Speaker 1: A report out of the European Unions just that the
Speaker 1: trend of video game piracy may actually be a net
Speaker 1: positive for the industry. I'm Jonathan Strickland, and this is
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff Daily. In general, it's pretty easy to understand
Speaker 1: that taking something that doesn't belong to you without the
Speaker 1: permission of the rightful owner is wrong. That seems clear,
Speaker 1: But when it comes to pirating video games, plenty of
Speaker 1: people seem to find endless justifications for doing just that.
Speaker 1: They range from the technical, with arguments like it's just
Speaker 1: a copy of some digital code, so it's not like
Speaker 1: they don't still have the game that they can sell
Speaker 1: to other people, all the way to the economical arguments
Speaker 1: with something like this is a fifteen dollar game and
Speaker 1: they're selling it for sixty bucks. There's no way I'm
Speaker 1: gonna pay that. I'm just gonna take it. And then
Speaker 1: there are tons of other arguments, and whether you find
Speaker 1: them justifiable or not, it's safe to say that the
Speaker 1: video game industry in general is firmly in the piracy
Speaker 1: is bad camp. Video game developers and publishers have worked
Speaker 1: hard to fight against piracy. On the technical side, they
Speaker 1: have incorporated various strategies to copy protect games. It's called
Speaker 1: digital rights management, or DRM, but it tends to boil
Speaker 1: down to some sort of technology based approach to making
Speaker 1: sure the game the person launches is in fact a
Speaker 1: legitimate copy. Now, in the old days of classic games,
Speaker 1: you might encounter a title that requires you to consult
Speaker 1: the game manual and type out a certain word on
Speaker 1: a certain page to prove that you bought the game.
Speaker 1: Later on, games included digital keys that required players to
Speaker 1: activate their copies by authenticating the game through some centralized
Speaker 1: security system. These days, many games require players to have
Speaker 1: a persistent online connection to verify they are playing a
Speaker 1: legitimate copy of the game, even if it is a
Speaker 1: single player experience. On the legal side, video game companies
Speaker 1: have hitched their wagons to the efforts from other forms
Speaker 1: of media to protect intellectual property. In the United States,
Speaker 1: video game developers rely on copyright laws such as the
Speaker 1: Digital Millennium Copyright Act or d m c A to
Speaker 1: provide protections from transgressions against their intellectual property. These companies
Speaker 1: fight so fiercely in part because technology makes it pretty
Speaker 1: easy to duplicate and distribute software on a large scale.
Speaker 1: Peer to peer networks and broadband internet speeds take much
Speaker 1: of the time and effort out of transmitting large data
Speaker 1: files across systems. There's a virtual army of hackers who
Speaker 1: make it their mission to crack these protection systems that
Speaker 1: are connected to games. Sometimes that makes the game easier
Speaker 1: to play without an Internet connection and unfortunate incentive for
Speaker 1: anyone who wants to avoid the hassle of always staying
Speaker 1: connected to the Internet just to play a game on
Speaker 1: a local machine. If we take a simple view of
Speaker 1: the problem, it seems clear that piracy hurts video game
Speaker 1: companies bottom lines. After all, those pirated copies represent laws sales, right,
Speaker 1: According to multiple studies, that's not necessarily the case. It's
Speaker 1: a complicated issue. In two ten, the United States Government
Speaker 1: Accountability Office published a report titled Observations on Efforts to
Speaker 1: quantify the economic effects of counterfeit and pirated Goods. The
Speaker 1: report explained that estimating the losses from pirated goods is
Speaker 1: practically impossible, as it requires making assumptions that could be wrong.
Speaker 1: For example, let's say a video game company has a
Speaker 1: big title coming out that gamers have been anticipating for
Speaker 1: a while. Some hacker has managed to infiltrate the game
Speaker 1: company and made copies of the game's source code, then
Speaker 1: uploaded that code to a piracy site. About a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people have downloaded the illegal copy. That means the
Speaker 1: video game company suffers a one hundred thousand copy shortfall
Speaker 1: right well, not necessarily, As the report pointed out, it's
Speaker 1: impossible to know how many of those one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: people would have purchased a legitimate copy had there been
Speaker 1: no piracy. It's possible none of them would have, which
Speaker 1: means the video game company would have suffered no loss sales.
Speaker 1: It's also possible that some people who downloaded the illegal
Speaker 1: copy later purchased a legitimate one. Ultimately, the report said
Speaker 1: that the arguments these companies present when they lobby for
Speaker 1: tougher legislation against piracy are based off of figures with
Speaker 1: no foundation. In reality, it's not that the companies don't
Speaker 1: have a valid complaint, but rather that the losses they claim,
Speaker 1: which are often used when prosecuting hackers as a way
Speaker 1: to convince judges to hit those hackers with hefty fines
Speaker 1: and sentences, aren't necessarily realistic, and that brings us to
Speaker 1: this new report from the EU. That one is a
Speaker 1: three hundred six page long document titled Estimating Displacement Rates
Speaker 1: of Copyrighted Content in the EU. Like the g a
Speaker 1: O report, this one didn't find a correlation between piracy
Speaker 1: and losses. In fact, the report suggests the opposite might
Speaker 1: be true. According to the report, quote illegal consumption leads
Speaker 1: to increased legal consumption end quote of games, so a
Speaker 1: rise in piracy seems to bring a rise in sales
Speaker 1: along with it. The report suggests that the industry is
Speaker 1: getting better at converting people from someone who will download
Speaker 1: an illegal copy of a game into a legal customer. However,
Speaker 1: this report relied heavily upon surveys, meaning the researchers were
Speaker 1: asking people to self report on their gaming habits and behaviors.
Speaker 1: Critics point out that this does not always generate the
Speaker 1: most reliable data. Without means of authenticating the results, It's
Speaker 1: likely many in the video game industry will eye this
Speaker 1: report with skepticism. Does this mean you should rush out
Speaker 1: and download all the games you want from piracy sites?
Speaker 1: Well not at all. For one thing, many of those
Speaker 1: games can be host to terrible malware that will infect
Speaker 1: your machine in nasty ways. For another, the whole point
Speaker 1: of the report was that people were converting over into
Speaker 1: legal customers. You could save yourself a step and just
Speaker 1: go the legal route. My personal philosophy is if a
Speaker 1: game seems too expensive, I won't buy it. I'll wait
Speaker 1: for it to go on sale, or I'll just skip
Speaker 1: it entirely. If I think a particular company's approach to
Speaker 1: d r M is bad, I won't buy that company's products.
Speaker 1: If enough people do that, it sends a powerful message
Speaker 1: to the company, which is sure to re examine its
Speaker 1: approach to protecting its own intellectual property. Ultimately, we have
Speaker 1: to accept that just because something exists doesn't mean we
Speaker 1: have a right to it. Hopefully video game companies will
Speaker 1: also ease off on their policies to protect their intellectual property.
Speaker 1: It's fine for a company to try and make certain
Speaker 1: it's not pirated out of business, but some of the
Speaker 1: lawsuits against people who have been found guilty of piracy
Speaker 1: include absolutely draconian requests for punishment. No one looks good
Speaker 1: coming out of that situation. To learn more about intellectual property,
Speaker 1: digital rights management, or something fun like video games, be
Speaker 1: sure to subscribe to text On. In that podcast, I
Speaker 1: explore topics like these in much greater detail. That's all
Speaker 1: for me for now. See you next time. Wonder