“As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid? Is this fair?” That’s Bill Gates, ranting about software piracy. He wasn’t complaining about the proliferation of dodgy copies of Windows 7 flying about in the torrentsphere, however.
No, this is from an open letter written in 1976, back when Microsoft was still Micro-Soft, directed at anyone using a stolen copy of Altair BASIC. The fact that Altair BASIC came on a reel of analogue paper tape clearly illustrates that the entire history of commercial software can be seen as an ongoing technological war between those selling the code and those determined to take it for free.
Today it’s Ubisoft in the firing line, its decision to force players to remain online at all times in order to validate their software attracting criticism and anger, especially when server problems have prevented gamers from even loading legitimately owned software.
So many memories. I’d almost forgotten about the Sinclair Spectrum with its rubber keyboard and massive 48k RAM.
Steam is probably one of a few DRMs that actually work without being hindrance for its users – at least in my experience.
I used to steal my software all the time. And if it worked, I bought it. The piracy was just an early form of shareware. Most of my friends were pretty much the same way. And often, one of us would buy, then share with a very small set of friends. Software was very expensive. And our money was being spent on hardware. We wrote most of our own software.
I’ve generated a lot of rolls of paper tape and punch cards.
A good source of confetti.
…funny thing is, industry giants such as Microsoft or Adobe would have nowhere near the same reach if they had cracked down on piracy in their early years.
What’s even more hillarious is that the current batch of DRM only keeps legal copies from being used – pirated versions are still just as common as ever, and generally work far better. For many, it’s become a standard procedure to acquire the cracked version, whether they’ve paid for a product or not, just because they want to ensure that they can actually use what they’ve paid for.
You know something has gone wrong when paying for software does not guarantee that you’ll be allowed to run it, but pirating said software does…
Out of the PAY for programs I have PAID for..
over 1/2 were crap, IF’ I hadnt tried them BEFORE hand.
Either a friend or someone HAD let me see it, and play it…Or temporarily Borrowed.
With the NOTE that “If you open it, its NOT returnable”, it makes it hard to FIND a decent program.
The FIRST program to sell 1 million copies. Estimates that there WERE 1 million Pirated copies on top of it. Thats was 1985.
The fun part is Availability. How many places can display and store, ALL the games/programs that are CURRENT and recent as the last year.
Limited programs..Are those NOT released in the USA, or the area/nation you live. There are releases that NEVER get to the USA, and many that NEVER LEAVE the USA.
At this time. Online distribution could/has cut Game/program COSTS to fall into the DIRT.
No packaging
No Books
NO SHIPPING
LESS ADVERTISING
NO WASTE from unsold products
you dont need to make 1million DVD/CD’s to be shipped and sent around the WHOLE of the USA. you only need 1 copy.
That $50 package on the self…Is worth Less than $10 in Value. the rest is OVERHEAD.
An unbiased look at the issue shows that NO MATTER WHAT THE LAW IS there are inequities, unfairness, fraud no matter what you do. Also pro’s and con’s on complying with the law or violating it.
One could say, “So what else is new?” BUT the answer would be, coincidentally==software in the age of the internet. Amusing or disheartening depending on your values/outlook.
And no one ever feels “sorry” for Bill Gates. Is it true that every great fortune is founded on a crime????
Server problems?
For those who didn’t know, there were DDoSed, perfectly illustrating one of the biggest problems with their ‘always connected’ scheme.
If for whatever reason you can’t establish a 100% reliable connection to their DRM serves then you’re plumb out of luck, even if you paid the extortionate price of their sub-par games.
Interestingly, it only took a couple of days for a crack/workaround to be created, so now those who obtained the games (Silent Hunter 5 and Assassin’s Creed II) illegally have a much better experience than those poor schmucks who paid for the thing and it’s DRM encumbrances.
Wait. Wasn’t that supposed to be something that DRM was supposed to address? Making the experience for legal purchases BETTER than for those who pirated the software….
Good comments guys?
But its $@#$%@%@ stupid that they ADD DRM/copy protection.
With Internet delivery, how many of you would PAY $10 for a program? Insted of $50..
ALSO consider that the GAME maker ISNT the distributor. ATARI doesnt make games anymore.
They BUY the game from the maker, then SELL it. The maker is STUCK with what he got, and wont get anymore.
MAKERS can NOW jump on the net, and sell the program at a CHEAP price and make MONEY.
If it isnt doing well, they can ASK the CUSTOMER whats wrong and FIX something, making a BAD program a BETTER one.
ONLINE gaming? has to keep ADDING.. MORE and MORE..after you are finished…you QUIT. ASK WOW…ALWAYS ADD MORE.. Keep them entertained and coming BACK. How much to pay? $1-10 is a good range. Do you know that there are Private Servers that cost NOTHING to play WOW?
WHY NOT?
WHO here is old enough(besides me) to remember when Multi-player games had DIALUP/NET/LAN/… connections to a game? and the game COULD BE THE SERVER, and others could log into it?
Well if software was placed back on paper tape, that would be an excellent deterrent for people to try to copy.
DRM is companies needing to get compensated for their products and not quite knowing how to.
So they go with the best idea that they presently have. Which often isn’t good at all.
DRM isn’t bad, it is the imperfect and yet volatile and changing distribution system that needs to balance utility versus compensation and the only known model to balance the equation at this time is inconvenience.
Perhaps in the future, there will be a new distribution model ….
@6 ECA
“But its $@#$%@%@ stupid that they ADD DRM/copy protection.”
All inefficiency is due to two competing forces.
On one side, you have the need for profit on one side and the other side you have kids who steal/torrent games/movies/music.
If kids [adults too, actually] would willingly not steal the games/movies/music, there would be no DRM.
If corporations did not have the need for profit, there would be no DRM.
But corporations do need a profit [or they die] and kids do steal games and movies. DRM sucks badly, but what are the other answers?
First computer game I ever played was stored on paper tape from a tty terminal with an acoustic coupler modem back in 1975. It’s what attracted me to computers in the first place. It was written in BASIC and I had the source code. The game was called startrek and being a big fan of the series in reruns, it hooked me instantly. Discovering I could change the program got me hooked on programming just as quick.
Saying that piracy is bad, doesn’t settle much. It’s a digital age baby, copying in digital is a snap. That doesn’t make it right but it certainly makes all but the current online verification schemes, useless. Smart people have learned to change their mind set, sell a service instead of a product. Get it connected and you can verify it. I’m not keen on it, but those that sell these things are really left with no choice.
Best fix.. don’t buy it. I won’t buy or install any software from EA or UBISOFT because of their asinine DRM policies.
If I really want a game they distribute and can get it from steam then I might buy it that way, at least then I know what I’m facing with them as opposed to god knows what kind of malware is being installed if I use one of EA or UBISOFT’s DVDs.
By the way: I bought a legal copy of Win7 here in SE Asia. The box warns me it MUST be activated from SE Asia. It cost me US$165. Now in a country where a decent wage is about $300 per month how many are going to buy a legal copy $165 instead of the pirate copies you can find easily for $3? BTW – most computers here are sold without an OS or with a free Linux distro. If they had to license Windows nobody could afford to buy a computer. So, when MS complains about piracy in Asia, he’s just being an ignorant ass who’s company does not understand global economics.
#12 Despite the fact you can get a reasonable P4 PC with a gig of ram off ebay for $130 which INCLUDES a real license of windows??
Animby==quite the advocate for the common man. Imagine having a concern for people who cannot afford the luxury of a proprietary computer program when there are outright free (eg Linux) programs that provide everything these consumers want or need.
I know you will protest but why not the same attitude when it comes to single payer healthcare for a vital, no substitute, government enforced monopoly service, ===or do I remember your position wrongly? Seems to me you are a sensible pro human being type person but are against the HCR? Tsk, tsk.
How’s your buddy Karzai doin these days?
Here’s what was missing:
“…Is this fair? Of course it is not. People like me who have spent literally hundreds of thousands of hours hunching over a hot computer deserve to become the richest person on the planet for a good long time. Possibly forever. It’s these damn contemptible pirates who stand in my way of foisting off on the general public a continuous stream of computer products that are a year late and a gigantic number of features short. Why, if the world were a perfect place, some idiot with airy-fairy notions of so-called ‘user experience’ and ‘satisfying interaction’ would come along and eventually eat my lunch, but make no mistake. I’m in it for the money, the money and the money, so bug off you geeky losers. I’m on a roll here!”
# 15 bobbo, “…do I remember your position wrongly? Seems to me you are a sensible pro human being type person but are against the HCR?”
Sorry Bobbo. You do misunderstand my position. I am totally in favor of health care reform. However, as rife with problems as it is, I’d rather see single payer or even nationalized health care than the half-assed program that was passed and which will benefit only bureaucracy and insurance companies.
Last time I saw Karzai, he was crying at the loss of his innocence.
To the members: Sorry to deviate from the topic.
10,
What is needed?
is to Price goods accordingly.
Pirating has NEVER gone over 10%.
IF it gets out of hand, you lower prices, take a hit in the profit margin, and Pirating goes down.
AND generally, sales go UP..
Profit is a good thing..But, over pricing a product is STUPID.
As I mentioned, You have a VIRTUAL PRODUCT. ALL you need is 1 and you can make millions of copy’s to sell. Charging the SAME PRICE online, as you would in a STORE in a BOX, is STUPID.
@18 ECA
Yes you are right, except that the salaries of the executives depend on milking every possible dime out of a product and sometimes perception is more important than reality in corporate politics.
If DRM doesn’t work, then why has every copy of consumer Windows since XP required activation?
I think DRM sucks and I hate it, but I acknowledge DRM is the side-effect of market inefficiency.
Anyone old enough to remember Ashton-Tate? They were a huge PC software company in the 1980’s, with leading products.
A-T’s president, Ed Esber, got obsessed with pirating of A-T’s market leading word processor MultiMate and their database dBase. Rather than focus on making the products better, he made them such a pain to install and use because of DRM that many customers abandoned their software.
I remember many Silicon Valley news articles with Esber railing about how all those horrible pirates were stealing money from Ashton-Tate.
At the same time, Microsoft released Word, and was trying to earn customers. MS Word could be pirated fairly easily, and didn’t have a DRM worth anything. I firmly believe that Bill Gates did that on purpose, and I think it was genius. Gates knew that pirates eventually become customers once they get some money. He knew that customers would rather have a pirated MS Word than a paid DRM copy of Multimate.
Esber forgot that punishing your paying customers with DRM, and investing your company’s efforts into DRM versus product development, is a bad idea. He drove A-T into as has-been company, now nothing but a footnote in the history of personal computing.
Lesson learned: DRM is bad for business.