How much pirated Amiga software did you have?

[Ilwrath]

What happens if that product/technology or parts thereof are then used in some hitherto unknown technology that ends making billions?

That's basically what Disney has done.  They've taken stories from the public domain, and made animated films out of them, creating bazillions in revenue by scavenging others' work and adapting it to a new medium.

So, traditionally, that was quite acceptable.  The intent and purpose of copyright is to encourage development, not ensure perpetual profit.  This point has been completely perverted by the big media companies that enjoy making perpetual profits.

[runequester]

Its complicated

On one hand you have reasonable requests:

Backing up software. Putting a song you bought on your MP3 player, watching a DVD on your computer, downloading a 20 year old game etc

On the other hand, you have pretty much every PC game developer hauling ass from the burning ship, unto consoles, because PC gamers plain can't be bothered to pay for games.


So nyeh. No easy answers.

[Amiga_Nut]

Well you see things like downloading a game onto a hard drive is not a solution.

1. You don't actually own anything physical and there are issues with storage/data corruption.
2. Cost is too similar, companies again are trying to INCREASE profits on products which are overpriced already (hence mass piracy)
3. You have to purchase enough secondary storage to host it all. So on an Xbox360...get the KY Jelly ready before looking for a half terrabyte 360 hard drive

First point is the biggest problem though, because if I buy a game on disc for 360/PS3 and I complete it fast (like 1 day for Colin McRea Dirt 2) then it goes straight onto ebay as a mint used once copy and I get back most of my 50 bucks. Secondly as crappy Microcock Winblows is the default majority OS and fails frequently who is going to foot the bills for re-downloading what you own? Is it more difficult than the life of a pirate and his bittorrent client just re-downloading it again? Probably.

If they want to sell me a digital copy of the same game it can not cost more than my loss from buying and selling it a week later second hand. So about 10 to 15 bucks. Also it needs to be installable on multiple machines for a single purchase for PC games and a VERY helpful and friendly service to help you out when a problem with your digital purchase's source files are shafted thanks to Winblows.

Another reason why people pirated Amiga games was the ability to back up their collection. Spend £35 on Shadow of the Beast in 1989 and you have no way to back it up to protect your sizeable investment unless you get a cracked copy you can copy at will via X-Copy.

Media companies created a need for Napster/WinMX/Shareazza/Bittorrent, the way piracy is fought in countries where they have no bent politicians to pass civil liberty infringing laws is via a very attractive sale price. Clearly then if a company can sell an album for 3 bucks or a game for 10 bucks abroad they can do it here, screw the suits....they brought this all on themselves from the day the first rubbish Amiga 'ST ports' were being sold for more than the ST version.

Ditto did CDs ever come down in price in the 80s? Nope. Despite the fact vinyl records cost much more to mass produce they just kept the price of CDs at 10 bucks and increased the price of vinyl to distract you. Ditto with VHS tapes and DVDs. DVD still costs pence to produce, most titles are around 12 bucks with some useless extra crap on a 2nd DVD. Fantastic. We have a choice now, it is called "I will decide for myself for free via bittorrent thanks"

And their answer is to introduce Nazi-like laws to impinge on your freedoms and civil liberties, good move to win public support. There will always be a way to pirate things easily, it's the digital age. The media companies need to address the reasons people do it rather than just assuming everyone is a cheapskate who wouldn't buy it anyway. Mass downloaders of MP3s statistically spend more money on actual purchases of MP3s anyway.....maybe the dumb dumbs need a good smack on the head with an ACME mallet to see common sense! Pass draconian laws and they will not bother doing stage two "I like this tune, I will buy it on iTunes because the artist deserves it" just to spite the media companies cock measuring with the lawyers and politicians at the expense of the free world.

[runequester]

on a related note, some cracked games actually worked better. A recent thread on here mentioned how Jaguar XJ220 required relokick to run on a 1200, whereas the cracked version ran just fine.

[motrucker]

And the industry is adapting.  Soon all software will be hosted and for a sliding fee per month it will grant you access to use productivity software remotely.  Google Docs proves this.  Steam is not far off from this model either.  Ownership of software locally stored will be gone.  As for amigas...Back in the late 80's, I can't think of a single game played on my friends 500 that wasn't a fairlight or whatever production, and he wasn't the one calling the BB.  we used xcopy a lot to make backups of our games because of the abuse the floppies would take sometimes.  This issue always falls into the same camps-sanctimonious goody-two shoes with the "Law is Law! WHARRGARBL!" argument, and then various shades of "well if I didn't download roms I woudln't even be able to enjoy my ancient miggy/intellivision/etc".  Meh.  Don't pirate the latest teeny bopper bullshit music or the latest and greatest software.  For mostly everything in the original Amiga catalog, it's a moot stupid argument, because I guarantee that the rights of the software are most likely not held by the individual who created it anymore.  Do I think EA needs some money for my DPaint copy?!  Hell no.  Piracy did not kill the amiga- if that were the case the PC would be Loooong dead by now.  The sad reality is that all of us amiga people are really bastions of quickly evaporating knowledge about early computing.  Its less about revenus and profit stream as it is about archival preservation.

Steam is, indeed, the model of the future. It is still possible to get your Steam game written to a real CD/DVD - but it can be a fight, and I have no doubt they will circumvent that too.
The average user can not play the game unless they are connected to Steam.
Here in the U.S., we still have the right to make archival backup coppies, if we can...

[halvliter'n]

I'm  drunk now: Devpac, cedpro, dpaint, real3d, photogenics. Digi Booster and I paid for Protracker:) and audio  master.

[jsixis]

most of the software I consider "pirate" was the software I bought that had known bugs but you only learned about them when you complained to the software/hardware vendor.

Off the top of my head;

 Amiga OS 3.5 didn't work with a warp 040 processor
 Delpnia Lite needed an 060 to do what they claimed, then later found out ver 3.1 was just junk
 Imagemaster R/T won't be retargable until the Amiga OS can do it
 ImageFX designed for Cybergraphix software, manageble with Picasso 96, good thing Amiga can handle a lot of windows
 Imagine 2.0, couldn't render the darn cow, then they had the balls to ask for a $100 a year continous upgrade fee to finance their conversion to Windows

 All of the printer/DTP software, none of them kern due to the OS but somehow Pagestream figured it out.

 The browsers all died, too bad you paid for them, with poison pills included.

 I paid a lot of good hard earned cash for a lot of software and the shareware I bought still works.
 Hats off to the companies that made great software and to those that sold crap I have kept track of you and I refuse to buy your Windows PC software

[Pentad]

I skimmed through many of the posts here and I see people are all over the place when it comes to this topic.  Some people are correct when it comes to the law and others 'think' they know the law.

The problem here -and I'm being very serious- is the bigger picture when it comes to the future.   There are some really deep questions about the handling of IP and its effect on our grand-children and great grand-children.   The laws we put into motion today are going to cause ripples for the next century.  I'm serious.

Intangible property is a mess to deal with and its only going to get worse.   The law seems horrible outdated and I believe it will be our future generations that will have to deal with it.

Let me throw out some issues that I see:

People should be paid for their work.  I think everyone can agree on that.  Yet, for how long?  How long should they be compensated before the good of the many out weigh the good of the few (or the one).  Forgive the Spock quote but its the truth.

If you write a book (I only teach US Copyright/Patent Law so YMMV) the copyright is good for 70 years after you die.   That is a long time for you and your family to profit off of this (as well you should).

Now, Disney wants to make this forever.   The copyright would never expire.   This seems bad to me.  What about high schools that want to do plays from Tennessee Williams 200 years from now?   I think it should be free.

Patents are another disaster here in America.  You can not patent a word or fact for obvious reasons.  Imagine owning the word THE.  

Software patents have been granted and Microsoft has a shed load of them.  Well, how many different ways can you write a program to draw a window on the screen?  Connect to the Internet?  Move data around?

You see, they will have so many patents that any kid in high school that wants to start their own company will get sued out of existence for any number of patents that Microsoft et al are sitting on.

Let's move beyond our time.  Lets go 150 years into the future.  With the path of patents, the knowledge that is gained by many of these companies do not go back into society.   The building blocks of our language are not holdable but one person or group yet the building block of software are.   Imagine a person holding the way a paragraph can be written.  Imagine a person holding the way a report, term paper, review, outline, or some other document can be written.  

If you read Michael Crichton's book Next you will see they are trying to patent genes.  Did you know a company holds the patent rights for your body's ability to heal itself?  Enforceable?  No.  Insane?  Yes.  It sets precedence.

What happens when somebody like Microsoft or Google own all the ways to move data a certain way in technology?  

The patent office is so far behind that they grant patents that should not be allowed.  Once they are granted its a mess to undo it.

Did you know the Welch's company (Jelly and Jam) were trying to patent the Peanut butter and Jelly Sandwich.  No joke.

Did Amazon really deserve a patent for the 'click to buy' button?  Really?  Really??  Is that what the patent is really for?  No, if you read what the patent is for, this does not count.  Yet, here we are...

I can't imagine being a future programmer in say 100 years and wanting to write software and change the world.  Microsoft may or may not be here but the patents will be.  

Did you know that Kodak (the camera people) were the only camera folks to bet against digital cameras in the beginning.  They lost their shirt and almost went 'Commodore' but they saved themselves at the last minute.  Anybody here know why?

They bought a tiny company that had a patent for how data can be moved around in memory.  I believe the company had folded but I don't remember.  Anyway, Kodak went looking for people to sue with this patent.  Who did they find??   Sun.   They sued Sun for like a billion dollars (no, really).  They settled for 900 million or something...

The question here is:  Did Sun really intend to infringe on this patent?  How the hell do you search for something as obscure as this?  What happens when they come after you?

More did you know:

When Deluxe Paint was released they stated that any work derived from the use of Deluxe Paint would be owned by EA.  People had a stroke and sued.  EA lost.  

George Lucas has fought for the perpetual rights of copyright holders to the extent that no photographs should be taken of anything without permission of the copyright holder.  Like the Golden Gate Bridge?  Take a picture of it?  Well, now you go to jail because you didn't ask permission of the architect.

I create a series of vases that get sold at Pottery Barn.  You come along and buy one.   You live thousands of miles away from me.  You want to paint it green for your room.  You must ask me for permission to paint it.  

Disney wants to end Fair Use (well, heavily reduce its worth) while making copyright law never ending.

These all seem like short sighted decisions to me.   I don't want high schools to do Hamlet forever because they don't have any money and 300 years from now "Glass Menagerie" is still too expensive for them...

I guess I feel that at some reasonable time, IP must go back into the society or the society doesn't grow and expand.  I don't believe a 7th grade kid in the future who wants to know how some bit of software controls technology should be denied that information because of a patent.  

Even if Microsoft would allow access to that information, that kid would be considered tainted and any blooming software house would be crazy to even talk to him because of what he has seen.  Remember, see the code once and you are tainted for life.   Microsoft would say that they used prior patent knowledge for any work they do.  

Sorry for the long rant..

:-)

-P

[fishy_fiz]

While I've pirated my share of software over the years (mostly back as a teenager on the amiga) I have no delusions that its not stealing. It's quite amusing to see some of the warped justification some people convince themselves of when it comes to piracy. "It's too expensive, its too crap, my mum was mean to me, etc, etc.". Too expensive, buy something else or save for it,... too crap, what the hell do you want it for ? There's also the amusing claim that sales arent lost because people wouldnt have paid for it anyway. Sure, not everyone would have bought what they easily stole, but some would. Marketting is effective and despite the products sometimes being crappy sales are still lost. If even 2 out of 10 people who pirated a copy of software bought it that still all adds up, possibly to a point where a company isnt losing money. It makes a difference. Having said all this though reason and logic will fall on deaf ears anyway. Those who delude themselves about piracy will always find a way to justify that its ok to themselves.
All this aside though pirating for yourself is one thing, but I absolutely despise anyone who sells other peoples work for gain (pirates who sell copied software). Kids are maybe an exception here as theyre not aware of what theyre doing exactly. Still wrong, but Im not going to hold it against them. One of the most amusing things I saw in recent times was a friends reaction at a local computer swap meet (I think called computer fairs in some parts) when we encountered one such person who was selling copied xbox360 and ps3 games. After asking what the heck the guy was doing selling copied games he was told "its ok, theyre just demos" (they werent, and its illegal to sell demos anyway) my friend decided the best plan of attack was to grab a box of this pirates "stock". The fellow then (obviously) started to protest at which point my friend went to hand the guy his mobile phone and said, "here you go, call the police then,... or should I?". The fellow then just put his head down and started packing up his stall.

[TheBilgeRat]

While I've pirated my share of software over the years (mostly back as a teenager on the amiga) I have no delusions that its not stealing. It's quite amusing to see some of the warped justification some people convince themselves of when it comes to piracy. "It's too expensive, its too crap, my mum was mean to me, etc, etc.". Too expensive, buy something else or save for it,... too crap, what the hell do you want it for ? There's also the amusing claim that sales arent lost because people wouldnt have paid for it anyway. Sure, not everyone would have bought what they easily stole, but some would. Marketting is effective and despite the products sometimes being crappy sales are still lost. If even 2 out of 10 people who pirated a copy of software bought it that still all adds up, possibly to a point where a company isnt losing money. It makes a difference. Having said all this though reason and logic will fall on deaf ears anyway. Those who delude themselves about piracy will always find a way to justify that its ok to themselves.
All this aside though pirating for yourself is one thing, but I absolutely despise anyone who sells other peoples work for gain (pirates who sell copied software). Kids are maybe an exception here as theyre not aware of what theyre doing exactly. Still wrong, but Im not going to hold it against them. One of the most amusing things I saw in recent times was a friends reaction at a local computer swap meet (I think called computer fairs in some parts) when we encountered one such person who was selling copied xbox360 and ps3 games. After asking what the heck the guy was doing selling copied games he was told "its ok, theyre just demos" (they werent, and its illegal to sell demos anyway) my friend decided the best plan of attack was to grab a box of this pirates "stock". The fellow then (obviously) started to protest at which point my friend went to hand the guy his mobile phone and said, "here you go, call the police then,... or should I?". The fellow then just put his head down and started packing up his stall.

So your friend did the right thing after stealing from the thief and turned in all those pirateed games to the police, right?

[fishy_fiz]

Nope. We got as far as the exit/entrance and it dawned on him that he had box of stuff he didnt want. Handed a few out to kids as they approached the entrance but got bored of it pretty quickly and ended up putting the box behind some bushes at the school the swap meet was held at. Chances are some lucky kid(s) hit the jackpot when they got to school the following week (either that or cleaners found them). Ive not seen the same pirate at the swap meets since, so some good come from it at least.

[TheBilgeRat]

Nope. We got as far as the exit/entrance and it dawned on him that he had box of stuff he didnt want. Handed a few out to kids as they approached the entrance but got bored of it pretty quickly and ended up putting the box behind some bushes at the school the swap meet was held at. Chances are some lucky kid(s) hit the jackpot when they got to school the following week (either that or cleaners found them). Ive not seen the same pirate at the swap meets since, so some good come from it at least.

So some lucky kids were set upon a course of theft by stumbling upon illicit goods and keeping property that didn't belong to them.  Your friend contributed to the delinquency of minors by handing out said illicit good, free or no.  The obvious thing to do was call the authorities right away and report the violation of copyright law.

Sorry for busting your chops, but the righteous road is a very hard one to walk sometimes.  Human beings operate in various shades of grey while all the while yelling that some are too dark and some are too light.  Thus the obvious problem with Law in general and enforcement in particular.  In America, it wouldn't have been unheard of for that law violator to have called the cops later and said that you had threatened him with bodily harm.  I guarantee the cops would have cared less about the pirated software at that point as much as your perceived violence towards another individual, right after they busted your chops for vigilanteism.  The older I get, the more I realize that most things we perceive as important or lawful are neither.

EDIT:  I am playing devils advocate here, and assuming you aren't from the US, so apologies if the first feels like an attack and the second if I am assuming wrong =).

[fishy_fiz]

Who's being righteous? Im just happy that the scum trying to make money from other peoples work has now vanished. The look on his face amused me no end. Just curious, but how did you manage to fit violence into the equation? My friend even offered the scumbag his phone to call the police. And no, Im not from the U.S, but again how does this fit into the equation? A lowlife is a lowlife, nationality plays no part. You're welcome to play devils advocate all you like, it doesnt stop the look on the guys face when he realised there was nothing he could do amusing me.

[TheBilgeRat]

Who's being righteous? Im just happy that the scum trying to make money from other peoples work has now vanished. The look on his face amused me no end. Just curious, but how did you manage to fit violence into the equation? My friend even offered the scumbag his phone to call the police. And no, Im not from the U.S, but again how does this fit into the equation? A lowlife is a lowlife, nationality plays no part. You're welcome to play devils advocate all you like, it doesnt stop the look on the guys face when he realised there was nothing he could do amusing me.

No, I agree.  That had to have been good

I bring the nationality part up only as it pertains to law.  Many courts in Europe are better at seeing through obvious BS such as an accusation of violence when there was none.  Here, all the scumbag would have had to say is he "felt" in imminent danger.  Maybe you looked at him funny, or had a rough tone to your voice.  Later on it would have probably got thrown out, but not after the (in)justice system had its way with you.  I mention it merely because here in the US I would never open myself up to possible litigation however spurious its nature over intellectual or minor property crime.  If I really had felt strongly about what he was doing I would have informed the police and left it at that.

[fishy_fiz]

Sure, the "right" thing to do wouldve been to call the police, and had it been me that was aggressively pro-active it's probably what Id have done (although to be honest I'd more likely have spoken to the organisers of the event and have them deal with it (they'd probably let things go until someone spoke up about getting the police involved)). Still though, it was quite entertaining and still makes me chuckle when I think about it.

[Amiga1000]

Well since the statute of limitations has long expired since the halcyon days of 1987-89..

I had a few hundred, obtained from a circle of friends who would get together and copy stuff. I didn't get any via downloading.
Most Amiga people seemed to come from the C64 scene where piracy was rampant and mass copy parties were common. There was a big one in one of the town parks.

There were some whose collections dwarfed mine, they had thousands of disks.
Do I pirate now? Nope.