Community

Nov 10, 2010 -- 11:47AM, AsmodeusLore wrote:

Preston, you may want to edit your post.  Remove any instruction on how to obtain illegal copies. That violates CoC.

Technically, he only instructs how to operate a search engine in order to get a list of result one of which links to a site which provides a .torrent file which COULD be utilized with the appropriate client software and actually result into obtaining a pirated (not illegal) copy.

Nov 10, 2010 -- 11:54AM, AsmodeusLore wrote:

True as that may be, this site has a pretty strict policy regarding instructions for obtaining such things.  I'd rather make the request personally, and informally, rather than having to bring an orc in and let them decide, and possibly getting a community member in trouble.

That is preferable indeed. I forgot it's not your task to moderate. I'm going to dive into the CoC and find the exact wording on the issue (and not further dilute the thread).

Nov 10, 2010 -- 11:51AM, kilpatds wrote:

If you want to argue itunes is a bad example, you'll have to point out how the music industry as a whole is going under.  Except I'm not quite sure if it's working out like that...  they've been going under for an awfully long time now.

I think the music industry is pretty much just in denial and its core problems don't stem from piracy.  The music labels are just convinced that they ought to be able to sustain the same growth that other companies do.  Music was huge right up through the 80's but then computer games and home video started encroaching into the same pool of disposable income.  Cost for cost, the gratification from a computer game is way higher (well, if its any good) than a music CD.  It might cost 3 - 4 times more, but the computer games usualy gives at least 10 - 20 hours of play without repetition.  A CD has 10 tracks, only 2 - 3 of which you really like.  Movies come in half-way between I guess.  Music has also been more comodotised - from radio to MTV and everything that that has spawned.  That year an artists spends working on new material rarely makes the studio time worth it, so everyone ends up on short rations, and artisists spend more and more time touring because thats where they make their money and none of it goes to the record companies.

But how can they blame any of that?  What they can target is piracy.  Get some woolly statisticians to draw a straight rising line over the top of your falling sales chart and say that the difference must be piracy, then sue anyone you can get details for while having your own pity party.

iTunes is somewhat guilty for pushing the music biz faster down their hill though - the break up of an album to individual tracks means they can't 'pad' the sales of the 2 - 3 tracks people really want anymore.  That might've been inevitable though.

All this is to say... undoubtedly companies overstate their piracy losses.  They tend to assume that the statistical estimates are correct (and I'm personally not convinced anyone has an accurate model for these estimates) and then that every pirate would buy the product if they had no other choice.  This is blatantly not the case, but again, when it comes time to defend lower than expected income, its an easy target.

The new CB, however, is more robust than most DRM because Software as a Service doesn't have the core vulnerability most DRM'd products have - the entire product isn't delivered into your hands.

At best people could expect to scrape data and reverse engineer a pseudo CB to use it - but this pretty much amounts to writing your own CB anyway and anyone willing to put that effort into it, may as well do it from the ground up - the effort would be comparable.  Even if you can't get the data 'for free' its not too hard to get together a bunch of volunteers and have them do the data entry for you.  The internet is great for that sort of thing.