Sean Ridgeley - Friday, November 6th, 2009 | 1:09PM (PT)
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iPhone developer hoping for a change in attitude
The piracy community is typically never short of excuses for pirating software and/or video games ("those people are rich anyway", "I need to see if I really like it", or "I can't afford it" are common), but the word from iPhone developer NaturalMotion really boggles the mind. According to the studio's Torsten Reil, "a lot of people" have pirated their 59p (99¢) football title Backbreaker Football: Tackle Alley -- the lowest possible price on the App Store.
The console version of the game is quite impressive, too (handheld version looks similar, just scaled down), particularly with the sweet Refused track in the trailer:
Reil, understandably, is quite frustrated with the results:
"At 59p it's pretty fair to assume that a lot of those pirates would have been able and would have bought the game, but there's an overall attitude that it's fine to pirate," he says.
His feeling is DRM is not the answer though, but changing that very attitude:
"There is in general a feeling that IP and content should be free. That's fine to say, but if you have to pay all the people that actually put their heart and soul into a game – who have to pay a mortgage off and have children – it becomes much more difficult. Yes, you can limit [piracy] with technical tricks, but there needs to be an overall change in the perception of IP and the people who create it."
Ironically, we've witnessed people with mortgages and kids freely pirating. As we've communicated before, it really does seem to come down to a lack of consideration, perhaps perpetuated in part by the fact software and video games are virtual, and as such are not seen as tangible goods of value, explaining the pervasive double standard between them and physical goods.
If you happen to be a pirate, we have a word for you: freeware.
I've pirated shit before, but only shit that costed extreme amounts of money and that I'd only use one time. I ended up finding freeware programs that did the same thing and quickly replaced my pirated stuff. I don't have any pirated shit on my computer atm and I don't plan on pirating again since I have a program for every forseeable circumstance now.
Yeah, 99 cents, that's rough from both sides of the argument in a way.
Sure the guy stealing a 99 cent item that's pretty low, but you have to look at software like a farmers field of corn, your going to go crazy protecting every kernel, so you put out your scarecrows, and accept that the crows and rats will take there tenth, and you have a harvest. Software, and IP's in general floating around in cyberspace or on a disk, will never be protected EVER! At some point someone has to play/listen/use it, its ALWAYS unlocked at that point so can ALWAYS be copyed!! This is a cycle that can never be broken. Everything can be seen can be reverse engineered. Country after Country, are being tricked/pressured into strict copyright laws, where you the citizen are paying for court cases that only make someone else richer and the taxpayer picking up the tab for the cases. In most cases the owner of the IP never gets anything directly from these cases. If banks left there bullion and money on peoples lawns(eyes,ears), or their banks had no walls, should you be paying out of your pocket to protect that which is so foolishly protected, or what is un-protectable without taxpayer funded policing to constantly enforce it. If laws continue along this path one day, no one will be able to print anything, or sing or play another new note, or write another new line of code, because it will belong to someone else. There are only so many ways to arrange words, and sort numbers efficiently or musicly. To pay for the policing the taxes will go up and up, and as your being taxed harder, people will increase there prices to combat that, which in turn gets you more pirates. Again, another Ouroboros. Really man own's no ideas, that aren't already to have been known before or to be known by someone in the future, your just on the circle somewhere. If you don't wake up to that, you will be buying everything from the Buy n Large megacorporation one day. Hey, I've bought a bunch of stuff off Itunes store, and from what I've read, people are making a TON of money off the apps. Maybe it's the customers your products are geared toward? I say LOCK'EM up! GET them all, hey lets give them 10 years in prison for every cent lost, if you think that will help.
I think all IP should only be protected by time constraints that cannot be renewed, we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors, if were made to stand alone, its another Dark Age.
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Sure the guy stealing a 99 cent item that's pretty low, but you have to look at software like a farmers field of corn, your going to go crazy protecting every kernel, so you put out your scarecrows, and accept that the crows and rats will take there tenth, and you have a harvest.
Software, and IP's in general floating around in cyberspace or on a disk, will never be protected EVER! At some point someone has to play/listen/use it, its ALWAYS unlocked at that point so can ALWAYS be copyed!! This is a cycle that can never be broken. Everything can be seen can be reverse engineered.
Country after Country, are being tricked/pressured into strict copyright laws, where you the citizen are paying for court cases that only make someone else richer and the taxpayer picking up the tab for the cases. In most cases the owner of the IP never gets anything directly from these cases.
If banks left there bullion and money on peoples lawns(eyes,ears), or their banks had no walls, should you be paying out of your pocket to protect that which is so foolishly protected, or what is un-protectable without taxpayer funded policing to constantly enforce it.
If laws continue along this path one day, no one will be able to print anything, or sing or play another new note, or write another new line of code, because it will belong to someone else. There are only so many ways to arrange words, and sort numbers efficiently or musicly.
To pay for the policing the taxes will go up and up, and as your being taxed harder, people will increase there prices to combat that, which in turn gets you more pirates. Again, another Ouroboros.
Really man own's no ideas, that aren't already to have been known before or to be known by someone in the future, your just on the circle somewhere. If you don't wake up to that, you will be buying everything from the Buy n Large megacorporation one day.
Hey, I've bought a bunch of stuff off Itunes store, and from what I've read, people are making a TON of money off the apps. Maybe it's the customers your products are geared toward?
I say LOCK'EM up! GET them all, hey lets give them 10 years in prison for every cent lost, if you think that will help.
I think all IP should only be protected by time constraints that cannot be renewed, we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors, if were made to stand alone, its another Dark Age.