Warez

Bob, this is for you, since you are so bored. Affirmitive action is gay, and everyone knows that, so there's no point debating it, so here's the new topic. What do you people think about warez? Are you for being able to download them, or against. Blahblahblah. Discuss.

I am pro-warez and pro (software) piracy.

I'm indifferent on the music front really. The artists aren't being hurt by it. If they are losing profits, they're so minimal compared to what they are making otherwise, then it shouldn't even matter. This, sort of, lends itself to my views on software.

First, I will state that I want to (and plan on) programming games. Therefore, I'm, theoretically, promoting the theft of my own product. I feel that this gives me clarity on the subject.

Piracy happens. It's a fact of life. If it is important enough to the company producing the game that their game not be copied, then they need to put some effort into preventing it.

I have an excellent example. I bought Savage a good while ago. I installed the game and typed in the cd-key on the back of the book. That's their only defense--the book. I, then, handed the cd to two friends who each installed and used the same cd-key. We all got online, on their server, at the same time. We even joined the same server to test it. There is no system to check the cd-key anytime after installation apparently. That's just disgraceful if you ask me.

Also, and this is my most imporant point, stolen software does not mean lost profit. If Savage had not been copyable, and my firends hadn't been able to play online with me with the one copy that I purchased, then I would have been playing without them. They would not have both rushed to WalMart and bought the game. The producers of Savage did not lose $80 because I let my friends use my CD.

I understand that it is wrong, and I understand that participating in piracy is an act of stealing something that several (or very many) people worked very hard on most likely. The fact of the matter is that I believe that if they cared enough, then it's their responsibility to prevent this act.

I'm probably pro-warez as well, but I'll argue on the other side for the sake of argument.

First of all, it is theft. If you're going to play their product that they spent their time and hard work on then they should also be paid. Not only are you stealing their product, but you are also stealing the effort that they put into making the game/music/whatever.

As you said, the warez may actually be making the artists more money by getting them popularity, but first of all, you don't know that for sure and it could be harming the artist, even if it is only minimally, and secondly if the artist takes the time making music or a game then they should be able to say how they want their product distributed. If they don't want to allow people to use their product without being paid for it, it is completely their choice, and we should honor those choices. If you want to allow people to pirate your games, then that choice is yours. Not everyone shares that view.

I concur with you that it is the companies obligation to protect their software from piracy. Truth is, though, that no matter how much they try to protect their product, there will always be someone out there who will figure out how to break into it. It's almost frivolous now days to try and protect things from being pirated.

If piracy were to end alltogether, game companies might make... 3% more profits. Most of the time, when someone downloads a game, copies a game, or steals a game, they never had any intention of actually paying for it in the first place. That means that if piracy were to end there would be little to no increased profit for the game producers.

Also, I don't want anyone stealing the games I make. That's why I said that it would be my responsibility to put safeguards against it. There are so many ways to prevent it. While it's true that there are no widespread measures that are flawless, game producers are being paid. It's their job to program. Why is it that the hackers, the people who sit around at home and don't get paid for it, are able to over-program them? It's because the game makers don't care enough.

Im all for it....thx god for piracy!

I counter that many copy protection methods are known to cause problems from low performance, to crashing, to simply not being able to run the game on certain brands of CD drives. Perhaps the producers care enough about the end users not to use forms of copy protection that could potentially cause such problems.

As for the hackers removing the copy protection, the fact of the matter is that any copy protection is a separate entity from the game engine and that once the hacker has your binary code, it's simply a matter of disasembling it and figuring out what parts to skip and what return values to fabricate. Even if the program code is encrypted on the hard drive, the programmer can run it in a debug environment and capture an image of the code after it has been decrypted and can likewise create such environment and patch the code after it has been decrypted. The only two effective methods of copy protection are:
1) in the case of an online game, a unique identifier is shipped with each copy and the UNIDs of people playing are monitored and verified for uniqueness (this method can be worked arround by the creation of private servers or simply by running on different servers)
2) ship a piece of hardware that performs a function integral to the game engine with each copy. For example, StarFox for the NES had a 3D proccessor in the cartridge, IIRC. This can usually eventually be bypassed by determining the characteristics of the hardware device and emulating them.

That first method is extremely effective. Look at Diablo and Warcraft. There are keygens that let you play the game offline only (which is only 1/10th of the game). Besides, just because there aren't better methods today doesn't mean that we can't work towards better ones. In fact, it means just the opposite.

The keygens also let you play online as long as you don't play on an official server.

As for better methods, I already explained that any method that does not depend on allowing or disallowing integral online service or an external hardware device is so easily worked arround that it's almost not worth the effort.