News - Government can’t wait to start punishing file-sharers

[Arthran]

The way I see it, there is presumably a massive market here that's not being seized upon. People want that content. There's obviously issues around premium channels and subscription, but taking the Voyager example, why on earth isn't that on a website somewhere, that plays adverts as it would on a tv, and that you can just watch it rather than download illegally. Yes, you can buy the box set, but I think the reality of the market is that many people would never consider paying out for those.

Would I like to go back and watch all of DS9 from start to finish - yes. Am I going to pay the shed load of money to buy the boxed set - no. Now if that was on a website, I'd probably watch it, and they would get a revenue from the advertising. As it is, they get no revenue from me at all (because I won't buy the box set) and they get no revenue from the pirates (who probably wouldn't have bought the box set either).

I guess my point is that the pirates will not be beaten. BUT, at the moment the whole industry seems to have it's mindset 20 years behind technology. Things like iplayer and 4OD show it's possible, and it can be done pretty well. They could get some revenue from me, but seems they don't want it. Maybe the profit they make from the box sets is so extreme they don't want to do anything to risk it....

Nail... Head... BANG!

exactly my point, the industry is stuck in the past and if they simply did a few things like the above example they would notice piracy plummet (as has been shown in the past, most piracy stems not from people not wanting to pay, but from people having no feasible way to do what they want legitimately, give them a legitimate option and they would rather use it) and they would notice profits rise.

give us things like startrek.com allowing you to watch any episode you want with adverts in it. yes people would skip them some of the time, but the revenue would be there!

[educatedfool]

I'm pretty sure if the majority couldn't download a game they wouldnt bother buying it.

[Arthran]

personally i believe the games market needs an independent version of Steam, a central repository that allows you to download and buy games on the fly.

[Noxvayl]

If it wasn't for P2P their would be alot more games produced on the PC, too much piracy involved in gaming now it's a damn shame because people who want to buy games are losing out on quality releases.

The offer that Microsoft has done for Windows 7 packages is a great attitude to take, if software is priced more reasonably to the customer in the first place then more people will want to buy it instead of using other means like P2P to aquire stuff ilegally.

Also over the last 5+ years look how cheap DVD's/CD's have become in highstreet shops, this is mostly because of online shopping but I'm sure the contribution of P2P has had a dramatic effect in the pricing, the cost to produce a CD is so cheap yet charging £13+ or whatever years ago was just pure greed & unfair.

To conclude, in my opinion the best way to beat piracy is to if possible lower pricing on games, software etc, when I was 8 years old I could buy a decent budget game on the Spectrum/Commodore/Amstrad for £1.99/£2.99 & the best games were only £9.99 at those prices even a kid with a paper round could afford to buy games, not anymore - £24.99+ for a game - not all parents can afford to pay these prices when on low income, alot of people earn the mininum wage & cost of living is more than ever.

Piracy is why there aren't as many PC games as there are console... I think not. I point you in the direction of a post made by a stardock employee> http://forums.demigodthegame.com/349758

Despite being one of the most pirated games of 2009 Demigod made it's sales début at number 3. So following your logic that piracy is causing lower game sales and thus restricting game development on the PC demigod should of done terribly with sales. So why is it that Demigod did so damn well despite the massive release problems they had along with HUGE piracy?

I think the major misconception here is that when piracy stops those people who did pirate would actually buy the game which couldn't be further from the truth. People aren't pirating to be tools and stick it to the man, they pirate because they can't afford the game. Obviously I can't say everyone does it for that reason but everyone I know that dabbles in piracy does so because they are unable to afford the ridiculous game prices, my assumption is that the majority of pirates do the same. So if piracy were to be prevented(even 100% eradication of piracy) it would not change too much for games developers, in fact I'd say the opposite to your conclusion would happen. The death of piracy would more than likely bring a decline in PC gaming sales.

Piracy gets the game around much better than any distribution company could ever do and when you make a good product the best advertising you could ever get is word of mouth. Piracy allows a game to get out to millions more people than it ever would being sold, should those people like the game they would recommend it to a friend. Not all of a pirates friends will go pirate the game, lots of them will buy it. These sales will be none existent without piracy, of course I have no idea of the impact this will make but I am pretty confident that removing piracy would be detrimental to PC game developers, definitely not beneficial because they won't get any extra sales and possibly evoke some boycotter's which could spread badly. Of course this is major blue sky thinking and somewhat difficult to achieve when your opinion is so heavily against something.

The problem with companies now is that instead of focusing on customers and what they want which will get them to buy the game and continue to be a customer for said company they focus their attention on piracy and thus piracy is what follows. If you focus your attention on something you naturally provide fuel for it to continue to exist and annoy you. An example of a company doing just that and failing badly because of it is Crytek. They put so much anti-piracy rubbish in Crysis that the customer who bought the game(me and many of my friends included) were left unsatisfied. Crytek then complained profusely about piracy labelling it as the cause of the games failure when they were the cause of the failure by forgetting about the customer and instead focusing on themselves. It is this selfish greedy thinking that causes a problem and not piracy, but of course most the world will reject this evidence.

Stardock is a great example of a company that focuses on its customers and benefits because of it. Instead of wasting any effort on piracy they focus on what their customers wanted and what would benefit them, thus they managed to get great sales despite those who pirated Demigod and I fully suspect Supreme Commander2 to have the same result. Valve are another company with a similar ethos and Gabe has been recorded as rubbishing claims that piracy is preventing game development on the PC. These companies don't ship anti piracy content in their games, they don't go to great lengths to prevent piracy and because of it there are loads of pirated copies of their games around but on the flip side they enjoy some of the best PC game sales in the world.

Piracy is not a reason for games loosing sales, it is a scape goat used because they are unable to admit their own wrong doing and failures.

[kalniel]

I suspect you are confusing entering at #3 with great sales. It says something about the state of the PC market that you can get to that position without terribly strong sales. The experience of legitimate users for that game was also hampered massively because of all the pirate copies trying to get on the servers.

[Lucio]

I think the government is just jumping on another bandwagon with this one, they're claiming they're acting in the interests of the big companies but really are just saying what they think needs to be said, having been led there by biased media reporting.

It's a wasted effort to try and monitor the internet useage of the UK, anyone who'se run a filtered network will know just how many entries get thrown up during a typical day. Even if you just watched the upload steams, and singled out the top 5% of uploaders not known to run a website, you'd still have tens of millions of items to check through.


So personally, I'm against this policy, not because I agree with people pirating digital materials, but because I'm against the huge waste of money it'd represent.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The way I see it, there is presumably a massive market here that's not being seized upon. People want that content. There's obviously issues around premium channels and subscription, but taking the Voyager example, why on earth isn't that on a website somewhere, that plays adverts as it would on a tv, and that you can just watch it rather than download illegally. Yes, you can buy the box set, but I think the reality of the market is that many people would never consider paying out for those.

Would I like to go back and watch all of DS9 from start to finish - yes. Am I going to pay the shed load of money to buy the boxed set - no. Now if that was on a website, I'd probably watch it, and they would get a revenue from the advertising. As it is, they get no revenue from me at all (because I won't buy the box set) and they get no revenue from the pirates (who probably wouldn't have bought the box set either).

I guess my point is that the pirates will not be beaten. BUT, at the moment the whole industry seems to have it's mindset 20 years behind technology. Things like iplayer and 4OD show it's possible, and it can be done pretty well. They could get some revenue from me, but seems they don't want it. Maybe the profit they make from the box sets is so extreme they don't want to do anything to risk it....

EDIT: since I started typing, the discussion seems to have moved mainly to PC games. Different issues entirely, so apologies if the above is going off on a tangent

The US has Hulu and we don't.

It looks fantastic:

http://www.hulu.com/

I also agree that the government has no right to waste taxpayers money on policing civil matters. If people are making money out of file sharing then involve the police but most people are not, so it should be up to companies to go after them not government agencies using public money.

Also if they want to reduce illegal file sharing the companies should go after uploaders NOT downloaders.

[kalniel]

I also agree that the government has no right to waste taxpayers money on policing civil matters. If people are making money out of file sharing then fair enough but most people are not, so it should be up to companies to go after them not government agencies using public money.

Apparently the unions have been asking the govt to do this, to protect jobs.

Also if they want to reduce illegal file sharing the companies should go after uploaders NOT downloaders.

Agreed. Though I'd guess most downloaders are also uploaders.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Apparently the unions have been asking the govt to do this, to protect jobs.

Well,I am sorry to say if the film industry continues to produce drivel then no amount of police or governmant help is going to make everything right. Look at the amount of remakes out there?? How much money have I wasted going to the cinema to see underwhelming films like Terminator: Salvation and The Day the Earth Stood Still remake??

If anything downloading a few episodes of a tv series has actually made many of my mates go out and buy the whole series on DVD as they have got into them big time. Remember that a lot of these series have not been shown in the UK at all so this narrow minded view of downloading hurts sales is just plain BS in my experience. People who are freeloaders will always do so whereas people who appreciate the effort people have put into a tv series,film or some music will buy it to support them even if they have downloaded some of it before.


I wish more effort was put into online streaming services in Europe like Hulu in the US. Even if I had to pay £10 to £20 a month(Hulu is free and ad supported) it would be worth it IMHO. If Sky could have their own streaming service it would be great. Not everyone can have a Sky box especially if they are students living in rented rooms or people living in rented bedsits.

If they want to secure their jobs the industry needs to produce better content period. Films and music are not essential items so if they do not produce good enough products people won't buy them. The same goes in any business. The copyright laws are pathetically long lasting and will eventually end up stifling any creativity. Some company even tried to take Men at Work to court in Australia over the song "Down Under" and the Verve lost all royalties to their biggest hit since they used "too much" of a sample they had been allowed to use. Funnily enough this happened after the song became a huge hit! I wonder if the company who owns the rights to the Breakwater catalogue should sue Daft Punk for Robot Rock then?? The same goes for Moby too.

If anything I want to support the independent studios more who produce great films like Moon which is being hardly shown anywhere in the UK. This is who the government must help NOT big corporations who can help themselves.

[usxhe190]

No matter whether you are for or against P2P sharing (i.e. old vs new industry etc), everyone must admit that this will have ZERO effect on "illegal" P2P sharing right?

This is just the government positioning itself on the blindingly obvious - i.e. "illegal p2p = bad! get ISP to irradicate! Government looks good now!"

But actually having to implement this will just be a big ?.

If the government can stop illegal P2P sharing, I would be very surprised.

Government has a better chance eradicating poverty than illegal P2P.

[kalniel]

Well,I am sorry to say if the film industry continues to produce drivel then no amount of police or governmant help is going to make everything right. Look at the amount of remakes out there?? How much money have I wasted going to the cinema to see underwhelming films like Terminator: Salvation and The Day the Earth Stood Still remake??

Why did you go to see them if they were rubbish? Read the reviews and don't see a film if you think it's going to be bad - that will send a message much stronger than pirating something.

If anything I want to support the independent studios more who produce great films like Moon which is being hardly shown anywhere in the UK. This is who the government must help NOT big corporations who can help themselves.

Don't you think that by setting itself against piracy the govt is helping independants? If the market turns into bland, spew out content of any quality because the link between quality/innovation and people paying for that content is broken, market then it will be taken over by big corporations or govt. run groups rather than independants.

We need a system of paying for content that we use in order to drive innovation and allow independants into the market.

[shaithis]

Why did you go to see them if they were rubbish? Read the reviews and don't see a film if you think it's going to be bad - that will send a message much stronger than pirating something.

Yeah, great idea. Lets put all the film reviewers in the studios pockets......

[Arthran]

We need a system of paying for content that we use in order to drive innovation and allow independants into the market.

You know what Kalniel, i dont think we are actually arguing different sides here.

Your completely correct in saying that we need to pay for content we use to drive innovation.
BUT and this is the big BUT, in my oppinion: File sharing is NOT the problem here.

Freeloaders will always be freeloaders. But the reason filesharing has become such an issue is not because everybody is a freeloader. Its simply because the technology and market have changed in such a way that instant access to media is possible and is what people expect, but the industries HAVEN'T. Remember pre-iTunes, if you wanted music fast you downloaded it, iTunes came and BANG, a large portion of your average internet users moved to services like iTunes because they were organised, decent and trustworthy.

The problem imo is simply that industries are trying to stick to the old ways rather than catch up with technology and provide the market with what it wants. The market wants fast easy access to media, and illegality is the main option at the moment. The moment webstreaming comes over here and other such services appear and are easy and cheap, a large portion of your illegal sharers will move over to that system.

The issue isn't that people aren't paying for content which is hurting innovation, its that the content isn't being provided to people in a way they are happy to pay for.

[kalniel]

The problem imo is simply that industries are trying to stick to the old ways rather than catch up with technology and provide the market with what it wants. The market wants fast easy access to media, and illegality is the main option at the moment. The moment webstreaming comes over here and other such services appear and are easy and cheap, a large portion of your illegal sharers will move over to that system.

The issue isn't that people aren't paying for content which is hurting innovation, its that the content isn't being provided to people in a way they are happy to pay for.

I agree we're of a fairly similar position, but I don't agree with the above comments any more. I think old methods might have had a role to play with the establishment of a pirating community, however modern methods do now exist such as DRM free digital downloads (Amazon mp3 for eg.) or subscription based services (napster (music), metaboli, D2D, digital river, gamesplanet (games)). These are easy, cheap, hassle free, yet there has not been any reduction in piracy since these became available. It's hard to imagine how much easier things could become.

[Arthran]

yet there has not been any reduction in piracy since these became available. It's hard to imagine how much easier things could become.

How are we measuring piracy though? ask people if they pirate and they will say no. Who's doing the measurements?

The problem is that even though there are some services (and tbh music IS very easy to get hold of online through legitimate channels!), many services are still lacking, movies and tv shows being one big area. Games I've seen a few services, Direct2Drive being 1. But as yet most of them don't quite fulfill what the users want (which is the direction Microsoft are heading, you can how download xbox games through xbox with a few clicks) that level of simplicity is needed in the pc world.

[kalniel]

Games I've seen a few services, Direct2Drive being 1. But as yet most of them don't quite fulfill what the users want (which is the direction Microsoft are heading, you can how download xbox games through xbox with a few clicks) that level of simplicity is needed in the pc world.

That simplicity is already there IMO. Only a few clicks needed on PC too.

Movies is the area I know the least about for digital distribution, but DVD rental is simple.