Piracy – The solution?

April 17, 2011 Chilling_Silence Personal Rantings

After my last blog post, I got thinking about the problem:
Copyright holders (Such as film makers, artists and game creators) want to protect their livelihood.

What the new Copyright laws seem to be more interested in is targeting the casual user, here’s why:

1) The clever people who do it all the time for their own personal use, are smart enough to cover their tracks and make themselves relatively un-findable
2) It’s already possible to track down people who  sell them, no law change was needed to do that
3) That leaves the casual person who figures they’ll either try their luck, or doesn’t think about the legality behind what they’re doing

So we’ve established what the problem is, and who’s being targeted, but what about a solution to the problem? So far the law seems more like scare-tactics rather than anything else, to scare the people in the aforementioned Group #3 away from doing it (Nevermind they could turn to those in Group #2 for a physical DVD / CD copy of audio / music etc).

But how do you actually tackle the problem?

Without a doubt, we live more than ever in a generation that doesn’t believe in delayed gratification, we’ve become a very “here and now” kind of culture. I certainly have that kind of mentality to say the least. If I go to the drive-through at McDonalds, I’m probably going to begin feeling impatient if I have to wait anything longer than about 60 seconds to get my meal.

So again, what’s the solution?

Well I got talking with a friend of mine over the course of the weekend about how much computer & gaming culture has shifted over the last even 4-5 years.

Games have become bigger in sheer size (Better looking graphics and things), the average persons HDD has gone up from 120 gigabytes to around 1-2 terrabytes (So they can store more), and connections to the internet and other networked PCs are getting faster and faster.

We talked about how we’d all come with a couple of legit games, but if somebody suggested people all start playing something you didn’t have, you’d usually just grab a copy off somebody else there.

But times have changed. Significantly.

The culture in the last few years has changed from one of “sharing is caring”, to one that esteems users who have legitimate copies of the games they play.

Enter: Steam.

Steam could well be every gamers dream. It could also be what the music and movie industry needs to look into.

With Steam, you buy a game, at a significantly lower cost than it would be for you to go to a physical store and purchase a boxed-set. It’s downloaded instantly across the internet to your PC, and when you purchase a game you even get the opportunity to give a friend a “guest pass” to try the game out for a few days for free also. If they like it, they can buy it and keep it. I bought a copy of Team Fortress 2 today, and was able to pass on a “guest pass” to a mate to try. There’s a good chance that because of that, he’s also going to end up buying the game too!

Steam games costs less, because there’s no having to manufacture a physical CD or DVD, no shipping it across the world, no brick and mortar store that has to take a slice of the pie to pay for their upkeep, no sales staff to swipe your EFTPOS card.

It’s convenient too, you get the game right away, and Steam even alerts you when another friend is playing that game so you can jump right on in and join them.

Then there’s the competitive side, that really has the geeks among us coming back for more. Achievements. By doing certain things in a game (Such as beating a lap-time in a car race, or killing a total of 1,000 bad-guys) you unlock achievements that are usually in the form of some sort of “badge” associated with your player / account. They show other players just how good you are, how hard you’ve worked at it, and how dedicated to the game you are.

Steam games are all locked to an account. While there are ways to pirate games bought from Steam, it’s a lot more convenient to just fork out USD$10 for your favorite game (Instead of NZD$100) and just buy a legit copy.

Why can’t the music and movie industry adopt this approach more?

iTunes made great headway in this area, and ANY iPhone or iPod Touch user will testify just how great the likes of the iTunes Store and App Store are, because they make your content immediately available, they’re usually lower-cost than other alternatives (Such as a physical CD), and they take a lot of the hassle out of making a purchase.

Amazon has also opened their “cloud music service” which allows you to store your music that you’ve purchased on the internet on their servers, and then stream it from the internet to either your computer, your stereo, your cellphone, anywhere, any time.

It’s a step in the right direction, but it’s not quite enough. It’s still not quite easy enough, and that’s the factor that Steam really capitalizes on, the fact that the human race seems to be getting lazier.

I’m not the kind of person who cares about a physical DVD case, but my wife is. For me, I’d rather hit a button in iTunes, buy the movie, go make some popcorn for a few minutes, then watch it by the time I’ve come back. Can’t be bothered walking or driving to the store, hunting through rows of DVDs. Give me something I can browse through with the flick of the wrist, either on a Tablet, Cellphone, or with a computer mouse. Much easier.

Has Steam changed the gaming culture by making things easier? Definitely! In fact I’d be willing to bet that the vast majority of gamers would prefer to buy a game legally through Steam than to pirate it. The ‘norm’ is no longer to just grab it from a friend, but to fire up your Steam Account and buy the game! This was without the help of any legal intervention! No laws had to change, no lawyers had to get involved. Just one company, with a good idea, and an open mentality about “how things can be done”.

Now, how can we bring that culture into the music and movie industry?

I’d love to hear your thoughts, as always, leave me a comment 🙂

EDIT: It turns out I’m not the only one who’s had this brainwave: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10720042

amazon, Copyright, Copyright infringement, Gaming, itunes,