Cobra A1:

Your analogy is completely wrong.  Even when the vehicle is made on cheaper assembly lines, each one is still a representation of capital and each one stolen is a net loss.  That doesn't make the theft of software excusable, and I never said so.  I did say that regardless of everything else, it's still illegal.  It's still morally questionable.  That was never at issue.

The source of the problem is the propensity and success of more economically and militarily powerful countries to seek domination of the labor and markets of smaller and weaker countries, usually resulting in uneven market structures.  Boycotting unfair pricing by Stardock or Mircoprose doesn't do anything because they almost never consider these markets in their financial projections anyway.

And thus we're back to the original problem.

I say that piracy is an unavoidable norm if the pricing of goods is unreasonable.  You would probably pirate, too, if you were driven to it enough - like say the price of "legal food" were 10 times the normal amount.  You can't boycott food, and the food industry doesn't care about you.

The problem is easy to solve if you think of it in economic terms rather than in moral terms; since the pirate and his buyers already know that they're morally in the wrong, appealing to their morals won't do anything.

Generally:

There have been some questions about how some people can afford a rig that can run Galactic Civilizations.  Secondhand rigs and engineers who specialize in retrofitting and jury-rigging such rigs reliably are a cottage industry in poor countries.  A "good" rig around here can sell for for about $60 give or take.  And by "good," I mean something that's 3 years past its prime in a Western market.

That's dirt cheap by Western standards, but it's still moderately expensive, yet reasonable for the market structure.

Think about that.  If YOUR games were made by rich foreign companies who don't really care about you, but price them at $600 per game, would you be able to indulge in gaming?  Probably not.

What if a local pirate offered them to you at $30?  Boycotting does nothing - you're far too miniscule a market to matter, and the company more or less ignores your plight to begin with.

There have also been concerns about cross-sale from Chinese markets of legal cheap copies.  That's entirely possible, of course, but you can stipulate to your Western consumer that using such copies is illegal.  Shoe's on the other foot now.  Would YOU trust your Western market to do what's "moral" in the face of massive economic pressure?

I disagree with both statements to various degrees.

It is inevitable that there will be inequities between societies in one way or another, and this inequity can potentially just be a natural part of a cycle - just the way things currently are. No particular 'culprit' or 'blame'. This state does not immediately demand the presence of corruptive forces.

Pursuant to the latter statement, absolutely existing global competitors reach out & expand and seek to control and dominate foreign markets, stifling competition. I have yet to see a multinational corporation that wants to see more competition with itself rather than less. This of course has a deleterious effect on the opportunities real people might otherwise have to participate. If you wish to include the unfair business practices of monopolization and unfair trade practices (cross-interest business subsidization, price gouging, industrial collusion/cartelism, etc.) as part of the corruption of free markets in lesser countries, I agree with you. I come back primarily to my main disagreement however.

My main disagreement lies with the notion that in the kind of closed, pie-carving capitalist race we live in that all you have to do is try. I am compelled to characterize this as nieve. The EV-1 Electric Car, with the newest battery technology of the time (1970s) could travel 120 miles before needing a recharge. It was quiet, had superior acceleration to internal combustion vehicles, was painless/sanitary to work on, and had no emissions. General Motors proved the concept. They then killed the project for the sake of Energy, Insurance, and Automobile cartels. By the argument you contend, CobraA1, we angry entrepreneurs should simply be able to remedy this injustice and lack of industrial vision by simply starting up our own electric car company and build our own competing electric car. By trying harder. By simply "putting our minds to it." By "rolling up our sleeves" and "putting some elbow grease into it".

(such cliches come to mind)

We both know that that would never work bereft of substantial 'interference' from (for example) government, and maybe even protective laws. Automakers would utilize their cross-investments as leverage against supplying us with tires for the vehicle. Energy companies would pull strings with license issuers to guarantee that no electric car we produce could ever be certified as road-worthy. Energy companies would deploy lobbyists to enact laws that required the incorporation of proprietary technologies or mechanisms into these 'new fangled electric cars'. Lawyers would be dispatched to concoct arguments against numerous aspects of electric cars. Metals and plastics necessary for the construction of the cars might seem very expensive or be out of supply to the new guy. Assembly lines that could provide machined parts might offer completely unfair terms to you, to do work for you in providing the necessary components to the electric car. Key components might suddenly be under threat of lawsuit as they are challenged in court for copyright or trademark infringment. Individuals who champion the new effort would be attacked and villified.

My point is this is a closed market, any and all opportunities pounced upon and clamped down upon, full of the very corruption you speak of when you talk of foreign nations and their affairs. Before we point fingers, we need to clean our own acts up. We set the bar.

Its in that context that I have the sympathy I do for those abroad. They can`t just, "work harder". That seems like Alice In Wonderland talk to me. 

I'm a bit of a fence-sitter I guess.  I do, however, have a story of DRM gone horribly wrong.  

Tribes 2: I stopped playing for a few months and forgot my username and password.  There's a way to retrieve those using your CD-key and the email you registered.  Guess what though? Dynamix got shut down, the retrieval form doesn't work any more   .  I love Tribes 2, I was good at it, involved in a clan. The movement and momentum was a joy, and was backed up with tactical depth across a variety of game modes.

Now I don't think there's anything much they could have done differently for Tribes 2 DRM.  It's a multiplayer game, it wouldn't have hurt to ditch the CD requirement, but accounts based on registering keys are the way these things are done. I still got bitten though, otherwise I'd probably still be playing it.

I'm with Team Fortress 2 now, and I'm happy enough I guess, but late at night I still dream of jetpacks and sigh.

My least favorite experience with DRM was Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts

When I got it, it forced me to download all the patches to play. One of those patches requires you to loggon to their server or whatnot to play, requiring another hour to figure out what site I had to go to to register for that (this was after registering CD key). In the registering process, it required me to put in CD key again... After 3 hours of installs, patches, and drowning in DRM, I finally got to play my game. Or at least, I get to play it til the company goes under, and it is no longer possible to log on to their server.

Clearly, you are very opinionated on this issue.

In fact, I'm seeing a bit of a pattern: You are "disagreeing" with my opinions, yet we are sharing many of the same basic facts. It just seems that you prefer to paint them in a negative and anti-western light?

Indeed they were. Corruption didn't start with piracy. Piracy is a symptom of a larger issue.

In fact, my own research is showing something interesting: The economic situation in the Philippines is currently improving, and they're hoping to be a first world country by 2020. They will eventually be able to have the income to buy video games.

Well, it's unlikely we respect the same economists.

This is far too vague. A more detailed analysis would be desirable. Anybody can wave hands and point fingers. I'm not interested in that.

"Understandable" meaning I can understand it - but not meaning I have to accept it as something unchangeable. I certainly hope things can and will change in the future.

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough: I agree that some people can act a certain way. However, this is in no way a fixed percentage. The percentage can be influenced by a wide variety of pressures.

Yes, and that's where we seem to run into problems. Some people pretend statistics tell us who we are and whine that we shouldn't try to change them, and others realize they're just a snapshot of the current situation and say that we should do our best to study them and see what we can change to influence them. I prefer the latter.

. . . and clearly, you like to pass the buck and the blame rather than actually study the problem. Pretending that first world countries are the only source of economic troubles is ignoring a large variety of factors and being quite irresponsible. I'm not denying that we have our own troubles and issues to resolve. But that shouldn't stop nations like the Philippenes from looking at their own economic systems and taking care of their own financial future.

I really do enjoy a civil disagreement, even when I disagree somewhat with the main voices I'm following. And I especially like it when people "on the other side" from me make their arguments well and force me to at least triple-check my own assumptions, which CobraA1 has done several times since I started reading him or her.

But sloppy rhetoric cuts down my fun, and this, from my POV, is a cear case of Pot-Kettle talk. I dislike unchecked American exceptionalism just as much as I dislike knee-jerk "evil Western imperialist" talk. Both are excessively reductionist and lead arguments away from productive territory--save 'em for cocktail parties where "it's just our folks."

Better to admit that it's hard to go on at any length *without* painting your prose with your heart's colors, and work on seeing where you agree, where you might be able to change your mind and agree, where someone else might change, and where change just ain't likely.

CobraA1:

It's not anti-Western to point out that the British system of economic plunder operating in India and China was a key factor for why India was impoverished while at the same time being the most profitable region of the British Empire.  That's just an analysis of facts.

In the same manner, the US's economic policies are not a matter of opinion.  They're factual and confirmable, hence why we can state them with reasonable surety.  Heck, American newsmakers in Time and TNYT make no equivocations about who benefits from the machinations of Wall Street and the White House, and who suffers.

That's quite unlikely.  The Philippine economic and political situation is essentially random at this point, so if it were to reach First World status in 2020, it would be by sheer dumb luck, and I don't think that's going to happen.

Well, if you want details, we can talk about the petro-dollar scheme, the enforced dominance of the dollar and its effect on world economy, and the various "free trade" impositions the US is trying to impose, which has resulted in many poor farmers in developing countries being forced into even more abject poverty than they suffered before.  How about "quota" trade agreements and the Tydings-McDuffie Act?

I assure you, I am not making this up from media spin and I am most certainly not a rabid opinion freak about it.  Let's talk about multinational schemes taking virgin forest through illegal smuggling operations and foreign shady mining outfits in the Philippines.

My view of the matter is based on independent research on the topic, not media hype or spin.  US officials go to great lengths to make sure that your country and companies from your country end up with the upper hand in as many negotiations as they can manage.  I'm frankly surprised that Toyota is making as much inroads into the American economy as it has, given all the barriers it has had to surmount.  At this point, being adapted to the environment, and supremely powerful after all the tests, I don't know if it can be stopped.

Of course.  So do I.  I have strong reasons to believe that if US companies were to offer reasonable region-specific prices for their products, we would see significantly less piracy going on.

Like all ventures, piracy is driven by economic pressures.  Pirates are able to employ highly skilled individuals and sophisticated machinery and hardware because hundreds of millions of people want to buy their products.  If those same hundreds of millions were to have reasonable alternatives, it would make serious inroads into the profitability of operating such ventures.

As do I.  I do not believe appealing to morality is likely to work, nor would stricter policing powers.  These measures have been shown to be failures in the past and are unlikely to work better in the future.

In some ways, the Philippine situation (and the Ugandan situation for that matter) is composed of local factors, but we also cannot ignore the fact that powerful US interests shape those local factors to a very large degree.  The US is one of the major export markets of the Philippines and nearly all the biggest players in the Philippine market choose to invest in the US for various reasons, all of which are, of course, under the close supervision of US market strategists.

I'm not pretending here.  You can find this out for yourself.  Do a little research on world investment flows and stock market relationships.

I'm also not pretending that Microprose largely pretends that the Philippines doesn't exist.  Heck, Wizards of the Coast is lousy locally, because they don't seem to care about the Philippine market.  If they were more attentive, perhaps I would have given them another 2000 dollars of my money.  You cannot boycott effectively a company whose sales projections don't include you.

You do not understand what's going on.  I'm GIVING YOU FACTS and all you hear is opinion.  It is NOT opinion that a $40 dollar game in a developing country is mostly an unreasonable luxury.  It is NOT opinion that the US dominates global finance.  It is NOT opinion that piracy is rampant in the markets that spawn them.

Now it may be opinion that pricing adjustment will impact piracy sales significantly, but I have good reasons for thinking that way.

Sure, go ahead.

Such as?

From a Wikipedia description and a quick scan of the act itself, the Tydings-McDuffie Act seems to be granting the Philipines independence. What's wrong with it?

You'll have to give me references for the "'quota' trade agreements." I'm not familiar with them.

I'm curious: What are the biggest barriers they had to surmount?

To be honest, I haven't been up to speed on international relations and trade agreements, so you more information than I do. I am in favor of free and fair trade with minimal restrictions.

As I've said before on similar threads, that's rather the entire (original) point of copyright. Without it, most people employed in making IP would be out of jobs and would not be able to afford to spend their time making IP; it would be limited to those who could do so in their spare time without depending on the income (if any) from doing so. As a result, the quantity and quality of offerings available would suffer greatly.

Simply, just because someone chooses to make nonphysical goods, why should their work be less protected under law than someone who manufactures something tangible? We may be using our brains instead of our backs, but it's still work and still has value.

Now, I agree that copyright has been abused rather severely by the "content cartels" in the past century, but that only means it needs reform (the initial 14-year term, for example, is more than sufficient for software), not elimination.

CobraA1:

Regarding the petro-dollar scheme:

The petro-dollar scheme is essentially the ongoing legal global market on oil and dollars.  The US has enforced a system in which oilcan only be traded and bought in dollars, not in any other currency.  The obvious corollary to that is that the dollar becomes necessary for all countries if they want to buy oil.  This is one of the reasons why the "oil for food" program in the late 90s was a sore point politically for the US.  There are other ramifications as well.

This is one of the mechanisms by which the dollar is enforced as the defacto world reserve currency.  When one country's currency is dominant in this way, every dollar you print for bonds doesn't stay in your country, so there's less supply.  Less supply, value stays the same, but value for other currencies becomes less.  Long story short, the US is able to export its inflation to every other country using dollars as reserve currency, imposing a virtual tax on such countries through currency control.

This is not new stuff.  Everyone in finance knows about this.

Regarding "free trade:"

The reason so many farmers in developing countries are against the US opening world markets in foodstuff is because US farmers are heavily subsidized by the government.  US farmers can actually sell their products at prices that would be at a loss if not for this subsidy.  In effect, a "free trade" agreement in this manner isn't a free trade agreement - it's an aggressive economic attack by the US on the food markets of these countries.

Proponents and opponents of this policy are aware of this.  Proponents only mention rhetoric about how free trade is good, without context because they know that the basic facts of how unfair this is is indefensible.

Regarding the Tydings-McDuffie Act:

The act is largely drafted to look like it's granting the Philippines independence.  In practice, it does these things:

1. It absolves the US of further responsibility for the Philippine's welfare.

2. It ensures that the US retains veto power on executive and legislative decisions.  NO real independence.

3. It stops Filipino crops and labor markets from competing openly with the US, which it had done successfully until this time, which is really what induced the US legislature to come up with this act to begin with.

In essence, the act was a response to labor, racist, and farmer lobbyists shouting for the shutdown of Filipino labor and foods coming tariff-free and without control into the US market.  They got it.

Again, this is not just me who says this.  Any reasonable historian you ask who's knowledgable about the incidents surrounding the act will say the same thing.  In fact, a much more economically oppressive act was drafted prior to Tydings-McDuffie but was rejected by Filipino because of how obviously and extremely oppressive it was.

Regarding Toyota:

First of all, Toyota has had to pay tariffs on imports before they created factories in the US.  That is a barrier to entry by Japanese cars into the US market.  Amusingly, the US isn't all about "free trade" when it comes to the automotive industry.

Secondly, Toyota has had to fight against popular US bias against anything foreign.  This means that its sales must be outstandingly better in almost every way just to have consideration.  This is also not opinion.  In a psychological study about bias, a couple hundred US men were asked to judge a random sampling of women photos in terms of beauty.  Pictures with American names and labelled as Americans scored significantly higher with a P=0.01.  These pictures weren't necessarily of Americans.  The labels were distributed randomly.

They also have had to create cars for the American climate and road conditions - not easy when your designers are living halfway across the world.  This is true as well for the aesthetic sensibility, which explains why Toyota cars are so bland - they would rather miss slightly than let go of their artistic sensibilities and miss by a mile.

I'm sure there are more factors against Toyota, not just these.  The US market is extremely hostile to foreign companies.

Regarding copyright:

IT'd be great if everyone respected everyone else's patents and copyrights.  That is not so.  The Chinese don't respect US copyrights partly because the US itself isn't very vigilant when it comes to piracy of Hong Kong movies, or even anime and manga.  In fact, the only hassle-free patent and copyright in the US is a US patent or copyright.  For instance, copyrighting your software or patenting your invention in the Philippines is apparently no protection at all from an unscrupulous businessman who can grab it and make money from it in other markets - such as the US.

Draginol:

I know that calling it a "license" makes software people more secure about the entire thing, but ultimately I think it drives away consumers and as for me; it makes me want to just shaft the entire industry and not buy a thing - stop playing games altogether on the PC/console, or only play abandonware or pirated software.

The most basic piece of saleable product that was meant to be protected by copyright is a book - it's the original copyright material.  When I buy a book, I do not obtain a "license."  The book is mine and I can read it or lend it whenever I want, wherever I want to whoever I want.  When 50 years are done, it's still a book and it's still something I can enjoy.

You need to match this at least in order to meet sales expectations, because this is how people in the market have been trained to think.  Stardock matches this because when you buy a game, you have company-lifetime assurances of free downloads for the game.  It doesn't poke your eyes out when you read it the wrong way.  About the only thing it doesn't match is that it doesn't allow me to lend it or sell it to others.  Frankly, I don't see how allowing that is going to affect sales, but at least it's not as invasive as other DRM forms.

Which is why I bought a hardcopy from Kalypso in addition to my registered softcopy.  Now I can lend the game to others and encourage them to get their own copies from you.  If you repriced the original DL at $10, you might see more sales.

The real question is, would he get 5 times the sales? In reality, he'd need 6-8 times as many sales to cover overhead and production costs, in order to get the same revenue as selling the number he did at $50.

You've missed a fundamental point - Stardock is a buisiness. It exists to make money; producing quality games and keeping customers happy are means to that end, not truly ends in themselves.