Ubi DRM: Their Side of the Story

[tgr]

The main difference with physical books is that there's a noticeable difference in quality between a new book and a book that's been read a hundred times, and hence a strong incentive to buy new rather than used.  What makes digital media special is that it doesn't tend to degrade with use and it can be duplicated with no loss in quality, so there is frequently very little benefit to buying a new copy.

I dp agree that if letting more than one person use one piece of media without paying separate fees to the copyright holder is intrinsically evil we should be torching those commie libraries first and foremost.

Not every used book is read 100 times. I've often bought used books when I were younger, because I couldn't afford new books, and I didn't want the pressure to read something within a certain period of time as I would've been if I borrowed the books from a library. I've also resold books because 1) I'd read them once and had consumed that story, and/or 2) I had to clear up space for new books. This is normal. It's even environmentally friendly.

Hell, I've even given books away because I were done with them and I didn't need cash at the time. If the book publishing industry were to treat its reading customers the same way as the gaming industry, then THAT would be illegal/useless as well. And I guess giving away or reselling my DVDs will have to be illegal and made impossible as well, since that's obviously not degrading in quality either. We'd best get those activation servers up for those DVDs as soon as possible, to thwart this blatant stealing of companies' money.

Oh, and just for the record, yes, I'm being ironic. I believe that the first-sale doctrine either applies or should apply to games and programs, as long as I sell or give the physical box it came in. If I make a copy of it, then that's copyright infringement, and that's a whole other ballpark, and is actively prohibited, whether what I'm copying is a game, program, book or a car.

[Fordel]

As long as pirating is easy, people will do it. All the DRM in the world doesn't make it any more difficult for the common user once the game is cracked and distributed. The only way to combat that, is to make the legit version just as easy and convenient.

Steam and iTunes solved this shit years ago. I own games thanks to Steam that I wouldn't have normally purchased OR pirated, it was just that cheap and easy. iTunes is the same thing, I could go find that song/album on the intertubes, but fuck it, only a dollar on iTunes and it's right here.


It's either that, or be Blizzard. 

[UnSub]

Steam and iTunes solved this shit years ago.

You have an interesting definition of 'solved'. Piracy is still a huge issue in both games and music. And I'd argue that both the music and games industries are only going to support a limited number of these solutions. Apple and Valve have 'solved' it in so far as they have carved a profitable business in offering those services. Could Ubisoft match Valve's Steam offer? Probably not.

The issue is less with game re-selling and more that major distributors are also being the competition in game sales. Second hand bookstores typically don't sit inside your local Borders. Plus video games have such a short shelf life anyway. Any title more than 6 months old gets viewed as something of an antique.

That said: I own my games and I don't resell them. Broke my heart when I had to go through my old Amiga collection, throw out the boxes with no disks and then sell the rest on eBay.

[Threash]

Steam and iTunes solved this shit years ago.

You have an interesting definition of 'solved'. Piracy is still a huge issue in both games and music. And I'd argue that both the music and games industries are only going to support a limited number of these solutions. Apple and Valve have 'solved' it in so far as they have carved a profitable business in offering those services. Could Ubisoft match Valve's Steam offer? Probably not.

The issue is less with game re-selling and more that major distributors are also being the competition in game sales. Second hand bookstores typically don't sit inside your local Borders. Plus video games have such a short shelf life anyway. Any title more than 6 months old gets viewed as something of an antique.

That said: I own my games and I don't resell them. Broke my heart when I had to go through my old Amiga collection, throw out the boxes with no disks and then sell the rest on eBay.

Maybe I'm completely clueless but as far as i know you can't pirate steam or itunes stuff can you?

[tgr]

Maybe I'm completely clueless but as far as i know you can't pirate steam or itunes stuff can you?

Everything that's going to be decoded into a human-parseable format is pirateable, the question is just how much work is involved.

[Samwise]

Maybe I'm completely clueless but as far as i know you can't pirate steam or itunes stuff can you?

Everything that's going to be decoded into a human-parseable format is pirateable, the question is just how much work is involved.

This.  But what's made Steam and iTunes so successful in the face of free alternatives is that it's more convenient to buy it from those services than it is to pirate it.  Which sort of pokes a hole in the "everyone just wants free shit and the only solution is to make everything as difficult as possible for paying customers" theory IMO.

[KallDrexx]

Steam also knows how to market things and run sales to encourage purchasing.

[naum]

Maybe I'm completely clueless but as far as i know you can't pirate steam or itunes stuff can you?

Everything that's going to be decoded into a human-parseable format is pirateable, the question is just how much work is involved.

This.  But what's made Steam and iTunes so successful in the face of free alternatives is that it's more convenient to buy it from those services than it is to pirate it.  Which sort of pokes a hole in the "everyone just wants free shit and the only solution is to make everything as difficult as possible for paying customers" theory IMO.

Steam and iTunes make it drop dead easy to get stuff you want.

And iTunes dropped the DRM a while back.

[naum]

Naum, when you contradict everything you say like that and moot your own analogy you can save everyone else a lot of time by just not posting it.

In the meantime, Triforcer attempting to rationalize used games is warming the cockles of my black heart.

OK. Here's another metaphor.

You own your house. But everything in it (TV, fridge, furniture, etc.…) you "license" to use and that can be revoked (and removed) on a whim.

Or your car. You own the hunk of metal, but the ignition, radio, electrical/computer system, etc.… is "licensed" by a provider that can disable all on a whim, as specified in the small print when you "purchased" the product.

Point was, you don't "own" your games (not anymore). Read the small print in the EULA — you purchase a license to access software on a machine(s).

[tgr]

They've even found out that a quick sale leads to a lot of units sold, even long(ish) after the sale's ended. I've no idea why, but it's there.

Or your car. You own the hunk of metal, but the ignition, radio, electrical/computer system, etc.… is "licensed" by a provider that can disable all on a whim, as specified in the small print when you "purchased" the product.

I'd love to see the world where a car manufacturer could walk up to someone's car or TV and disable it for some "EULA violation", without serious repercussions. It sounds like utopia.

[Koyasha]

....er, because when a copy of the game was originally purchased, they received money.  piracy and a used goods market aren't the same thing. 

So?  They received that money independent of whether you purchase the used game or not.  If you don't purchase the used game, they receive $0.  If you do, they receive $0.  They already received their money from the original sale.  They have no reason to make it easy or even possible for that original buyer to resell, trade, loan, or give away the game.

This is not to say that they should insert restrictive measures in order to prevent the game from being resold.  I agree with BioWare's current strategy for that - add extra value for original purchases, give a positive benefit for buying new, rather than trying to restrict resales.  But when they decide what sort of restrictions to put on the software, there is no reason for them to make reselling the software easier.

Further, I agree with Samwise in that used games are probably more damaging and cause more loss to the publisher/developer than pirated games, because someone buying a used game is someone you know is willing to spend money on your product, as opposed to a pirate, who may or may not be willing to spend more than $0 in obtaining the product regardless of the ease or difficulty of pirating it.  The person that bought the used game is verly likely to have bought it new if that option weren't available, while they pirate very well may not buy at all even if it were impossible to pirate.

[Samwise]

Further, I agree with Samwise in that used games are probably more damaging and cause more loss to the publisher/developer than pirated games, because someone buying a used game is someone you know is willing to spend money on your product, as opposed to a pirate, who may or may not be willing to spend more than $0 in obtaining the product regardless of the ease or difficulty of pirating it.  The person that bought the used game is verly likely to have bought it new if that option weren't available, while they pirate very well may not buy at all even if it were impossible to pirate.

Now, if I may   for a second...

My suspicion has long been that all of the MPAA/RIAA/etc hurf blurf about pirates and the attempts to inflate the supposed damage done by them is just laying the PR groundwork for chipping away at the REAL danger to their revenue, which is the set of rights given to consumers by current copyright law (namely the concepts of first sale and fair use).

I'm aware that this violates the rule of "don't ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence," but I have a hard time wrapping my head around them being dumb enough to believe their own propaganda.

[HaemishM]

If you're going to ascribe a conspiracy to the MPAA/RIAA bluster, you might as well get it right. It's not about fair use or first sale concepts. In fact, it's not about the consumers at all. It's about controlling the methods of distribution so that the commodities of the market (the artists, musicians, etc.) have to go through them to get paid. The whole concept of an artist recording music/making a movie, selling it direct to consumers and giving no cuts to the music label or movie company is frightening. Their entire business is built on being the arbiter of what content gets consumed and how much money the artist gets from the creation of said content. Lose control of commodities, your entire business is fucked.

Big-time video game publishers are the same way. They aren't really needed anymore for distribution or marketing, just for development seed money, which can be gotten outside of a major publisher.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Further, I agree with Samwise in that used games are probably more damaging and cause more loss to the publisher/developer than pirated games, because someone buying a used game is someone you know is willing to spend money on your product, as opposed to a pirate, who may or may not be willing to spend more than $0 in obtaining the product regardless of the ease or difficulty of pirating it.  The person that bought the used game is verly likely to have bought it new if that option weren't available, while they pirate very well may not buy at all even if it were impossible to pirate.

Now, if I may   for a second...

My suspicion has long been that all of the MPAA/RIAA/etc hurf blurf about pirates and the attempts to inflate the supposed damage done by them is just laying the PR groundwork for chipping away at the REAL danger to their revenue, which is the set of rights given to consumers by current copyright law (namely the concepts of first sale and fair use).

I'm aware that this violates the rule of "don't ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence," but I have a hard time wrapping my head around them being dumb enough to believe their own propaganda.

It's no conspiracy and it's not even that they believe their bullshit, well not everyone. It's that it's simply easier to blame pirates for poor sales than it is to take responsibility for a bad game or movie.

[kildorn]

Now, if I may   for a second...

My suspicion has long been that all of the MPAA/RIAA/etc hurf blurf about pirates and the attempts to inflate the supposed damage done by them is just laying the PR groundwork for chipping away at the REAL danger to their revenue, which is the set of rights given to consumers by current copyright law (namely the concepts of first sale and fair use).

I'm aware that this violates the rule of "don't ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence," but I have a hard time wrapping my head around them being dumb enough to believe their own propaganda.

The MPAA has already made a number of adamant declarations that it's a violation of Fair Use to make any form of backup of a DVD for any reason. They have it very much in their sights as something that needs to die, and aren't really hiding that fact.

I don't think they're using Piracy to drive that, however. They're using the DMCA as their justification that making a backup copy of a disc is circumvention and thus illegal.

[Lantyssa]

They've even found out that a quick sale leads to a lot of units sold, even long(ish) after the sale's ended. I've no idea why, but it's there.

People tell their friends how awesome the game is and they want to play.  It's already been vetted, so the extra cost is made up by not having to buy lots of games to find the good ones.

[Samwise]

The MPAA has already made a number of adamant declarations that it's a violation of Fair Use to make any form of backup of a DVD for any reason. They have it very much in their sights as something that needs to die, and aren't really hiding that fact.

I don't think they're using Piracy to drive that, however. They're using the DMCA as their justification that making a backup copy of a disc is circumvention and thus illegal.

The DMCA was very much driven by their bleating about piracy though.  And it is a very effective wedge, since now if they want to legally prohibit someone from doing something otherwise perfectly legal with their purchased media, all they have to do is put some sort of protection in place that purports to prevent that activity, and that activity is now illegal.  When you can effectively write your own laws by slightly modifying your packaging you don't have to spend nearly as much money on lobbyists.

[eldaec]

Libraries would not exist today if the power of

I believe that the first-sale doctrine either applies or should apply to games and programs

And flat out does apply in countries with actual consumer protection laws. Microsoft fell foul of this in Europe when they started trying to pretend that it is illegal to sell on windows without giving them a kick-back.

....er, because when a copy of the game was originally purchased, they received money.  piracy and a used goods market aren't the same thing.  

So?  They received that money independent of whether you purchase the used game or not.  If you don't purchase the used game, they receive $0.  If you do, they receive $0.  They already received their money from the original sale.  They have no reason to make it easy or even possible for that original buyer to resell, trade, loan, or give away the game.

Again, except in countries with meaningful consumer protection law. I might be assuming incorrectly that most people in this thread are American, but a lot of countries take the rights of the individual more seriously and try to prevent the kind of corporate sharp practice described here that is nominally targeting pirates but is actually aimed at the secondary market.

This is part of why bullshit piracy stats irritate me. The pretence that activation based DRM is aimed at pirates is what stops consumer protection organisations being able to act against it.

EDIT

Actually the other big DRM driver I'm not mentioning is internal career politics.

Empty suit makes up unprovable statistic about piracy.
Empty suit sells huge DRM project that gives him a finger in every product across the organisation.
Empty suit claims success based upon unprovable statistics showing how much of corporate profit is ascribable directly to him (and it is always him).
Empty suit gets promoted before anyone starts asking serious questions which anyway can only be answered with yet more unprovable statistics.

[tgr]

Libraries would not exist today if the power of

I believe that the first-sale doctrine either applies or should apply to games and programs

And flat out does apply in countries with actual consumer protection laws. Microsoft fell foul of this in Europe when they started trying to pretend that it is illegal to sell on windows without giving them a kick-back.

Libraries would not exist today if the power of ... what? :P

Just for reference, I'm from Norway, and I am used to having actual consumer protection laws, which is why I've been so vocal here. Well, that, and the fact I'm getting annoyed with the DRM itself.

But when you mention microsoft, it's the case where they sued a guy for buying office as a student package and resold the programs individually, isn't it?

[Sheepherder]

Who cares if someone buys a used copy instead of a new copy? It's common for books, I don't see people bitching about people selling (or hell, GIVING or LENDING) a book to others, what makes games so damn special that rules regarding "THOU SHALT NOT RESELL" are actually even considered being allowed?

Legal status, the same reason the moral brigade uses to condemn pirates.  Seriously people, those paint chips are not good for you.

[eldaec]

...publishing corporations was then what it is now.

Yeah, finishing sentences is pretty chill.

[eldaec]

Who cares if someone buys a used copy instead of a new copy? It's common for books, I don't see people bitching about people selling (or hell, GIVING or LENDING) a book to others, what makes games so damn special that rules regarding "THOU SHALT NOT RESELL" are actually even considered being allowed?

Legal status, the same reason the moral brigade uses to condemn pirates.  Seriously people, those paint chips are not good for you.

ok, I have no idea what you are arguing for/against here.


Against paint chips I guess.


I'm down with that.

[Sheepherder]

You can't be against piracy and for used games without the use of aforementioned paint chips.  They both utilize the same legal argument (licensing rather than purchasing), which arbitrarily (but legally) differentiates software from other consumer goods.

[Rasix]

Yes, you can.  Quite easily really. Takes a brain though.

My arguments against used games stem mostly towards snot and finger prints on my physical media.

[Sheepherder]

Okay, lets roleplay it:

a) You are morally against piracy because the artist is not compensated, or the license is not legally transferable.
b) You are for resale.

Create a case where b) does not contradict a).

[Rasix]

a) I'm against theft because it's theft.  

b) I go into Gamestop and trade Bioshock for credit towards something less shitty.  They sell it to some rube.  

I don't give a shit about your analogies or exercises in morality, honestly.   You're not nearly as clever as you think you are.

[eldaec]

You can't be against piracy and for used games without the use of aforementioned paint chips.  They both utilize the same legal argument (licensing rather than purchasing), which arbitrarily (but legally) differentiates software from other consumer goods.

Congratulations you just invalidated the concept of design rights in manufacturing. Fuck, with a legal mind like that you are truly a loss to the profession.

EDIT : Not my profession you understand, I have a real job.

[eldaec]

a) I'm against theft because it's theft. 

It's not actually, theft is taking the property of another with the intent to permanently deprive that party of the use of the property.

Its copyright infringement, which is its own thing but still makes you a very naughty boy.

[Samwise]

That's kind of like how I'm against tautologies because they're tautologies.

[Rasix]

It is what it is. 

[tgr]

Okay, lets roleplay it:

a) You are morally against piracy because the artist is not compensated, or the license is not legally transferable.
b) You are for resale.

Create a case where b) does not contradict a).

So, I assume you're saying that games are so special that the first-sale doctrine doesn't apply to them because the software industry has decided to try to tell us what we can and can't do, despite what the laws in a fair bit of countries say they can or can't allow/disallow.

I'll clue you in (yet again) to the fact that while someone goes into gamestop and buys a used game, that does not automatically mean just a lost sale. The guy might not even HAVE enough money for a full-priced game, so he never went into gamestop with the intention of buying a fullsized game to start with, so in reality it isn't a lost sale at all. On the other hand, some other guy might have gone into gamestop and sold the very same game the first guy is going to buy, and he then used the money generated from that sale to buy another full-priced game. He wouldn't have been able to afford it otherwise, but now he does.

Suddenly, the used games market has facilitated the following: a full-price game has been sold, the publisher wins. An old game was sold to facilitate buying said full-priced game. One gamer wins, gamestop wins. Same old game was bought by another gamer. One gamer wins, gamestop wins. Everybody wins.

So, tell me, how is this such a bad thing that it must be fought against by stripping consumers of their rights and making the experience for legal customers suck ass through a straw?

[AutomaticZen]

I believe his point is the game companies hate both equally when it comes to the bottomline.  Or something.  Whatever.

[LK]

I'd love to see the world where a car manufacturer could walk up to someone's car or TV and disable it for some "EULA violation", without serious repercussions. It sounds like utopia.

Car chases would be extremely rare under those circumstances, that's for certain.

[eldaec]

I believe his point is the game companies hate both equally when it comes to the bottomline.  Or something.  Whatever.

No, I'm pretty sure his point is that they are both morally equivalent to paint chips. Or something.

[Sheepherder]

a) I'm against theft because it's theft. 

b) I go into Gamestop and trade Bioshock for credit towards something less shitty.  They sell it to some rube.   

I don't give a shit about your analogies or exercises in morality, honestly.   You're not nearly as clever as you think you are.

Got it, it's fine as long as you pay someone money.

So, I assume you're saying that games are so special that the first-sale doctrine doesn't apply to them because the software industry has decided to try to tell us what we can and can't do, despite what the laws in a fair bit of countries say they can or can't allow/disallow.

Except first-sale does not exist everywhere, and the only jurisdiction that matters tends to uphold EULA's.

Suddenly, the used games market has facilitated the following: a full-price game has been sold, the publisher wins. An old game was sold to facilitate buying said full-priced game. One gamer wins, gamestop wins. Same old game was bought by another gamer. One gamer wins, gamestop wins. Everybody wins.

Three games for the price of two, and neither the artist(s) nor their agencies assented to the change in price.  But hey, as long as you pay someone you're not stealing nor infringing upon an intellectual property, right?