The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) does some decent stuff, and does some work to help protect freedom of speech on the internet. But, once you know that pro-piracy crusaders like Cory Doctorow and Lawrence Lessig are associated with their organization, then it should raise some red flags. Doctorow, for example, has sold “I pirate music” t-shirts on his website, and promoted books teaching people how to pirate and not get caught. Looking at EFF’s stance on issues, it becomes clear that they are (as an organization) taken a pro-piracy stance on things. This is the reason I could never actually support their work. It would be great to see a more moderate version of the EFF, one that doesn’t take a pro-freeloader / anti-creator stance.
Recently, the EFF began promoting “Real Net Neutrality”. Here’s what they say:
“Tell the FCC: Don’t let Hollywood hijack the Internet”
Already with the title, the EFF is drumming up fear-tactics with words like “hijack the Internet”. What does that mean? It sounds scary. I can imagine all kinds of terrible things. What it actually means in this context is “Content creators are unhappy with rampant piracy on the internet. Current legislation would permit ISPs to not-deliver internet packets when they contain copyright-infringing material”. That’s a whole lot less scary, but the EFF clearly wants to use a scary phrase.
Last fall, the Federal Communications Commission proposed rules for “Net Neutrality†— a set of regulations intended to help innovation and free speech continue to thrive on the Internet.
But is the FCC’s version of Net Neutrality the real deal? Or is it a fake?
Buried in the FCC’s rules is a deeply problematic loophole. Open Internet principles, the FCC writes, “do not… apply to activities such as the unlawful distribution of copyrighted works.â€
The net-neutrality bill would allow ISPs to throttle the unlawful distribution of copyrighted works? Gee, it’s a good thing the EFF has stuck out their neck to fight against this. Based on the phrasing, it almost seems as if the EFF thinks that piracy should be permitted as a part of “free speech”. Personally, I actually find it “deeply problematic” that the EFF thinks throttling copyright-infringement is a problem.
For years, the entertainment industry has used that innocent-sounding phrase — “unlawful distribution of copyrighted works” — to pressure Internet service providers around the world to act as copyright cops — to surveil the Internet for supposed copyright violations, and then censor or punish the accused users.
And the EFF uses the scary-sounding phrase “copyright cops” to describe the action of not delivering or slowly-delivering packets when people are involved in copyright violations. Since Net Neutrality is only concerned with the speed of the internet, it seems that slowing down/stopping the delivery of copyrighted material is equivalent to “censoring” and “punishing”. Stopping copyright infringement is not censorship. The fact that the EFF would describe it as censorship tells you a few things about where the EFF stands — and it’s against the creators.
From the beginning, a central goal of the Net Neutrality movement has been to prevent corporations from interfering with the Internet in this way — so why does the FCC’s version of Net Neutrality specifically allow them to do so?
The claim that “from the beginning, a central goal of the Net Neutrality has been to prevent corporations from interfering with [piracy]” is historical revisionism. I support net neutrality, but not when it involves copyright infringement. (To use a page from the EFF’s playbook, perhaps we could say that the EFF is attempting to hijack the Net Neutrality legislation to make the world safer for piracy.)
Besides, if the EFF believes that the goal of Net Neutrality is to let everything flow freely, then they should take a real stand and tell us that child pornography is part of “free speech” and ISPs should never be allowed to interfere with its transmission. At least then, they would be consistent.
“Tell the FCC that if it wants to police the Internet, it first needs to demonstrate that it can protect Internet users and innovators by standing up to powerful industry lobbyists. Sign your name here to demand that the copyright-enforcement loophole be removed.”
This is clearly a false dichotomy. The EFF wants to make the internet safe for piracy, but it does this under the cloak of saying that the FCC isn’t standing up to “powerful industry lobbyists”? Whether you think big-business has too much influence in government doesn’t mean you can just trample over the legitimate rights of copyright holders. That’s the equivalent of saying that Oil Companies have too much influence on the government, and therefore, people should be allowed to steal all the gasoline they want until the government stands up to “big oil”.
The EFF really needs to straighten out their act and stop going out of their way to side with freeloaders.
Addendum, January 16:
Please see my recent post about the EFF’s attitude towards piracy where they say: “there is no evidence out there that “Internet piracy†is leaving us with fewer creators or fewer copyrighted works”. (In other words: piracy is not a problem; there is no need to address the piracy issue.)
EFF: Piracy Not the Problem – “Piracy is the red herring of the digital music distribution debate” (Ironically, that statement was made at the peak of the Music Industry’s sales – in 1999. The past ten years have seen music sales decline by over 50%.)
EFF releases tool to detect if your ISP is throttling BitTorrent.
EFF defends the makers of Morpheus, Grokster, and KaZaA against a lawsuit brought by the record companies. (Admittedly, I’m doubtful that the creators of P2P software should be held liable, but I wouldn’t want to support them in court, nor could you argue that they were naive about creating anything other than software for the purpose of sharing copyrighted material.)
At Wired magazine: “The EFF vigorously urged the Copyright Office to authorize jailbreaking, which in this case is hacking the phone’s OS, and hence allowing consumers to run any app on the phone they want, including [pirated applications and] those not authorized by Apple.”
Dave Winer, an early supporter of the EFF:
I gave $5000 to the EFF when they started, I think it was in 1990, with the noble goal of protecting freedoms as our technology and culture move online. I think I have supported every cause the EFF has adopted since then, but that’s no longer true. I gave this a lot of thought, believe me, and had a long email exchange with Brad Templeton, the chairman of the EFF board of directors, and think they have become as radically polarized as the entertainment industry, and like Hollywood are now working against the interests of those they were meant to serve. The issue appears to be copyright, and it appears that the EFF believes there should be no copyright….
The problem with the EFF position is that in order to remain consistent, they have had to say that copyright doesn’t exist — if a policy or law restricts what a user can do on the Internet then that is a bad policy or law. The courts can’t agree with the EFF. I don’t agree with the EFF.
Idiot. Either you support Net Neutrality or you don’t.
There is more to P2P than piracy, you know?. Get a clue before you post.
I think you’re confused about the concept of Net Neutrality (and maybe the EFF is too). Net Neutrality means that all Internet traffic is treated equally. We’re talking about ISPs throttling traffic based on where it comes from, where it’s going to, what protocol it is, etc. Yes, things like Bittorrent can be used for piracy; so can lots of other technologies. Yes, Net Neutrality helps Bittorrent; it also helps tons of other technologies on the Internet. Supporting Net Neutrality doesn’t mean you support piracy. You guys need to get your facts straight.
Hello,
I agree that network neutrality in general is a good thing and I also agree that stopping piracy should be a priority, I work in a IP field myself. My concern is how much do consumers have to give up in order to protect content creators?
If you are a software developer then you must understand that it would be technically impossible to filter all piracy. Even if ISP’s setup DPI equipment or were using some hashing algorithm to identify copyrighted works; anything ISP’s implement will be over come in a matter of minutes by pirates. The point is: are you willing to let ISP’s deep packet search your private emails, html form postings, search engine queries all in the name of “stopping piracy”? You open this loop hole for any “network management” under the guise of protecting content creators but all you are doing is opening a loop hole for ISPs to do whatever they want with the traffic on the internet all in the name of “hollywood”. Hence hijacking the internet.
If you try to fight pirates on the internet you will fail and fail miserably. And it will only drive more people to piracy because it will be far more convenient then dealing with the “legal” internet. The way to fight piracy is to figure out why pirates do it in the first place. Why are digital downloads often the same price as the retail copy? I would never pay the same price for a digital download and the reasoning is simple, the first sale doctrine. If I can’t resell something then obviously there is less value to it. If you want to fight piracy do it the right way and actually win over consumers with value added content. Not by price gouging and not by dismissing what the consumer actual wants.
With digital distribution cutting costs why is it that many retail games cost the same as their digital counterparts? I understand bandwidth is expensive but that is a result of the poor competition in the ISP market. So as a result we need to allow ISP’s to filter our internet? It seems so ass backwards to me.
Allowing ISP’s the authority to watch everything you do on the internet so that they can stop you from downloading a copyrighted work won’t work on a technical or social level. Come up with something better or continue to lose to the pirates.
Thanks,
Erik
>Besides, if the EFF believes that the goal of Net Neutrality is to let everything flow freely, then they should take >a real stand and tell us that child pornography is part of “free speech†and ISPs should never be allowed to >interfere with its transmission. At least then, they would be consistent.
They generally are consistent. The EFF is not terribly happy when ISPs take it upon themselves to start doing deep inspection of data on their network under the banner of ‘we are helping the children!’. The point is that such things are the job of law enforcement, not the ISPs.
Are you, for instance, in favor of the phone company listening to all your calls in the hopes of catching something illegal? There are reasons that a warent is required for such wire taps. Having ISPs do the same thing without a warent, or even being a law enforcement agency, is a scary thing.
it’s “all or nothing” or maybe “you can’t have it both ways” come to mind when I hear idiots like this spouting crap about “free speech is great except when…”
Hollywood had a record-breaking year despite “rampant piracy”. seriously, if they had a record year how bad could it be? even if it is bad, there’s certainly more important issues than this! cutting down on people’s freedoms just so you can have a ~more~ record-breaking year is called oppression.
ever heard of free will? gotta take the good with the bad if you want it pal, suck it up and shut up.
I am an artist (musician) and I want to be paid for my work but I’m not about to support a policy that’s only going to help Big Content. I’m a little guy and therefore I can’t afford to be part of the exclusive-members-only-high-price-of-admission club that a non-neutral net would prioritize.
you sir, are a short-sighted idiot who is only concerned about his own works being pirated.
>> Stopping copyright infringement is not censorship. The fact that the EFF would describe it as censorship tells you a few things about where the EFF stands — and it’s against the creators.
ah but that’s not their implication but rather your inference. a non-neutral net WOULD allow for censorship! why don’t you get that?!? theoretical made-up example: comcast’s CEO is hard core right-wing politically (don’t know if that’s really true, again just an example) and there’s a very popular and vocal anti-comcast and anti-right-wing blog on the internet. Comcast can simply decide to send packets going to that site (for comcast customers only) to take the long way around… the extremely, long route 1A scenic route and off a cliff way so you either never actually get the site delivered or it is so slow you give up. effective censorship.
if you don’t think that the EFF is putting language in their proposal to help prevent abuse, then you are deluded. if you do and then you twist it around to seem like a ‘pro-piracy’ action, then you are pathetic.
what about the study that found that people who download music for free via P2P are the most active paying customers? amazing to think that fans WANT to pay for something they love but don’t have endless resources to buy everything so they check out lots and lots of stuff and only buy the stuff they really want to own. and equally amazing to think that this process makes it so that content creators who make something shitty don’t sucker people into buying it since they can check it out for free first. wow these revelations are mind blowing AND totally obvious!
maybe if you made a good game, video game fans would actually buy your game? don’t blame your poor sales on piracy – your lack of success is your fault.
MW2 was heavily pirated but still managed to not only break video game sales records but also break records across other entertainment metrics!
I couldn’t even find your game on torrent sites or gnutella. Obscurity seems to be more of an issue for your than piracy. One the other hand your are getting plenty of publicity from sites like gamepolitics.com for this post, though I am not sure that’s a good thing. Before GP’s article I had no idea you even existed.
It doesn’t sound like you put a lot of thought into this position beyond a kneejerk reaction to the EFF.
I suspect if ISPs were to start filtering for copyrighted content (an expensive and ultimately futile endeavor), the pirates would start using encryption (bittorrent already has it). Even flawed encryption is enough to foil hashing an fingerprinting. Though with the speed of modern PC being what it is, more robust algorithms, like AES, are possible. There are a myriad of ways of to distributed pirated content. File lockers, email, instant messager, private file servers, and P2P to name a few.
The ISPs content industry spend billions and the pirates spend some free time adding encryption to their files.
As a P2P user I won’t pirate your game (assuming it were even available) , but I won’t buy it either.
An excellent, well-reasoned piece.
This sort of rational support of Net Neutrality and against piracy is very rare!
It is not the least surprising that you have raised the ire of the net roots legions.
When they can’t attack your logic they resort to name calling.
Just wanted you to know that you are NOT alone and there are many of us out here
that understand that Net Neutrality is not an ‘all or nothing’ issue. Some balance
must be struck between Copyright and right to privacy. Locking down the internet
in its current piracy-friendly format will not serve the public well in the long run.
The framers of the US Constitution were wise when they established Copyright
in Art. 1 Sec 8…. P2P does not invalidate their reasoning.
I believe you are letting your distaste for the beliefs of Doctorow and Lessig lead to misreading the EFF’s statement. Read this section again: “Buried in the FCC’s rules is a deeply problematic loophole. Open Internet principles, the FCC writes, ‘do not… apply to activities such as the unlawful distribution of copyrighted works.'” They are not disagreeing outright with the FCC’s statement, but instead they are saying this can be used as a loophole to allow controversial practices. The EFF is saying, “By making a statement most people would agree with–the internet shouldn’t be open to pirates–the copyright companies can get the government to agree to otherwise distasteful regulations.”
Look at the hyperlink from “copyright cops”: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/12/mpaa-obama. The kind of filtering and monitoring that major copyright organizations are seeking can be compared directly to warrantless wiretapping. These groups–RIAA, MPAA, etc.–are so fervent about the protection of their copyrights that they want to infringe on the personal privacy rights of everyone in order to catch those who are breaking the law.
Most sane people would agree that cybercrime is bad and that new policies need to be conceived for policing cybercrime in the future. What many of them are saying, and what I believe the EFF is getting across in this letter, is that the answer isn’t granting broad spectrum powers to the police (or in this case private organizations) to monitor anyone, anytime in the name of profit protection.
Before we sacrifice liberty for protection, we have to ask what we’re protecting, how effective our sacrifice will be in protecting it, and how much of our liberty should be given up. The MPAA says, “Everyone, totally, and all.” The EFF is saying, “The few, very little, and as little as possible.” Personally, I’m with the EFF on this one.
Wow. Most of my posts don’t get any comments. It’s like I stepped on a landmine.
Dorkmaster Flek:
True, true. I wasn’t really singling out BitTorrent. In fact, the Net Neutrality “loophole” could be used to do things like block websites that are involved in copyright infringement. In that case, it wouldn’t even involve deep-packet inspection or blocking ports, just blocking particular IP addresses. (Of course, the strategy of blocking IP addresses is of limited value, but under the EFF’s revised rules, presumably, it would actually be illegal to block pirate websites.)
eborring:
(nod)
I agree. Although, I don’t see it as necessary to stop all piracy. (Before I begin this analogy, please note that I am not saying shoplifting is exactly equivalent to piracy. I think shoplifting is more damaging than piracy.) I recently heard that stores have shoplifting rates of about 10-20%. I believe that means 10-20% of the merchandise disappears without being paid for. Now, shoplifting is causes an physical loss of property, so (depending on the store and it’s markup) we might say that a store that experiences 30% shoplifting rates goes bankrupt. We can’t stop all shoplifting. We just need to keep it low, in order to keep the store in business. Piracy is similar. You don’t need to stop all piracy. In the case of piracy, a 30% piracy rate is survivable for a company, whereas a 30% shoplifting rate is not. But, you want to do something similar with piracy – you don’t need to completely eliminate it, just keeping it low is good enough.
I think, in the long run, identifying pirated material through some sort of deep-packet inspection is ultimately going to fail. It’s just too easy to hide information. Off the top of my head, I can think of ways to obscure data so you’d never know what I was sending.
To be fair, these things would be done with computers (not people). Also, ISPs already have an enormous amount of information about what you’re doing on the internet. They know exactly what sites you visited and could even remember what packets went through their system. Packets of data running through a network are the equivalent of postcards – the postman can already read them whenever he wants. Your ISP has the same ability to read your packets as your postman does to read your postcards.
Well, pirates are a diverse group. I don’t think there’s any one thing that pirates want. Some are amenable to lower prices and better customer support, others think that all information should be free and that not-paying is always better than paying (regardless of any other factors). I have heard of pirates moving away from movie piracy and onto Netflicks, for example. But, I also personally know some pirates who react to the idea of paying for digital media with disbelief – as in “why would you pay for something you can get for free?”
True. I think that’s some fair, constructive criticism.
Neeneko:
To be fair, listening-in on phone calls requires a human being, since computers aren’t good at understanding speech. There’s an creepiness factor involved there, plus the fact that a person remembers. Computers, on the other hand, can just look for patterns of bits or block data coming from particular IP addresses. Just based on the volume of data flowing through the internet, you can see that it’s a task no human-being could handle.
voiceofreason:
Recently, I wrote a post called “Hollywood, Box Office Numbers, and Piracy”. It examines the claim that Hollywood had a record-breaking year. (When you adjust for inflation, it was not a record breaking year.) You can check it out in the “Recent Posts” sidebar.
Right now, I’m actually not that concerned yet about my own works being pirated, but I am concerned about people’s attitudes towards piracy and the long-term trends in piracy. You’d be right if you said that I’m concerned about my career ten or twenty years from now. I’m also concerned about the continued production of digital media, and whether piracy will end up harming everyone – i.e. creators who don’t get paid and leaving the creative field, and society where each member sees it in their own best interest to pirate, but the collective movement towards not-paying results in a much less diverse / much more cheaply produced media, resulting in everyone being worse-off. In other words: the concern that this is a “tragedy of the commons” situation.
voiceofreason:
I do support net-neutrality. It would be a problem if some ISP started re-routing traffic in order to stop people hearing certain criticisms. But, that’s an issue above and beyond copyright issues. (I assume you’re taking that example from the real-world situation that happened a few years ago. Stuff like that should be stopped.)
empiresofsteelsux:
Yeah, I’ve seen that study. It’s a bit strange. I’ve heard numbers all over the place – everything from pirates buy 1200% as much music as non-pirates to studies saying that they buy 40% more. I don’t understand the disparity in those numbers, and I know a number of pirates that won’t buy anything. I wrote a post about that a while back, but my only guesses: (1) the numbers are wrong because people lied, (2) the study was done badly, (3) non-buying pirates were claiming to be non-pirates, and lowering the apparent buying-rate of the non-pirate group, (4) people who love music are more likely to pirate, people who don’t buy music don’t pirate or buy music (resulting in a correlation between piracy and buying).
Don’t worry. I’m not blaming any of my sales numbers on piracy.
True. Although, the piracy numbers I was seeing was a relatively small percentage compared to sales. I’ve seen much, much worse piracy-count to sales-numbers ratios in other games. Also, I MW2 might’ve benefited from Microsoft’s attack on pirates right before the launch (which would’ve made a lot of people too scared to pirate), and I would assume the MW2 requires servers to play online – which opens the potential to block pirates from playing multiplayer.
prh99:
I agree with you there.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what will and won’t work against piracy. At some point, I’d like to write them all up, because there’s a lot of strategies that could be tried. You’re right that fingerprinting can only have a short-term effect on piracy because pirates can find ways around it.
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Several people here have pointed out that automated filtering for copyright infringement will not work for various technical reasons. I’d like to point out another reason why it won’t work. Viacom is currently suing Youtube for copyright infringement over videos uploaded to the site. As part of the lawsuit, they included a list of allegedly infringing videos. Viacom then had to go back to the court and amend the complaint. The amendment consisted of removing some 250 videos from that list. The reason they had to remove those videos was the fact that those videos were uploaded by Viacom employees as part of their job. If the copyright holder has trouble keeping track of what material is infringing and what isn’t, how is the ISP supposed to have any chance of getting it right?
So, there’s no easy way to determine is something is allowed to be shared or not, and it’s almost trivial to bypass any filtering scheme that is put in place. Given that, why is the government even considering allowing unlimited snooping of digital communications when it can’t possibly do what it’s supposed to do, but is open to so many other ways of being abused?
I don’t understand how that’s even possible. YouTube benefits from safe-harbor provisions. Safe Harbor essentially says that if someone uploads some copyright-infringing material to your site, and you are notified of it, but refuse to act, then you can be held liable – essentially for helping copyright infringement. This is why sites like YouTube don’t get sued – because they respond to takedown requests, while sites like the PirateBay doesn’t benefit from “safe harbor” provisions – they ignore (and often sent back snarky responses) to people who requested that their copyrighted material be removed.
I looked up the case, and it appears that’s exactly what their argument is: “Google argues that it’s protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s safe harbor provisions, which generally state that sites are not liable for copyright infringement based on material uploaded by users, provided that the sites remove the material upon request.”
Yes, it appears that 100 of the videos were uploaded by Viacom employees as marketing.
At this point, there’s no legal requirement for ISPs to keep track of copyright infringing material. The issue being debated right now is whether it is legal for ISPs to block copyrighted material, not whether they are legally obligated to block it. In other words, the EFF’s “Real Network Neutrality” would make it illegal for ISPs to block copyrighted material.
In some ways, I suppose it might be better to let the EFF have their way. Then, pirates will pass-around unencrypted digital media, which makes them easier to catch. Obviously, that’s not what the EFF’s wants, but maybe for the EFF, it will end up being a case of “getting what you asked for, not what you wanted”.
Regardless of this particular issue, I still maintain that the EFF is a pro-piracy organization and intends on making the world safe for pirates. I think there’s plenty of evidence for that. And part of their strategy involves tying the hands of law-enforcement.
I do not want an “internet postman” looking through my postcards. Rather than your intended effect of reassurance, you make me want to take another look at encryption.
I also don’t think the system will stabilize at a point where most people can’t effectively get their music and movies for free: the 70% paid paradigm. Stamping out piracy entirely is impossible, and without doing so it will become more and more widespread by the time you can attach entire movies or discographies to a single email.
I’ll give up “professional” media long before the wonders of the internet, as sad as it would be to do so. Nonetheless, I hope both can prosper.
The trick is to create something like the Steam gaming app which provides digital goods cheaper (half price! quarter price! on sale for eighty percent off market value!) in an environment which beats anything the pirates can provide. Make it worth their while not to pirate.
Throttling traffic does not necessarily involve looking at packets. It could involve things like blocking or slowing traffic from/to IP addresses of pirate sites, or between P2P applications. Admittedly, those are of limited use.
I don’t follow what you’re saying here. What’s the “70% paid paradigm”?
I don’t claim that “stamping out piracy entirely” is the goal. In fact, I compared it to shoplifting in the sense that you don’t have to be 100% successful in stopping it. In general, people tend to bring up the “you can’t entirely stop piracy” as some sort of an argument against even trying to combat piracy, but that’s a red herring. It would be equally valid to tell a shopkeeper that he can’t entirely stop shoplifting, therefore, he should stop trying.
Sending stuff via email is inconvenient. Inconvenience produces a drag effect on piracy, reducing the number of people who are willing to do it.
Maybe we can rely on other methods for combating piracy. Afterall, ISP-level blocking/throttling is not the only or the best way to stop piracy. (I was just irked at the EFF for constantly jumping into the fray to make the internet safe for piracy.) I can think of a half-dozen other methods off the top of my head.
To be fair, “market value” is mostly about perception. If everyone sold their software for $10, then $10 would be the “market value” of software. (In other words, if Steam sells a game for $10 when everyone else sells it for $40, it’s 75% Off. But, let’s say that everyone copies Steam’s prices – lowing it to $10, then $10 is the new “Market Value” of the game. Now, does Steam have to sell it for $2.50?)
There is some validity to the strategy of adding value to the software by giving users access to multiplayer and updates, while locking out pirates from those things. Admittedly, pirates can still get updates elsewhere, but it’s less convenient. Adding inconvenience to the piracy equation is always a deterrent.
This strategy works for some games, but not all software. Personally, I have software tool that, even though I’m a paid customer, I’ve never had any need to go online and get access to customer support, forums, updates, or anything else that they could potentially lock me out of if I were a pirate.
🙁
I don’t have time to read all this, but it is a very unusual sentiment for an indie developer. Piracy is never the cause of you going out of business. If your game is good, people will buy it. (id software, anyone?)
It is all the fallacy of the lost sale. Just because some pirate played your game doesn’t mean they would have ever bought it in the first place. Also, pirates tend to broke school students or citizens of poor countries — I am older, an American, I have money, and as such, pirating seems like more work than an instant gratification webstore download.
The worst thing an indie could ever do is restrict the distribution of their games, their art. Resist draconian registration processes as if they were the plague themselves! Nothing makes me more angry than some game I’ve bought telling me I can’t install it on my laptop, or on a second system, or after a reformat — activation services don’t last forever nor are these copyprotection systems very portable (TryMedia has issues in Windows Vista/7, or in virtual machines, for instance.) I say all this as a repeat customer of many indie game houses such as TreeCardGames, WadjetEye Games, Killer Bee Software, Popcap Games, etc.
I think it’s fairly common, even among indie developers. I think the most favorable position towards pirates that I’ve heard from an indie developer is 2d boy’s. They made World of Goo (released without DRM). They said that they didn’t think piracy hurt or harmed their sales. Most indie developers tend towards disliking pirates. A few examples:
“I have minimal DRM. People can transfer their registration to someone else if they want. I even have a one year money back guarantee if someone is unhappy. I’ve tried to be ethical in all the ways I want as a consumer. The result? My games get pirated like crazy, and I have to charge a lot to stay in business. I have a situation where honest people have to pay lots of money to subsidize the people who rip me off. The good people pay to buy games for the bad. This, of course, infuriates me.”
http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/09/some-kind-words-about-drm-for-once.html
Creator of Tap-Fu, for the iPhone:
“If you look at the total numbers, the percentage of of pirated copies of the game submitting high scores is 71.2%. Now most pirates will tell you that they just like to try before they buy. If it’s a good game, then they’ll buy it… Well, from this data we can conclude that 0% of pirates think the game is worth buying…. Now that all that is said and done, are we really concerned about it? Maybe a bit. We like to think that it’s not us specifically that is losing sales to these people, it’s every developer that is losing sales to these people. The pirates have essentially removed themselves from the iTunes economy and that hurts everyone. How much does it hurt? probably not a whole lot. There’s probably a few of these people that would have bought our game in the first place so it’s not really a big deal. But as a developer, looking at that high scores chart, it is kind of depressing.”
http://smellslikedonkey.com/wordpress/?page_id=274
“iPhone app developer Ben Chatelain was practically fuming when he found out that his app Full Screen Web Browser had been cracked and posted to iPhone warez site Appulo.us just four days after release.”
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/03/developer-fights-iphone-app-piracy-by-turning-cracks-into-demos.ars
I agree that’s it’s possible to create a game that is going to be very profitable. We generally think of piracy as producing a drag on the industry, but it’s not so bad that you can’t be successful. I also prefer to make a distinction between piracy as it exists today, and where piracy could go in the future. If piracy rates remain stable, I’d be less concerned about it, but I think it’s getting worse. And there is a potential there for things to get bad. ( See this article about piracy in Brazil: http://texpine.com/2008/02/15/how-piracy-can-break-an-industry-the-brazilian-case/ ) I also think the EFF’s position is helping to drive piracy to being a worse problem.
I don’t think anyone outside of lawyers, lobbyists, or politicians are going to say that 1 pirated copy is one lost sale. We know it’s a fraction. That fraction probably varies from game to game. Personally, I’m not that worried about pirates who wouldn’t have bought my game, or are poor (in the third-world or college students living on loans). But, I know a lot of pirates personally. There’s some variation in the group. For example, I know one guy who used to buy his software, but then someone taught him about piracy. Now, he thinks buying is crazy because you can get it for free on the internet. A few months ago, I saw him with an active noise-cancelling headphones. Those headphones are something like $300. Sometimes people pirate to get things as cheaply as possible and then spend their money on expensive (physical) things.
Yeah. I do plan to release DRM-free copies of the game in the future (which will also remove the DRM on the copies people have already bought).