The Ethics of Emulation

[Hatta]

Yes, patent law is a form of socialism as well. Socialism isn't necessarily bad, of course. Socialism and captalism are both a means to an end, a healthy society. Use either as needed. I'd pretty much agree with the rest of your post. Business models have to adapt to new economic realities.

[17DaysOlderThanNES]

@17DaysOlderThanNES
I can go what myself? Did I say I was talking about you and how you feel about Nintendo?
You're not the only one to post on this thread, in fact you're one of the last. If I am directly talking to you I will let you know.


Mods should lock this thread. Like another poster said it's like beating a dead horse.

Sorry, you posted right after me and I saw it as a personal attack myself. Now that I know you weren't referring to my post, we're A OK.

17DaysOlderThanNES, there are lots of ways to rationalize piracy. Just understand that if everyone did so, the games you value (the ones you spend your valuable time with) would not exist. If you're really ok with that (I am, in quite a few cases) that's no one's business but your own. Spend the money you can afford to support the developers you want to succeed and your conscience should be ok. That's all you're truly accountable to in the end.

um, yeah, that's what I said in my post alright.

So are we socialist now.

Manipulating the market by artificially limiting supply through copyright is socialism. Under a free market the supply is infinite when the marginal cost is zero, so the marginal price would also be zero.

I assume, then, that you feel the same about patent law, which accomplishes a similar purpose of allowing the "original creator" to decide how much supply to inject into the market.

The old standbys of market theory just aren't equipped to handle digital goods. By their very nature distribution and duplication cost is effectively nil, especially when you consider just how willing random people are to take up that cost pro bono. Compare with something like a CD; selling bootlegs costs a certain amount for the new disc plus packaging. It takes a certain amount of effort to steal physical items; stealing digital items is relatively painless. So content providers have to find ways to monetize content creation with the knowledge that anything digital can and will be made freely available for all. Right now there are a lot of people who are "old fashioned", but as the number of Americans become more and more tech savvy you'll see less and less of people who spend money on something digital because "that's the way it's supposed to be". You'll start seeing it for reasons such as "I want to support this developer" or "I get a bonus figure if I buy it".

Wanna know one fun fact about patents? Patents last 20 years, copyrights last SEVENTY YEARS AFTER THE CREATOR IS DEAD. That's Grade A bullshit if I've ever seen it. If NES games were patented and not copyrighted, a good chunk would be public domain now, and IMO, that's how it should be. BTW that's not an attack or rebuttle, just something I wanted to bring to the discussion.

I definitely like the idea of "pay to support the developer" rather than "pay full price for my game before you know if it's good or not, no refunds." I mean, if you go to a restaurant and the food is awful, you say "fuck this, I'm not paying" and you walk out. Somehow, we've been bullied into "no refunds" even if the game/movie/music blows. I know alot of that has to do with the concept that you watch a movie once and you're usually done, but I should still have some recourse when I've been scammed.

I also feel strongly that paid digital download files should have some sort of mandate that requires sellers to send an "ownership card" or at least have a centralized record of all of your digital purchases. My biggest gripe is that if my PS3 gets stolen full of paid download-only games, I'm totally shit out of luck. With physical games, assuming they weren't also stolen, I still have my collection. Maybe you can call up Sony and have them transfer the games, but I doubt you'll be able to do that 10+ years from now.

[MrPopo]

[quote="17DaysOlderThanNES]Wanna know one fun fact about patents? Patents last 20 years, copyrights last SEVENTY YEARS AFTER THE CREATOR IS DEAD. That's Grade A bullshit if I've ever seen it. If NES games were patented and not copyrighted, a good chunk would be public domain now, and IMO, that's how it should be. BTW that's not an attack or rebuttle, just something I wanted to bring to the discussion.[/quote]
That's very true that copyright law has a very different timeframe than patents. The law for getting something patented is also far more stringent than getting something copyrighted. The words I'm typing are copyrighted, technically. I have yet to see someone bring up a point of "let's lower the length of copyright" into any discussion involving digital piracy. I feel that is a far more defensible argument than the ones traditionally brought up. Then again, most of the arguments for piracy could be used whether copyrights lasted 1 year or 100 years, as they stem from the nature of digital duplication vs. stealing tangible goods.

I definitely like the idea of "pay to support the developer" rather than "pay full price for my game before you know if it's good or not, no refunds." I mean, if you go to a restaurant and the food is awful, you say "fuck this, I'm not paying" and you walk out. Somehow, we've been bullied into "no refunds" even if the game/movie/music blows. I know alot of that has to do with the concept that you watch a movie once and you're usually done, but I should still have some recourse when I've been scammed.

You used to be able to return games to the store, within the return policy window. Then games started coming out on mediums that were easily duplicated in the home. As a result it opens the door for someone to purchase a game, copy the disc, and return it, in essence getting a free game without the hassel of bittorrent. PC games were the first to suffer from this, thanks to their nature compared to Playstation and Saturn (PC games couldn't have that authentication track). And when CD-Keys started being used that basically closed the door returns for opened software, as it would put the store in the position of potentially selling software to a customer with reduced functionality. This is a reality forced by the nature of digital products. I personally support "demo piracy" because of this if official demos are not provided, but its still in the same class as someone who downloads the game, plays it through fully, and never buys it.

I also feel strongly that paid digital download files should have some sort of mandate that requires sellers to send an "ownership card" or at least have a centralized record of all of your digital purchases. My biggest gripe is that if my PS3 gets stolen full of paid download-only games, I'm totally shit out of luck. With physical games, assuming they weren't also stolen, I still have my collection. Maybe you can call up Sony and have them transfer the games, but I doubt you'll be able to do that 10+ years from now.

I am actually less concerned about this, because the internet allows nothing to remain locked forever; yes, the PSN will go down, but someone will have managed to rescue all the programs and found a way to make them transferrable onto your PS3. Hell, there's already cracks for VC titles, so its only a matter of time for everything else.

[17DaysOlderThanNES]

That's very true that copyright law has a very different timeframe than patents. The law for getting something patented is also far more stringent than getting something copyrighted. The words I'm typing are copyrighted, technically. I have yet to see someone bring up a point of "let's lower the length of copyright" into any discussion involving digital piracy. I feel that is a far more defensible argument than the ones traditionally brought up. Then again, most of the arguments for piracy could be used whether copyrights lasted 1 year or 100 years, as they stem from the nature of digital duplication vs. stealing tangible goods.

Well, I think it's very important ethically to pay for recently made products depending on use. You should always pay for a PS3 game if you like it. On the same note, you should always pay for professional programs (photoshop, etc.) if using them in a for-profit scenario. For example: I have a bootleg of Solidworks 2004 (3D engineering CAD program) on my computer, but I only use it for screwing around, not making money. On the same token, at work, all of our Solidworks are legitimate retail versions because it is a for-profit industry. People don't tend to realize this, but not-for-profit sharing of copyrighted works is relatively legally inactionable (which is why you don't see lawsuits everywhere). All of the Limewire suits stem from the fact that users were sharing files to extreme extents to others (i.e. people not knowing WTF they were doing and let Limewire run in the background all day sharing Brittney Spears' latest album to thousands or millions of people). In other words, it's usually unauthorized distribution (to a large extent) that is deemed legally unacceptable, but not using the pirated software yourself. Still, I think it's up to us as members of society to know when something is ethical to download or needs to be paid for. Furthermore, I think a shorter copyright would help prevent market stagnation (do we need another Genesis compilation, Sega? how bout a new game that doesn't suck for once.) and also create a less "fuck it, it'll be illegal as long as I'm alive, so might as well download it now" attitude.

You used to be able to return games to the store, within the return policy window. Then games started coming out on mediums that were easily duplicated in the home. As a result it opens the door for someone to purchase a game, copy the disc, and return it, in essence getting a free game without the hassel of bittorrent. PC games were the first to suffer from this, thanks to their nature compared to Playstation and Saturn (PC games couldn't have that authentication track). And when CD-Keys started being used that basically closed the door returns for opened software, as it would put the store in the position of potentially selling software to a customer with reduced functionality. This is a reality forced by the nature of digital products. I personally support "demo piracy" because of this if official demos are not provided, but its still in the same class as someone who downloads the game, plays it through fully, and never buys it.

It actually started even before that. I think sometime between the NES and Genesis days stores stopped accepting game returns because kids would buy a game, beat it, then return it, leading to stacks of returned games. Even worse, the early NES games (5 screw carts) had standard flathead screws and since all cases were virtually the same, you could buy a new game, swap the boards, and return it with the old game inside the new case. This happened alot with rentals too, which is why they put those nasty rental stickers on the cartridge seam. This is also why you see security bits on all cartridges past the early NES games.

I am actually less concerned about this, because the internet allows nothing to remain locked forever; yes, the PSN will go down, but someone will have managed to rescue all the programs and found a way to make them transferrable onto your PS3. Hell, there's already cracks for VC titles, so its only a matter of time for everything else.

Well, I guess it's just a matter of if I pay for something, I want to be able to prove it. OK, so say I buy a game for PS3 now and it's download only, how could I prove it when my PS3 breaks (assuming that happens) and PSN doesn't support it anymore? I mean, no one has ever been prosecuted over downloading games (especially old ones), but if that ever did start happening, I would LOVE to shove my ownership card in the face of the prosecutor and be like "go fuck yourself dude, I paid for this shit." Even still, I would prefer disc media since I can store that myself indefinitely whereas digital downloads are only around as long as that hard drive holds up or if someone managed to save it and spread it around online.

[SamTHorn]

First thing that comes to mind is a quote from the musician, Jack Johnson, " Once I sing a song its not mine anymore."

In my opinion, this is true for pictures, video games, songs, movies and so on... If you want to make money with your creations you must evolve into the technical age of the internet.

For example if you're a musician you should preform at concerts in stead of waiting for people to give you money for your recordings. And for video games, being the largest industry in the world, the designers should get their money when the big companies buy it, not when the consumer purchase it. The only entities that are losing anything is the one with too much money.

Just my opinion.

~ Sam

__________________________________________
miami hotels... restoration franchise.

[noiseredux]

I'm actually amazed/confused that this thread is still open.

[17DaysOlderThanNES]

First thing that comes to mind is a quote from the musician, Jack Johnson, " Once I sing a song its not mine anymore."

In my opinion, this is true for pictures, video games, songs, movies and so on... If you want to make money with your creations you must evolve into the technical age of the internet.

For example if you're a musician you should preform at concerts in stead of waiting for people to give you money for your recordings. And for video games, being the largest industry in the world, the designers should get their money when the big companies buy it, not when the consumer purchase it. The only entities that are losing anything is the one with too much money.

Just my opinion.

~ Sam

I like this mindset, well, except for the part about "big companies buy it." First of all, that is how it works, a publisher buys the rights to produce X number of copies and then they get paid when stores buy it. A publisher does well when lots of stores order or re-order it. Just because they have high operating capital doesn't mean they don't deserve something for their contribution. That said, $5-$10 for a god damn Wii VC game is highway robbery.

The thing about the song, however, is something I've been saying for years, especially when you consider copyrights are good for life+70 years vs. patents that are good for 20. I say 20 all around, done.

[Limewater]

Gosh. What all of you anti-piracy folks aren't understanding is that I am entitled to whatever I want. Jeez.

[Big Stupid]

Oh dear, this thread is getting awfully political and personal. How about we each agree to do what we each think is right? Why don't we end this nasty thread, and post about something less controversial, like stem cell research, abortion and whether Mega Man 9 was good or not (it wasn't).