This is how you stop online "Piracy"

Serious Sam: BFE "Begone Freeloading Enemies" has introduced a clever way of dealing with pirates. Stick an unkillable foe that follows them and torments them in the game. Way to go Croteam!

I'm glad someone said it...

From Game Politics:

Minecraft Creator: Piracy Isn't Theft

Minecraft creator Markus 'Notch' Persson told attendees of the GDC Indie Games Summit that the notion of piracy as being theft is incorrect.

"Piracy is not theft," said Persson during the session. "If you steal a car, the original is lost. If you copy a game, there are simply more of them in the world. There is no such thing as a 'lost sale.' Is a bad review a lost sale? What about a missed ship date?"

Persson suggested to attendees that many developers see pirates not as "inherently evil, but as potential customers." Persson also took on comments made by Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata, saying that his criticism of small and rampant mobile and social games excludes the fact that games such as Minecraft are more of a service than a one-time purchase. Persson said that games such as his creation and Angry Birds are constantly adding updates and new content and that both have incredible sales numbers.

"Treat game development as a service," he said. "Make a game last longer than a week. You can't pirate an online account."

It is amazing how well it works for business when you treat your customers better than than the pirates. One of the reasons I believe piracy is so rampant, is that there are often more rewards for being a pirate than an honest customer with many companies. That DRM (Digital Rights Management software) which can destroy your computer is no risk on a pirated version, which is only all the more reason to pirate what they put the DRM on!

I would hope this attitude would catch on, but I've worked too long in the corporate world. Power corrupts, and it is as true in the business world as it appears to be in the political one.

U.S. government report on piracy... not as bad as it is made out to be!

Government Accountability Office (GAO) study says "Study: U.S. Piracy and Counterfeiting Data is Unsubstantiated"

Yep, that's right. They've looked into it and industry is making up data just to justify their claims (who'd have thought of it! /sarcasm) Not only industry either, the FBI was caught in fabricating that industry loses up to $250 billion a year due to copyright piracy... but when questioned had absolutely no data or way to veryify the claim.

In fact the long and short of it was that every government office and private industry group they contacted was making up claims of losses. Which comes back to a long understand issue: How many internet pirates are actually would-be customers if they didn't pirate? And how many pirates instead turn into actual customers as a result of trying a product?

Maybe IP piracy is less of a problem than just making a poor product and treating your customers badly. But I'm sure that is a lot harder to explain to shareholders than the convenient scapegoat of "there are people copying our stuff for freeeeeee!!!!! they made me lose your money".

I'm not sympathetic pirates, but I'm becoming even less sympathetic and intrusions into my private life, poor customer service, and denial of owner's rights in the excuse of combating piracy. When I BUY something from you, I own it... I'm not renting it from you because you have to fight piracy. I don't mind paying for subscription service games... if I get into it KNOWING it is a subscription service game. Big Business and Big Government are colluding to use it as an excuse to invade people's private lives and take away privacy that would never be allowed any other way. I mean seriously if the government or corporations sent people in person to such through all the private files in your house "just because you COULD do something bad" would people accept it?

In fact here in the U.S. we already had an American Revolution due in part to exactly that.

Lessons not learned

Once upon a time there were more a lot of brands of PCs that were incompatible. IBM created the personal computer that almost all of us use today. How many competitors can you name though? Apple, Macintosh, Texas-Instruments, Radio Shack (Tandy), any more? There were a lot but the personal computer we have today won out... why? Because they had more than one company making components for them and were able to provide a better overall product because of it. IBM allowed anyone to make PC compatible parts and software, something their competitors didn't allow.

For most mainstream technology that people use all the time it is the same way. Competition was allowed instead of proprietorship and the technology caught on. However, in gaming platforms they're determined not to learn. Nintendo in Spain just lost a lawsuit to prevent 3rd party manufacturers from improving their product under the guise that it might sometimes be used for piracy. You know what the same argument has been used to try and stop VHS tapes, writable CDs, and MP3s. Why is industry frequently determined to fight an uphill battle against their own consumers demands for free use of the products they buy? Microsoft also just got slapped with yet another anti-trust suit for trying to block 3rd party development for the X-box by Datel. Yet, 3rd party development always seems to boost sales for any platform. Nobody would use windows if it wasn't for the 3rd party support of applications it gets. A lot of people prefer Linux but don't use it because of that very same lack of support from their party hardware and software developers. Being rich and powerful seems to always make one a control freak, even though being a control freak is detrimental to what made you rich and powerful in the first place.

Now Microsoft is trying to pay Newscorp (owner of Fox News) to take their news articles off of Google so that they're only found on Bing. I wonder who will lose out from that deal? I really doubt it will be Google. If I was one of Fox News' few conservative competitors (i.e. Pajamas TV) I would be praying that Fox took MS up on the offer so that I could get my articles promoted on Google without Fox competition.

Big business will just never learn. People like to customize things and make it theirs, even if sometimes piracy happens. It is coutner intuitive to the control freak nature But but but... Piracy can happen! is the objection. Yes, it can... Piracy can ALWAYS happen. Are you going to discourage Piracy by making it more beneficial to be a Pirate than a customer? No. You have to discourage Piracy and make it difficult while at the same time making it being more rewarding to be a customer than a Pirate. The stick will never work if the other side has ALL the carrots.