THQ is fairly rare for even having the guts to admit it. I actually respect that, don't know if they can turn it around, but being honest about the source of their problems can't hurt in the endeavour.

I pondered this a little more and what I'm fearing is that file-sharing will turn out like radio. Maybe the law will say that the only people who can legally file-share will have to get a license before they can do it. Fine. But that cuts out some individuals who might have kept up those niche files out of love for the genre. Maybe some licensed sharers try to focus on those niche markets. Good for them. Except, license costs keep going up and up and up until the only way to keep a license is to get rid of those niche markets and only provide what the big publishers want to be provided because, well, they own the copyrights of the files that they want to be circulated.

I don't know how radio was in the 1920's, but I do know that a lot of people didn't have TV's when it first came out. In any case, I do hope you are right about the genie being permanently out of the bottle so that what I described above doesn't happen.

Ehhh, I'll take a wild stab and say Pirate radio? Some people might call it "free radio" :)

I suppose I could be considered a pirate radio bootlegger. Two-way radio helps immensely when you're sitting in the cab of machinery working with people who don't know how to use hand signals who want to communicate with you.

I just found the parallels and naming to be quite amusing. Nothing new under the sun, and all that.

Yeah me too. That's kind of what I was digging at. I shouldn't have answered a rhetorical question though :)

You knew the answer, others may not have, unless it's blindingly obvious answering probably educates a few folks at least;)
I hope so too, some days I seriously doubt it, though.

Heh... Just explain me why and how the angry shit developers have something to do with the gaming industry....

And WHY I should care about a single word from them. Mind you: 1 billion idiots playing angry shit aren't a good reason...

So... what is the middle ground between "going nuclear" and doing nothing at all?

I would imagine we're all agreed that DRM is a no-no. So that leaves us with...what exactly?

Forgive me for being blunt, but unless you are OK with something else, your concern strikes me as a bit disingenuous if you are overruling everything else.

IMO reason is a better weapon than force. Convince the people instead of antagonizing them, offer them alternatives. Of course that won't end piracy but it will raise awareness and sympathy for the 'victims' of piracy. What is often overlooked is that there is a difference between pirates and people who infringe copyrights. If you want to effectively fight piracy you need the common people on your side. If all you do is play the Sherifff of Nottingham, it's no surprise if criminals get glorified as the modern Robin Hood. Laws are only good as long as the majority supports them, so it's a very bad idea (and much too late now) to criminalize the whole populace due to copyright infringements. It pays off to treat them as potential customers instead and go after the real criminals.

But it looks like tactics of Sheriff of Nottingham works. See how many filesharing services changed their business model or decided to stop their business activity. Even few torrent sites decided to shut down their sites. And all of this because of Megaupload shut down.

I'm not saying it's good or not. Just saying that fear works too.

And I'm not necessarily saying that the things you described are a bad thing. On principle, I'm not against sueing people who make money off copyright infringement. Shutting down the whole site may be a bit radical (unless it's due to more serious charges), but I think most people accept such measures if they're not directed against random individuals but against an organization that's demonstrably abusing copyright laws for profit. And of course, such tactics achieve their goals in the short run, but what they don't accomplish is to raise awareness, sympathy and a sense of guilt among consumers. How come so many young people sympathize with terrorists like Anonymous? It's also because they feel abused by those in power and because they don't trust them anymore, and I think it's dangerous to just ignore that.

Imagine someone hacking GOG - how much sympathy would it get them to antagonize a company that does everything right, treats its customers with respect and is generally hold in high esteem, with a large fan community backing it up? Isn't it wiser to try and make lots of friends than to make lots of enemies?

I didn't even realize they have _sold_ any significant number of e.g. Angry Birds games. maybe because at least on Android platform the full games are readily available as adware. I presume buying them on Android means you don't have to watch any Google ads anywhere, except that even they are not present in the ad version, if you don't have net connection enabled. Is it different on e.g. Apple platform?

So I presumed Rovio gets nowadays most of its money from ads running in AB games, and selling AB plush toys and T-shirts, much more than actual game sales. But what do I know, maybe some really buy AB games heads over heels.

And I'm sure that will put a major dent in piracy just like shutting down Napster did back in the day. Wait, that's not what happened at all. The preferred methods of piracy have changed over the years, balancing accessibility and decentralization depending on the technologies available and the legal tactics current in vogue, but these shifts in methods have had little effect on the occurrence of piracy itself. Torrents are still around and going strong, and these days are even further decentralized in that some types don't even require trackers anymore. There are also an increasing number of private trackers and darknets as well. And even sneakernet seems to be making a bit of a resurgence (it made me chuckle a bit when I recently saw my 65 year old mother passing around burned software and music CDs within her circle of friends).

And aside from being utterly ineffective at stopping piracy or increasing sales (note these are two different things), such heavy-handed tactics destroy one of the few things that's actually effective in convincing people to buy: goodwill. Companies that establish a rapport with their potential customers and foster an atmosphere of goodwill have a much easier time of convincing those potential customers to become real customers. Pissing away that goodwill by getting behind heavy-handed legal tactics and engaging in rhetoric to try to scare people is one of the worst things a company can do.

Aside from fostering goodwill, the other thing that as been quite effective in decreasing piracy and increasing sales has been making easy, affordable alternatives to piracy available. iTunes, Amazon mp3, Spotify, etc, have all been tremendously effective in re-acquiring customers for the music industry, and Netflix and Redbox have been similarly effective for movies. Ironically, these kinds of services (especially the latter two) seem to continuously be targeted for destruction by the very industries that they're helping (who seem to think that if they could just get rid of these easy, cheap services people would line up in droves to jump through hoops and pay much higher prices for their products.... idiots). And coming back to Megaupload, many artists (especially rap and hiphop artists) used Megaupload to distribute some of their own works as a way of advertising to their fans; so not only will the shutdown of Megaupload do nothing to affect the occurrence of piracy, but it also removed a tool that many artists were using to successfully promote themselves and their music (of course, the likes of the RIAA were all for this, as they seem to hate any distribution channels outside of their control, which could give artists the ability to avoid them and their abusive contracts).

Ultimately, legal tactics have time and again proved utterly ineffective at fighting piracy and improving sales, and often are actually detrimental to those goals. To reduce piracy and to increase sales (again, two different things) what's needed is affordable, easy to use methods of legally acquiring content, fostering an atmosphere of goodwill with potential customers, and on a larger scale convincing the public at large that copyright is a benefit to them so that they'll buy into it (this would require a massive overall of copyright laws, so I'm not holding out much hope for this one).

An excellent post that should be framed and put in every executive office in the entertainment industry. And to "validify" this, let's make an example: GOG.com

Many people, me included, buy more games on GOG than they play. Quite a few purchase their games more for nostalgia reasons, than for actually playing them. And many of us pay more only to buy it here than on e.g. Steam. (It helps that we are old and have an proper income). Many do that, because they like GOG or they like for what GOG stands. Being the "good guy" the only sane one in a room full of idiots. And some of us actually buy those games for the first time, even though they played them a lot. Me included. Keep that in mind.

As we all now, GOG and CDP belong to the company group. And as most of us also know, that CDP was using shady tactics to "shakedown" suspected pirates in Germany. This caused quite the stirr here on the GOG forums (and elsewhere). I was one of the more vocal people against this tactic. So, what was my reaction? While I wasn't downright "boycotting" GOG, I made sure I only purchased games I could only get here and that I really wanted to play (none). Others even withdrew completely from GOG.

This happened because CDP, by that also GOG lost its goodwill with us. I no longer saw GOG as the "good guys" but just "like the rest, maybe worse". When CDP announcement the end of their tactic, I resumed my usual buying habits and went on my happy buying spree (15 games, not counting giveaways).

So, while we don't know if those shady tactics by CDP actually brought them any more sales or profit, they certainly cost them some sales. And that was probably also what made the people at CDP change their minds. The "maybe" of gaining something was less worth to them than the "definite" of losing sales.

TL:DR GOG is running on goodwill, and it's running pretty great on it. Take that goodwill away however...