Rad wrote on Jun 23rd, 2008 at 11:00am:
since open source software has become such a force.

"Become"?

Open source is nothing new in any way whatsoever at all; it's always been a big force, back to the dawn of electronic computing. Business models change and evolve and adapt, and fashions in business come and go, but there's always room for business to innovate. Sometimes that innovation is best protected by (temporary) secrecy, as with any other information a business keeps to itself if it is a source of comparative advantage, while sometimes it's best to try to co-operate and forge standards.

It's an ever-shifting balance. Always has been. Always will be. Plus ca change.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Rad.Test on Jun 23rd, 2008 at 10:55pm

wrote on Jun 23rd, 2008 at 6:29pm:
consider anti-retroviral drug licensing in sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, which of course leads to the question of why drug companies don't seek to develop treatments for third-world illnesses

I am impressed with your scope of knowledge.

Thanks for the enlightened response.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jun 24th, 2008 at 3:11am
Apologie in advances, but I've been up a few consecutive days and perhaps this is the risk of drinking after a long time awake on an empty stomach...

I assume you're being ironic (perhaps it says more about my own opinion of myself than anything you meant to say) and that it seems like a bizarre and utterly horrible thing to compare such a trivial thing as mere software piracy to that of any other form of property right let alone that of the question of market pricing of drug formulas (and therefore funding development of things that save human lives), but the world we live in is absolutely replete, full to bursting with such ironies.

Such as, for instance, our current age's great robber baron Bill Gates being one of the people whose vast wealth (amassed from a monopoly; in other words the failure of markets, and of the proper balance of individual and corporate property rights against the interests of society as a whole) is today financing a huge amount of the research into such things as malaria which yet other forms of global market failure are not financing.

As of course, the wealth of a great robber baron and monopolist in a previous generation did the same; the Titan himself, John D. Rockefeller (a book I recommend wholeheartedly, by the way), whose vast fortune was poured into medical research and in particular, ridding America of the scourge of hookworm.

[ Something that having read Titan, always strikes me when visiting the US. One of my lifestyle choices is to live somewhat monkishly, not just in a small (60m^2) house far from any city and with a shaved head but I also live barefoot, our fair islands have no snakes or hookworm or anything really harmful to humans. One of the great public-health measures the Rockefeller foundation undertook in the US was simply that of encouraging wearing footwear amongst the southern poor, to break the life-cycle of the hookworm which was endemic to the soil. ]

Which of course, in respect of Steve Yegge's post, makes one wonder how to make much of our own lives and "cleverness". For instance, I've known I have some unspectacular but somewhat population-rare cognitive abilities since I was a young child (about 7, in fact, before my parents divorced and ended up in different countries) and that they were not earned but something I was gifted and had thus a duty to do something with.

But then, well, what is the right way to measure ourselves? What we have done on the planet? Who we are in comparison to those who are Great we have met? I chose my life today when I was 13, when I saw that Apple ][ it was so this is what I was looking for. And now I can look back and all I can see is you stupid child.

And this is all I've done with that gift... mere commerce...?

Property, theft, piracy, irony.

I mentioned recently comparing notes with a musician, who also chose his future adult life as a child, and who offered me (as a long-time fan of his music) his latest CD free, a gift. Naturally I pressed the cash I had nearby into his hand! How do those with music, instead of something as lucrative and luxurious as mathematics as a gift manage their lives and provide for their children?

...

The especially silly thing is, who owns Symantec shares? Who benefits from that heapin' helping' o' profit my work generates? "Institutions"? Who are they?

Pension funds???? Those are the shareholders, the rapacious capitalists red in tooth and claw, the bottom-seeking global financiers we're railing against, are the ones paying the cheques that keep our parents going? Well ok, not my father, who left public service when I was a youth after his second wife left him with a baby to look after, but speaking metaphorically...

Too much of that and I honestly can't remember who the bad guys are supposed to be any more, except I'm probably going to turn our to be one of them with the way the plot keeps twisting...

Why do we get these gifts, if this is all that comes from them?

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Pleonasm on Jun 24th, 2008 at 1:36pm
Rad, thank you for starting a “sticky thread” on this subject to highlight the issue and the forum's policy, and to provide a common place for concerned individuals to report violations upon which you may easily act.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jun 24th, 2008 at 7:46pm
Well, that was an incoherent ramble I posted. Anyway, to try and distill a point out of it, there are a couple of real thoughts in there.

Firstly, that societies have a general problem with to pay to get some important things done, and how to get the people capable of doing those things to do them. Many vital professions - like, say, teaching - are paid very, very poorly, for example. What does that mean about how societies value that work and the people who do it?

The question comes with software is that how should we price it, and how should the people who write it be compensated for their work so that they do it (on the basis that technological progress is a valuable thing overall).

The strange thing about the "Free Software" movement, and where it often ends up aligning with piracy, is the important distinction between the kinds of "Free". "Free Software" is not necessarily supposed to mean zero cost. In practice though, "costs nothing" is how most of the people in the world who don't write code think of it.

The people who pirate software (and I'm not talking about college students, I'm talking of the many instances I've seen dealt with of people who are using Ghost in their business without paying for it) clearly do mostly think of the software they steal as something they are somehow due as a right. They clearly have no consideration of the fact that what they are stealing is created by someone, and that those someones are human beings with jobs and lives.

What much of the so-called "Free Software" movement ends up being about in practice is a similar, rather strange belief, that software is somehow special and that the people who create it should not be able to ask for payment for it; that software is something at once so important that it's a universal human right for everyone to have all the software they want, but that software development is so unimportant that it's affront to have to pay those annoying little people who write the stuff and for them to expect to make a career out of it and have happy lives doing so.

[ That probably sounds like a caricature, but in dealing with software pirates it's astounding to see that precise mindset on display and argument made. ]

The reality is, that like all those other things we want in our societies like teachers who prepare our children's lives to be better than ours, and the artists who culturally enrich us, if you want software developers you're going to have to pay them somehow.

Ultimately, the question is, how much is this stuff - and it's not just software, because the same applies to most engineering professions and indeed to human technological progress in general, in fact - worth? Which of course for me, as someone who lives to do this, the answer to means a lot about how I feel my life is worth.

I don't need to be a multimillionaire and have a mansion and a swimming pool, I'd just like to have a stable job where I can focus on my work, and be able to feel good about doing it. Piracy and the attitudes one encounters from the people who commit piracy really do make one question this.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Rad on Jun 25th, 2008 at 6:08pm
No, I was not being ironic. I only know about anti-retroviral drugs from an online friend who lives in South Africa (Jo-burg).

How old were you when your parents divorced?

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by MrMagoo on Jun 25th, 2008 at 7:22pm
Nigel,


Your posts (and even your ramblings) are always well thought out.  Thanks for contributing.


I wanted to make some comments on Free Software.  As a huge fan of free software I wanted to make the point that most people in the open source community recognize the vast amount of time and skill it takes to create software.  Personally, the freedom of free software appeals to me much more than the free cost.  I'd be willing to pay several hundred dollars for the privilege of using Linux.  The freedom to use it as I choose without worrying about DRM and licenses would be worth it alone.  The fact that the open source nature allows any volunteer with coding skills to add useful features vastly improves its appeal to me.  

Most of the free software fans I work with feel the same way.  We appreciate what open source developers give us and consider the idea that all software should be given away for no cost as an immature idea from people who aren't looking ahead.  If developers can't make money at their day job by selling software, they won't continue to produce high quality software, and if society doesn't value computer science skills properly, fewer people will be interested in it as a career.  Forcing ALL software to be free, ironically, would mean that there would be no software at all for anyone to GET for free.  You have to pay for it somewhere along the line.

I don't think that software is 'special' in this regard.  I see this as a very similar issue to people who steal CableTV or download mp3's and movies without paying for them.  Optimizing society's policies surrounding intellectual property is a big problem that the thinkers and policy-makers of today need to tackle.  I've seen lots of heated debate about it here in the US.  Protecting people's intellectual investment is important in properly rewarding them for their work, but allowing fair use spurs innovation and creates useful variations.

The Free Software Movement's hostility toward many software companies (such as Microsoft) comes from the sometimes unreasonable restrictions placed on how we use programs that we have legally purchased.  If I spend my money for a game, why shouldn't I be able to play it on my laptop, desktop, and work computer (so long as I only use one at a time)?  If intellectual property really is property, what business is it of the creator where I use it or who I sell it to, as long as I don't make illegal copies or compromise the future revenue of the developer?  Why should I be able to modify the code to do something the way *I* want it do, as long as I understand it voids any warranty?  This is the way in which software seems special to me - it is sold as a transfer of property but then the consumer's rights are restricted as if the publisher still owns it.  Software companies seem to want it both ways.

The ability to use software when and where I want and modify it however I see fit allows me to be innovative in how I solve technological problems and allows everyone to work together to solve issues - facilitating the overall technological progress you describe.

Besides that, software keys, CD checks, DRM, activation, and all the other things software companies try to use to stop software pirates are clumsy and annoying.  They cause significant inconvienence for an honest user - having to register software, track keys, and find libraries to read the DRM.  Occasionally, as has been the case in several computer games recently, DRM ends up preventing legitimate users from using their legally purchased product due to incompatibilites or other errors.  Furthermore, these measures are a mere speed-bump for pirates.  They quickly crack the DRM or license keys and then distribute the cracked version - making the cracked version actually easier to use!  I've actually run cracked version of software I legally purchased for this reason!

'Free Software' does not have these issues.  I understand you have to make it difficult enough to copy to keep the honest people honest, but it is out of hand.  Free software has the additional bonus of not having to deal with this headache since you can copy and distribute it as you like.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Rad on Jun 25th, 2008 at 8:09pm

MrMagoo wrote on Jun 25th, 2008 at 7:22pm:
Your posts (and even your ramblings) are always well thought out.

I agree.


MrMagoo wrote on Jun 25th, 2008 at 7:22pm:
If intellectual property really is property,

Interesting. I never heard it put that way before.


MrMagoo wrote on Jun 25th, 2008 at 7:22pm:
it is sold as a transfer of property but then the consumer's rights are restricted as if the publisher still owns it.

You seem to elaborate on this thought here.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jun 25th, 2008 at 8:10pm

MrMagoo wrote on Jun 25th, 2008 at 7:22pm:
but allowing fair use spurs innovation and creates useful variations.

Unfortunately, that's not the way it's working.

Due to piracy and the effects of "free" software, independent developers and the innovation in software they bring has almost collapsed, indeed along with almost the entire desktop software market. What little innovation in desktop (home consumer) software is happening in the marketplace is no longer being done by ISVs. Instead, almost the only new products that actually succeed in anything but the most feeble way as products are a) targeted at corporate use (which may let a small "consumerised" version exist which could not sustain itself as a business otherwise) or b) entertainment products, or c) can be cast in a way they can be sold as services for a small but regular ongoing fee.

Eventually new business models may emerge that allows independent business to flourish again - largely tied to services, of course, or via hardware vendors. The iPhone and perhaps the services for game consoles (XBox live, Playstation network) may well evolve to become publishing platforms which are available to ISVs where they can glean at least some revenue to make genuinely good ideas work. However, that transition is not going to be easy.

You don't need to take my word for it, of course. Simply peruse the Business of Software forums of Joel on Software to see how real ISVs trying to start up are struggling, and having to direct their energies to fewer categories (the three above, basically) in order to even achieve quite modest success.

And indeed, you also should pay attention to the choices being made by students, which reflects their (admittedly imperfect) expectations of what will make a good future career.

I wouldn't recommend - and indeed, I doubt I would choose if I had to do it today - a very bright young person pick software as a career specialty now; other science and engineering disciplines are both more intellectually challenging and have far better future prospects (I'd pick a Theoretical and Applied Mechanics program now, as indeed was my first choice in my teens, or perhaps something in the materials science space) for the near term of the next 20 years.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jun 26th, 2008 at 5:32pm

Rad wrote on Jun 25th, 2008 at 8:09pm:
Interesting. I never heard it put that way before.

Actually, it's something that is the subject of a lot of serious academic research and in economics and public policy. The economic benefit that arises from turning intangible goods of many kinds (or of dividing things normally treated as commons) into something fungible by way of creating defensible property rights for them is something that is being demonstrated anew constantly.

Of course, the place this gets most keen attention is in non-Western contexts, where traditional property rights attached to things such as hunting and fishing and other forms of property right did not need any kind of formal framework. In New Zealand's case, for instance, this emerged recently via what became known as the "Foreshore and Seabed" issue, where traditional Maori food-gathering practice and long-established tribal use and effective guardianship of part of the seabed was discovered to be result in a conflict between statues and the government attempted to resolve this.

Some of the most clearly researched recent study of this in which the benefits of creating property rights is established relates to managing exploitation of such things as Galapagos tourism and there are many other examples.

The most important thing about property rights is not whether the rights themselves necessarily involve dominion or control of something physical. It's really about the distribution and management of the economic benefit that arises from their exploitation.


Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jun 26th, 2008 at 5:44pm

Rad wrote on Jun 25th, 2008 at 8:09pm:
You seem to elaborate on this thought here.

What is being alluded to here are the questions that arise from what in the US is known as the Doctrine of First Sale and how this conflicts with the use of copyright law - the letter of which has always had trouble with software because the process of using it involves making temporary copies of it (from hard disk to memory, for instance), which is of course part of the underlying reason why explicit licenses are involved in software at all.

The problem is that makers of software have no other real way to protect themselves other than to use copyright law - no other forms of commercial protection such as trademarks, patents, or trade secret are not suitable - but the end result of this process is a conflict between the legal ideas of what constitutes a sale (under which certain "rights" exist under consumer laws written to apply to transactions of physical goods) and contract law (the license agreement is a contract).

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jun 26th, 2008 at 6:35pm

Rad wrote on Jun 25th, 2008 at 6:08pm:
I only know about anti-retroviral drugs from an online friend who lives in South Africa (Jo-burg).

Ah, righto. Medical issues of course the ones which most clearly show the problems; drugs, after all, are mostly (leaving aside such things as RNA interference) just a matter of chemical formulas. What protection applies to those - patent law, but it's not always a great fit, and the dilemmas of paying for them ...

In the specific case of anti-HIV medications, the drug companies invested enormous amounts of money - many, many billions of dollars - to treat the disease in the West, ultimately leading to a breakthough in the form of reserve transcriptase inhibitors and the development of the HAART therapeutic application of them.

The problem is the humanitarian one of how to apply this in countries in which the prevalence rate of HIV infection is over 30% of the population; how to balance the need for the companies which invested the money in developing the therapies to recoup that investment with the humanitarian problem of making the therapies affordable to large numbers of people in economies where much of the population is around the USD1 per day line (economies of scale are an issue too; even after discovering a drug, demonstrating safety and efficacy, and then being licensed for use, making it affordable involves much futher research and then investment in manufacturing techniques and suitable plant).

Governments of those countries who wanted to start applying these therapies (even in the most simple ways, such as for prophylaxis - treating pregnant HIV-positive women to prevent the transmission of HIV to their newborns) had the choice of breaking patents to try and start manufacture of the medications themselves to bring down the cost, or trying to work out something else. Drug companies, for their part, have the problem that they can't simply manufacture or donate below-cost or license patents free of charge to those markets which cannot pay rich-world prices, because that product then rapidly becomes a commodity that undermines their pricing in the rich world (via black markets, or their licensees turning around and directly competing against them).

The main framework for managing this conflict at the moment (leaving aside the contributions of medical charities and aid organizations in subsidizing treatment) is the rules of WTO treaties which in particular have in place a "compulsory licensing" mechanism by which countries can apply to the WTO to legally break the normal patent monopoly.

At least with HIV, the disease was prevalent enough in the rich world for the investment in development of the treatments to take place. The problem of disease which has been eliminated or which has not ever been present in Western countries is the more acute one. Malaria is perhaps the best example, but there are numerous others. The approach taken by the Gates foundation isn't necessarily popular; they and the WHO have their conflicts.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jun 26th, 2008 at 7:03pm

Rad wrote on Jun 25th, 2008 at 6:08pm:
How old were you when your parents divorced?

Just turned 9; my younger brother almost 7. I had bonded closer to my father and chose to live with him; my younger brother to my mother.

I can't say it necessarily has much relevance to your particular (painful) situation, but when my mother chose to move to Australia I was 12, and I coped with that by simply trying to close it all off. She wrote occasionally, but I hated reading those letters and never replied, and indeed I have never made any attempt to contact her, my younger brother, or a half-sister from her subsequent remarriage. Nor did (or has) my father ever experienced any contact from his younger son. The nature of such things is that parents tend to suspect the other parent of influencing the children, but in my case that's not so; that degree of separation was too much and the only way to cope was to just shut it all off and concentrate on the good things in life, like science and mathematics.

My younger half-brother in New Zealand had a more difficult experience, since his mother left my father when he was about 1 (my father going on welfare to raise the two of us), and although they did stay in contact her subsequent life situation went very poorly indeed. I'm not in any position to comment on the finer details and emotional consequences of that for them, though.


Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by MrMagoo on Jun 28th, 2008 at 5:42am

wrote on Jun 25th, 2008 at 8:10pm:
Due to piracy and the effects of "free" software, independent developers and the innovation in software they bring has almost collapsed, indeed along with almost the entire desktop software market.

I can appreciate that the issue is not black and white, and that piracy has hurt the industry.  However, there are techniques for fighting piracy, like water-marking, that have proven to be more effective than DRM and rights restrictions in other marketplaces (such as e-books) which do not infringe on the consumers' rights to use what they legally purchase.  

It seems that the economy of producing software has become similar to the movie industry.  It is so expensive to produce a high-quality, full featured program these days that you have to be able to expect large returns.  I'm sure this is what has led to software companies targeting corporate users, as there is more money to be had from selling to businesses than selling to consumers.  It also forces computer game writers to write sequels to games they know will sell (again - similar to the movie industry.)

However, continuing the entertainment industry analogy, I don't approve of the movie and music studios suing individuals for having digital copies of their music.  In the same vein, I don't approve of software companies placing prohibitive restrictions on honest customers.  

I said before that I agree that you have to make it difficult enough to copy to keep honest people honest, but copy protection seems to be quite out of hand.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jun 29th, 2008 at 9:11pm

MrMagoo wrote on Jun 28th, 2008 at 5:42am:
I said before that I agree that you have to make it difficult enough to copy to keep honest people honest, but copy protection seems to be quite out of hand.

Keeping the honest people honest is the exact phrase that gets used here with respect to (genuine, not the V2i) Ghost when we are designing the licensing measures we apply, because we don't think it's worth the risk overall of seriously inconveniencing legal customers because of cheats. People complain about all licensing, including ours, of course, but anyone who thinks what we do is unreasonable or unfair should try coming up with an alternative which doesn't involve everyone losing their jobs and there being no support or future development.

The other things you are complaining about are not new. The use of copy protection measures has not changed much over the entire lifetime of the personal computer, in fact. People who were around in the 80's will remember all the same stuff; dongles, network license servers, and elaborate schemes for creating uncopyable floppy disks (my all-time favourite being that first used by Broderbund for their game "Choplifter" on the Apple ][, where the content of the disks was written in spirals rather than the normal tracks - the stepper motor in the drive being under software control, so it was stepped every couple of sectors based on a game-specific set of timings).

Also, as I said earlier, there are publishing services - and emerging business models - which are different. I am a happy user of Valve's Steam service, which DOES allow use of a purchased license on many computers; this is the same thing I was alluding to earlier as a potential future with respect to XBox Live and Sony as publishers for content for their respective media platforms.

The future is an open question, but Steam is an interesting part of the space now. Steam's DRM model strikes an excellent balance. HOWEVER, the problem with all such things for ISVs is that this model applies well only to certain kinds of content, and that the publishing platform itself was expensive to develop and run and so takes a cut of the revenue stream (although vastly less of a cut than traditional retail distribution, more than the "nothing" most people think of as the cost of internet distribution) and being a third-party platform in the entertainment niche it's not achieved enough success to be of use to ISVs who would like to publish non-entertainment software through it.

I don't approve of the MPAA or RIAA methods either, by the way, but then I don't live in the US and those kind of enforcement actions do not occur in New Zealand. We do not have legislation like the DCMA and the courts here take a different view than those in US jurisdictions do regarding such things (for instance, equipment to circumvent the use of region coding is legal here because the region-coding element tied into some copy-protection technologies like those in DVDs is viewed as falling afoul of competition law).

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by MrMagoo on Jun 30th, 2008 at 6:05pm

wrote on Jun 29th, 2008 at 9:11pm:
People complain about all licensing, including ours, of course, but anyone who thinks what we do is unreasonable or unfair should try coming up with an alternative which doesn't involve everyone losing their jobs and there being no support or future development.

Someone is always going to complain no matter how elegant the final solution turns out to be.  I haven't ever had an issue with Norton copy protection or how they enforce their policies.  My comments were aimed at the industry on a philosophical level.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Rad on Jul 8th, 2008 at 2:13pm
Here's an interesting link that claims one third of all consumers are DVD pirates:

http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/007224.html

http://www.macworld.com/article/134337/2008/07/futuresource.html

Unfortunately, they don't say what is the best DVD ripping/copying (back-up) software.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jul 9th, 2008 at 12:44am
And in a strange co-incidence: Macrovision is hiring!.

Note that they are looking only at copying of commercial DVDs (and not those which are pirated commercial counterfeits, which may not be a major factor in the US/UK markets but are a general global problem) and not at torrent-type downloads, which like the counterfeit product market aren't something you can battle easily.

If the survey included information on torrent-type piracy of mainstream films, my guess is that it'd look much much worse - and also less in favour of Macrovision having a useful deterrent effect at the "keeping honest people honest" level, although I think they do have a fair case to make and I'd also observe that I've never seen Macrovision on DVDs cause technical problems like it used to in the videotape days when it was a scourge to legitimate customers (and as the SafeDisc/SecurROM type schemes are now).

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by MrMagoo on Jul 10th, 2008 at 2:46pm
Although I've never had Macrovision keep me from watching a DVD, it has given me trouble backing them up (for obvious reasons.)  It is unfortunate that DVD piracy is rampant, since it gives them good reason to tighten security.  Tighter security nearly always inhibits usability in electronics.

In my case, taking DVD's on frequent road trips means they quickly get scratched and cracked no matter how careful I am.  If I didn't back them up, I'd have to frequently re-purchase my entire collection.  Fortunately, there are still ways to back the DVD up and continue to watch my legally purchased movies.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jul 10th, 2008 at 8:13pm
In actual fact, there is basically nowhere in the Western world in which making backups of prerecorded media makes the slightest bit of rational economic sense at all. Actual media failure rates are sufficiently low, and scratch rehabilitation is so available and so cheap (and works), that putting any time, effort, or money put into backup of prerecorded content on optical media is quite silly.

Of course, there are common human cognitive failures which come into play such as the endowment effect which leads people to make many such poor choices (you want to "protect" what you "own" even if it's cheaper to just replace it), but this doesn't change the simple reality that as a matter of public policy, allowing backup of prerecorded media is not justified because of the truly colossal economic loss that comes from enabling of routine piracy.

For countries with very weak consumer-protection law there may well be a justification for improving mandatory standards of consumer protection and for regulators to act to encourage competition to improve aftermarket care; that is a far, far more effective public-policy approach and benefits consumers far more than any other approach.

As I'm mentioned several times before, once again I live in a country where the law strikes a pretty good balance: the Consumer Guarantees Act requires that all products meet a requirement of "reasonable quality" which specifically includes durability as a criterion (see also the question of Extended Warranties upsold by retailers).

[ If the actual intent in copying is not really backup, but that is merely used as a proxy for the ability to engage in format shifting, that is a different discussion. ]

Since I've linked The Economist and mentioned HIV/AIDs policy earlier (they give a lot of coverage to the issue), a book favourably reviewed there a couple months ago came up this morning as Elizabeth Pisani was the feature guest this morning on New Zealand public radio (download available for 7 days from the broadcast date).

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by MrMagoo on Jul 11th, 2008 at 12:24am
I disagree that DVD's are scratch resistent enough that backup isn't necessary and that scratch recovery works sufficently well.  I've lost many DVD's to scratches (or complete cracks due to unfortnate accidents) and I've never had good luck with scratch removal kits.  That's the whole reason I started backing them up, and I do make frequent use of my backups - which reinforces my feelings that it is financially sensible for me.  

What would be financially silly is to ask DVD's to be manufactured that can stand up the the abuses that DVD's naturally take on a road trip or in the hands of my nephews.

Format shifting is another factor.  Since my DVD's are already backed-up to my hard drive, I find it convenient to share them on my home network and watch them from any computer in the house.  The files aren't accessible from outside my network, so I am not redistributing them, merely watching them in one room without getting up and walking into another room to get the disk.

As is the case with Macrovision - DRM doesn't seem to ever stop piracy.  If it did, there would be fewer illegal copies out for 1 in 3 consumers to buy.  They will always find a way around the protection.  All it does is make it more and more difficult for legitimate users to use the disks in reasonable ways.

Similar to how gun control ensures that only criminals have guns, DRM takes options away from people following the DMCA and does little to combat piracy.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jul 12th, 2008 at 12:08am
You can disagree all you like, but the experience of rental agencies and retailers here shows otherwise. Rental discs in particular receive appalling treatment, which is why rental outlets here typically employ scratch-removal equipment that is quite effective (and having purchased the equipment, offer it as a cheap service). Similarly, one of the game software retailers here in New Zealand offers free scratch repair for one year from purchase as a standard thing, as part of their Consumer Act obligations. Better service wins customers, of course.

Now, one of the quid pro quos in this is making illegal copying a more clearly identifiable offense. In countries in which "backup" copies are not considered infringing (in New Zealand, there is no such automatic "right") or which format shifting is considered part of "fair use" (here ringfenced to apply only to sound recordings in the latest amendment to the Act for prerecorded media; format shifting of broadcast media is different) even in egregious cases of infringement these are available as defenses; this in effect raises the already astronomical cost of attempting to defend one's property against blatant infringers to an unreasonably high level. Removing these faux defenses mean that it is generally much easier and cost-effective to bring successful prosecutions against offenders, and making it possible to actually penalize offenders benefits legal users.

The law as it stands in my country seems to be to be a good balance, and I'm pretty happy with it.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by MrMagoo on Jul 13th, 2008 at 5:01am
This seems to be one area where we will remain in disagreement.  It has been interesting to hear your thoughts.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by zmdmw52 on Jul 13th, 2008 at 6:07pm

MrMagoo wrote on Jun 28th, 2008 at 5:42am:
... In the same vein, I don't approve of software companies placing prohibitive restrictions on honest customers.

A practical question-
If I own a genuine copy of a particular software (eg Windows XP), am I justified in installing the same copy of Win XP; (ie with same Serial No) on two computers (eg 1 desktop & 1 laptop) that I use exclusively at home, on systems that are used only by me and for no commercial/small business applications? It is an aside that MS won't allow this to be done, with WGA, Product Activation, and such; but this would be a valid question for a home user on a limited budget [who (for argument's sake) has no interest or time to invest in a Linux distro and insists on using MS-Office since (s)he has been using that Office suite for the past many years]; if the laptop vendor had not bundled a copy of Windows with laptop.
(BTW I do have 2 separate versions of Win XP Pro, 1 each for desktop PC and laptop; both 'genuine').



MrMagoo wrote on Jul 11th, 2008 at 12:24am:
Format shifting is another factor.Since my DVD's are already backed-up to my hard drive, I find it convenient to share them on my home network and watch them from any computer in the house.The files aren't accessible from outside my network, so I am not redistributing them, merely watching them in one room without getting up and walking into another room to get the disk.

Is my situation with Windows XP (or other software) analogous to above? Or are there gray areas?
(I am pretty sure there are, depending on where one is standing; but am curious to know how many of those reading this have a similar (or differing) opinion.)

The software industry, it seems was *comfortable* with this (ie they recognized the grey zone, but *may* have empathized with the user; tho' it is difficult to understand or know with certainty individual corporate strategy), as reflected by the foll. example:
I have a licensed copy of Adobe Acrobat 6 Professional; which I use on my laptop and desktop PC (both almost exclusively by me for my personal computing needs and for no commercial purpose whatsoever). I chose not to register (version 6 and earlier have registration as an option, not compulsory to register online, unlike with ver 7 and above). I do not feel any pangs of regret at all, since I do not see the need (or *moral logic*) in getting 2 copies of the same program for my (and my alone) personal use. It is a systemic problem (of portability) that I have to alternate between (and keep in sync) laptop and desktop; in this situation, licensing IMHO has no role beyond that of a single registration.

A similar question arises with other software such as Norton Systemworks or Anti-virus Programs (due to which software companies now issue 3-PC/3-User licenses). It also seems to (partly)  be a package/company-specific question, since not all software vendors do so.

However, I feel software companies should give consideration to the above line of thought. This may be one reason why those (eg students on a limited budget) still undecided would opt for pirated, rather than licensed, software.


Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jul 13th, 2008 at 7:41pm

zmdmw52 wrote on Jul 13th, 2008 at 6:07pm:
software companies should give consideration to the above line of thought

Of course we do, and have. Software development is not a new industry (we're celebrating the 50th anniversary of Lisp this year, for crying out loud) and it's full of smart people, or at any rate it used to be even if the talent pipeline is down to a trickle. Rest assured that pretty much everything on the way of business model has been tried multiple times. And as is the way of business, most things fail, and go away if they don't work (although they sometimes get tried anew from time to time).

Norton 360, for instance, is licensed precisely in the way you describe. A single retail "copy" is allowed to be used on up to 3 PC's concurrently. Sony's downloadable PS3/PSP game "flOw" can run on up to five pieces of Sony hardware that are registered to a single user. I've mentioned Steam already, which lets you use the software purchased on your Steam account on any PC.

Note, however, that the 3 things above are all tied to strong online DRM enforcement, and all come from companies who have got the wherewithal from other products to sustain the development of the DRM platforms themselves. If you sell primarily to consumers and don't do that, you very shortly simply won't have a business (and you certainly aren't going to get any money from anyone to start a business selling software to consumers).

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Pleonasm on Jul 14th, 2008 at 7:40am

Quote:
I have a licensed copy of Adobe Acrobat 6 Professional; which I use on my laptop and desktop PC (both almost exclusively by me for my personal computing needs and for no commercial purpose whatsoever). I chose not to register (version 6 and earlier have registration as an option, not compulsory to register online, unlike with ver 7 and above). I do not feel any pangs of regret at all, since I do not see the need (or *moral logic*) in getting 2 copies of the same program for my (and my alone) personal use.

Zmdmw52, you should check to be sure, but I do believe that Adobe allows Acrobat 7/8/9 to be activated on two PCs at the same time. I was moving my Acrobat 8 Standard license from one PC to another a few months ago, and Adobe Technical Support told me that it was not necessary to deactivate the product on the old PC before installing and activating it on the new PC.

On a more general note, the logic of your argument presupposes that you are entitled to selectively adhere to the terms and conditions of the license agreement as you deem appropriate.  That is false.  If you want to purchase a license for Product X, then you are obligated to honor its terms and conditions.  If you don’t like those terms and conditions, then don’t purchase Product X.  The situation is “black & white”, and really is quite simple & straightforward.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jul 14th, 2008 at 8:33am
Just a note on this; do not rely on the technical measures of activation to divine the nature of the license, and do not rely on what a company's technical support say as the "official" word - licensing is subtle and it is easy for two parties on the phone to end up at cross purposes (especially since technical support folks are generally trying to give narrow answers to specific questions, not general answers which can be construed as any form of legal permission).

The EULA text is a legal document, and regardless of anything else you are told by anyone or infer yourself, the text of that agreement is what you (and Adobe) would be held to in any dispute. Read it! It isn't there for show.

In particular Adobe have their current EULAs online and the EULA for v9 states very clearly in section 2.4 "Portable and Home Computer Use" (with restrictions in section 2.5 for volume licenses, and in section 15 for some specific products) what you are permitted to do, and this specifically permits one single secondary installation for individual use provided it is not used concurrently with the primary install.

But don't take my word for it. Read the EULA yourself. That above refers to Acrobat V9 - If you have V6, you must consult the specific V6 EULA text since that is the governing legal agreement for that version of the code.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Pleonasm on Jul 14th, 2008 at 11:01am
Nigel, you are absolutely correct.  It is the EULA (and not advice received from a technical support specialist) that determines the proper use of a software product.  That is one reason why I cautioned Zmdmw52 to “check to be sure”.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jul 14th, 2008 at 3:15pm
I realize that's what you meant, I just thought I'd be explicit about that since I've seen people on these forums and on our official ones argue these things wrong with respect to Ghost (viz, claims that "I didn't install it" meaning licenses don't apply).

I've also seen some rather silly person on the official forum misrepresent the results of badgering some poor support tech as proof that "Ghost isn't licensed", when the tech meant to just say that the Ghost executable doesn't need a license applied to it through an activation procedure - not the same thing at all.

What still gets me though, is how many people never bother to read these things at all.

The wider point this leads to considering is whether the existence of DRM checks in support of these kinds of quite liberal usage policies works overall to increase user's rights over what vendors would otherwise do. I'd argue that it's clear that they in fact do tend to result in more liberal licenses, but then I've been closely watching this process evolve for decades since it affects my wallet from both sides. If the alternative to strong DRM is going out of business (which it pretty much is, nowadays) that is the worst outcome of all for users, despite the anti-business venom of a large chunk of Slashdot types who seem to believe that having great developers put out of work will make the world better via magic.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by MrMagoo on Jul 14th, 2008 at 5:07pm

wrote on Jul 14th, 2008 at 3:15pm:
the anti-business venom of a large chunk of Slashdot types who seem to believe that having great developers put out of work will make the world better via magic.

I'm sure this is a sensitive subject for you with good reason, but I think calling the attitudes "anti-business venom" is a little unfair.  The Slashdot crowd doesn't dislike DRM because they want anyone to go out of business or because they want to take your paychecks away.  I think that open source enthusiasts are keenly aware of the value of quality code and the value of people who can create such code.

The anti-DRM attitude comes from bad experiences they have had with DRM.  CSS kept them from watching DVD's in Linux.  When DeCSS was written, the industry acted quickly to outlaw it.  Note that part of the argument they used against DeCSS was that there were several licensed DVD players coming for Linux, but to date (10 years later) there are no licensed DVD players available to consumers for Linux.

Sony's DRM on several BMG music CD's was actually a badly written root-kit that created security holes in the OS.  Worse, the uninstall created more security holes and caused crashes.  The Slashdot community sees that as an invasion of privacy (especially since the root-kit phoned home reporting usage...) and the Slashdot community takes their privacy very seriously.

Recently, the "Mass Effect" DRM included in the new Spore game has created all kinds of headache for legitimate users trying to play the game.  Other games' DRM, like Starforce, has caused trouble in the past.  I'm not a big gamer, but the last thing I want to deal with is some DRM issues when all I want to do is play a game.  

I've personally had corrupted Windows DRM lock my music files which I had legally purchased from Rhapsody.  Rhapsody was able to help me resolve it after some time, but it was a huge frustration when I just wanted to listen to music (and a common occurrence, according to the tech that helped me.)  I'm too busy to deal with things like that and I don't buy music on Rhapsody anymore so I don't have that happen again.

All this... and then the industry starts suing individual users with sneaky, heavy-handed, and sometimes even illegal tactics asking for huge judgments.  These people aren't pressing illegal CD's and selling them en-masse on every street corner, but the industry lawyers act like they are going after the mob - or maybe like they are the mob.

This is where the negative attitude toward DRM and big business comes from.

No one has any issue with you getting paid for the excellent work you do.  The issues comes in when big companies take protecting their IP rights too far and the protection becomes a frustration, a privacy invasion, or a lawsuit against an 8 yr old girl sharing accidentally sharing some files in Kaaza (because Kaaza indexes your music and shares it using the default settings.)

I don't think the desire to balance consumer rights with business interests is worthy of being called a 'venomous attitude.'

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jul 14th, 2008 at 10:59pm

MrMagoo wrote on Jul 14th, 2008 at 5:07pm:
The Slashdot crowd doesn't dislike DRM because they want anyone to go out of business or because they want to take your paychecks away.

I know the minutiae of every issue you raise, and the fact is that those are mere pretexts used to drive a sense of outrage (and motivate the footsoldiers) and the over-the-top Slashdot responses to them are indeed appropriately described as vicious.

More painfully, the interests of anyone who writes software are of no concern whatsoever to the Slashdot end users, and indeed not just them - it is also very specifically of no concern whatsoever in Stallman's GNU Manifesto; driving creative people completely out of the business is considered a perfectly acceptable outcome in his philosophy. People not being able to make a decent living from writing software is explicitly stated as not important because his concept of freedom is more important than that.

[ I don't mind his expression of his philosophy, by the way. I believe it is a sincere and profound belief of his, so even if I have not ever agreed with it I still appreciated his work and indeed happily paid the fee to the FSF for the source to GCC on 1/2" mag tape back in the 1980's when I ported it for myself as part of writing my own UNIX kernel. Edit: oops, 1/2" tape - gcc on one reel, X Windows on the other - not that X was going to port to real mode MS-DOS heh. It took a lot of major surgery to get gcc running in a 16-bit platform. Kinda a fun story, actually, hard to believe I pulled it off. ]

Unlike the days when Slashdot was created, now the vast majority of people there do not write code nor understand the economics of software creation at all - if I or indeed the vast majority of paid developers have their livelihood lost and exit the industry that is not just simply an acceptable loss; if you do not hold their philosophy, to them it is a victory to be celebrated.

The reality is if you take the paycheck from a corporate, to that community that's all that matters and you're just a bad person, and deserve to have your work pirated. Having that said is something I've just had to become resigned to, and is just a sad part of being in the industry now. All one can do is try to concentrate on the rare bits of positive feedback.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by MrMagoo on Jul 15th, 2008 at 12:49pm
I think that you are very accurately describing the most extreme members of the community.  I disagree that the extremists are the majority.  

It is simply logical that in order to have free software, you need developers.  To have developers, you need to have some sort of incentive for people to invest the huge amount of time, energy, and money it takes to learn to write code.  Someone has to be paid for something at some point, or nothing can be free.  I think you probably under estimate the number for people who understand that.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Rad on Jul 15th, 2008 at 7:49pm
Just checking in.

Good thread.

(Court tomorrow.)

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jul 15th, 2008 at 8:51pm

MrMagoo wrote on Jul 15th, 2008 at 12:49pm:
I disagree that the extremists are the majority.

People who hold precisely those views in precisely that way are indeed the majority; the difference is that it is simply rare to get any of the members of such echo-chamber communities to consider that any negative impact is real or anything but a temporary roadbump on the path to their utopia. And even for the few that are capable of this, they can paper over it using the same cognitive trick that pirates do.

People who choose to pirate anything do not conceive what they are doing in any way morally wrong. Why, and how?

One of the cognitive tricks (of course, there are many aspects to the blend, but this one is one of the two or three that are key) they use to pull this off is to depersonalize things. "Symantec" did me wrong, I will punish "Symantec" - the depersonalization of the corporate name lets them disconnect their actions from the human sphere. Even the existence of people who will be actually harmed by their actions is not something you can easily convince them of. I've studied and interacted with people who have pirated product I work on many, many times over the decades and indeed something you pretty much always find is that you cannot get these people to acknowledge the connection between their actions and the effect on another human being at the far end of the chain.

[ You can briefly, sometimes, get them to acknowledge that such people exist, but they will not connect their actions to that other person. You can see it in their language. I can say "I made this thing" and the response will almost always be "Symantec", rather than any direct dealing with me as a human person. In the few occasions when does not occur, the response is always abusive, which is again a simple psychological defense mechanism on their part - defending their conception of themselves as moral by attempting to put the content creator at the level of deserving their actions. To do this requires projecting ALL the (real or imagined) failings of the corporate body onto the individual creator. These are constants of the psychology; anyone who works on the creative side will see this precise pattern repeated endlessly. ]


MrMagoo wrote on Jul 15th, 2008 at 12:49pm:
To have developers, you need to have some sort of incentive for people to invest the huge amount of time, energy, and money it takes to learn to write code

Correct. But then Stallman's manifesto says precisely that you do not need that, and how many consumers have sufficient knowledge of economics to know he's wrong when enough people repeat over and over that you can get something for nothing?


MrMagoo wrote on Jul 15th, 2008 at 12:49pm:
I think you probably under estimate the number for people who understand that

Not at all. The Open Source movement as a whole crossed over many years ago from being mostly composed of (well-intentioned, idealistic) developers operating in academic or noncommercial contexts - leavened by a smaller number of commercial developers with sympathy for some of the goals, as I have - to being primarily a consumer movement which takes  Stallman's agenda as a whole as truth and does not examine it with a critical mindset.

What's interesting now is that even as academic computer science programs are declining all over the world, this is not really acknowledged as a consequence of making it a wholly unattractive career. Software has become such an undesirable career choice that the mid-range candidates are not enrolling in either the science or engineering degrees with software specialties (there's a problem in engineering more generally but it's less sharply pronounced).

There continues to be a small stream of the very capable candidates, people at (for argument's sake) >4 sigma on g, who are not sensitive to economic factors as much as others. People in the lower sigma ranges and who don't have an interest in pure academic careers have largely transitioned to different fields of study. The GPA requirements for undergraduate academic programs is being reduced to make up the absolute numeric shortfall in enrolments so that the downsizing in departmental staff can be managed during the transition to a new equilibrium (at dinner on monday with an academic tutor at Auckland he dated the phase transition they saw in enrolment to about 2000).

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jul 16th, 2008 at 12:50am
By the way, remembering that Stallman is the founder of the entire free software movement, more choice quotes from the man whose views are the orthodoxy around which the GNU movement revolves:

Excerpted from http://kerneltrap.org/node/4484:

Non-Free Software:
JA: What is your reaction to tools such as gcc, gdb and GNU Emacs being used for the development of non-free software?

Richard Stallman: Any development of non-free software is harmful and unfortunate, whether it uses GNU tools or other tools. Whether it is good or bad, in the long term, for the future of computer users' freedom that one can use these tools to develop non-free software is a question whose answer I could only guess at.

JA: How do you react to the opinion that non-free software is justified as a means for raising dollars that can then be put into the development of completely new software, money that otherwise may not have been available, and thus creating software that may have never been developed?

Richard Stallman: This is no justification at all. A non-free program systematically denies the users the freedom to cooperate; it is the basis of an antisocial scheme to dominate people. The program is available lawfully only to those who will surrender their freedom. That's not a contribution to society, it's a social problem. It is better to develop no software than to develop non-free software.

So if you find yourself in that situation, please don't follow that path. Please don't write the non-free program--please do something else instead. We can wait till someone else has the chance to develop a free program to do the same job.

JA: What about the programmers...

Richard Stallman: What about them? The programmers writing non-free software? They are doing something antisocial. They should get some other job.


While Mr. Stallman would not, I believe, condone piracy as a legitimate form of direct action (even though he thinks all copyright is harmful to human societies) the painting of commercial software developers as parasites on society is not helpful and when taken up by a wider political-consumer movement it's hardly surprising to see this used as a moral justification for theft as "direct action" and its targets as deserving.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by zmdmw52 on Jul 16th, 2008 at 1:56pm

Pleonasm wrote on Jul 14th, 2008 at 7:40am:
On a more general note, the logic of your argument presupposes that you are entitled to selectively adhere to the terms and conditions of the license agreement as you deem appropriate.That is false.  

It was not so much an argument, as a line of thought; the *tone* of the post reflects as much (IMO).


Pleonasm wrote on Jul 14th, 2008 at 7:40am:
If you want to purchase a license for Product X, then you are obligated to honor its terms and conditions.If you don’t like those terms and conditions, then don’t purchase Product X.The situation is “black & white”, and really is quite simple & straightforward.  

I totally agree; that is how I have 2 separate licenses for Windows XP (one each for laptop & desktop PC).
However, not all PC users see things in such strict terms (*black & white*). Reflected in this CNET article (quoted here for your ref)-


When it comes to software piracy, Microsoft may just be aiding the enemy.
Microsoft has been counting on gains against unlicensed software to boost revenue from the Windows unit, which accounts for a huge chunk of overall profits and sales. However, one of the company's own decisions could make its anti-piracy battle more difficult.
With Windows Vista, Microsoft took an extremely tough stand on piracy. Computers that were not properly activated within a short period of time went into a virtually unusable state known as "reduced functionality mode."I n the newly released Service Pack 1, however, Microsoft is softening its stance somewhat ...

Tho' the author argues against MS's logic above.

As of 2004, The Economist estimated upto 35% of all PC software installed was pirated, resulting in a $33 billion loss to the industry. This recent (2007) Global Software Piracy study reflects continuing dismal s'ware piracy figures & resulting revenue losses. Though detailed cost-benefit and revenue analysis is beyond my scope of knowledge, a 'gut feeling' (no scope for further debate here) approach would lead one to suggest that harsh measures may further aggravate the problem. One adverse effect may be genuine customers (using licensed software) facing difficulty due to sterner anti-piracy measures (from CNET article)-

Counterfeiters aren't Microsoft's only opponents in its effort to combat piracy: Some of its customers are against it, too.
The company is forging ahead with a program, Windows Genuine Advantage, tied to its free software downloads and updates, that checks whether the Windows installation on a PC is pirated. But some people, including some who say they own a legitimately acquired copy of Windows, have challenged the need for such validation ...


wrote on Jul 14th, 2008 at 8:33am:
In particular Adobe have their current EULAs online and the EULA for v9 states very clearly in section 2.4 "Portable and Home Computer Use" (with restrictions in section 2.5 for volume licenses, and in section 15 for some specific products) what you are permitted to do, and this specifically permits one single secondary installation for individual use provided it is not used concurrently with the primary install.

Thanks, I didn't know that!


Pleonasm wrote on Jul 14th, 2008 at 11:01am:
Nigel, you are absolutely correct.It is the EULA (and not advice received from a technical support specialist) that determines the proper use of a software product.That is one reason why I cautioned Zmdmw52 to “check to be sure”.

Point is well-made and taken. However, do bear in mind that most day-to-day/SOHO users rarely have the time to go through the fine print (literally!! :)) of EULA's >> EULAlyzer (tho' that app is more directed towards detecting clauses for spyware, personal info & such).

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jul 16th, 2008 at 7:18pm

zmdmw52 wrote on Jul 16th, 2008 at 1:56pm:
As of 2004, The Economist estimated upto 35% of all PC software installed was pirated

A minor correction, since I have the full article; that is the BSA's estimate and not that of the Economist itself (or of its sister body which does do econometric surveys, the Economist Intelligence Unit) and in fact the primary thrust of The Economist article cited above is that the BSA's methods to extrapolate projection of sample data provided by a firm called IDC are not robust (and this criticism has been directed at the BSA throughout its life).

And as the article notes, the true actual economic impact of piracy is very hard to study. That the total amount is eyewateringly huge is not in doubt; but as a an illegal activity it is difficult to measure really closely and in particular look at the total system effects in the wider economic sphere.

In particular, the field of software has never reached any kind of stable equilibrium point in which only one thing is happening at once, and given that most of the feedback effects in it are non-linear in nature (viz. the formation of monopolies and network effects in general) and subject to long time delays relative to the pace of the technological change (so the overall system still exhibits unstable dynamics) it's extremely difficult to generate robust correlations between cause and effect.

[ And in particular it's hard to measure the chilling effects of things that have not occurred because of people choosing not to pursue, or failing in, innovations that are undercut by piracy and popular anticapitalist movements. ]

That piracy is already massive percentage of the total installed base is not in doubt; that funding of startups for desktop software has ceased is not in doubt; that the supply of good engineering talent is dropping (nonwithstanding the temporary supply disruption of the entrance of India and China to the work labour markets) is not in doubt; that levels of innovation overall are plummeting is not in doubt.

The only thing in doubt is whether the situation can be rescued; whether (or when) a stable equilibrium point short of outright crash will be found.


zmdmw52 wrote on Jul 16th, 2008 at 1:56pm:
harsh measures may further aggravate the problem

The measures taken are not harsh (especially given that they do not, in fact, actually harm consumers who remain protected by consumer and privacy-protection law, breathless rhetoric to the contrary) especially if you consider that the only real available alternative for business is to exit that market segment because it is no longer profitable to serve it.

The fact that the numbers are so large (and of course, they are just as bad for digital entertainment media) represents a public-policy problem of immense proportions; massive, widespread disrespect for the law is not a healthy state for any society to reach, and usually what is necessary to resolve this is that the social contracts underpinning the law have to be renegotiated.

However, there will be losers in this. The people whose livelihoods will be wiped out (are already being wiped out) by the mass disobedience, and the future cost to human society of eliminating the technological innovation and cultural products those markets bring. Changes that can affect long-term GDP growth of industrial nations are what we're talking about here.

By the way, some thoughts about wider issues of genuine human freedom  including economic freedom are touched on by this brief look at Milton Friedman's writing. Timely to see it turn up in my feed this morning so I can put it in contrast to Stallman's views.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by MrMagoo on Jul 16th, 2008 at 8:00pm

wrote on Jul 15th, 2008 at 8:51pm:
People who hold precisely those views in precisely that way are indeed the majority

Another point on which we are simply going to have to disagree.  

There may be a loud minority, hell bent on pushing their agenda in article comments and forums, but my experience with the open source community is that they respect professional developers (even though admiration doesn't necessarily follow that respect.)  It is unfortunate if you haven't had much opportunity to interact with the segment of open source enthusiasts that makes you feel your skills are appreciated for the innovation you bring to software as a whole.


wrote on Jul 15th, 2008 at 8:51pm:
how many consumers have sufficient knowledge of economics

Simple logic is all that is required to arrive at such at the conclusion that you need developers to make software, and developers have to make a living somewhere along the way - not a detailed study of software economics.


wrote on Jul 16th, 2008 at 12:50am:
when taken up by a wider political-consumer movement it's hardly surprising to see this used as a moral justification for theft as "direct action" and its targets as deserving

I don't think an average consumer has an understanding what open source software is or any idea that such a debate exists, so I don't think it is that easy to equate piracy and the open source enthusiasts.  Open source isn't about disrespecting licenses.  If it was, the GPL would be a contradiction of it's writer's intentions.  Piracy and open source are separate issues.

Mass piracy occurs because a few scrupulious people supply consumers who are unaware that the products are stolen or unaware of the magnitude of the impact supporting such piracy has.  Awareness is important in combating that, and probably more effective than restrictive DRM measures that take options away from legitimate customers and only barely slow down the pirates.  When the RIAA started suing customers several years ago, they said it was to raise awareness, and I think it has succeeded at that.  I just think it is a very negative way to raise awareness among your customers and they have been very evil about how they go about it.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Rad on Jul 16th, 2008 at 8:01pm
Checking in.

Killer thread. Very interesting.

Court today. I did good (which means nothing bad happened).

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by zmdmw52 on Jul 17th, 2008 at 3:52pm

Rad wrote on Jul 16th, 2008 at 8:01pm:
Court today.

What's with that? (Court thing)

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Rad on Jul 17th, 2008 at 5:01pm

zmdmw52 wrote on Jul 17th, 2008 at 3:52pm:
What's with that?

http://mt4.radified.com/2008/06/june-gloom-fatherhood-court-legal.html

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jul 17th, 2008 at 7:08pm

MrMagoo wrote on Jul 16th, 2008 at 8:00pm:
may be a loud minority, hell bent on pushing their agenda in article comments and forums

I.e., Slashdot. They really aren't the minority there, though, which is why it gets singled out. Now, that's not representative of most open source users, but it's one of the hubs of a militant proselytising wing of something that functions like a cult. Honestly, I'd rather sit next to a Scientologist on a 12-hour flight; the conversation would be more intelligent and I'd have a better chance of them taking no for an answer.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jul 17th, 2008 at 9:07pm
By the way, open source developers are a different thing. No different to the commercial kind, in fact; equal mix and range and shape of the talent pyramid, with plenty of notable iconoclasts in either set. When I next bump into Peter Gutmann (when his current speaking tour is over) I'll try and remember to ask him for his perspective on New Zealand's current Copyright Act since he was part of the debate leading up to its passage and was quite critical of the early drafts.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jul 18th, 2008 at 9:52pm

MrMagoo wrote on Jul 16th, 2008 at 8:00pm:
consumers who are unaware that the products are stolen or unaware of the magnitude of the impact supporting such piracy has

Again, let me say how wrong this is. Most pirates know what they are doing, and have constructed a mental framework in which it's a perfectly good thing.

In fact, I've conveniently been supplied with a concise demonstration by two of this site's less subtle pirates discussing the virtues of using, absolutely knowingly, pirated Ghost. Both have also behaved in exactly the evasive manner I also described, refusing to acknowledge that they were doing wrong, when dealing with me in the thread which Rad pointed at which kicked this off.

Piracy is largely not a simple consumer-driver phenomenon. Most regular consumers are a) honest, and b) used to paying for stuff, often with a large element of barter and reciprocity - trust - involved instead of cash.

To get to piracy, they typically have to be lead to it, by learning about it (via sites like Slashdot where outfits like TPB are ... delicately, by people smart enough to know not to incriminate themselves ... generally given a very positive reporting while law enforcement is always decried as a Bad Thing) and encountering people (like Mr. Shadow and Mr. Singh) encouraging them, telling them it's "fighting greedy companies" and the like.

Seriously. The anonymizing effects of corporations, and the anonymizing effects of the internet, are what most help people pull off the cognitive trick necessary to believe the tales they are told: the outright lies the pro-piracy folks spin, and the half-truths of the open source movement, that software costs nothing to make and nothing to reproduce so they are being gouged and stealing is moral.

Once people get to believe this, the game is largely up, and you cannot change their opinions or actions without coercion. They will defend their mindset which makes them morally justified to the end. And unfortunately, the love of anonymity and the freedom to behave badly without consequences that it brings (I'd link to the classic Penny Arcade cartoon but I don't know how Rad feels about not-safe-for-work content) is clearly very addictive.

Another irony of piracy is that the owners of big corporations are typically instutitions; which means banks, pension funds, and entities like that which are in charge of folks savings. Leaving aside the question of managerial action (a question in its more general form of misaligned interests called agency risk), business benefits society at both ends: by providing employment in the now, and returning profit to investors in public markets, which for most people are what provides their wealth for the future.

[ I'm not sure how far the U.S. is through the transition occurring in most OECD countries from defined-benefit to defined-contribution pension schemes; I understand it's still politically untenable in the U.S. to address the problem, although the US is at least helped in deferring facing this by still having such high fertility compared to other western countries. Here, that transition is well under way; indeed, the Government's pension liabilities are explicitly manifest in an investment fund that invests in equities and property just as private institutions do. ]

The notion that corporations are "greedy" reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how public markets work and how much we all need them to work. They need to be restrained by rules that ensure the pursuit of profit does not get out of hand, but that's better done by regulation, not theft.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by MrMagoo on Jul 20th, 2008 at 4:35pm

wrote on Jul 18th, 2008 at 9:52pm:
Piracy is largely not a simple consumer-driver phenomenon. Most regular consumers are a) honest, and b) used to paying for stuff, often with a large element of barter and reciprocity - trust - involved instead of cash.

To get to piracy, they typically have to be lead to it, by learning about it (via sites like Slashdot where outfits like TPB are ... delicately, by people smart enough to know not to incriminate themselves ... generally given a very positive reporting while law enforcement is always decried as a Bad Thing) and encountering people (like Mr. Shadow and Mr. Singh) encouraging them, telling them it's "fighting greedy companies" and the like.

Which is why I think that consumer awareness is far more effective in combating piracy than DRM.  Awareness can reverse the senario you describe and encourage people to get their software the honest way.  DRM is a mere speed-bump for pirates, and (it seems to me) encourages people to use pirated goods (since the pirated goods have fewer restrictions placed on their use once the DRM is broken.)

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by zmdmw52 on Jul 21st, 2008 at 1:39am

MrMagoo wrote on Jul 20th, 2008 at 4:35pm:
Which is why I think that consumer awareness is far more effective in combating piracy than DRM.Awareness can reverse the senario you describe and encourage people to get their software the honest way.DRM is a mere speed-bump for pirates ...

Also, the Open Source movement (availaility of FOSS software) can be a move towards the consumer with a limited budget having a more economically beneficial (for the individual user) choice.
Though there aren't OS alternatives to all commonly-used, paid-for programs/suites; I feel the OS movement is catching up & the gap between paid-for & OS equivalents will get narrower in terms of functionality (e.g. Ubuntu Linux that, though not the Linux equivalent of Windows; comes closer to Windows-like envt with every new version release).


Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jul 22nd, 2008 at 2:13am

MrMagoo wrote on Jul 20th, 2008 at 4:35pm:
Which is why I think that consumer awareness is far more effective in combating piracy than DRM.  

Not only wrong (unfortunately, no firm publicises their own internal data and nor can I share all I know), but it's well known to be of extremely limited effectiveness for well known reasons.

But first, let's remind ourselves of some basics; you're talking about reducing consumer willingness to pirate (reducing demand, the other main demand-reducing mechanism being the threat of enforcement). The other legs of anti-piracy are - as with most illegal activities - reducing supply (making it harder to pirate), and interdicting distribution.

[ Right now, the primary problem is above all else an enforcement problem; piracy is pervasive and the standards of proof required to engage in any enforcement action at all are eyewateringly high (and growing). This is exactly what makes the breathless hysteria of the anticorporate groups on Slashdot so damaging; because pirates (and pro-piracy activists) are completely unconstrained by the need to be truthful or act legally, unlike the legitimate actors engaged in enforcement. Combine this with selective reporting or deliberate distortion (as with Mass Effect's DRM, which in fact does not work as described on Slashdot) which give pro-piracy groups the ability to counterpropagandize and you do not have a good environment for evaluating policy. ]

[ Of course, the obvious driver of the enforcement problem is simply that markets have worked so well to deliver things that are both cheap and high quality. In the days of yore when the development costs of software were borne by users more directly and it cost many thousands of dollars to purchase, enforcement was easier to deal with (easy to find, easy to prove). Mass-market distribution and efficiency and improvements in quality have driven costs down low enough so that each case of infringement is individually too low to be efficient to pursue directly. ]

Now, the key questions about education are:
a) does it work at all (i.e., does investment in education yield positive ROI, to some degree)?
b) if it does yield positive ROI at todays levels, where does it stop working at all (ROI falls as the low-hanging fruit - the more easily persuaded - are affected but an increasingly recalcitrant core remains)?
c) what kind of $ figures are needed to cover the gap between a) and b) if indeed any exists?

The problem with a) in that in general, it's fighting against an intractable problem of human behaviour, which I've mentioned here before: two ways it emerges are Time-Inconsistent Preferences and Misperception of Risk, the latter in particular being a constant problem in public policy.

Public-service announcements exhorting people to, for instance, eat more fresh fruit and vegetables are one of the classic examples of this. The future harm - bowel cancer, for example - being mitigated is overly discounted by our cognitive machinery and the public generally prefers the $ benefits today of cheaper, more risky to health, foods.

One of the few examples anywhere of public education that is notably effective is that of the Montana Meth Project, discussed in the wider context of drug economics in The Economist.

One of the things about the public-service advertising about meth which helps it work is that the drug produces its effects a) rapidly, so the discounting mechanism is reduced, b) with high probability, and c) young people are incredibly conscious about their physical appearance, whereas they couldn't care less (more technically "heavily discount") all the other negative effects of drugs.

Education about piracy (which, by the way, there is plenty of) unfortunately is in the same boat as the "eat fresh fruit and veges" ads. The negative impacts of piracy are real and severe, but their direct impact on the pirate is minimal - "worse software" - and far distant in the future. In other words, the best ROI we can hope for is small.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Pleonasm on Jul 22nd, 2008 at 7:33am
Worth repeating and reading again…


Quote:
The notion that corporations are "greedy" reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how public markets work and how much we all need them to work.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by MrMagoo on Jul 22nd, 2008 at 5:06pm

wrote on Jul 22nd, 2008 at 2:13am:
Not only wrong (unfortunately, no firm publicises their own internal data and nor can I share all I know), but it's well known to be of extremely limited effectiveness for well known reasons

I really don't think the ROI on DRM is spectacular, either.  That is my point - that a minimum amount of DRM stops the honest Joes from simply copying the program, but any more than that does nothing additional to slow piracy.  It seems to me that even incredibly sophisticated DRM is often broken in just a few weeks, and then piracy proceeds just as it would have with if weaker DRM had been used.

So, plainly, my point is that any DRM beyond basic copy protections makes things less convenient for honest users and does little to slow piracy.

I'm not thinking only of the customer here - it is unfortunate to see companies spend several months on DRM schemes only to have them cracked in a few weeks.  It seems to me those months could have been spent on something with a better ROI.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jul 22nd, 2008 at 7:46pm
You can believe what you want about ROI, but I am not relying on my imagination as source of data points.


MrMagoo wrote on Jul 22nd, 2008 at 5:06pm:
It seems to me that even incredibly sophisticated DRM is often broken in just a few weeks

So what? This is more than adequate for most kinds of content.

Increasingly, for many many reasons, entertainment media of all kinds (non-game consumer software being the one thing outside this) are increasingly built around a "blockbuster" model of marketing with tiered distribution systems in which the net profit per sale starts out high and decays, so most of the profit is gained in a brief period of time.

Look, for instance, at GTAIV (and Halo3 before it) and at the specific way SecuromV7 activation was used by 2K with Bioshock (where, as promised just after release, activation limits were removed after enough time had passed). Given that no actual harm is done to legal consumers (modulo the irritation at the release time of SecuROM not liking Process Explorer) by their DRM and that the business models are already built around having recouped the bulk of development expenditure within a period of a month or so from first ship on any platform, this is something you can expect to be the norm.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Jul 22nd, 2008 at 8:10pm

Pleonasm wrote on Jul 22nd, 2008 at 7:33am:
Worth repeating and reading again…

And of course, worth bearing in mind just how sophisticated the bargain is, when you look at the network of laws and regulations societies with market economies use to ensure that markets act in the interests of all (buyers and sellers, businesses and consumers) and work to prevent perverse outcomes.

The correct way to view issues of copyright as a matter of public policy is to examine this grand bargain with an eye to the future rather than to the past. It's unfortunate that with respect to say, copyright term extension, the past is often in the driver's seat rather than consideration of what will make markets work better in the future.

This leads into a discussion, of course, about technology with respect to non-market or undeveloped economies and the role that the diffusion of technology from western market economies into less developed ones (often, transforming them into market economies) can improve human welfare.

How best to go about that process of making technologies like this available - and how to balance the interests of technology producers with humanitarian goals is still an open question, but it's an important one. The role of the cell-phone in improving lives in Africa gets a lot of press, and it is particularly interesting that the diffusion of cellphones themselves has largely been achieved through normal market mechanisms (albeit often quite innovative ones to suit the environments in some of these countries). How to replicate that trick more generally to ensure that the fruits of technological development in general are available at a fair price which balances those interests is a challenging one.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by MrMagoo on Aug 14th, 2008 at 2:02am
An interesting debate on this whole topic happened between a game developer and pirates this week.  A game developer asked on his blog for pirates to tell him why they pirate his games, and they responded en masse:

http://www.positech.co.uk/talkingtopirates.html

Some interesting notes in the final summary from the developer:


Quote:
I got a few people churning out long arguments about whether or not intellectual property is valid, and claiming that it was censorship, or fascism and other variations on this theme. I'm used to reading all this, and find it completely unconvincing, and to be honest, silly. The really interesting news was that this was a trivial proportion of the total replies.


This seems to suggest that Stallman has not been nearly as successful in creating an army of fanatical pirates as this thread has implied.


Quote:
People don't like DRM, we knew that, but the extent to which DRM is turning away people who have no other complaints is possibly misunderstood. If you wanted to change ONE thing to get more pirates to buy games, scrapping DRM is it. These gamers are the low hanging fruit of this whole debate.


Pretty much exactly what I was saying.  People don't like licenses and restrictions.  I don't care how practical it seems, people hate it and pirate cracked copies of software to get around it.  Selling any product successfully is about giving the consumer what they want, and it seems they want DRM-free software.

By the way - I didn't respond to this survey, so it is interesting to me to find out just how mainstream my feelings about this issue are...

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Aug 14th, 2008 at 4:05am
Except that, he posted on Slashdot inviting these comments, a place which is part of a wide political movement made up of people devoted (per Stallman's fantasy drivel) to the idea that any commerce in software is morally wrong and that anyone developing software made for money is intrinsically evil. Secondly, as I already noted above from long experience with pirates, they all employ "pretexts" to pretend that they are moral people and that what they are doing is not wrong. This use of DRM (particularly from the Slashtards) is merely such a pretext - a stalking horse, a cloak.

The simple fact is that software which does not employ strong DRM (like ours) still suffer eyewateringly enormous rates of piracy; higher rates, irrefutably, demonstrably so, than those which do.

I know I will never convince you kind of this, and it helps that in any case I'm utterly disinterested in doing so - this is not a debate, it's a lecture, and one where I am offering the truth because I was invited by Rad to do so, presumably because he is interested in the truth of such matters and I'm in a position to offer it.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Aug 14th, 2008 at 4:48am
And presuming for a moment Rad is still reading, it's worth nothing this entry in the Free Exchange blog which draws attention to some important research that I think, makes a point which is very much in accord with common sense.

The purpose of legal restrictions - patents, copyrights, and such - that make it easy to monetise innovation is to stimulate markets (and thus the opposite of the FSF position, which is that any such markets or form of trade is prima facie immoral, as if the human propensity to trade with each other is some kind of aberration). There is abundant research and history to demonstrate that this clearly works. The value of such protection - in particular considering such things a term limits - falls off very rapidly, and so the optimal degree of protection is thus dependent on the size of market. When markets are large and liquid and transparent enough, there is less need to ensure that the primary market actors can capture absolutely every last bit of market value in order to provide a suitable incentive to innovate.

We need markets to be competitive, and for both new entrants to appear with disruptive innovation (and such new entrants are those who are absolutely the most dependent on the legal protections provided by copyright and trademark and patent law) as well as for the existing market players to be stimulated by competition to improve what they have (which means protection, but of different kind - and not protection which protects incumbents at the expense of either new entrants or entities that are merely smaller).

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by MrMagoo on Aug 14th, 2008 at 3:15pm

wrote on Aug 14th, 2008 at 4:05am:
The simple fact is that software which does not employ strong DRM (like ours) still suffer eyewateringly enormous rates of piracy; higher rates, irrefutably, demonstrably so, than those which do.

I noted at one point that I have no complaints with Norton specifically, and I understand the need to keep honest people honest. My comments are aimed at software with DRM that is
1) stringent enough that it interferes with convenient use of the software (such as most games employ - even simple CD checks are annoying)
2) complicated enough that it causes other issues with your system outside the software (Sony's rootkit would be an extreme example of this)
3) reduces a consumers privacy (the Windows phone-home features are a popularly debated example.  The Apple iPhone is also seemingly heading in this direction)


wrote on Aug 14th, 2008 at 4:48am:
We need markets to be competitive, and for both new entrants to appear with disruptive innovation (and such new entrants are those who are absolutely the most dependent on the legal protections provided by copyright and trademark and patent law) as well as for the existing market players to be stimulated by competition to improve what they have (which means protection, but of different kind - and not protection which protects incumbents at the expense of either new entrants or entities that are merely smaller).

I don't disagree.  I think that people deserve to have their work protected and that it is necessary for competition and innovation.  I do not condone stealing in any form and haven't given it any support previously.


wrote on Aug 14th, 2008 at 4:05am:
Except that, he posted on Slashdot inviting these comments, a place which is part of a wide political movement made up of people devoted (per Stallman's fantasy drivel)

He originally posted on his own blog.  Lots of sites ended up linking to it, not just Slashdot.  He notes that responses came in as comments on many different web sites and to several of his email addresses, so I think it is definitely possible there is a wider representation of his consumers than just the Slashdot crowd.  And, as I noted, the "Stallman fantasy drivel" was a very small part of the responses he received.


wrote on Aug 14th, 2008 at 4:05am:
I know I will never convince you kind of this, and it helps that in any case I'm utterly disinterested in doing so...

I don't think lumping me into a 'kind' is fair or useful for this debate.  I am not debating with you as a 'member of Stallman's legions' or as a 'solider of the Slashdot army.'  I've noted that I disagree with the fanatics out there, and have made an effort to keep my comments as objective as my experiences allow.  My intention was furthering what has been an interesting discussing on a hot topic, and I thank you for participating.  I've learned a lot and it has been slightly eye opening to get a developer's point of view.  Although it is true that I'm not convinced on some points, it is not out of blind stubbornness, and I do see that the issues are very difficult.  

However, I've learned that when debates such as these digress into personal attacks on the members of the debate rather than focusing on a discussion of the issues,  the intellectual portion of the debate has largely passed, and further debate is probably not productive.  Thanks again for sharing your views.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by El_Pescador on Aug 14th, 2008 at 5:17pm
WARNING: Possible cross-cultural use of innocent expression being interpreted as a pejorative remark !!!:o


wrote on Aug 14th, 2008 at 4:05am:
"... I know I will never convince you kind of this, and it helps that in any case I'm utterly disinterested in doing so..."



MrMagoo wrote on Aug 14th, 2008 at 3:15pm:
"... I don't think lumping me into a 'kind' is fair or useful for this debate..."




UNSAFE
Quote:
"... I know I will never convince you(r) kind of this..."


OR

UNSAFE
Quote:
"... I know I will never convince you(r) type of this..."



SAFE
Quote:
"... I know I will never convince folks such as yourself of this..."


OR

SAFE
Quote:
"... I know I will never convince people of your persuasion in these matters of this..."


El Pescador

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by MrMagoo on Aug 14th, 2008 at 6:38pm

El_Pescador wrote on Aug 14th, 2008 at 5:17pm:
SAFE Quote:
"... I know I will never convince people of your persuasion in these matters of this..."

Thanks for trying to help but, I'm not taking issue with the exact words he used to phrase it.  I considered the possibility I was reading his post with a different tone than he wrote it, and was still a little offended.  

I'm taking issue with the fact that he is seemingly lumping me in with pirates and fanatics when I have taken pains to have a discussion on the topic rather than just repeat some mantra I read somewhere.  Your 'safe quotes' still imply a lumping with some group Nigel has a distaste for (and understandably so) rather than respecting my viewpoint as an educated consumer.  

I've been trying to discuss the issue with him consumer to developer - as someone with a strong point of view on the other side of the fence.  His comment that I'm 'one of them' indicates to me that he doesn't see the discussion the same way - that he feels like he is trying to preach ('lecture' in his words) to the immoral pirate masses in his posts to this thread.  I don't intend to represent those crowds and don't intend to continue the discussion under those assumptions.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by Nigel Bree on Aug 14th, 2008 at 7:19pm
Cheers, Pesky. You're right, I shouldn't have said that. Unfortunately, this endless repeating of "DRM bad" really annoys me because it's so intellectually dishonest; it's purely a political statement, not one based on economics, or actual human behaviour, or looking at the question of how to improve things for everyone. Everyone is allowed to make such statements of their own views, of course, but as with Stallman's "arguments" that the world would be magically better without evil money-making companies it's not really advancing a viable alternative to anything.

The real problem is how to address the problem that DRM is trying to solve, if not via DRM; in a world with perfect, immediate digital distribution, in a world where any attempts to encode ethical, socially responsible behaviour in law face determined opposition (even in countries like New Zealand or Sweden with open governments, no corruption, and long traditions of legislation for socially beneficial outcomes), how is it possible for any creator or person with a new idea to prosper?

Right now, no-one has any answer. Societies have not provided creators or publishers any other tools beyond legal restrictions on copying which are largely framed in terms of pre-electronic physical objects. So, when we are faced with piracy that involves physical distribution of counterfeit product it's at least usually possible to deal with it in the existing legal and enforcement framework. For personal copying the asymmetries producers face are insane - it's just not economically viable to pursue enforcement, and now that things have got as bad as they have it probably won't ever be.

All the traditional tools of societies for addressing such problems are problematic in the digital age, especially in an environment like the current one where truly mass piracy has been made so easy. As more and more consumers adopt the idea that whatever they want should be available on demand whenever they want it, doing anything via the law to address this form of market failure becomes harder and harder.

So, markets will simply have to adapt to a new equilibrium, built around those same four islands where the business models are not being too disrupted - embedded software made by hardware manufacturers (who have physical product they can protect), software for business (businesses must obey the law, after all, and the incentives for medium and larger business to do so are strong), services to consumers which rely on advertising (the newspaper/television business model), and the games/movies entertainment businesses which rely on recouping more and more money in a shorter and shorter time until their product falls into the advertising-supported bin.

The online services one is the most interesting, because it's the only one of these which doesn't impose really significant challenges to new business (next easiest for new entrants is business software, but it has some real challenges) and thus be a source of major innovation, and it's the only which offers access to consumer markets other than the hardware-vendor publishing platforms like the Sony/Microsoft/Apple/... ones. But right now there's still no good alternative way to monetise those in a way which lets people really capture the rewards from innovation. Well, beyond advertising.

And creators of new services have to struggle with the same problems; because barriers to entry are low, and their ideas are not able to be protected (they can only protect their implementations), they only have limited ways to protect themselves from competition. The only real differentiator in a world where services are being priced at zero and supported by advertising is quality of experience, but that quality of experience takes investment. And where does that investment come from? Existing large businesses can sustain that kind of thing, but are the doors open enough for new business and ideas?


Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by MrMagoo on Aug 14th, 2008 at 7:56pm

wrote on Aug 14th, 2008 at 7:19pm:
The real problem is how to address the problem that DRM is trying to solve, if not via DRM

...And I suppose people who don't have suggestions on how to improve the situation shouldn't complain about the status quo too loudly.  The 'Slashdot crowd' is definitely guilty of that.

The thing is, hearing an admission that DRM is not the ideal fix for piracy from the very people implementing it brings a breath of relief that we are all at least thinking about the common goal of improving customer experience.  The response of "I know it can be a pain, but DRM is a necessary evil" is much easier to swallow as a consumer than "Stop being a greedy pirate and give us your money."  It may sound silly when put that way, but that's how people hear it, and that is what leads to the emotional nature of it.


wrote on Aug 14th, 2008 at 7:19pm:
And creators of new services have to struggle with the same problems; because barriers to entry are low, and their ideas are not able to be protected (they can only protect their implementations), they only have limited ways to protect themselves from competition. The only real differentiator in a world where services are being priced at zero and supported by advertising is quality of experience, but that quality of experience takes investment. And where does that investment come from? Existing large businesses can sustain that kind of thing, but are the doors open enough for new business and ideas?

This hits home for me.  I've been cooking together a decent idea for an entertainment product, but my fear is that it will be quickly copied and run over by companies with much more resources than I have.  I think that Open Source actually helps to some extent on this front.  Writing an entire operating system is far beyond my capabilities, but adding new features to a Linux operating system to provide a unique customer experience is doable.  Essentially, Open Source allows the community to do much of the ground work of creating a quality experience for the consumer, leaving the final details to the innovator. It's not a perfect system, but it may, as you say, lead to new equilibriums.  

I don't have the answers, but I think respectful discussion of the issues are going to have to take place between smart people from all sides - business, consumer, law makers, and law enforcers - before progress can be made.  Unfortunately, it seems like those discussions are getting more and more difficult to have due to the rising tensions.

Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by zmdmw on Sep 26th, 2009 at 6:22am

Rad wrote on Jul 16th, 2008 at 8:01pm:
Checking in.

Killer thread. Very interesting.

Readers of this thread would be interested in this article that contrasts 'standard' EULA's against Open-Source Licences (GPL/BSD-type licenses). Based on a suit in France, favoring the GPL-camp:
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/09/big-gpl-copyright-enforcement-win-in-paris-court-of-appeals.ars

He then goes on to give an overview/contrast between the various types of licenses, in a manner understandable to general folk, without much of legal jargon (unlike some parts of this post).



Quote:
... And this brings me to the difference between an End User License Agreement and open source licenses like the GPL or the BSD licenses. I will try to explain it as clearly as I can by using a number of simple diagrams to illustrate what, exactly, it is that these documents do.


Title: Re: Piracy / Linkage
Post by zmdmw on Sep 26th, 2009 at 7:25am

zmdmw wrote on Sep 26th, 2009 at 6:22am:
Readers of this thread would be interested in this article that contrasts 'standard' EULA's against Open-Source Licences (GPL/BSD-type licenses). Based on a suit in France, favoring the GPL-camp:
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/09/big-gpl-copyright-enforcement-win-in-paris-court-of-appeals.ars

The correct URL for thearticle is:
http://www.osnews.com/story/22233/The_Difference_Between_EULAs_and_Open_Source_Licenses

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