Piracy: -noun, plural -cies.

1. The practice of a pirate; robbery or illegal violence at sea.
2. The unauthorized reproduction or use of a copyrighted book, recording, television program, patented invention, trademarked product, etc.: The record industry is beset with piracy.
3. Also called stream capture. Geology. diversion of the upper part of one stream by the headward growth of another.

It’s funny how one word can have so many different meanings isn’t it? In this article though, we will be focusing on the second definition, that of copyright piracy, but still the word itself has many different connotations. This is the first of a series of articles looking at piracy in its many forms, how it is done, how we can stop it, and why it occurs in the first place.

When someone says Pirate, what springs to mind? A Black Beard-esque figure with a hook hand and a speech impediment? A guy sitting in a nondescript room torrenting the latest films? How about a sneaky hawking merchant selling bootleg DVD’s in a marketplace? Or even to some people, a hero trying to bring down a corrupt and outdated industry. Read on and see if your opinion changes at all.

The Software Pirate

I think my first experience of software piracy was back when I was still very young, maybe twelve or thirteen. A friend of mine had one of those “chipped” playstations, and these weird gold discs as opposed to the black ones. That alone was pretty cool, but when he told me he could get any game he wanted for a fiver a disc I was amazed. Hence was my introduction into the world of software piracy.

At first it seemed too wild to be true. I looked in various PS magazines and found that chipping, as it was called was dangerous, voided your warranty, broke your machine and was very, very illegal. As far as the first part goes, all I can say is that eventually I was given that playstation- and it still works. The second part of course was very true. It didn’t stop my friend though, today he’s moved up from grey stations to the Xbox 360.

The point in case here is that the law does not discourage software pirates. And with the advance of PC technology and the internet, Piracy is now even easier than ever. All you need to do is download the image file of your chosen game, burn it and voila, you have your game. Chipping consoles is easier too; firmware updates mean that any moron can now play copied games on their consoles without even thinking about a soldering iron.

Then of course there’s PC piracy. It’s so damn easy, all you need to do is torrent a file and apply a crack. Anyone with more than a few months of computer experience can do it. All the hard part of cracking the game’s protection is done by someone else, for FREE. The crackers themselves break the protection on games for many reasons. For many of them, the challenge of breaking the system and gaining some recognition from it is more than enough to justify their time. Read a short piece called the mind of a hacker by the mentor for a glimpse into this mindset.

So we’ve established that the Law does not stop piracy, and with apps like peer guardian, the few people who are worried about being caught can rest easier. So how do we stop Software piracy? The answer seems to be a digital arms race between publishers trying to develop bigger and better copy protection, and crackers efforts to break them. And there are so many crackers out there that no copy protection can hold up to the sheer number of attempts to break it, let alone the efforts of the lower numbers of coders who are highly skilled.

Nevertheless, the video games industry (and the software industry in general) seem to have blinded themselves to this fact. Adopting the politician approach of sticking their fingers in their ears and going nahnahnahnahanahnah! Whenever anyone points out that the current system just isn’t working. Point in case, Mass effect on the PC, by Bioware.

Do a Google search Mass effect activation. Take a look at a few of the websites that come up. The general feeling (outside the official forums anyway) is that people have been ripped off- and it’s easy to see why.

Three activations, and after that your serial key becomes null and void. Look at it this way. You install Mass effect, but the install was pooched for some reason. One activation. You uninstall and reinstall. Two activations. You play through the game for a while, but something happens (You’re using a Dell and it catches fire for example), that causes you to loose the game files. You reinstall. Three activations. You complete the game and uninstall it for the sake of precious disc space (that porn needs to go SOMEWHERE). After a month or two you decide to replay the game, this time doing things differently. Only you can’t activate it at all. Oh dear, don’t you feel like a chump? If you want to play it again you need to buy another CD key sucker

Or you could go online and grab a keygen. Hell you already paid for the game right? It’s not like you’re conning the developers out of their hard earned money. You find a keygen. Low and behold it works! Okay you got a spy ware problem, but a quick ad aware scan later and that’s sorted.

A few days later a mate lends you a game. Problem is his CD key is registered and you can’t install it. But you really want to try this game before you buy it and the demo was (as all demos are) useless for letting you get the feel of the game. One tutorial level, pah! Keygen time!

Then you cross the line. You’ve got away with this much right? You torrent another game you wanted to try. You play it for a while and end up completing it, without ever buying it. Congratulations, you’ve gone from semi pirate to full blown Long John Silver.

Granted, this is a very extreme example, but it shows how intensive copy protection systems actually ENCOURAGE piracy rather than stop it. Honest people are not going to pay for a game that they will need to pay for again and again, or can’t get working in the first place (We’re looking at you Bioshock). Less scrupulous people will pirate it rather than put up with the hassle of a legal purchase, and hardcore pirates would just get the illegal copy anyway. Oh I should probably point out that apparently doing a true uninstall of mass effect redeems one of your activations, but many people claim otherwise.

To cut through the bullshit and tell it like it is; Publishers are going to be hurting their own profits a lot more than software pirates ever could by forcing away their customers. And the longer they keep this up, the more people are going to get involved with Piracy. The internet is a big place, and you can’t track down every illegal copy on every torrent site, and even if you could you can’t always get it taken down depending on the laws of the country the site is based in. Point in case, pirate bay.

Please be aware that I’m not condoning or endorsing piracy. No matter how you look at it, software takes hundreds, if not thousands of man (and woman) hours to write, in games there’s also the story writers, musicians and so on all of whom contributed to the game and depend on sales for their earnings. Piracy is not a victimless crime, just because you can’t see the victim does not mean that no one suffers. Think of that before you install your torrent client and block RIAA IP’s.

More cynical readers (of whom I’m sure there are many) are probably sniggering right now and asking “So Evis, if you’re so knowledgeable about all this and against piracy, how do YOU propose we stop it?” Well, I have a few ideas.

To Developers

• Lower the price of games. Publishers can afford to take a smaller cut from the sale of the game. Lower prices mean people will pay for not taking the risk of pirating. No one wants to pay up to £50 for a single game. In terms of value for money, Valve’s orange box was second to none.
• Stop the extreme copy protection. You’ll drive people off if you keep doing it. Stop it now before it gets endemic. Loosing a few thousand sales is going to be nothing if you end up loosing millions as people refuse to buy a product they can’t get to work.
• Give us more with our games. Nintendo’s stars system is on the right track. They’re basically like loyalty cards at supermarkets, you get the game, register it and earn points that can be redeemed for stuff.
• Better demos. Playing the first five minute level of a game does NOT constitute a taster. Like a movie trailer demos should feature all the exciting bits of a game. Walking around with two guns is not fun. Let players play one of the later levels where they have more weapons and are in a “cooler” setting. Even create a special “demo level” for the game highlighting all the best points, Valve did this with half life the lost coast, and it made me buy episode two.
• Stop treating us like idiots and stop acting like idiots. Don’t spout bullshit about piracy and how it will destroy the industry. In any industry a degree of corruption will always be preset. Stop trying to get rid of piracy completely and focus on making people want to buy your legal copies rather than free illegal ones. You make take a profit hit in the short term, but you’ll save your asses in the long run.
• Create something new. For too long the industry has been churning out endless FPS games. Give us something new! Write better stories in games, experiment and play! Nintendo lead in this field, being the first company to give us analogue controllers, and the motion sensitivity of the Wii. And look at the sales figures of the DS compared to the PSP. And they said touch screen would never work… Point is once you’ve played one FPS, they’re all the same just with little extra bits tagged on. Bioshock was a big disappointment for me.
• Experiment within the genres. Play Call Of Duty 4 and Halo 2. One is clearly better than the other. A few years back the industry was churning out WWII games, before that it was star wars. Yes, I know you need to make profits, but you can only get so much activity out of a dead horse. If you want to keep in dollars, keep people interested in your company.
• Don’t buy a series or franchise as it’s doing well and then try to make it better. We’re looking at you this time EA. These guys are hell of picking up games and them murdering them within two sequels. You got it because people liked it, don’t change it.

To Pirates or Would-Be Pirates

• Go open source. It’s legal, it’s just as good and in most cases just as free. Don’t think MS office, think open office. Don’t think winamp, think songbird.
• Be generous with your games. If you own a game, let people try it, at least until the game industry learns how to make a decent demo.
• Demand a better deal. Get on the forums of publishers and say you’re not going to pay more than £35 for a game, unless there’s good reason (Like the guitar controller for guitar hero). Stick to your laurels. If publishers notice a slip in sales and there’s an identifiable reason why, they will change their ways.
• Remember, in most cases it’s the publishers who price games and institute the copy protection. Yet it’s the developers who need to pay their bills, and they have nothing to do with how a game is marketed.

Well, I think that about sums it up for software piracy. I could go on for another fifty pages, but I daresay you’ll be bored by the time I’m done. If you found this interesting, please leave comments as I value the opinions and ideas of others. Keep an eye out for my next article in which I will be looking at other forms of Piracy. Until then, haul away yer halyards and ready the cannons, lest we loose our booty! Arr! At least until the ninjas get here!