Quote: Make a fart application, become a millionaire :P I'm surprised that Apple, who are so concerned about their image, are letting these low grade applications in.

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/12/iphone-fart-app.html

Quote: Get a whiff of this. Some iPhone developers are still raking in large piles of cash with their apps, and recently a fart application made nearly $10,000 in a single day.

look at number 3 on the list 'chopper' developed by a kiwi guy, he said he was making US$50,000 a day off that at the start ( indie console developers (wii/xbox360/ps3) can only dream about such figures )

wasnt there an app that just had a picture of a diamond + the guy make a couple of thousand off that :)

in related news, apparently apple have recently ordered 100million 8gb flash chips.
i.e. theyre not expecting the bottom to drop out of the iphone/ipod market

Quote: Original post by WilyCoder

Quote: Original post by phantom

IMO having/obtaining software, or indeed ANY digital data, which you don't have a right to have SHOULD be treated the same as theft. The laws have been left behind and neeed to be updated to reflect the world we are in. You are still using a product which you have no right to be using, as to how you obtained that product shouldn't, imo, factor into how it is treated when it comes to being a criminal offense. I don't care if a copy still remains of the thing you are using, the simple fact is to use it you should have paid money for it, you didn't, you are a criminal. End of story.

I disagree. Victimless crimes are not crimes in my opinion. It should be no surprise that I disagree with the drug laws as well.

Laws exist not to prevent you from doing certain things, but to protect other people. Copying bits does not deprive the original owner of anything.

I agree and disagree with your statement, the creator of the game is the victim but treating this as theft is just to harsh, it's like when they used to cut off peoples hands for stealing an apple.

If someone is found to have pirated software then they should have to pay the retail price to the creator of the software
.

Quote: Original post by Talroth
Flooding p2p networks with fake copies of your software just makes you look bad and wastes bandwidth.

I know Cliff Harris of Positech Games does this, and he swears by it. Given he's one of the indies that makes a living from games and seems to analyse everything he does, he's probably got a point.

Quote: Original post by CodaKiller
I really don't think many people would spend a few hours torrenting software only to play it for a couple hours then go out and buy the game.

People are lazy by nature, they are not going to spend their hard eared money on a game that they can play for free that is right at their finger tips.

I think the lazy part is the key really, I copied games on floppies from friends in my youth because it was easy, if i saw a cool game at a friends house why would i go 20km to the nearest videogame store when i could just copy it right then and there ? Now its pretty much the same, I still almost never buy games at a normal game store, only some impulse purchases if i happen to be near one.

I buy most of my games through steam these days even though it sometimes costs more than it would to buy the same game at a local store, The fact that its convenient is far more important for me than the actual cost.

The only thing I'm really missing is good digital distribution of Movies, why can't the movie industry allow their customers to watch high quality streams of new movies at a reasonable price ?

Right now we have to wait a few months for the DVD release to even be able to watch a movie legally at home which basically means i lose interest in a movie before its available in a format i like and end up watching it first when its airs on TV instead).

Quote: Original post by phantom

Quote: Original post by phresnel
So, the last time you bought a car (an object you only buy every few years, for a price that you can afford only every few years) or another expensive device, did you buy proper magazines or solely relied on reports in the internet, or did you drive that car / try out the device before finally deciding to keep it?

And lets say you wanted to buy a car, but the car you wanted didn't allow you to take test drives would you go into the show room, hot wire the car and drive out with it?

IMO having/obtaining software, or indeed ANY digital data, which you don't have a right to have SHOULD be treated the same as theft. The laws have been left behind and neeed to be updated to reflect the world we are in. You are still using a product which you have no right to be using, as to how you obtained that product shouldn't, imo, factor into how it is treated when it comes to being a criminal offense. I don't care if a copy still remains of the thing you are using, the simple fact is to use it you should have paid money for it, you didn't, you are a criminal. End of story.

Maybe then, and with some high profile reports/court cases resulting in something concrete, the 'ordinary' person won't see it as ok to do these things.

That's pretty much the only way to take care of it because it crimialises the criminals and not the honest owners (with most copy protection software working the otherway around, assuming you are a criminal and asking you to prove you aren't).

I think the key difference is that a copy is a copy, For alot of people making a copy of a piece of software isn't like hotwiring a car in a showroom, its like going to the showroom, look at the car, then go home and build an identical one for personal use which is perfectly legal with the current legislation when it comes to physical products, (With software it would perhaps be like having a robot analyze the car in the showroom and build a copy for you without you having to supply any raw materials which would still be perfectly legal, patents and trademark rights only prevent you from using the copy commercially).

The problem when it comes to moral issues is that IP is an artificial construct originally created to encourage creative work, The connection copyright infringement->theft isn't natural and probably never will be,
Most countries treat the issues differently from a legal point of view simply because it is two very different crimes and they should thus be treated differently.

Personally i think copyright should go back to what it used to be, a time limited distribution monopoly.
The time limit is far too long as well right now (It has been extended several times in the past and I don't really think people would create less software, movies, music, or other art if the copyright period was reduced to 20 years or even less).

One cannot own the expression of an idea imo, copyright however does just that, it grants "ownership" of the expression to a single party for a limited period of time (Alot of people are pushing for the time to be even longer though) , any comparisons to physical goods is plain silly imo.

Copyright can only be justified as a tool to encourage investment in creative works, It doesn't need to and shouldn't ever be used to turn expessions of ideas into the property of any individual or company. (It is getting dangerously close to that as the lobby groups push to extend the protection time further and further into the future)

There are plenty of intangibles that can be 'stolen'. "Steal a kiss" "Steal a moment" "Steal a base"
Heck, if someone copies customer data from a data warehouse somewhere without permission, people hardly (ever?) bawk at someone referring to it as "stealing customer data". A game though? NO! That's "pirating!"

I suspect that small-scale copyright infringement being blasted when referred to as stealing in a linguistic sense is born from self justification.

On a personal note, I don't believe that every pirated copy is a lost sale. I do, however, believe that piracy has a significant effect on PC game income.

Quote: Original post by necreia
There are plenty of intangibles that can be 'stolen'. "Steal a kiss" "Steal a moment" "Steal a base"
Heck, if someone copies customer data from a data warehouse somewhere without permission, people hardly (ever?) bawk at someone referring to it as "stealing customer data". A game though? NO! That's "pirating!"

I suspect that small-scale copyright infringement being blasted when referred to as stealing in a linguistic sense is born from self justification.

On a personal note, I don't believe that every pirated copy is a lost sale. I do, however, believe that piracy has a significant effect on PC game income.

Ofcourse, i was mearly stating that its annoying as hell when people keep labeling one crime as another to make it sound worse just to make people feel sorry for them and when it comes to copyright infringement things are very different simply because noone actually owns the bytes being copied.

Copyright grants a person the exclusive right to determine how those bytes are distributed for a limited period of time (In sweden this "limited" period of time extends to 70 years after the death of the author (if there are several authors its based on whomever dies last), you are not stealing his bytes, you are infringing on his government granted right to control the distribution of those bytes. (Whichever is worse depends entierly on the scale and wether the infringer profits from it or not imo) (Anyone who makes a work available to the general public without permission is worse than a simple thief who nicks a copy from a local store imo but i still consider the crimes to be too different to be compared easily)

Like intellectual property, regular property relies on the rules of society to determine ownership. That's why you can claim to own property simply because you've got a piece of paper with your name on it, or you can own that car you've dumped on the side of the the public street. In a sense, I guess that would make copyright infringement analogous to tresspass or squatting. Back on topic, I don't see anything wrong with describing copyright as being "owned" by someone, especially since I can't think of a better verb.

Quote: Original post by Trapper Zoid
Like intellectual property, regular property relies on the rules of society to determine ownership. That's why you can claim to own property simply because you've got a piece of paper with your name on it, or you can own that car you've dumped on the side of the the public street. In a sense, I guess that would make copyright infringement analogous to tresspass or squatting. Back on topic, I don't see anything wrong with describing copyright as being "owned" by someone, especially since I can't think of a better verb.

The way I see it you own the copyright, not the work covered by it, the actual work is part of our culture and can't be owned while the copyright really can't be stolen (Unless someone forces you to sign it over to them ofcourse).

Copyright needs to be respected though since its really the only major incentive available for people to invest in creative works and its also a card that indie developers should play. Labeling copyright infringement as theft doesn't help people understand the problem or the reasons for copyright to exist and if people doesn't understand why copyright exists they sure as hell won't respect it.

Personally i think copyright laws are in need of a major overhaul because I fully understand why people don't respect a law that has been so horribly transformed in order to serve the interests of a small wealthy minority.

What we really need is a copyright legislation that people can respect, not because they fear the reprecussions if they violate the law but because they understand and agree with the reasons for the laws existance. (A Law that the people do not respect shouldn't even exist in a democratic society, and the only reason current copyright law is tolerated is because its so darn easy to get away with violating it)

Quote: Original post by SimonForsman
The way I see it you own the copyright, not the work covered by it, the actual work is part of our culture and can't be owned while the copyright really can't be stolen (Unless someone forces you to sign it over to them ofcourse).

I see it more as the actual work is temporarily owned (like a lease) by the rights holder, who can then dictate who can do what with it. When the lease is up, it becomes common property.

I do agree that copyright laws need a major overhaul and that the duration has become too long, for much the same reasons you suggest. Copyright's a two way deal between the creator and society. If society doesn't think the creator is keeping up their end of the deal, neither will they.

More specifically, I want to find whoever thought it was a good idea to put those unskippable piracy sermons at the front of legit DVDs and in the opening trailers at the cinema and whack them with a cluestick for failing Common Sense 101.