underground gamer is offline for good

[wclem]

Equal access to everyone for everything. It is about sharing, maybe if we all did more of it the world would be a more peaceful place. That is all guys, not who is entitled to what or how much.

Best feeling you will ever get is giving something away for free. Just like sharing our hobby.........

[marurun]

I'd argue that it's really patents that are the problem in terms of stifling creativity, especially the current state of software patents. Copyrights can prevent you from using someone else's characters to tell your story, but at the same time you should be able to tell your story without their characters. Unless I'm missing something that copyright cuts off.

*tl:dr and for better, less rambling explanations, find some of the points I take up here:
http://publicknowledge.org/economic-imp ... pp-negotia*

I think that's the common perception. But let's think of how important and powerful pop culture and creative expression can be. Copyright is, in the US at least, an artificial and temporary monopoly granted by the government for the express purpose of incentivising creators in the short term for the long-term enrichment of the public and the public domain. Protest songs about US combat in Vietnam and the draft from the 60s and 70s are locked behind a paywall for 95 years. The people these songs are about, or who experienced the events these songs depict, will be dead before the songs can be shared or remixed without express permission, and likely monetary exchange, from someone else.

That's a little too warm-fuzzy for some, so let's look at the economic argument. Long copyright terms are a disincentive for further commercial creative expression. Why? Let's use an example from the copyright hearings in Europe a few years ago. An aging American jazz musician went before an EU committee to argue that unlike so many workers who have pensions (more common in the EU than in the US), he had no pension on which to retire. He was dependent upon royalties from his nearly 50-year-old recordings to retire. Let's put aside that if he's a US musician and self-employed he's due social security (because he was legally obligated to pay into it). If copyright were a 28 year affair, as originally intended, that musician had 28 years from the time he created his first jazz recording to invest profits from royalties and other copyright-linked incentives into a retirement fund. And once the 28-year term on the first recording runs out, he has later recordings from which he can continue to draw income, and put away for retirement, until 28 years after those subsequent recordings were copyrighted. Further, he can continue to perform live as a musician whether his recordings are copyrighted or not. Most musicians are still pretty damn good at playing their own songs 30 years later, and non-singers particularly can often hit 50 years and still play them well. There's always an audience for a concert of the original performer performing their material. I'd usually take the original over a cover band, and the face that cover bands can exist under compulsory licensing suggest and don't ever seem to push out the original performers is evidence that copyright does little to incentivise live performances.

What does this have to do with disincentivising creative production? If someone can get two really popular albums under their belt that have significant royalties for 50+ years, they can simply stop producing material. OK, so reality isn't so simple. Unless you are U2 you probably can't live on royalties alone without touring and continuing to produce. Still, when I got a job just out of college, I did some really good work. Was it as creative as that jazz musician? Probably not, but it also wasn't the kind of work that you could distribute for royalties. I didn't get a pension. I had to sock away some of my own money for retirement. I didn't get to do some cool, creative thing and then let royalties come in from it to supplement my income for my entire life plus the entire life of my children (creator's life + 70 years, yo!). Putting aside issues of fairness, the only reason creators can pull in these royalties and prevent others from redistributing, rerecording, rereleasing their work is because the government grants them an artificial monopoly over their output. The impetus of this time-limited monopoly is so that they will see financial benefit from their works, continue to create new works, and eventually their creative output will enter the public domain and be reusable and remixable by others. But works that are protected for that long don't enrich the public. They become prized by large commercial entities which collect them and license them and profit from them, and prefer to remix and reissue for profit over creating new.

[irixith]

However, there is no way to know the ACTUAL lost income, because every infringement is not a lost sale.

..and this is where legalese (or what you're arguing) and reality part ways. Game X costs $50. For every person that owns and plays Game X, $50 must change hands. If 100,000 people buy Game X, $5,000,000 changes hands. If one person buys the game and the other 99,999 pirate it, only $50 changes hands. The other $4,999,950 vanishes. This fuzzy logic whereby we look at the number of downloads (let's say, 500,000 people downloaded) and then try and qualify who actual is and isn't a customer is horseshit, speaking plainly. It doesn't matter whether or not they would have bought it, what matters is that they chose to download and partake, which they otherwise couldn't have done without spending money. That person enjoying your game is quantifiable lost sale.

And let's be honest, if someone downloads a game illegally instead of paying for it, they're not a customer. They might be using "your" product, but they're no customer of yours. If we try to claim that every infringement should be treated as a lost sale and the money recovered thus, that would render "piracy" and the resulting prosecution and cost recovery MORE profitable than simply selling the game with illegal downloading uninvolved. That is no longer "making whole", but is instead using the legal system for inappropriate financial enrichment, something that is very frowned upon in the legal community.

Whether or not they are or are not a customer does not change the fact that they have stolen from you. I'm a Honda customer -- I'm not a BMW customer, but I'm not averse to stealing one of their cars! Could I argue that in the courtroom? "Sorry judge, I know I was using the BMW without paying for it, but I'm a Honda gal, so uh, tough luck buddy." The fact that every infringement is not considered a lost sale for cost recovery is probably why the system is so bent out of shape in the first place -- no penalty. There's nothing to discourage users from piracy, beyond wanting small things like boxes on their shelves and games to buy in the first place.

Further, calling copyright as theft common sense is nonsense.

It is most certainly not nonsense! Hiding behind semantics and definitions and trying to pretend that by calling downloading games off the internet "copyright infringement" and thereby attempting to argue that it's not theft is what's nonsense.

Copyright infringement and theft are so different in the details that they bear little semblance, and thus need different legal frameworks, as well as mental models, in order to operate correctly.

I'm probably alone here, but I disagree that they are so different. If I walk into a store, slip a game into my bra (ok, ok, into my purse) and walk out the door, we are on common ground -- I'm a thief. If I try and go back into the store, the shopkeep will spin around and kill me where I stand, and upon my resurrection I shall forever be known as THIEF. If I crawl out of bed, turn on my computer and download that same game from Usenet, I'm still a thief -- just without any of the social stigma, shame, and death by electricity. Either way I've taken something that doesn't belong to me without paying for it. I can dig that the legal system wants the tangible good to worth "more" than the intangible one because there's a clearer measure of loss, but just because the legal system hasn't found a way to wrap the language around the intangible good too doesn't mean a theft didn't occur.

[Cronozilla]

This is actually a really complicated issue ... but I would say the way copyright infringement is generally handled for individuals is absolutely unethical on the part of the copyright owner.

It's not that piracy should be condoned, it's that, they're not always truthful about which numbers are piracy numbers, and which are poor sales numbers. It involves a lot of speculation and wishful thinking on their part. Most of the general population's opinion on piracy has actually come from companies who want it to be seen equal as robbing old ladies ... and that's just not accurate.

These companies use corporate copyright laws against individuals ... it's just ridiculous. You can actually get a far more punitive settlement for copyright infringement as an individual than many other crime's minimum sentencing. Hit someone with a car? Oh, maybe $2 million in settlement plus a year in jail and community service. Download a music album? $250K per song plus 5 years, potential, per infringement. You can potentially go to jail and have a higher settlement than for murder.

To me, the advent of sharing online isn't necessarily a negative thing, it's just showing that things aren't the same as they used to be and it's telling companies they need to change how they deliver things and their expectations from their consumers.

As a side note, also, I find it really obnoxious when a company will just sit on a property because they don't think it'll make them enough money ... but, sure as shit, no one else is making a dime on it. That is just some grade-a-bullshit, and several companies do this and act like it's perfectly acceptable.

We're talking about ethical codes here ... that's the only way you can argue that Copyright infringement is, in fact, theft. And on a scale of Ethics ... I would argue that people committing copyright infringement in this manner (arguably the most benign manner) is far less ethically concerning than the legal reaction it receives. Again, I'm not condoning piracy, but you can't just say, oh all these people are wrong, shame on them ... and not look at the entire situation.

Anyway, that's how I see it.

[MrPopo]

I'd argue that it's really patents that are the problem in terms of stifling creativity, especially the current state of software patents. Copyrights can prevent you from using someone else's characters to tell your story, but at the same time you should be able to tell your story without their characters. Unless I'm missing something that copyright cuts off.

*tl:dr and for better, less rambling explanations, find some of the points I take up here:
http://publicknowledge.org/economic-imp ... pp-negotia*

<massive snip>

The impetus of this time-limited monopoly is so that they will see financial benefit from their works, continue to create new works, and eventually their creative output will enter the public domain and be reusable and remixable by others. But works that are protected for that long don't enrich the public. They become prized by large commercial entities which collect them and license them and profit from them, and prefer to remix and reissue for profit over creating new.

That's an interesting perspective you have; that it's easier to rest on one's laurels than it is to keep trying. I'm not sure I agree with your conclusions, though. Let's split it up into two categories: the individual who created a work and a corporation that owns the IP rights to a work.

In the case of the individual, you are asserting that long copyrights disincentivize them to continue to produce once they have hit some definable amount of "successful" content, as they reach a sufficient level of wealth that they will be set up financially for the rest of their life (barring Futurama-esque head jars). While this might be the case for some individuals, you can see that the vast majorities of individual "artists" (to use a blanket term for content producers) continue to produce long past the point of continuous sustience. It's actually rather difficult to make money from "artistic" production, so those who make a career of it start off from the position of "this is something I love, and would do even if I didn't get paid". So while there is a theoretical disincentive from long copyrights, in practice we don't see that occuring.

Now, for the corporate case, I'd argue that even if you had short-term copyrights you'd still see the same issue of a corporation building up a stable of works that they rehash for easy money. Just because a work enters the public domain doesn't mean you can no longer monetize it. Your typical corporation might focus on a selection of public domain works that it knows what to do with and keep producing variations on those works. The difference with short copyright terms is that the corporation needs to have a larger body of works it utilizes. Or you just might see things the same way they are today, just with a higher turnover on when you see one property dropped for another (so instead of riding a work for 70 years, you only ride it for 30 years). The underlying issue is not that corporations want to stifle creativity, it's that they want to make money, and the public has shown that being given the familiar is an easy way to make money.

[Menegrothx]

Again, though, these are all a far cry from feeling entitled to be able to download the newest Halo game (before it even gets released!).

It's a private torrent site dedicated to retro gaming. Nothing more recent than 10 years old.

Are you seriously equating the downloading of a game that hasn't been sold in stores for years (+there's the fact that the original game studio and even the original publisher might've been defunct for years by now) to downloading a game that was just released? As long as it's retro games that we're talking about here, this whole argument is retarded. Now if we were talking new/recent games, talking about "theft" and whatnot would actually make atleast some kind of sense.

[AppleQueso]

Again, though, these are all a far cry from feeling entitled to be able to download the newest Halo game (before it even gets released!).

It's a private torrent site dedicated to retro gaming. Nothing more recent than 10 years old.

Are you seriously equating the downloading of a game that hasn't been sold in stores for years (+there's the fact that the original game studio and even the original publisher might've been defunct for years by now) to downloading a game that was just released? As long as it's retro games that we're talking about here, this whole argument is retarded. Now if we were talking new/recent games, talking about "theft" and whatnot would actually make atleast some kind of sense.

The argument spun off into a general piracy debate way earlier in the thread. Nobody is specifically talking about Underground Gamer anymore.

[wclem]

I think UG is more about letting people enjoy something who otherwise may not have access to it. Some people who download actually do it because they cannot afford to enjoy these things otherwise. Just because someone can afford to pay for all the luxuries they want does not mean that they alone are ENTITLED to it. Everyone, regardless of income should be able to enjoy the same things. UG just leveled the playing field a little. This is all it comes down to.

You are poor, so you dont get it. I dont care how hard you work or if you are disabled. I have more money than you so I can pay, too bad for you.

100 dollars, ten people buy it. United States
10 dollars, one hundred people buy it. China

Believe it or not but not everyone who downloads believes that they should get things without working for it. Truthfully, think to yourself, how many people do you know that work and download just because they are cheap and dont want to pay. Compare that number to the number of people you know who buy things in a fashion that everyone gets there cut. Most people pay their share, but some cannot. I do not begrudge them for downloading something so that they also can enjoy what I do. I wish I could buy it for them but last I checked I was not rich.

The end of it is that UG is about sharing, nothing else. It is not about breaking copyright law, or stealing from people. It is about sharing, it is about people gathering in a place and sharing what they love. Life is too short to argue about a very small minority of people who may be downloading stuff because they are just to cheap or evil to pay for it. Some people simply cannot and for those I say, "Download man download".

We all need to look beyond ourselves and see everyone for what is simply right. People starve while rich people and rich companies dump resources beyond most of our wildest dreams into trying to stop a small amount of downloaders. Think of what they could really be doing with that money. (think of how much of our tax dollars are thrown at it).

[fastbilly1]

Again, though, these are all a far cry from feeling entitled to be able to download the newest Halo game (before it even gets released!).

It's a private torrent site dedicated to retro gaming. Nothing more recent than 10 years old.

Are you seriously equating the downloading of a game that hasn't been sold in stores for years (+there's the fact that the original game studio and even the original publisher might've been defunct for years by now) to downloading a game that was just released? As long as it's retro games that we're talking about here, this whole argument is retarded. Now if we were talking new/recent games, talking about "theft" and whatnot would actually make atleast some kind of sense.

The argument spun off into a general piracy debate way earlier in the thread. Nobody is specifically talking about Underground Gamer anymore.

UG was my only stop for updated MAME databases and DOS games. I hope they get this cleaned up and get back up on their feet. They are/were a great asset to me.

[MrPopo]

Most people pay their share, but some cannot. I do not begrudge them for downloading something so that they also can enjoy what I do. I wish I could buy it for them but last I checked I was not rich.

So under your system where it's ok if people don't pay for something, what exactly is the incentive to pay for something?