Valve’s Take on Piracy
by Stephen Spring on January 19th, 2009 at 11:22 am EDT - 533 views
Valve, creators of such games as Half Life, Counter Strike, and more recently Left 4 Dead, have come forward today at a Game Business Law summit at Southern Methodist University. At the summit Valve stated that the piracy problems were largely the fault of the marketers and not the consumers.
We take all of our games day-and-date to Russia. The reason people pirated things in Russia is because Russians are reading magazines and watching television. They say ‘Man, I want to play that game so bad,’ but the publishers respond ‘you can play that game in six months…maybe.’
Holtman then stated that whenever their Valve products were readily available in Russia, piracy of said game dropped dramatically. Holtman took aim at the marketers again saying that the majority of pirates were simply “Underserved” customers. (That’s UNDER-SERVED)
This comes as a suprise to many as Valve, the creator of Steam, currently is one of two dominating powers in the video game sales industry and for a company whos livelyhood is creating and selling games to take a defensive stand point strikes us as a little odd.
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0 CommentsPirates Sentenced to 1-6 Years
by Taylor Flatt on December 31st, 2008 at 6:10 pm EDT - 278 views
Earlier this week, the Chinese counterfeiting gang that stole 2 billion dollars worth of Microsoft phony software was sentenced to 1 1/2 years to 6 1/2 years which is quite tough considering earlier Chinese court cases. The software was found in 36 different countries and multiple languages which isnt suprising considering the speed that things fly on the web.
Although, Microsoft and the RIAA along with governments, are cracking down on these “pirates” they will never see the end of the road. Not only are there millions of pirates, but most do it because of one simple fact. That fact is the price of software and games today. You used to be able to go out and buy a $39 game, but now it is $59-69 and same goes to software which is hiking up the ladder. This is game will continue to go on for years to come and will only end in hard feelings and trillions of dollars spent trying to quell this uprising. Something more drastic needs to be done if they think they will make any head way into stopping this.
Source: AP
Snag in RIAA’s Plan?
by Taylor Flatt on December 23rd, 2008 at 3:15 pm EDT - 182 views
Recently, the RIAA has announced they will no longer be taking the fight to the courtroom, rather, they will be taking it to the ISPs. However, one ISP has stepped up to the plate and demands that RIAA pays him for such a service. Jerry Scroggin of a Lousiana ISP company had this to say,
“They have the right to protect their songs or music or pictures,” Scroggin said. “But they don’t have the right to tell me I have to be the one protecting it. I don’t want anyone doing anything illegal on my network, but we don’t work for free.”
With the RIAA excpecting ISPs to stand up and jump on the bandwagon, it seems all too easy to get lost in all the excitement to forget that the little guys actually have bills. The RIAA is basically looking for these ISPs to find, track and (possibly) remove clients from their listing when they upload or download content illegally.
Although there seems to be some friction between this ISP and RIAA, Scroggin still wishes they could work out a deal with RIAA,
“There’s got to be a better way than HBO sending me threatening e-mail,” he said. “What I’m saying is, let’s sit at the table and come up with a way that works for everyone, including the customers.”
With small ISP companies on the edge of this plan, RIAA must do something to help protect their against this foe or they might see their whole operation go up in smoke.
Source: CNet
Does the RIAA Really Have a Plan?
by Taylor Flatt on December 22nd, 2008 at 2:48 pm EDT - 196 views
No. All this talk about stopping piracy is a big one. From the RIAA suing the websites to them shutting off their user’s internet. These are all drastic steps that will prove to be more problematic than anything else. From zdnet, they have provided some snippets of an interview that was done with the RIAA, let us listen in,
- Q: When will the system actually be in place and start working? Has that been determined yet?
- A: It has not.
- Q: Can you say anything about what ISPs are involved?
- A: No. All the parties would want comfort that the technology is accurate and reliable, because nobody is interested in false positives. And we’ll also need a mechanism so that somebody who claims that he or she was improperly identified would have an opportunity to be heard and have the question resolved. All of those things need to be worked out.
- Q: How will you deal with ISPs that choose not to cooperate? Will they be notified about subscribers who share files? Will you proceed with lawsuits?
- A: That’s an issue we hope not to have to address. … This is entirely voluntary and I think it’s made possible because the business interests of the industries are converging. There was a time five years ago when ISPs were solely focused on increasing their broadband penetration, and cutting back on piracy was not part of their business interest. Five years later, they’re in a very different place. They want to be portals in their own right, they want to offer their subscribers great content; it’s something that distinguishes one from another. They’re looking at themselves as more than the dumb pipes that they were five years ago, and I think that opens up partnerships that didn’t exist before.
Not only does this interview give insight of their overall plan, which is no plan, but they also believe that all ISPs will go along with their little plan. If you look at it on the other side of the tracks, then you will see there are big dollar signs for ISP companies that don’t switch.
For example, you have millions of people who download things illegally and if you network and market yourselves to these people, they will switch to you and pay more money to not get caught on this big scandal. This is especially true when they said when people were accused, then their voices would be heard. Does this mean their voices will be heard in an unbiased manor with evidential backup to support their accusations? We will see, but for now, it is all just talk.
Source: ZDNet
RIAA Ceases Lawsuits And Cut Down On Internet Instead
by Bradley Wint on December 21st, 2008 at 2:22 pm EDT - 211 views
The RIAA has taken a totally new approach to the fight against music piracy. Instead of taking the pirates to court and spending lots of time and money on the stand, they have decided to work with several Internet Service Providers to crack down on these music thieves. The ISP will monitor network traffic and if a customer has been deemed to be uploading illegal music, they would be warned on a three strike basis. During these strikes, the customer’s Internet supply would either be capped or totally shut off completely.
These efforts are aimed mainly as Peer to Peer file sharers, and is one of the smartest and simplest moves by both the RIAA and the ISPs. Eventually there would be few ways to get around it, because there are only a certain number of Internet companies a person could sign up for (or leech off as the case may be). At the end of the day, music has become very cheap, so why not spend a bit of cash to support your favourite artist.
Source: LA Times