Don't Worry About Copy Write Protection!

[Atrocities]

My first CD burner cost me $200.00 US and it worked like crap. The CD's cost about $2.00 each and they most always were bad.


DVD burner - $50.00
A pack of DVD disks - $10.00
Pack of jewel cases - $10.00
10 assorted newer PC Games - $550.00

Feeling one gets from making multiple copies of non copy protected games and then selling hundreds of boot leg copies to tourist at the flea market ... Pricless.

And they do........... I can get a complete version of Vista Beta for around $12.00 US. (Or at least I think that is what the guy said it cost... I could not understand him, he spoke very bad english.)

Calling the police and reporting this activity is pointless as they never come. They have far more important things to do such as setting up speed traps, protecting the local Krispy Cream, and flirting with the hookers to be bother by something as simple as an illegal boot leg operations. The feds are even less interested the local PD so again, no one gives a rats *** and no one can do anything to stop it.

The police NEVER come and the sales continue.

[Suicide Junkie]

*SJ makes a note to not bother looking for a good price on pens & paper from DG's store.

I for one like to be able to restore my system from a disk image on CD.
And putting stuff on 700mb CDs is a huge bonus when my Lappy's hard disk totals 2 Gb.

[NullAshton]

As the rest of that guy's post said, which was in response to Starforce's mods posting a link to a warez site on their fourms, they didn't place copy protection on their game because they thought it was useless. The people who pirate the game is not going to buy the game if they can't pirate it. And often, people find ways to get around copy-protection. So copy-protection only serves to annoy, not to discourage piracy effectively.

[Captain Kwok]

David, you must have been one of those guys who thought the additional tax on recordable media here was a good idea - even though it did nothing to stem falling music sales and the extra money went to record companies and not the artists...

A large percentage of pirates would never buy the game under most any circumstance anyway, so it doesn't make sense to punish people who have very legimate reasons for using recordable CDs, DVDS, etc. That's like assuming everyone is guilty and is contrary to our legal system.

[Phoenix-D]

Ah yes, the attitude that "Everyone's guilty, so everyone should pay". Sorry David, that's not really a good idea..and it wouldn't slow piracy much anyway. Unless you also want to tax internet connections..

Oh and you better tax those mass duplication machines as well..because there's a good chunk of the pirating right there.

[Atrocities]

I have spent over $10,000.00 on music since 1990. Easily. I just bought two new CD's the other day, well used via Amazon, but still new to me.

The appeal of downloading music is a simple one, availablity. You can often find the songs, albums, or whatever it is that you are specifically looking for without having to endure all the crap that you don't want to hear.

But nothing compares to having it on CD, authentic real Music CD from the stores.

[Azselendor]

DEG's method would go a long way to help curb piracy. But it won't stop, as fyron said, people with virtual drives. However, if you tax media duplication devices, office theft of blank cd's would rise and shoplifting as pirates aren't detered by taxation.

Here's what I'd do.

1.) Have ISP's block ports used by peer-to-peer systems and ones that can be used.
2.) Require all servers to have a domain name if it is accessable to the web. This allows pirates to be hunted down and found. Domains can only be registered to valid mail addresses, no po boxes (but I'd allow an exemption for rural locations by means of a special application).
3.) Sites containing porn must use a .XXX extention as proposed. Many warez sites have prono advertisers and we can force them into the .xxx domain type and then use ISP's to lock them out.
4.) Levy taxes against companies that manufacture recordable media software, hardware, and media. Individuals that make the software can be made liable for infringment suits if their software is involved in piracy.
5.) Create a system of financial rewards for the successful capture and conviction of pirates. This will seriously harm flea-market pirates.
6.) Make piracy penalties involve a mandatory prison sentance and fine, not one or the other and up to limits.
7.) Require pirates to register in a national database distributed to computer companies and retailers when caught. Much like how sex offenders can't work or live near children, we want to make sure pirates are run out of computing for good.

Now that won't stop pirates, just really give them a bad day. We need to combat this on the industry level as piracy is rampant in price-senstive nations and areas where $50+ price tags on software is insane.

[Atrocities]

Lets fill up the jails with people who make illegal copies of software and music instead of the creal criminals. The only way to stop piracy is to simply outlaw the technology.

[Fyron]

DEG's method would go a long way to help curb piracy.

Actual piracy where physical media are sold, marginally. p2p usage? Not in the slightest.

1.) Have ISP's block ports used by peer-to-peer systems and ones that can be used.

Impossible. You would have to block literally every port, since p2p apps (as well as the vast majority of TCP/IP capable apps) can be reconfigured to use arbitrary ports... This is of course never going to be a workable solution.

2.) Require all servers to have a domain name if it is accessable to the web. This allows pirates to be hunted down and found. Domains can only be registered to valid mail addresses, no po boxes (but I'd allow an exemption for rural locations by means of a special application).

Totally the wrong solution. What happens to free dynamic domain services then? Have to pay for them? Not a good solution at all for people that just want to host a photo gallery or whatever from home. Why should I have to pay extra money above and beyond the cost of my Internet connection (and electricity) to run a little server? And don't tell me I can just give out IP addresses, since that is unfeasible.

4.) Levy taxes against companies that manufacture recordable media software, hardware, and media.

Good idea, tax legitimate users of recordable media for the small fraction of illegal users. Wait... that's a terrible idea.

Individuals that make the software can be made liable for infringment suits if their software is involved in piracy.

So... lets sue Microsoft. They let me copy CDs as a default feature of XP. And lets sue all CD drive manufacturers, since all CD drives can be used to create CD images, thus spreading piracy. And of course sue MS for providing CD driver software in Windows, since they are used for piracy all the time. Now let's sue every maker of a CD burning application. So what if they let you do all sorts of legal things like make mix CDs and backups and burn whatever non-copyrighted materials you want onto a CD to give to friends and family (photo CDs, anyone?)? They can be used to create distributable copies of games, movies, music, whatever!

Even if you create some sort of DRM solutions to allow authorized makers of software and hardware, you can not touch people in most foreign nations that choose to make software that circumvents all of it. It will never work.