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[a1s]

the copyright-laws here were more or less like they are now even back then

no true. before the 80s, you could pretty much hand out any copyrighted works for free, if you were retarded enough to waste your money on it. belive it or not, (allmost?) noone was.

Originally posted by Bobbin Threadbare@Mar 18 2006, 04:25 PM
But what idiot would sell them publically.

the kind that wants to erarn money. if you haven't read carefuly they not only pirate software (which most of us do- raise your hand if you own a copy of AutoCad), they actulay sell the stuff. which (unlike warez) was illegal ever since they invented copyrights.

[Chuck the plant]

Originally posted by a1s@Mar 18 2006, 02:38 PM

no true. before the 80s, you could pretty much hand out any copyrighted works for free, if you were retarded enough to waste your money on it. belive it or not, (allmost?) noone was.

Wow. Before the 80s. The C64 (which I was talking about) became popular more ore less when...?

@ Tulac: I figured that by now. Still this does not make it right or acceptable. Get THAT?

[Tulac]

I never said it's right , but you must be blind or something because I repetead it in almost every post of this topic I KNOW IT'S WRONG, I'm just saying that's the way it is, and your little crusade won't change a thing...

So please when having a discussion read my whole post, not just the part that you can attack


So to conclude:

Piracy is bad (yes Chuck it is, that's out of the question)
Copy protection is useless, and only hurts the users who actually payed for the software (as seen with starforce), and the only way that copying can be stopped is by using force or law, there is no way to stop it electronically...

Therefore those guys from that production company have saved money that they would spend on copy protection, and still their game had good sales, which only preoves the useleness of copy protection...

Are things clearer now?

[TheGiantMidgit]

Originally posted by moogle+Mar 18 2006, 12:14 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (moogle @ Mar 18 2006, 12:14 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-TheGiantMidgit@Mar 17 2006, 12:18 PM
piccie

LOL, you "watch" Pennyarcade to Midget? o_0 [/b][/quote]
Since their first week.

[plix]

Originally posted by Chuck the plant+Mar 18 2006, 07:57 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Chuck the plant @ Mar 18 2006, 07:57 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Look, I'll make this very easy, just for you. One of the basic principles of our modern society is specialisation, meaning: One does not have to know a little bit of eveything and take care of all the stuff they need or want themselves....Given you give them money to do this, which you aqquire by selling the things YOUR skills allowe you to produce to those who need/want them. Money is important because the things YOU can do for others might not always be the things they want and/or need in exchange for THEIR services and skills. [/b]

Thanks for the explanation! I really was wondering how capitalism worked!

Now, you condescending silly person, why don't you take a step back and realize that you've just attempted to impose a set of morals globally which are defined in terms of a single socioeconomic system. Many eastern Europen countries have been capitalist for less than 20 years -- you seem to have just completely glossed over that.

<!--QuoteBegin-Chuck the plant
Obviously there is a rather large demand for the products game-designers can provide. However, many people are not willing to give anything in exchange. This is not only taking advantage of someone else - which should already qualify as being "immoral" in itself - it's robbing those people of their possibility to earn money. Is this really difficult to understand?[/quote]
Yes, what you're saying is difficult to understand because it's intentionally misleading. You refer to games as "products" which, if they truely are, shouldn't rightfully fall under copyright protection at all. From another perspective, to quote the U.S. Consititution, copyright is intended

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

Do you notice in there anywhere "...and to advance the business interests of incorporated organizations"? In this context, arts are a part of culture and are considered heritage -- i.e. they're part of the collective history and should be free for all to enjoy. However, to allow artists to support themselves in the creation of new works they should be ensured -- for a limited time -- exclusive rights to their works. After that limited time the works should fall into the public domain for all to enjoy.

Originally posted by Chuck the plant
And about "normality" and "immorality":
Do you have ANY idea, how "immoral" many of those then so called "normal" things were that happened in the Third Reich, in Stalinist russia, in Mao's China etc.?

It was "normal" in the western world for hundreds of years to own slaves, to conquer and loot on a global scale (the Americas, Australia, Africa, etc), and that the caucasian was the "best" race. That's without even *touching* religion.

Morality is relative and dynamic. I maintain that arts are public goods, not "products," an idea which also happened to be the foundation of copyright. You disagree, but don't even attempt to trivialize my view because of a poor interpretation of the law.

Originally posted by Chuck the plant
Nope, the copyright-laws here were more or less like they are now even back then.

That may be true where you live, but it certainly isn't true in the U.S. (where most of these games originated). Look up the Copyright Act of 1976 or the Sonny Bono Copyright act to see in how slightly over 20 years copyright went from registration-based for terms of 14 years plus an optional, one-time extension to automatic and lasting roughly a century. I'd say that's just a bit of a change.

[Sebatianos]

Originally posted by Tulac@Mar 18 2006, 03:12 PM
The only who might get caught are pirates who sell copied games and are very public and known, or companies which use pirated software, because those get inspected often and must pay big fines...

The last one I knew went out of bussiness about a decade ago... They used to send out koded disks with which you could decifer their catalogues of games. I wonder how many of them are still out there? I doubt that there are many. Those people were the first ones over here who owned Internet conections and CD burners. They were making big money by selling pirated CDs to people. Some games you couldn't get, others were twice the prize a pirate offered. They did the same with music.

But then everything moved to the web and you could download for free (so you wouldn't pay a pirate). That was also the most usual charge they could bring up against a pirate - selling illegal stuff (and without paying an income tax on it - this reminds me, I have to fill out my Tax-Return ).

[Playbahnosh]

I must say: WOW

Some incredibly intelligent and smart remarks and descriptions, well done folks, this is what I always dreamed of! A converstion about this matter without "buy da game ya f*kkin thief pirate! :ban:" Thanks!

Well...

Originally posted by Mara
Playbahnosh, I do agreee with you !
You sure did sum up my thoughts

Hmm, some like minded people does exist, I'm happy about that k: And yes, the law(in all countries) grant you the right to make a backup copy of the media you bought. And yes, copy protections is just what they sound, trying to prevent you from making a copy... isn't that ironic? :P At least this is why GameCopyWorld.com and the likes exist.

What do we have here? bypassing copy protections and cracks ARE legal bacuse of the "backup-copy-right" but giving that "backup" to your friend to play is illegal? well l-o-l And how on Earth can they make sure you won't just "lose your backup disk in your friends house" and make another one? THEY CAN'T! This is a huge paradox of laws, full of holes, wich are of course exploited by both companies and players. companies use them to make profit and players to play for free. Why do software companies only sue business firms or alike? Because the charges won't stand against a single person and quickly disarmed by some lame story like above, but businesses are bound by different rules and laws therefor easier to defeat in a lawsuit. And on the contrary, warez is the greatest marketing system for them because their software reaches users even outside their distribution radius and there is a good chance to find people like me with the "if it's worth it, I buy it" philosophy, or "I saw a great program/game at my friend's, can we buy it Dad? Pleeeeez? " system or alike... This is why they don't seem too eager to break down on warez, they only hunt "street pirates" who actually sell the stuff insted of distributin it fo free as intended.

Originally posted by plix
Crackers defeat copyright protection because it's fun, not because they want to make money or even really play the game -- it's an abstract thing that's rather hard to understand without being a really technical sort of person (i.e. a programmer/reverse-engineer). People who trade/distribute this stuff are in it for various other reasons.

I totally agree with that. Some of you may even heard about CORE. An ancient cracker group that was there when it all started, the birth of The Scene. CORE = "Challenge Of Reverse Engineering", the name says it all k: they are formed from members of older groups, even from before. There were others like TRSI, Hybrid, Razor 1911 and most importantly THG, "The Humble Guys" who were most important creators of The Scene, they made the .NFO files patented to be attached to every single Release(cracked game, crack, trainer...etc) that must include the group name, the release's description and other data. These groups crack games, make trainers and stuff because they like to do it, it is fun to defeat the copy protections and also a great challenge. Just think about it, people making copy copy protections are expert senior programmers backed up with funds and manpower and working day-to-night to come with the unbreakable protection. Reverse engineering works the same, just without funds or manpower, and it's a bloody hard job I can tell :whistle: ([whisper]okay I confess, I took my try on the cracking department but I didn't got too far, the most simple serial protection defeated my week-long work...after trying desperately for two weeks, I was able to crack a 300kb worth notepad-like program I havent got the determination to continue that hobby its damn tiring... but I can make cool trainers for games [/whisper])

That must sound ironic, but The Scene has it's own, sometimes very strict laws. The release law for examlple. If a group first makes a release that is working fine the other later releases will be "nuked". The original release can be nuked too if it is not working, then the group first releasing a "Proper" release could claim the place. I won't go into detail in this, those who are interested can find these rules I'm sure...

Originally posted by plix+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (plix)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>The reason they don't make an effort to clone the game is that generally they don't give a damn about playing the game in the first place.
[/b]

Uh-Uh! the opposite! they actually like playing games, that's why the hobby If they don't give a damn about playing, why would they crack them? Oh they do like games a lot, actually they buy their own copy k:

<!--QuoteBegin-Tulac
Look Chuck, it's just that most of us (from ex-communist countries that is) are used to pirating games, to play them...[/quote]

That's true, like here on Hungary. I remeber when I got my first ever computer I was 4 years old, it was a used "Commodore +4". I had tons of games for that on tape, all warez copies of course, and I was happy with that, that was somehow natural to have free games for my machine. When I got my 386DX I got some cool games on floppy disks, fo free of course, I remember Commander Keen 4, Elite, Biomenace, Jazz Jackrabbit, Mine Bombers...jeeez, sweet 'ol memories . And it was only natural to share the games with friends also having computers. At that time there was absolutely no way of getting games legally, maybe one or two shops in the capital, but that was far away, so it was natural to exchange games beetween friends, but the think is we DIDN'T REALIZED that what we were doing is illegal in some way, no one told us, in fact my father used to bring home some cool games from work, they had computers there

I don't know where did I hear about copyright infragment first, but that was around when I got my first IBM PC with 100Mhz and 32 MB RAM, around age 12 if I remember correctly. Our computers teacher told us that copying games are bad and we should buy them in stores (but there were tons of games on the school computers all cracked :P)

So Chuck, for people from Central and Eastern Europe, around my age, was only natural to have free games and programs, and that habit is still around even after communism left long ago. You guys, like you Chuck, not from this habitat will probably never understand this because you got used to actually buy your games from early age, but for us its no that obvious. This is why, even if we know it's illegal, we don't give a damn about it and continue to get free stuff because it is still eligable, and we cannot change just like that, the society here is like this not just single renegade persons like in the US for example. And nothing that you will say or do will change that, you cannot change a rock solid habit and the whole society of half Europe. There are of course people who bear with a higher sense of morality and started to actually buy softwares, but this is just a fledgling and needs time to catch up with other countries. There are thing needed for this, especially the drop in prices of software becuase they are insanly high now...

okay, I will report back soon, I have to go now...
Please go on! There are some extremely good reasons and counter-reasons here k:
keep it up k:

[troop18546]

Originally posted by Chuck the plant@Mar 17 2006, 06:21 PM
Either you want it - then buy it. Or you DON't wan't it - then why even bother downloading?

If you just want to play around a bit - a Demo or Shareware-version should be enough for that matter, shouldn't it?

Well... sometimes there's this thing like "none of the stores have or WILL have it". Many of you guys are lucky you can waltz in to any freakin' shop and buy any ancient or newest game. People like me either wait half a year for good games to arrive or we never get them at all. :tai:
2nd, I am a person who buys games, but if there ain't no place to get them - "sharing" is the main option. I DL'ded "The Suffering - TTB" at first, but it didn't work, so as soon as it came to stores (A MIRACLE), I took those 40$ and bought it.
3rd, a demo? Enough? Pff... Stick me with a knife why don't you? :tai:

Just my opinion in all this stuff.

[Tulac]

Originally posted by Sebatianos@Mar 18 2006, 08:47 PM
But then everything moved to the web and you could download for free (so you wouldn't pay a pirate).

Well actually here there are still a lot of pirates, because most people are still on 56k, and those that aren't don't have enough money to pay for flat rate (like me), so we have to watch on every MB spent and can't really download games, maybe small software and stuff like that...

[kajjj]

I am the 'buying' kind of gamer. Although I have an 8Mb broadband, I still prefere to own an original copy of the game. Thankfully, in UK you can buy preowned games, these are about 30% cheaper than new ones, I use this option quite often. But sometimes I copy the game, then I trade it for another one. It does't happen often though.
Somehow I find the game more interesting when I have to pay for it. The games that you download are just not that good anymore... They come too easy.