History Needs Software Piracy

[DylanD]

This guy read my mind. Great article to get others thinking about copyrights laws, etc. Thanks for the link.

[overture2112]

Why History Needs Software Piracy - PCWorld

The best part about that article was the links. From http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3191 I found out about the archiveteam, which is pretty neat.

[FarmGuy]

Wow, I can't believe the insane amount of wrong plaguing this thread.

1: PCWorld is right up there with the National Enquirer and the Daily Mail. If the link provided is true, this this must obviously be true as well.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/21460...pc_gamers.html


2: I cannot believe that people still hold on to the notion that floppy information will eventualy 'deteriorate'. Folks, if you don't take care of your product, of course it's going to fail. I have casette games that are older than people currently celebrating birthdays on this site and they still work like new.

This is not the exception to the rule. Keep older software in a dry place free from excess heat and/or cold and it'll last forever. It's just common sense.

3: You can justify piracy any way you wish, it's still illegal. It's folly to lie to yourself or others as to why you pirate games. Yes, it may be a pain to play those games on casette or 5 1⁄4 but it can still be done with the right hardware. As for 3 1/2, pick up a USB floppy drive and learn how to use DosBox. Anything else is just an excuse. I download games too, but I don't lie to myself either.

Secondly, it's better to buy a physical copy anyways. Most games you download from sites like this are usually missing files as to ease upload/download. Anvil of Dawn is a perfect example as almost all are missing speech files. Anvil of Dawn is also an incredibly rare game to find 100% complete, which makes owning the game a nice addition to one's collection.

"Saving games via piracy" is BS. Someone needed a copy of that game to begin with, so it was never lost. If anybody is saving games from being lost, it's collectors who know how to properly store games. It's just one more excuse pirates try to use to justify what they do.

[gezegond]

2: I cannot believe that people still hold on to the notion that floppy information will eventualy 'deteriorate'. Folks, if you don't take care of your product, of course it's going to fail. I have casette games that are older than people currently celebrating birthdays on this site and they still work like new.

This is not the exception to the rule. Keep older software in a dry place free from excess heat and/or cold and it'll last forever. It's just common sense.

So you know more about floppy disks than the people who invented them. Good for you.

3: You can justify piracy any way you wish, it's still illegal. It's folly to lie to yourself or others as to why you pirate games. Yes, it may be a pain to play those games on casette or 5 1⁄4 but it can still be done with the right hardware. As for 3 1/2, pick up a USB floppy drive and learn how to use DosBox. Anything else is just an excuse. I download games too, but I don't lie to myself either.

I know it's illegal. I also believe the people who made it illegal were thinking only about the corporations not about people's rights. Thus, these laws are wrong, and should be changed.

"Saving games via piracy" is BS. Someone needed a copy of that game to begin with, so it was never lost. If anybody is saving games from being lost, it's collectors who know how to properly store games. It's just one more excuse pirates try to use to justify what they do.

If you are one of those collectors, you will eventually change your mind when all your precious collector's items become useless plastics and nintendo tells you that if you want to play super mario bros. you have to pay for it again.

[Drageuth]

About 10 years for both of them.

Source 1
Source 2

wait are you serious?? even if a cdrom game hasn't been used the data will deteriorate anyway??
man what's the point in collecting games then

It's the same as pretty much anything. If not cared for properly (as someone mentioned earlier but I forgot to quote them), yes that information is eventually deteriorate. However, I still play games on my NES that are over 20 years old (that's double the life expectancy) and they work flawlessly. Because I store them properly and don't abuse them. I also installed Wolfenstein 3D off the original floppy disks about five years ago, and those disks were around 15 years old at the time.


As to FarmGuy -- the main argument here isn't exclusively about video games, but software in general. There is a lot of stuff we as a society can learn from studying what we used to do a hundred years ago, when the only really reliable records are actual artefacts -- in this case, the software -- lying around to show us things. Sure, in all honesty, it's not really going to change anything in the future if we aren't capable of studying something like developer code from the past, but you never really know what kind of information may be important. For example, how much would we have learned, and much sooner, if a copy of Archimedes's On Sphere-Making had survived? Would we have entered an Industrial Revolution decades or centuries sooner? What about Plato's Hermocrates? Would we have had a better understanding of the universe at a much earlier age? What about the Maya Codices, which were burned by the Spanish Conquistadors? The Mayans were very intelligent people, and anything written by their scholars could have had a resounding impact on the way we view life or tackle problems. If all of this information had been preserved through some form of archival system, how different would our world be?

To be fair, I'm not comparing software to the works of Plato, Archimedes or Mayan scholars. That would be retarded. In the long run, it is highly unlikely that software or video games will have any form of profound impact on every day thinking the same as those three examples would have. But within the software development world, in particular when trying to sold new problems one hundred years from now, it definitely is helpful to look back at what has been done in the past and how they solved some of their problems. Pretty much any professional software developer will tell you that there is an undefinable wealth of information in what we have done in the past which helps tackling problems in the future, and we can't ignore that.

I did like the second comment on the article, which I'll quote here -- I thought the guy made a really great, logical point which I wholeheartedly agree with:

This is a wonderful article on a very important issue. Thank you.

Two analogues worth mentioning:

Many (if not most) of the earliest silent films have been lost forever as the silver nitrate film stock with which they were made disintegrated in the vaults. The effect is nearly identical to the loss of software over time. In this case, the loss was due primarily to neglect, but tight copyright control by companies with no financial reason to keep making prints allowed it to happen. Even more recent titles, such as Disney's "Song of the South", are at serious risk of disappearing forever.

Second, many significant copyrighted audio recordings currently languish in vaults, deteriorating rapidly, never to be heard again, because there is no market for them. Without financial incentive, but with strong copyright protection (effectively a form of DRM), large media companies have no reason to protect, or make available for study, recordings which may be of immense value to historians.

The solution might be to build archival requirements and data protection expectations into copyright law. Companies would have a right to retain copyright control over older works only if they agree to protect them to certain standards. Alternately, after a period of disuse, they would be required to release copyright control to an authorized archival organization.

[gezegond]

It's the same as pretty much anything. If not cared for properly (as someone mentioned earlier but I forgot to quote them), yes that information is eventually deteriorate. However, I still play games on my NES that are over 20 years old (that's double the life expectancy) and they work flawlessly. Because I store them properly and don't abuse them. I also installed Wolfenstein 3D off the original floppy disks about five years ago, and those disks were around 15 years old at the time.

No matter how well you take care of them, I can assure you none of them will last past the 70 expected years until they're released into public domain. But I guess you already know that.

[Drageuth]

No matter how well you take care of them, I can assure you none of them will last past the 70 expected years until they're released into public domain. But I guess you already know that.

Yeah, I should have been more specific with that statement. They will deteriorate more rapidly if you don't care for them properly, but they will eventually become unusable.

[Rok124]

someone should post a thread on how to properly take care of a game so this doesnt happen so fast to them

[garrendesares]

someone should post a thread on how to properly take care of a game so this doesnt happen so fast to them

if we need a thread for common sense its sad

then again not a bad idea, as most people who sell games they bought obviously dont take care of them

[The Almighty MegaMan]

Please, 10 years?

I mean, really?
I bought a copy of Super Mario 64 two months ago and one of Star Soldier Vanishing Earth three weeks ago (plus Bomberman 64 and Pokemon Stadium 2 from last september onwards).
They all work. All of them save.
And they better keep on doing that for at least another 10 years, 'cause I'm just getting started with the N64.

Although I do approve of keeping copies of software even if you do not have the original game (only if it's be due to you being poor, living on a 3rd world country, or the fact that you want to play games that are out of print since at least 15 years ago), that's pure bullshit.

There's a point where the devs/publishers don't make any more money out of certain software. From that point on (i.e. 10, 15 years), said software should be free (only to download, not to use/resell).

Myself I am a pirate to some degree, but only because importing stuff here is ridiculously complicated, expensive, and a lot of pricks don't even want to send things down here.

Then again, am I hurting the industry much if I play Crisis Force, High Seas Havoc or Avenging Spirit?

tl;dr
1) Nope, games last for at least 20 years
2) 15+ years old soft should be free (to download, not free of copyright).