How do you sell software? By fucking your legitimate buyers...
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@BeenThere said:
@joemck said:
@Zylon said:
Clearly, the only solution is to go back to distributing games on ROM cartridges.
Winner! Not just harder to pirate (there are writable cartridges, but they cost quite a bit), but zero load time.Would it be all that hard to make an image of a ROM cartridge, and then create a virtual ROM loader that loads that image?
Not sure how a ROM cartridge is really any different than a CD-ROM, which used to be secure before people figured out how to write virtual CD image readers that acted (and mounted) just like CD drives.Yeah, this is pretty much bullshit. You know if someone release a cart-based game system again, there would be an accessory sold that plugged into the cart slot and either let you plug a USB thumbdrive into it or connect it to a network share. ROMs are easy to rip and would be all over the Internet in no time. The fact is, piracy just gets easier and easier. The reason carts were hard to pirate is because everything was hard to pirate. Even old-school PC games required you to mess around getting data of the floppies/CD and then required a way to distribute them (either an expensive CD burner or uploading them on your slow, expensive net connection).
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@morbiuswilters said:
@BeenThere said:
Every time a criminal finds another way to get their hands on a firearm illegally - should that mean we all have to jump through an ever deepening array of hoops to buy one?
Given the general political and historical knowledge of the forum, TDWTF might not be the best place to ask this.
I certainly didn't want to derail this thread into one of those, and am glad to see it hasn't.
The main point I was going for, is that whether someone agrees with civilian gun ownership or not, it should be evident that an ever escalading series of hurdles for legitimate use has near-nil impact on criminals that always make a point of bypassing the hurdles for legitimate use.A friend of mine (and no, the friend is not me) has fully working cracked copies of AutoCAD, 3DstudioMax, and Maya - these are not cheap titles. The per-license loss for these items are substantially higher than a $50 game, and yet they are easily available via bit torrent. The point being that if a company like autodesk (which I am sure has a lot at stake due to their high license fees) doesn't have the resources to protect those titles - who's going to? They also have a far more "sticky" customer base - you really can't work in those industries without their products, so a draconian system will not scare away a lot of users.
Yet, their titles are out there and cracked - hence cracked versions will probably always be out there. EA is acting like "piracy" is coming from people "CD swapping" and trying to prevent that, largely because (I would guess) they are afraid to deal with the real source of piracy - cracked copies via the internet.
In fact, I bet a non-technical higher up decided to "beat back piracy" and had the techs come meet to "brainstorm" on solutions. Knowing they can't touch cracked copies (the real issue) some tech eeked out "um, we can help stop CD sharing?" and the beast started to form from there.
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Morb to your point about DRM. Even if ALL music was DRM protected, you can play the file and have an audio recorder listen. There will be some quality loss but some loss of a extremely high quality MP3 is still good for most people, if not then buy the f-ing music. You can NEVER stop piracy, pirates will figure out a way. However the current DRM scheme is like having to call Toyota every day to unlock your car. If Toyota closes that call center or goes out of business (lets say like Playsforsure), you can't get into your car without breaking some windows, and then it won't even start anyways.
Unfortunately I cannot think of ANY solution to stop piracy on software that is not intended to be used through a server. A server can check for legality (say WoW, though there are illegal servers they are not as good as the orig), while single player games, or mp3s don't need such checks and thus unless you can stop the average user from copying you are fucked. The point of good copy protection is to fool the average "dumb" user who is scared of the computer. Thats a good 90% of people so you got a pretty fucking good market share. If you market software to the ub3r l33t user like high-end games do (they market to people who upgrade their computer parts every 3 months) those people will use the pirated/cracked game because they have no money to spend on the damn game.
In the end all you have to do is make the user WANT to buy your software. But yet the dilemma remains, with physical objects you don't have to worry about people stealing by replicating what their friends have, with software that is the whole point of why computers and the internet are so great.
The only thing is, don't fuck with your LEGAL users, you mess with them and you will fail. I think we already saw what happened when the rootkit CD-authentication software was shipped with games. People simply refused to buy the games, or got cracked versions of their legally bought games.
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@morbiuswilters said:
Yeah, this is pretty much bullshit. You know if someone release a cart-based game system again, there would be an accessory sold that plugged into the cart slot and either let you plug a USB thumbdrive into it or connect it to a network share.
You mean like it's been done for Nintendo DS?
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@morbiuswilters said:
The old-school Mac games usually required the "original" floppy to be used as a requisite for running the game. Some were copyable, some weren't.Even old-school PC games required you to mess around getting data of the floppies/CD and then required a way to distribute them (either an expensive CD burner or uploading them on your slow, expensive net connection).
The most advanced copy-protection scheme I remember was with a program called QualiTools. The 5.25" floppy disk had a small "scratch" that had been burned in by a laser. However, this über-protection was defeated by someone who copied the floppy, then proceeded to slash the same scratch with a razor. Hey, it had CRC errors, but the program actually worked!
Note: this was basically needed, because 5.25" floppies were really easy to damage, and no one wanted the "master disk" to fail, so we used the "slashed" version.
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@danixdefcon5 said:
@morbiuswilters said:
The old-school Mac games usually required the "original" floppy to be used as a requisite for running the game. Some were copyable, some weren't.Even old-school PC games required you to mess around getting data of the floppies/CD and then required a way to distribute them (either an expensive CD burner or uploading them on your slow, expensive net connection).
The most advanced copy-protection scheme I remember was with a program called QualiTools. The 5.25" floppy disk had a small "scratch" that had been burned in by a laser. However, this über-protection was defeated by someone who copied the floppy, then proceeded to slash the same scratch with a razor. Hey, it had CRC errors, but the program actually worked!
Note: this was basically needed, because 5.25" floppies were really easy to damage, and no one wanted the "master disk" to fail, so we used the "slashed" version.
The same thing is done with CD and DVD games today. It's easy to bypass, you just need to use a hex editor to edit out the instructions that look for the damaged sectors, which is much more reliable than using a razor to slash the floppy disk.
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@astonerbum said:
Morb to your point about DRM. Even if ALL music was DRM protected, you can play the file and have an audio recorder listen. There will be some quality loss but some loss of a extremely high quality MP3 is still good for most people, if not then buy the f-ing music. You can NEVER stop piracy, pirates will figure out a way.
Wrong. All you need is for all content to be digitally-signed and to prevent the player from playing unsigned content. Your personal audio recorder would be required to use your own issued signature on the recordings and if you attempt to redistribute them someone will notice and revoke your cert. It would also open you to civil and criminal prosecution. Requiring all content to be signed by the creator would drastically reduce piracy as it would be equivalent the of forcing thieves to leave an ID will their name, address and social security number at the scene of every crime. I'm not saying I advocate such a system, but it is certainly technically possible.
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@morbiuswilters said:
Wrong. All you need is for all content to be digitally-signed and to prevent the player from playing unsigned content. Your personal audio recorder would be required to use your own issued signature on the recordings and if you attempt to redistribute them someone will notice and revoke your cert.
This would never work due to privacy laws, and because nobody would buy such devices, when devices without this enforcement are still on market. However, there have been experiments with watermarking - certified players would be required to check for watermarks on any non-encrypted content, and refuse to play it if watermark was found (all encrypted content would be watermarked; actually, IIRC, this already is the case with some SACD and DVD-Audio titles).
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@ender said:
@morbiuswilters said:
Wrong. All you need is for all content to be digitally-signed and to prevent the player from playing unsigned content. Your personal audio recorder would be required to use your own issued signature on the recordings and if you attempt to redistribute them someone will notice and revoke your cert.
This would never work due to privacy laws, and because nobody would buy such devices, when devices without this enforcement are still on market. However, there have been experiments with watermarking - certified players would be required to check for watermarks on any non-encrypted content, and refuse to play it if watermark was found (all encrypted content would be watermarked; actually, IIRC, this already is the case with some SACD and DVD-Audio titles).People would buy the devices if they were the only devices for sale or allowed for sale. As far as watermarks go, if you can strip the encryption you can strip the watermark easily enough. Finally, I'm not sure how privacy laws would play into this. If all devices were required to have hardware-level DRM that checked for signatures and all recording/creative devices were required to have a unique digital signature that was applied to all created files, this dosen't really infringe on the privacy of the end-user. The only time it would become an issue was if recordings of copyrighted material were found being passed around, at which point the user has committed a crime and their personal info would be available to a court.
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@morbiuswilters said:
People would buy the devices if they were the only devices for sale or allowed for sale.
Only if somehow all other devices were banned, and nobody would sell second-hand hardware without these requirements.@morbiuswilters said:As far as watermarks go, if you can strip the encryption you can strip the watermark easily enough.
If it's an analog watermark, it's pretty hard to strip. While I haven't experimented with audio watermarks, I did play with Digimarc picture watermarks, and those survived a lot (you'll see something similar if you ever scan a banknote - many editors will refuse to let you open/edit such scans because of a watermark embedded on most newer banknotes). Note that while audio watermarks are supposed to be inaudible to human ears).@morbiuswilters said:Finally, I'm not sure how privacy laws would play into this.
Many colour printers print their identification on every page they output, and this has caused some invsetigations on whether this is legal (in Europe at least - remember that privacy is valued much higher here). Now imagine if every (audio) file you'd create would always carry a definite "John Doe authored this" mark.
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@ender said:
@morbiuswilters said:
People would buy the devices if they were the only devices for sale or allowed for sale.
Only if somehow all other devices were banned, and nobody would sell second-hand hardware without these requirements.Other devices don't have to be banned, but they could be. All it would take is for most content creators and manufacturers to agree on a standard. At that point, anyone who wants to play this content will have to buy a compatible player. Over time, secondhand hardware will become scarce and outdated and people will migrate to newer. Of course, a law could be passed that just requires this, as it has been proposed before.
@ender said:
@morbiuswilters said:
As far as watermarks go, if you can strip the encryption you can strip the watermark easily enough.
If it's an analog watermark, it's pretty hard to strip. While I haven't experimented with audio watermarks, I did play with Digimarc picture watermarks, and those survived a lot (you'll see something similar if you ever scan a banknote - many editors will refuse to let you open/edit such scans because of a watermark embedded on most newer banknotes). Note that while audio watermarks are supposed to be inaudible to human ears).I remain very doubtful that watermarks could not be easily bypassed.
@ender said:
@morbiuswilters said:
Finally, I'm not sure how privacy laws would play into this.
Many colour printers print their identification on every page they output, and this has caused some invsetigations on whether this is legal (in Europe at least - remember that privacy is valued much higher here). Now imagine if every (audio) file you'd create would always carry a definite "John Doe authored this" mark.I don't think privacy is valued all that much in Europe at all. Sure, lip service is given to it and convoluted laws are passed, but most Europeans countries have minimal respect for things like unrestrained free speech, private property and private gun ownership, just to name a few. If anything, the privacy laws of Europe seem like more of a power-grab by the governments: by claiming to protect privacy they essentially put themselves into a position where they only possible way to enforce this is to have the power to violate everyone's privacy. Yeah, that'll work.
Also, I wouldn't really consider anonymity to be privacy. Being able to speak or write anonymously isn't a right that is protected in most countries as it would quickly lead to abuse. I think requiring someone to stand by what they say publicly isn't a bad thing and isn't a matter of privacy at all. However, I also envisioned that the signature would not contain identifying information and that tracking a particular signature back to an individual would be something that required a court order. So even then it's not requiring people to put their name on what they author or distribute, but it is requiring them to put a mark that can be used to trace content back to a particular device and eventually a human, so it may not be that different, except that it is a lot more anonymous than having your name and address embedded with it. Either way, it's certainly a complex topic and one that our existing laws and morality have no real answer for.
I've never seen color printers like that in the US, so perhaps they are illegal here or no company would try to sell them, I don't know. However, by interfering the government isn't promoting privacy, it is fighting it. If a person chooses to purchase a printer with this particular feature, that is a private transaction between the buyer and seller. Nobody is forced to buy or use these printers. However, having the government say that a company can't sell a printer with that feature would be a violation of the privacy of that company and of potential customers. Not good.
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@morbiuswilters said:
I've never seen color printers like that in the US, so perhaps they are illegal here or no company would try to sell them, I don't know.
Here's a list (and more information on the issue).@morbiuswilters said:If a person chooses to purchase a printer with this particular feature, that is a private transaction between the buyer and seller.
Who says that the buyer is informed about this?
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@ender said:
@morbiuswilters said:
I've never seen color printers like that in the US, so perhaps they are illegal here or no company would try to sell them, I don't know.
Here's a list (and more information on the issue).Oh hell, I think we have one of those at work... I guess in the future I should probably go to Kinko's when printing out anonymous death threats against high-ranking government officials. Good to know.
@ender said:
@morbiuswilters said:
If a person chooses to purchase a printer with this particular feature, that is a private transaction between the buyer and seller.
Who says that the buyer is informed about this?Isn't it up to the buyer to find this kind of thing out for himself? If it's a concern when purchasing a printer, the buyer will research and be certain to purchase one without this feature. The link you provided shows that at least one 3rd party is testing the printers and providing results publicly, so if buyers are concerned about it they will avoid those printers. If enough people avoid them, the companies might stop making them, but that's wholly dependent on how important it is to the market.
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@morbiuswilters said:
Being able to speak or write anonymously isn't a right that is protected in most countries as it would quickly lead to abuse.
Fortunately, it's protected in the USoA and routinely upheld by the courts. Without it, freedom of speech can quickly become a complete joke.
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@alegr said:
Fortunately, it's protected in the USoA and routinely upheld by the courts. Without it, freedom of speech can quickly become a complete joke.
Wrong. There is a difference between blocking the government from outlawing anonymous speech and having the government actively protect anonymity. There are no laws that making anonymity compulsory, which was the topic here. What's more, the government can revoke your anonymity during the course of criminal or civil proceedings. The concept is that it protects those with minority opinions from retribution, but in practice if your identity can be revealed as part of a court case, then it provides very little protection.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@ender said:
@morbiuswilters said:
People would buy the devices if they were the only devices for sale or allowed for sale.
Only if somehow all other devices were banned, and nobody would sell second-hand hardware without these requirements.Other devices don't have to be banned, but they could be. All it would take is for most content creators and manufacturers to agree on a standard. At that point, anyone who wants to play this content will have to buy a compatible player. Over time, secondhand hardware will become scarce and outdated and people will migrate to newer. Of course, a law could be passed that just requires this, as it has been proposed before.
I may be wrong on this, but I believe it has been tried before indeed. During the early drafts, the (in)famous "Trusted Computing" initiative pretty much tried this approach. From what I know, the basic idea was that all future computers would be required to include a "trusted platform module". This would check the hardware configuration and operating system of the computer on boot and only pass control to the actual boot loader if the hardware and OS had been digitally signed. Of course, manufacturers would only get this signature after they proved their devices complied to the "Trusted Computing" standard as well. Meaning, for example, they respected copy protection and that they would subsequently check subordinated software and devices for a digital signature as well.
The idea was basically the same, that soon all computers with out a TPM would become scarce and outdated and that, eventually, cracked hardware or unwanted software could be made unusable by simply revoking the signature.
Because of course this scheme would give the signature authority pretty much absolute controlabout which software ran where, it was soon met with a public outcry and quickly scaled down to a much more harmless version. From what I know, today, the TPM is actually integrated in most computers, but only functions as a "secure key store", where for example, DRM mechanisms can store their keys to tie them to the computer (or more precisely the mainboard) and to save them from being found by a RAM dump.
(Disclaimer: I read about those events in a german IT magazine (c't). This magazine is usually credible, still you may know more about all this stuff than I do.)
I think this incident shows pretty well, why, I think, all similar projects are doomed to fail just as well. If you'd actually manage to make ALL recording and/or playing devices to comply to a single copy protection standard, the authority governing this standard would get incredible power. Companies that were part of this authority would get a huge market advantage in contrast to those that weren't. And this situation would be against the interests of too many people and smaller companies. A law like this would never find majority, not because of ethics or Jon Doe's right for privacy, but simply because the interests of all affected parties would be too different.
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@morbiuswilters said:
The concept is that it protects those with minority opinions from retribution, but in practice if your identity can be revealed as part of a court case, then it provides very little protection.
In practice the courts are refusing subpoena for revealing "John Doe the defendant" name, unless the plaintiff shows that it's very likely to prevail in the case. Thus, a lawsuit filed just for the purpose of finding the John Doe's name won't proceed.
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I have mostly pirated games. I dont buy games because:
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Too expensive (Unless you buy second handed)
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Protected CD/DVD (Saw some protection destroy CD drives)
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Games usaly dissapont me by (Odd story, or too quick to finish it, not memorable)
But i did buy from Stardock entire collection of Galactic Civilization 2, because game is damm good and there isnt any protection. it was worth. And also i have a few PS2 games: FFX and FFX2, Breath Of Fire 5, Burnout (Original)
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@bsaksida said:
I have mostly pirated games. I don't buy games because:
- I am a freeloading bastard, and I can get away with it.
Oh come on, really, there are demos, there are reviews and protections don't actually break drives nowadays.
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@wybl said:
@bsaksida said:
I have mostly pirated games. I don't buy games because:
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I am a freeloading bastard, and I can get away with it.
Oh come on, really, there are demos, there are reviews and protections don't actually break drives nowadays.
Yeah they are like Blood 2 demos. Demo was the second level, I Like those levels. Bought a game, The most enyoable level were just level 2. With others i wasnt happy with it. Demos are for try, But often when playing demos and then you get dissapointing retails. Also it is hard to buy a game if you have minimum pay from job.
Edit: I also paid for games i realy enjoy it.
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@bsaksida said:
Also it is hard to buy a game if you have minimum pay from job.
Henceforth, this will be my defense for every illegal and unethical action I engage in. Boosting a car? "It is hard to buy Mercedes if you have minimum pay from job." Snatching purses off old ladies? "It is hard to drink Korbel with minimum pay from job, unless I steal money too."
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@morbiuswilters said:
Boosting a car? "It is hard to buy Mercedes if you have minimum pay from job." Snatching purses off old ladies? "It is hard to drink Korbel with minimum pay from job, unless I steal money too."
Blocking ads? "It's not like I can afford this stuff with my minimum pay job, you know?"
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@morbiuswilters said:
Henceforth, this will be my defense for every illegal and unethical action I engage in. Boosting a car? "It is hard to buy Mercedes if you have minimum pay from job." Snatching purses off old ladies? "It is hard to drink Korbel with minimum pay from job, unless I steal money too."
I Woudnt go that far. If i like game i woud buy it. Playing spore for a while, but i am thinking of uninstalling it and deleting it. I am more into RPG like Diablo or Final Fantasy. MDK 2 was so good, that even now i have original box with me
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@bsaksida said:
@morbiuswilters said:
Henceforth, this will be my defense for every illegal and unethical action I engage in. Boosting a car? "It is hard to buy Mercedes if you have minimum pay from job." Snatching purses off old ladies? "It is hard to drink Korbel with minimum pay from job, unless I steal money too."
I Woudnt go that far. If i like game i woud buy it. Playing spore for a while, but i am thinking of uninstalling it and deleting it. I am more into RPG like Diablo or Final Fantasy. MDK 2 was so good, that even now i have original box with me
Obviously I'm exaggerating, but you are stealing and justifying it because you want the stuff without having to pay for it. That's how toddlers rationalize stealing, not mature adults. Seriously, if you take copyrighted content, you are stealing. Just live with it and stop trying to justify it.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@bsaksida said:
@morbiuswilters said:
Henceforth, this will be my defense for every illegal and unethical action I engage in. Boosting a car? "It is hard to buy Mercedes if you have minimum pay from job." Snatching purses off old ladies? "It is hard to drink Korbel with minimum pay from job, unless I steal money too."
I Woudnt go that far. If i like game i woud buy it. Playing spore for a while, but i am thinking of uninstalling it and deleting it. I am more into RPG like Diablo or Final Fantasy. MDK 2 was so good, that even now i have original box with me
Obviously I'm exaggerating, but you are stealing and justifying it because you want the stuff without having to pay for it. That's how toddlers rationalize stealing, not mature adults. Seriously, if you take copyrighted content, you are stealing. Just live with it and stop trying to justify it.
I am well aware that it isnt right ti use pirated ganes, and are a lot of work is done on a games. Everyone is doing this, because it is easy even if it isnt right. If you wamted to play every new game, you can't. Sometimes games arent avaible here where elsewhere is awaible. Spore isnt one of them. Sometimes i woud need to wait more than a month to be avaible here, and some games i cant play, because they are on console. Here PS3 is around 550€. And it is a little more than a whole pay. If i woud be without bills and food (Witch isnt possible) coud easly afford those new games. Also sometimes i prefer to have image files on external HDD, because DVDs can take 2 many place. And If i wanted to play a game, i woud have to search entire CD/DVD collection to get, so that i coud play it.
And this is about original thread. If you would have a home compuiter and a notebook, it woud be pain iif they limit on computers even if the user woud be same.
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@bsaksida said:
Everyone is doing this, because it is easy even if it isnt right. If you wamted to play every new game, you can't. Sometimes games aren't available here where elsewhere is available. (...) Here PS3 is around 550€. And it is a little more than a whole pay. If I would be without bills and food (which isn't possible) I could easily afford those new games.
Did you even read what morbs said? Here, I'll help you:
@morbiuswilters said:
(...) you are stealing and justifying it because you want the stuff without having to pay for it. That's how toddlers rationalize stealing, not mature adults. Seriously, if you take copyrighted content, you are stealing. Just live with it and stop trying to justify it.
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@wybl said:
Wybl, your avatar frightens me, but on to the point:@bsaksida said:
Everyone is doing this, because it is easy even if it isnt right. If you wamted to play every new game, you can't. Sometimes games aren't available here where elsewhere is available. (...) Here PS3 is around 550€. And it is a little more than a whole pay. If I would be without bills and food (which isn't possible) I could easily afford those new games.
Did you even read what morbs said? Here, I'll help you:
@morbiuswilters said:
(...) you are stealing and justifying it
because you want the stuff without having to pay for it. That's how
toddlers rationalize stealing, not mature adults. Seriously, if you
take copyrighted content, you are stealing. Just live with it and stop
trying to justify it.
Morb is right, there is no justification for stealing other than buying is more of a hassle, not monetarily, but usability, and even then I cannot justify that I am doing the "moral" thing. Spore is a good example, so is DRM music. However saying that "I steal because I can't afford to play every game out there" is the same as me saying "I can't afford a Ferrari, so I just steal them" and claiming it is moral.
My only justification for downloading pirated videos with no moral objection: I own the video in DVD format, I want it on my Zen so I can watch it on the road. I don't want to figure out the proper way to rip it to a avi when its 100x easier to just download it as a torrent.
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@morbiuswilters said:
Obviously I'm exaggerating, but you are stealing and justifying it because you want the stuff without having to pay for it. That's how toddlers rationalize stealing, not mature adults. Seriously, if you take copyrighted content, you are stealing. Just live with it and stop trying to justify it.
This is the Internet; you're using too many words. The proper response is:
l2savemoney, n00b
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@wybl said:
Oh come on, really, there are demos, there are reviews and protections don't actually break drives nowadays.
I "get" corporate Adobe products now, because the consumer versions' protections wrote to a boot control area on my hard drive as part of the activation process. Way to go Adobe, you just bricked my machine because I tried to use your product.
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@AssimilatedByBorg said:
I would be curious to know if the "EULA can change at any time with no notice" terms have ever been upheld in court. Well, even if that term is crap, the judge would almost certainly just tell the publisher that the changes are null and void, but the original terms still apply.
I don't think a contract can change without the agreement of both parties (common sense, optimism that the US legal system isn't entirely fucked, etc.). Since these EULAs say they can change "with no notice," I think yes, that would logically void any changes made.
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Guys if you think this is bad, clearly you have never had the pleasure of playing any Steam based game.
Talk about DRM issues, this thing gives Satan a boner.
I wouldn't mind it nearly as much. The overall functionality is pretty good. Installs, plays, updates pretty smoothly. Uses a few more resources than I'd like for such simple operations but hardly intolerable.
No, my problem stems from the fact that this thing, regardless of time, need, or any common sense, MUST HAVE INTERNET ACCESS AT ALL TIMES, or you don't get to play your games. Any of them. Or use the SDK. Or anything really.
The internet is a big thing. There are tons of things between my computer and Valve's content servers, any number of which can fail, resulting in no connection. I've had a bad day. I come home, and I wanna blast the sh*t outta some Combine soldiers. Having the stupid servers down message pop up and with all the delicacy and kindness of an anal raping tell me I can't play a game I goddamn paid for is NOT HELPING MY DAY.
I get it, they want to verify that my install is legit, which I really couldn't care less about. But to do it in such an obtuse and ineffecient manner just pisses me off to no end, especially considering how tempermental my internet can be at times. And, I'll be honest here. I DLed a rip of Episode 2 about a 3 weeks before I actually bought it (rip had some missing textures, plus I wanted TF2 and whatnot.) THE RIP WORKED BETTER. Thats the damn sad thing. The only sacrifice were some missing textures, no multiplayer, and I had to have the whole content base in there, about 5 gigs. Big deal.
The rip, I ran a bat file and had a game menu in about the same time it takes steam to start, login, and show me a message saying its "loading" (my ass. Its verifying the install, and it shouldn't take nearly that long.) But I like Valve, I liked the game, and I wanted to use the content in the SDK, so I did end up buying it anyway.
My point is, DRM is fine. But when its executed in such an obtuse and intrusive manner that the ripped copies work better, the company needs to seriously re-examine its execution.
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@Master Chief said:
[Steam] MUST HAVE INTERNET ACCESS AT ALL TIMES
lol wutI think the original version of Steam had this problem but for the last three years or so its offline support has been just fine. Steam starts up, notices that there's no Internet connection and then works, letting you play all of your games. I know this because a few weeks ago the Steam servers were down for some reason and I could still load up and play all of my shit. Obviously multiplayer doesn't work when the servers are down but all of the other content worked just fine.
Seriously, there's a reason that Tycho today said that Steam is the best implementation of DRM out there (bottom of Tycho's first post). PA seems to be lagging at the moment; it's probably being slashdotted for the post I'm linking.
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@Welbog said:
lol wut
I think the original version of Steam had this problem but for the last three years or so its offline support has been just fine. Steam starts up, notices that there's no Internet connection and then works, letting you play all of your games. I know this because a few weeks ago the Steam servers were down for some reason and I could still load up and play all of my shit. Obviously multiplayer doesn't work when the servers are down but all of the other content worked just fine.
Seriously, there's a reason that Tycho today said that Steam is the best implementation of DRM out there (bottom of Tycho's first post). PA seems to be lagging at the moment; it's probably being slashdotted for the post I'm linking.
Well how the hell do you activate that? Any time my internet is on the fritz I can't even get steam to start, much less play games!
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@Master Chief said:
Well how the hell do you activate that?
As far as I remember (I don't have Steam at work so I can't verify), it's the default behaviour. It has an opposite option that you may have turned on, which is something like "Do not store personal information locally", which is meant to be enabled when Steam is installed on a shared PC like one at a cafe or something. If you have that option on, then it might mess with the ability to play offline. I wouldn't know, though, as I've never had need to use that option.
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@morbiuswilters said:
Your personal audio recorder would be required to use your own issued signature on your own recordings and if you attempt to redistribute them, even legally, someone will notice and revoke your cert. It would also open you to civil and criminal prosecution.
FTFY
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@TwelveBaud said:
@morbiuswilters said:
Your personal audio recorder would be required to use your own issued signature on your own recordings and if you attempt to redistribute them, even legally, someone will notice and revoke your cert. It would also open you to civil and criminal prosecution.
FTFYWell obviously the signature would be used on your own recordings. If you don't violate the law by distributing someone else's copyrighted work then your key wouldn't be revoked. I wasn't even advocating this, I was just pointing out that this is a possible way to implement a DRM system that allows abuses to be curtailed.
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@morbiuswilters said:
I wasn't even advocating this, I was just pointing out that this is a possible way to implement a DRM system that allows abuses to be curtailed.
But would it really work, or would it be like DVD regions (where I'd have to try really hard if I wanted to find a region locked player)?
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@ender said:
@morbiuswilters said:
I wasn't even advocating this, I was just pointing out that this is a possible way to implement a DRM system that allows abuses to be curtailed.
But would it really work, or would it be like DVD regions (where I'd have to try really hard if I wanted to find a region locked player)?It would most likely require consistent national laws, to prevent people from manufacturing "alternative" devices. However, if there was enough cooperation between hardware, software and Internet service providers, it could also become a de facto standard. Market economics make this infeasible if the DRM technology negatively impacts legitimate users in any way. However, if it were truly seamless enough that nobody who wasn't trying to pirate content would even know it existed, it's a possibility. Especially if the scheme itself allows for a bit of flexibility in legitimate use, such as letting a friend borrow a copy of a protected album, or what have you. Basically, if it doesn't remove an individual's ability to use the content and engage in the limited sharing that most people think of as natural, then it would probably stand a very good chance of stopping the mass distribution of illegal copies. That's the real thing that content creators are worried about, although many music and movie companies have let themselves become so seduced by the idea of stopping all copying that existing solutions limit the very limited sharing and copying most people are used to doing with physical media. In addition, current DRM tends to be heavy-handed, a PITA for legit users, worthless at stopping pirates and is composed of several incompatible standards. The industry would have done better to approach the situation in a more moderate way, slowly infusing digital signature verification into every product possible, while keeping actual enforcement very minimal. Once a critical mass of hardware, software and digital services were DRM-aware, the copying constraints could slowly be enforced.
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@Jeff S said:
What are people's opinions on what the software industry should do to curb pirating?
In my opinion - nothing. They should take the money they are paying for rootkits like SecureROM and StarForce and spend it on writing better games. Or produce cheaper games.
Removing copy protection from applications software did not kill the software industry in the late 80s when Ashton-Tate and Microsoft started doing it (despite the predictions from many commentators at the time). Removing copy protection doesn't seem to have killed StarDock (Totalgaming.net).
In the last year I have installed games that are several years old. For example, SW:KOTOR, Freespace II, Space Empires III. Where would I be if those games required internet activation, like Mass Effect and Spore? Some of those publishers aren't in business any more. (To make it worse, Mass Effect PC was originally going to require internet activation every 10 days or the game would stop working.)
Additionally, I wish the music and television industry would learn this. I bought Stargate Atlantis Season 4 last week. I put the DVD in, what do I see? Several minutes of non-fast-forwardable "you wouldn't steal a car. You wouldn't steal a handbag." followed by an additional non-fast-forwardable "FBI Copyright is Theft" message ARRGGHHH! All that does is make me *more* likey to go buy a hacked, stolen copy because the hackers remove those annoying things.
B
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@ammoQ said:
does anybody know how to get System Shock 2 running on XP?
i had no problem with that... but i've played the rip version from www.the-underdogs.info (i don't know much about legal issues, but SS2 is abadonware now, so i assume it shouldn't be so bad).
what exactly is the issue?
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@SEMI-HYBRID code said:
[quote user="ammoQ"]does anybody know how to get System Shock 2 running on XP?
i had no problem with that... but i've played the rip version from www.the-underdogs.info (i don't know much about legal issues, but SS2 is abadonware now, so i assume it shouldn't be so bad).what exactly is the issue?[/quote]
There's actually a very large community dedicated to modernizing SS2. It basically doesn't work at all in XP or Vista unless you use some fan patches. I suspect that your ripped version came pre-patched to work in XP. The SS2 community has also made fan patches that fix in-game texture bugs, add improved models for modern hardware, added better network support for co-op play and more.
I don't actually know what the community is called or where its site is, but I know its software is called "SS2 mod manager", which sits in the SS2 working directory and fiddles with its files.
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If game companies spent all those resources they now put into the futile battle against piracy in making better games instead, I'm pretty sure they'd make more profit, not less. A lot of today's games are way too short to be worth the 50 euros (or 70 for consoles). A lot of them are also buggy, even console games now that consoles have hard drives that allow for convenient installation of patches.
I like to buy the good games, and I have enough legally bought games to last several years. Two weeks or so ago I dug out my copy of Heroes 3 Complete and set myself a goal to complete all the campaigns. I'm now in the last scenario of the fifth campaign (out of six) of the base game, and then there are two whole expansions to play through. And after that I can move on to Heroes 4, and when I get [i]that[/i] done I can finally buy Heroes 5. I hope it's still in stores when I get that far, sometime in the next spring perhaps.
Being a Linux user, I often need cracks just to make my games work under Wine. Some older copyprotections work, many don't. The cracks also make it a lot easier to start a game - no need to dig up the CD, just type Heroes3 on the command line. Thankfully, certain recent games (Supreme Commander) have had their copyprotection removed in a patch.
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@morbiuswilters said:
I was just pointing out that this is a possible way to implement a DRM system that allows abuses [by consumers] to be curtailed.
Which actually is part of the problem. What's to curtail abuses by the creators of the DRM system? As I pointed out in tags, Sony MiniDisc implemented a rights management system; discs could have the "always copy", "copy once", or "never copy" flags set, consumer recorders could not select anything less restrictive than "copy once" and defaulted to "never copy", and you had to meed certain criteria (read: Sony/BMG recording studio) to get a recorder that allowed unlimited redistribution. Sure, it reduced MiniDisc piracy, but it interfered with the ability for people to self-publish, where Sony dictated what rights consumers could grant for their own work. Fortunately there were other choices in audio recording systems, but if the government mandated that all people use MiniDisc, that would be a serious problem. And MiniDisc is just one example out of many, many more.
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@Welbog said:
I don't actually know what the community is called or where its site is, but I know its software is called "SS2 mod manager", which sits in the SS2 working directory and fiddles with its files.
SS2 is *not* abandonware, by the way.
