How do you protect your right to piracy?

[Nimrod]

Mr. Presidente, you are failing to keep things within the proper context here.  The amount paid is nothing when you compare it to what you've saved.  Chumpy lil' $50 buck games aren't all there is to be had.  Just think, for a small fee you get quality products that range a very broad spectrum.  TIVO is something that comes to mind.  FUCK TIVO, as I've read elsewhere.  I watch commercial free TV that's delivered speedily and on demand as I wish.  Of course, I did buy a Western Digital media player, and nifty passport drive in matching color and two 32MB flash drives, so I could free the laptop from the entertainment center.  Worth every cent, it was.

I understand your point and your purpose.  My point, however, is that some things, tangible or otherwise, are worth the costs.  If I spend $20 USD for a month of usenet service (which I do not because I get great service through ISP - I have paid for it in the past) and I obtain just one $50 game, how have I defeated the purpose?  I paid for a service and obtained a game through that service.  However you see this, the purpose wasn't defeated because I've saved $30 at the least, I've retained my anonymity and I wasn't bothered by P2P limitations and such.  If anything, I'm paying for the convenience and the safety of privacy, excluding ISP logging.  Then as the games, programs and media mount, that $20 is such a small fraction of the possible costs, that the cost itself is extremely justified.  But then, maybe my logic buffers are fried and I'm seeing this all wrong. 

[Zazazu]

Let's ignore the whole debate over how much electronic data is worth for a moment, because I have a really hard time deciding myself when the price reaches over $20. The problem with your model is that it's a subscription. That means that if I don't use it one month, I'm still paying for it. I'm adamantly against paying for anything I don't use. I'm also adamantly against having to go through the hassle of cancelling something. Been there, done that, with AOL back in the 90s, with RealArcade, with Columbia House and BMG in the 80s/90s. Subscriptions have never been anything but a pain to deal with. The closest I will get to a subscription of any kind today is my utilities, and those are basically unavoidable if you can't make a phone from a tin can, a fork, and a little motor oil.

I'll happily pay more for a single item than I could if I had a subscription to some monthly service. Why? Because after my purchase, it's over. If Usenet was $2.99/month, that would be too much, because I know that eventually I'm going to want to cancel it and I'll be stuck on the phone with some pimpled teen, screaming at him because he won't cancel my damn account already as his bosses require him to go through some 5 minute cross-sell script.

[Nimrod]

Your earlier suggestion that the price is the reason most people ARR is missing a point that is very relevant in the Sims community.

Many of the simmers I know that ARR their games (myself included) did not start ARRing until BV & SecuROM.  For this group of simmers, it's not about the cost of the game or not being able to afford the game, it is about refusing to pay for spyware that damages computers - including the computers of my adult daughter and at least one other person we know in real life.

As TS3 does not come with a version of SecuROM that installs itself onto your computer, my daughter and I have returned to buying the game.  Yes, we ARRed the pre-release version, but on release day we headed down to the local computer store and each of us handed over our $100 AUD to purchase the game - that's about $80 USD each.  We could each have paid for a couple of nights out at local restaurants for that.

SecuROM hasn't presented me with any issues beyond minute memory usage and process cycles, I haven't experienced any sort of interference with other programs and stuffs.  Rootkits really piss me off though.  

I think we're relatively on the same page, you refuse to install SecuROM while I refuse to pay for something that I can't return if I'm not satisfied, simply because I MAY have copied the product to use illegally.  

Let's ignore the whole debate over how much electronic data is worth for a moment, because I have a really hard time deciding myself when the price reaches over $20. The problem with your model is that it's a subscription. That means that if I don't use it one month, I'm still paying for it. I'm adamantly against paying for anything I don't use. I'm also adamantly against having to go through the hassle of cancelling something. Been there, done that, with AOL back in the 90s, with RealArcade, with Columbia House and BMG in the 80s/90s. Subscriptions have never been anything but a pain to deal with. The closest I will get to a subscription of any kind today is my utilities, and those are basically unavoidable if you can't make a phone from a tin can, a fork, and a little motor oil.

I'll happily pay more for a single item than I could if I had a subscription to some monthly service. Why? Because after my purchase, it's over. If Usenet was $2.99/month, that would be too much, because I know that eventually I'm going to want to cancel it and I'll be stuck on the phone with some pimpled teen, screaming at him because he won't cancel my damn account already as his bosses require him to go through some 5 minute cross-sell script.

I did stray from the original model of either, or.  Check it out, http://usenet-news.net/index1.php?url=get you can buy blocks that have no expiration date.  What is 100 gigabytes of data worth?  I'd say $23 is an acceptable amount, considering 100GB is a hugh amount of data!

[Rhayden]

Mr. Presidente, you are failing to keep things within the proper context here.  The amount paid is nothing when you compare it to what you've saved.  Chumpy lil' $50 buck games aren't all there is to be had.  Just think, for a small fee you get quality products that range a very broad spectrum.  TIVO is something that comes to mind.  FUCK TIVO, as I've read elsewhere.  I watch commercial free TV that's delivered speedily and on demand as I wish.  Of course, I did buy a Western Digital media player, and nifty passport drive in matching color and two 32MB flash drives, so I could free the laptop from the entertainment center.  Worth every cent, it was.

I understand your point and your purpose.  My point, however, is that some things, tangible or otherwise, are worth the costs.  If I spend $20 USD for a month of usenet service (which I do not because I get great service through ISP - I have paid for it in the past) and I obtain just one $50 game, how have I defeated the purpose?  I paid for a service and obtained a game through that service.  However you see this, the purpose wasn't defeated because I've saved $30 at the least, I've retained my anonymity and I wasn't bothered by P2P limitations and such.  If anything, I'm paying for the convenience and the safety of privacy, excluding ISP logging.  Then as the games, programs and media mount, that $20 is such a small fraction of the possible costs, that the cost itself is extremely justified.  But then, maybe my logic buffers are fried and I'm seeing this all wrong. 

Your name is quite fitting.

PIRATE CAT DOES NOT PAY FOR HIS DOWNLOADS

[Nimrod]

You wasscally wabbit you.  Oh well, fuck it.  Get yourselves a case built against you, see if I care.

[Kyna]

SecuROM hasn't presented me with any issues beyond minute memory usage and process cycles, I haven't experienced any sort of interference with other programs and stuffs.  Rootkits really piss me off though.

Lucky you.  My daughter and that other person we know both had to replace their CD/DVD drives as a result of SecuROM.

I think we're relatively on the same page, you refuse to install SecuROM while I refuse to pay for something that I can't return if I'm not satisfied, simply because I MAY have copied the product to use illegally.

Not quite the same page.  I refuse to install or pay for a version of secuROM that installs itself on my computer.  It's a fine distinction, but an important one.  This difference means that while you are happy to pay for an ARRed game if you find you like it, I know beforehand that I will *never* pay for any TS2 EP or SP released after they started including SecuROM.  I won't pay for malware.

Keep in mind that the average simmer is not your average gamer, we're a unique demographic in the gaming community.  We tend to be bitten by the "gotta own them all" bug (so yes, we want the EPs & SPs that come with SecuROM, but preferably without the SecuROM), but we are generally less likely to ARR until something like SecuROM comes along and changes our perspective on ARRing.

I did stray from the original model of either, or.  Check it out, http://usenet-news.net/index1.php?url=get you can buy blocks that have no expiration date.  What is 100 gigabytes of data worth?  I'd say $23 is an acceptable amount, considering 100GB is a hugh amount of data!

No shilling.

[morriganrant]

Or, you can hop on IRC and get your pirate cat fix that way. All this nonsense about newsgroups.

Also, Securom screwed with my anti-virus and firewall.

[Fat D]

Mr. Presidente, you are failing to keep things within the proper context here.  The amount paid is nothing when you compare it to what you've saved.  Chumpy lil' $50 buck games aren't all there is to be had.  Just think, for a small fee you get quality products that range a very broad spectrum.  TIVO is something that comes to mind.  FUCK TIVO, as I've read elsewhere.  I watch commercial free TV that's delivered speedily and on demand as I wish.  Of course, I did buy a Western Digital media player, and nifty passport drive in matching color and two 32MB flash drives, so I could free the laptop from the entertainment center.  Worth every cent, it was.

I understand your point and your purpose.  My point, however, is that some things, tangible or otherwise, are worth the costs.  If I spend $20 USD for a month of usenet service (which I do not because I get great service through ISP - I have paid for it in the past) and I obtain just one $50 game, how have I defeated the purpose?  I paid for a service and obtained a game through that service.  However you see this, the purpose wasn't defeated because I've saved $30 at the least, I've retained my anonymity and I wasn't bothered by P2P limitations and such.  If anything, I'm paying for the convenience and the safety of privacy, excluding ISP logging.  Then as the games, programs and media mount, that $20 is such a small fraction of the possible costs, that the cost itself is extremely justified.  But then, maybe my logic buffers are fried and I'm seeing this all wrong. 

I do not think a pirate copy has the monetary value of a licensed copy for a simple reason - it lacks the license, which is what you actually pay for when you buy the software. For that reason, unlicensed copies are not worth being paid for more than the costs of data storage and transfer, which means the slowdown of network tubes and your computer and possibly additional power-on time, which slightly increases electricity consumption.

[Chain_Reaction]

I don't see why anyone would pay EA a cent after the whole Securom thing, I haven't after I installed BV unknowing it'd be the last of my CD ROM. First I noticed the burner died, then it stopped reading discs, now it's permanently crippled and won't even open anymore. All happened within a week of installing so I know what did it. I've left it broke all this time because I don't really need it. I couldn't even put the Sims 3 disk in it if I wanted to, their fault, not mine.

[J. M. Pescado]

Mr. Presidente, you are failing to keep things within the proper context here.  The amount paid is nothing when you compare it to what you've saved.  Chumpy lil' $50 buck games aren't all there is to be had.  Just think, for a small fee you get quality products that range a very broad spectrum.  TIVO is something that comes to mind.  FUCK TIVO, as I've read elsewhere.  I watch commercial free TV that's delivered speedily and on demand as I wish.  Of course, I did buy a Western Digital media player, and nifty passport drive in matching color and two 32MB flash drives, so I could free the laptop from the entertainment center.  Worth every cent, it was.

None of those things have any worth to me whatsoever. I don't even own a TV.

I understand your point and your purpose.  My point, however, is that some things, tangible or otherwise, are worth the costs.  If I spend $20 USD for a month of usenet service (which I do not because I get great service through ISP - I have paid for it in the past) and I obtain just one $50 game, how have I defeated the purpose?

1. By paying money to someone else, you've compromised your anonymity through THAT service, too.
2. Pirate Cat does not pay for his downloads. Period.

I paid for a service and obtained a game through that service.  However you see this, the purpose wasn't defeated because I've saved $30 at the least, I've retained my anonymity and I wasn't bothered by P2P limitations and such.  If anything, I'm paying for the convenience and the safety of privacy, excluding ISP logging.  Then as the games, programs and media mount, that $20 is such a small fraction of the possible costs, that the cost itself is extremely justified.  But then, maybe my logic buffers are fried and I'm seeing this all wrong.

They're fried. You're missing one very important concept that has entirely eluded you:

[Nimrod]

Or, you can hop on IRC and get your pirate cat fix that way. All this nonsense about newsgroups.

Also, Securom screwed with my anti-virus and firewall.

You just had to mention IRC didn't you.  I...refuse...to allow myself...well let me just add that IRC is nothing but the original P2P.  Trace anyone?

Also, can someone produce unbiased, hard data materials about SucuROM and whether it is an actual rootkit, cause it's beginning to sound like one.  All I find are reports which are too biased one way or the other.  And, again, I've had no issues with it, except once, several years ago with dTools, before they went all commercial.  But other versions since then, and now, dTools Lite 4.30.4.0027 offer no hiccups.  I know this because the dreaded SucuROM is running it's little processes as I type, have an image mounted and have physical TS2AL disk in drive (which I haven't played in days but it works fine) and the downloaded retail of TS3 is running.  No problems anywhere, comodo is listing no suspicious connections and avast! pro reports system green with no rootkit activities.  Alas, I'm beginning to get paranoid about it though.

[morriganrant]

Or, you can hop on IRC and get your pirate cat fix that way. All this nonsense about newsgroups.

Also, Securom screwed with my anti-virus and firewall.

You just had to mention IRC didn't you.  I...refuse...to allow myself...well let me just add that IRC is nothing but the original P2P.  Trace anyone?

Also, can someone produce unbiased, hard data materials about SucuROM and whether it is an actual rootkit, cause it's beginning to sound like one.  All I find are reports which are too biased one way or the other.  And, again, I've had no issues with it, except once, several years ago with dTools, before they went all commercial.  But other versions since then, and now, dTools Lite 4.30.4.0027 offer no hiccups.  I know this because the dreaded SucuROM is running it's little processes as I type, have an image mounted and have physical TS2AL disk in drive (which I haven't played in days but it works fine) and the downloaded retail of TS3 is running.  No problems anywhere, comodo is listing no suspicious connections and avast! pro reports system green with no rootkit activities.  Alas, I'm beginning to get paranoid about it though.

I know IRC is the original P2P. I was paranoid about COX and the torrents for Sims 3, I got it through IRC instead, grabbed a few movies and videos while I was there. If the industry starts cracking down on torrent sites then the pirates will just go back to IRC and News Groups. The scene isn't suffering because of torrenting, it's just become easier for even the average user, and is so much simpler. The IRC channels I've peeked into are still going strong. I have no idea about your newsgroups, maybe it's just that newsgroups aren't as popular anymore.

Securom gives itself access to the kernel of your OS. Ring 0. That way it can give itself permission to shut down or control programs that it shouldn't be able to. What benign copy protection does that? For me, it kept shutting my firewall down, I have my firewall set to only allow a handful of things out. Sims 2 was not among them. My anti-virus couldn't update, at all. It wouldn't allow it to. I couldn't even get it open to run. I removed Securom, all issues regarding that were gone. Several friends of mine online also suffered dvd drive loss. Couldn't burn anything, couldn't save family pictures to a disc, it soon stopped reading discs at all. These are people that I trust to not be retarded and just hop on the blame game, some were unable to open certain music player programs that they had and didn't put two and two together until several others were complaining of the same. There are completely legal reasons why you would have a program like Nero on your pc, but Securom says "no" and your game will not even run. What kind of benign copy protection dictates what software you can have on your pc? You would let some software tell you what you can and can not do on your own pc? It just assumes that you are a criminal and anything that even remotely looks like you can copy the game is seen as a threat, including some of Sony's own cd drives. Securom hides it's own files from you, why should it need to? Why should it need to lock it's own registry keys down so that you can't delete them, especially when the games are just going to reinstall it every time you run them? Just google Securom Issues and see how many people are complaining of them.
I'm the worst person to be giving this little talk though. My mind does not run in enough of a straight line and I can't seem to jot things down neatly. Visit reclaimyourgame.com, use google, listen to peoples' experiences, and form your own opinion.