Why piracy is the better choice

[zridling]

Although its title talks about Hi-Definition format wars, author Charlie Demerjian tells us why piracy has triumphed over every DRM, new format, and anti-consumer tactic — because of the mega-corporations' unmitigated greed:

In the meantime, Piracy, the better choice (tm) flourishes. If you take 10 minutes to look around, you will see that every HD movie is now available on P2P networks.... What was an underground clique in the 1980s and 1990s has become mainstream and so vastly much easier to do that it is laughable. Before the technology hits 1% market penetration it is comprehensively cracked and better for the consumer than the legit versions.... The lawsuits, threats, purchased governance and stern speeches could not prevent the children of Warner Music from pirating, the less moneyed masses are a lost cause. As of right now, anyone can get any music or movie they want, for free, much more easily than they can through legal DRM infected channels. Piracy, the better choice (tm).... If you try and purchase any of this content, you descend into a DRM nightmare of incompatibility and legal mires. Your monitor will not work with your Blu-Ray drive because your PC decided that a wobble bit was set wrong. You just pissed away $6000 on a player, media center PC and HD TV for nothing, you lose.

[brotherS]

Nice article! I also like the beginning:

THE NEXT GENERATION disk format has been settled once and for all. Thanks to the due diligence, hard work and unprecedented cooperation between the media companies, the hardware vendors and the OS vendor, we finally have a solution. It is quite easy, Piracy, the better choice(TM).

[superboyac]

Hmmm, interesting.  I have to say, he does have a point.  Let me give a personal example.  My friend let me watch his DVD, "The Girl Next Door".  I used Zoom Player to play it, and was initially frustrated because it was my first time playing a DVD on it and it wasn't set up.  But when it started playing, I wanted to skip past all the menus and just go straight to the movie, but as you know, on DVD's, you can't skip the logos, THX sounds thing, etc.  You just have to sit through it.
Then, another friend told me that he was in the movie, so I wanted to see it again to be sure, but I had given the DVD back, so I downloaded the movie.  It took all of an hour or so.  Then I played it on the same computer, and it was a lot easier to navigate and watch and the experience was much more pleasant.

My point is, it was actually easier and better to watch the pirated version than the actual DVD.  Now, I always think about that whenever I have to sit through those beginning credits.

[f0dder]

Too bad how DRM punishes the regular users but doesn't stop the pirates, huh?

[zridling]

That's exactly what I do with all my movies and audio CDs — copy and format them into AVI and MP3/flac on my computer and archive them on DVD. With programs like SlySoft's CloneDVD and AnyDVD (both of which come with Lifetime licenses), you can remove all that crap at the beginning, strip the subtitles, or extract the audio to MP3. And if it's a "Special Edition" DVD, I burn all the 'Extras' footage onto a separate movie. If I'm queueing up Doctor Zhivago or Barb Wire, I just want to get on with watching the movie. I could care less what the FBI or whomever forces a blue screen on me. My eyes just glaze over at it.

To his larger point in the article on piracy, though, this is why I think it would have been better if Microsoft had charged either nothing for Vista or sold it for a nominal price of $50. By all appearances, it seems to be a transitional OS given all the things left out of it and the immediate work on its successor. Instead, make money of the apps used on Windows. I can't wait for the day when the OS really is irrelevant. And the reason I won't jump on Vista before SP1 (or by next Festivus) is because of apps. All mine run fine on XP; I have full driver support; and I can do everything I want for now. But by slapping $160-$400 tag on Vista, you only further enable piracy. He's right: you can have the corporate edition of Vista and the full Enterprise edition of Office 2007 right now for free if you want, fully activated.

[superboyac]

Yeah, zridling, I agree, I think I'll stick with XP for a while also.  Unless there's some feature taht I absolutely must have and it's only on Vista, I'm in no hurry.

By the way, with that SlySoft software, when you convert DVD's to avi like you do, do you still retain the chapter settings and menu's?  Or are you just left with one movie file?

[Josh]

You are left with one movie file. You dont get menus when ripping to AVI.

[nudone]

i'm not really up on all this but from what i see the only real difference you are going to get with vista is the directx 10 game stuff - eventually.

like i said, i don't really know. but i would assume that directx 10 would be made available for xp or are microsoft going to deliberately keep it to vista.

i might have missunderstood all this directx 10 stuff so forgive me if i'm talking rubbish.

[Eóin]

like i said, i don't really know. but i would assume that directx 10 would be made available for xp or are microsoft going to deliberately keep it to vista.

At the moment they are saying it will not be available for XP

Apology

Sorry edited it in error as I clicked Modify instead of quote ... restored back to the original message

[f0dder]

And neither will the hybrid flash/disk drives be... intel have shown disks running under XP though, so they might release some drivers... *hope*

[Carol Haynes]

like i said, i don't really know. but i would assume that directx 10 would be made available for xp or are microsoft going to deliberately keep it to vista.

At the moment they are saying it will not be available for XP

In which case the games manufacturers won't develop for it. If you spend huge amounts of money on development you want a return on that investment - limiting distribution only to VISTA in the short term is unlikely to do that.

Personally I think MS will come under increasing pressure to release DX 10 for XP - though they may never admit it.

[f0dder]

Carol: XBOX360+Vista-only... that does sound plausible to me. MS even released at least one games (I think it was one of the Age-of-something) which refused to run on win2k - for no good reason, which was revealed when some pirate group removed the XP-only check.

They're willing to do a lot to push their new pile of manure. (also remember how HALO was delayed after MS-purchase because it had to be converted to run on xbox instead of it's original target platform, the PC... and then the PC version was delayed for even longer, to help drive the original XBOX sales. I know several persons that bought an XBOX just for halo.)

[Carol Haynes]

I know several persons that bought an XBOX just for halo.)

More fool them - I still think the big game companies will expect software to run on more than VISTA - they're still releasing stuff that is compatible with Windows 98 because they know there is still a sizeable market out there!

[dk70]

Will take time because XP works ok for most but the coolness powers of DX10 will make tons of people upgrade to Vista in a flash. If that is what it takes to make full use of new/expensive DX10 video card so be it. Same people will tell others to do the same or die with XP, may be start using Linux or Max since so unhappy etc. There will be forces pulling both ways. Just features like Readyboost/Readydrive for Viste is enough - there are more than just DX10 to attract attention.

So the part of computer users who are into new technology will be easy to convert - every website about hardware, games will be focused on this sooner than later. MS knows - even if not all games will make full use of DX10. Games are likely to come in DX9 compatible version, with less eye candy/speed. Wait for the many comparison screenshots/benchmarks... Eventually majority will be DX10 only - about the time when no longer worth to maintain backwards compatibility.

Dont know about pile of manure but I know that for many people it dont matter one bit if speed and eyecandy is improved. They jump ship without battle, rest follows.

Those not caring for 3D will be harder to deal with, tech people and world is no problem and will help MS speeding up flow of transistion

Check out the road map for XP SP3 http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle/servicepacks.mspx "2008" is part of Vista promotion in a way, stupid they are not.

[brotherS]

Fresh article: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/24/1730250&from=rss

Electronic copyright infringement is something that can only become an 'economic epidemic' under certain conditions. Any one of the following: 1) The products they want... are hard to find, and thus valuable. 2) The products they want are high-priced, so there's a fair amount of money to be saved by stealing them. 3) The legal products come with so many added-on nuisances that the illegal version is better to begin with. Those are the three conditions that will create widespread electronic copyright infringement, especially in combination. Why? Because they're the same three general conditions that create all large-scale smuggling enterprises. And... Guess what? It's precisely those three conditions that DRM creates in the first place. So far from being an impediment to so-called 'online piracy,' it's DRM itself that keeps fueling it and driving it forward."