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Topic: The disconnect between content providers and their customers (long) (Read 1815 times)
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Jeff Kelly
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6921
I'm an apathetic, hedonistic, utilitarian, nihilistic existentialist.
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After reading the thread about the copy protection schemes that will most likely be employed by Spore and the resulting discussion I wanted to start a discussion on the subject.
The discussion in the spore thread mainly focused on money. The assumption being that content providers have to go to these lengths to make sure that they still can make a living from their work and that content is mostly pirated because people are cheap and don't want to pay a dime.
I don't think that it captures every aspect of pirating. In my opinion money is only one issue that drives people to illegally download games, music or videos. I think there is a larger disconnect between content producers on the one hand and content consumers on the other hand.
What bothers me most as a film, music and computer games nut is the amount of hassle that I have to endure each day when using or buying legal content. More often than not nowadays it is harder to get and use legal content than it is to just download it off the internet.
Take for example copy protection schemes. I own an iPod, I own an iPhone, I have several computers, a hi-fi stereo system plus HDTV in the living room and I want to be able to use my music and videos on any of these devices. If I legally buy a new CD or DVD the copy protection scheme prevents me from space shifting my content. I won't be able to put it on my iPhone, I won't be able to put it on my computer, I won't be able to stream it over Wi-Fi to my Stereo or HDTV. If I use DRM-protected content from download stores I will most probably exclude half or more of my devices. iTunes content won't work on the streaming server that can only play Windows DRM. My iPod will not play content bought from amazon or other Windows only system. If one of these services goes the way of the dodo I will not be able to even access it anymore (As has happenend to customers recently when Windows discontinued it's PlaysForSure Servers) and more often than not it is not even in a quality that I'd even consider buying.
Even if the tools to crack the copy protection exist, it is most likely illegal to use them. If I just downloaded the content via bittorrent I won't have any of the problems mentioned above. Files are available in lossless format or really good encoded HDTV, there is no copy protection, it is encoded using standard codecs that can be played on nearly any device out there and there are lots of tools that can recode those files to fit any device imaginable. The range of available media is also better. Nearly everything from rare music nobody ever heard of to recent episodes can be found there. Ever tried to find an old movie or a CD of a not so well known band in a brick and mortar store? Hell even on-line stores like amazon don't have everything.
Well that shouldn't be a problem with download stores one should think. Well in reality company A won't offer its content in store 1 because they don't like it. Company B won't offer its content in store 2 because they have an exclusive agreement with company X and so on.
As a member of an European country another problem arises. There is a lot of media that I cannot even buy legally over here. Region 2 DVDs are usually only released over here when there is at least one television station that owns the licence to broadcast the series and of course only after they have broadcast it as part of their programme. Depending on the perceived quality of the licence this can be several years later than the original broadcast in the country of origin or even never if ratings aren't that good. Television networks in countries like germany take even longer because they have to produce a dubbed version and this incurs additional financial risks and is usually done as cheap as possible so that it usually further degrades the experience.
So there are a lot of high profile television series and movies that have never been officially released in germany or other European countries. In germany this would be Battlestar Galactica (ratings too bad, also very very bad dub), the later seasons of 24 (bad ratings), Dr. Who and Torchwood, The West Wing and The Wire (network executives fear that Europeans wouldn't 'get' those series). My name is Earl, curb your enthusiasm, I could go on and on.
If there is at least an US release I should be able to import it shouldn't I? Unfortunately this would be also illegal. Media that hasn't been rated by the local equivalent of the MPAA can not be legally imported. If customs intercepts the package they confiscate and destroy it. Watching it on a network from another country is also impossible. Licencing rights are granted per country so people from other countries have to be excluded from the programmes. This is usually done by encryption for satellite broadcast or Geo identification techniques for internet streams.
Even if you are lucky and your local television network actually broadcasts it, it will usually run on a day and at a time that you can't watch, will be preempted for everything from football to synchronized swimming to the national bingo championship, will randomly switch timeslots, will be interrupted every five minutes for commercials, will have commercials and program informational text and sound superimposed while running and will most probably be cancelled before it can finish its run due to an ancient way viewer participation is recorded.
Just downloading it over bittorrent is so much easier and virtually hassle free.
A similar argument could be made for games. As legal owner I have to wrestle with copy protection that more often than not breaks my computer, will be forced to insert the CD in the drive every time the game starts, will be hassled by activation schemes on line verification schemes that break down if internet access is limited. If I just download the crack all of these things vanish.
Another aspect is that the perceived value of content has changed over the years. The prevalence of crappy overhyped content and media hype and the failure to deliver on the hype have made people cynical. American Idol and similar casting shows have shown people how the content industry manufactures success. If any hobo that can hold a microphone right way up is able make a CD. If music is not created by real artists but by producers and marketing specialists that tailor fluff pieces to target audiences, if music has no value to the people creating it except as a marketing device, then it is only logical that people perceive music as having no value. If record labels are able to give Madonna or Robbie Williams tens of millions of dollars for a record deal then clearly the labels must be overcharging so it wouldn't hurt if it was just downloaded of the internet. That is how people think.
Everything is hyped to death these days. The greatest film of the century, the biggest comeback, the most influential book since the bible. Usually companies fail to deliver on the hype. If every magazine, TV show and blog tells me that a movie or CD is the second coming of Robot Jesus and after I bought it I realize that it is just crap that has been overcharged for, I tend to get pissed off.
Companies can't just assume that people respect their products if they don't respect them themselves.
Unfortunately they don't only download Madonna or Robbie Williams or the real crap once they have started. People become suspicious of every product not just the ones who are really bad. If they do this with the latest American Idol winner, they must be doing it with most of their other artists as well. If outpost was overhyped crap so must be Bioshock.
Well one could argue and several people already have that if you don't agree with the way the product is advertised or sold you should just refuse to buy it and they would be right. Stealing isn't justified just because the company involved pisses you off. There are two things I'd like to add to that discussion. First a CD is not like a car. If I cannot afford a Porsche or a Ferrari but I'd like or need a car I can simply buy a cheaper one. A Honda or Dacia is still a car with 4 wheels and an engine that gets me from A to B. It might not be as luxurious but I have a choice to give my money to somebody else instead and get a similar product.
If I am fond of a particular band or series I face a different choice: Buy it or don't buy it. I think this choice is significantly harder to make for most people than the choice of buying the more expensive or the cheaper product.
Secondly and I agree with Schild on this one, many people use downloading as a message to content providers. I think it is a stronger signal than refusing to buy a product.
If I refuse to buy a product it might have different reasons. It might be too expensive for example or I might just not like it or I might not even know that the particular product even exists. If it is downloaded instead a clear signal is sent. We like your product or else we wouldn't download it but we refuse to pay your price for it or live with your arbitrary restrictions.
That a significant part of downloadres are just cheapskates that don't want to pay anything is surely right I just don't think that it is the only reason. I for myself take the route of just not buying things that don't suit me.
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Margalis
Terracotta Army
Posts: 12335
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My main fear is that in 10 years nothing I paid for will work. My games won't be able to contact their authentication servers, my HD-DVDs won't play, etc.
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vampirehipi23: I would enjoy a book written by a monkey and turned into a movie rather than this.
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Fordel
Terracotta Army
Posts: 8306
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I'd have to agree that is my largest concern. Having the 'responsibility' of maintaining my media taken away from me. I still have a bunch of old Games/VHS/Cassette media, and players for all of them. Shit, My Father still has 8-Tracks  . As long as I maintain the media and the devices to play them, they'll work. Like, sure, its annoying to have to put in that old game CD every time I want to play, but it will work every time. I don't have to wonder if the company that made it exists or not, or if they decided to turn off the servers to register it or whatever. I get a real sense of ownership, I paid for something, It's mine to use, the end. All of the new trends with Media and Copy protection, do their damnedest to take that ownership away from me. Usually so they can resell it to me half a dozen times. Maybe I'll just stick to buying books, no one can randomly turn those off. Yet.
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and the gate is like I TOO AM CAPABLE OF SPEECH
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Venkman
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11536
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We can Fahrenheit 451 them though!  In all seriousness, I have the same concern. I care slightly less about it now because I'm really not buying a lot of games I expect to be perpetual. I don't keep around old OSes, and have ditched most of my old consoles. I am really not a "gamer" in the way most of the folks here are. I couldn't give a shit about the older games, whether they're available as abandonware or not. But it is obviously an issue for a lot of people, the sort of people who spend the money keeping this industry afloat. The industry is largely ignoring them by letting middlemanaged committees design terrible, unintuitive and nigh unsustainable solutions. That's not to say the industry shouldn't bother. They just really need to be smarter about it.
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Jain Zar
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1362
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I'd have to agree that is my largest concern. Having the 'responsibility' of maintaining my media taken away from me. I still have a bunch of old Games/VHS/Cassette media, and players for all of them. Shit, My Father still has 8-Tracks  . As long as I maintain the media and the devices to play them, they'll work. Like, sure, its annoying to have to put in that old game CD every time I want to play, but it will work every time. I don't have to wonder if the company that made it exists or not, or if they decided to turn off the servers to register it or whatever. I get a real sense of ownership, I paid for something, It's mine to use, the end. All of the new trends with Media and Copy protection, do their damnedest to take that ownership away from me. Usually so they can resell it to me half a dozen times. Maybe I'll just stick to buying books, no one can randomly turn those off. Yet. Like the OP, you speak much truth. And don't worry, they are working on Books too. Kindle anyone? Companies don't want us to own anything, and would be happy to make us rebuy the same content dozens of times. Its basically why Blu Ray and HD DVD were pushed at us. Luckily corporations don't have TOTAL control yet and it hasn't really worked out. Why make new content to sell when they can resell us the same shit over and over again? Heck, I even see it in hobby gaming. How many different editions of Dungeons & Dragons are there? Hell, newer games have plenty. Warhammer 40K is 11 years old and its on its 5th full edition now. (Fantasy is a little older and on its SEVENTH.) They want us to rebuy basically the same stuff. Though it seems as if media companies are the worst, treating us all like thieves. EULAs, crap like Steam, Starforce... it almost demands people pirate to actually get to enjoy the product they bought!
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