If there is one topic that will spark debate amongst PC gamers today, it is piracy and the impact its economic impact on the gaming industry. Nearly everyone has an opinion on the topic, ranging from complete acceptance and support for piracy to utter disgust and disapproval. In the past years, since the SOPA and PIPA legislation was proposed to Congress, this issue has reached its critical mass, with a different PC game developer blaming piracy as a present danger to the industry every other day. As someone who has played games for almost my entire life, I must confess I am rather upset when reading the innumerable discussions and articles on piracy.
Discussion on piracy on the PC platform as well as DRM has been riddled with uninformed opinions through illogical excuses. This has caused hysteria and scaremongering making it nearly impossible to have a civil discussion on the matter. Although it is quite difficult to obtain reliable data on piracy and its impacts, the challenge is increased further when both parties have a vested interest to spread misinformation on piracy-related...
In Charles W. Moore’s essay, “Is Music Piracy Stealing?” Moore uses great statistics of the people who are concerned and not concerned about music piracy. He gives many examples of the facts he has researched and gives an ethical appeal to his audience. “This week the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) launched an ad campaign using the slogan ‘copying is stealing,’ attempting to convey the message that digital copying is as serious and criminal as stealing a CD from a record shop or a DVD from a video shop” (Moore 242). However, throughout Moore’s entire essay he has a weak introduction and conclusion paragraph, repetitive examples, examples that do not apply to his topic and he uses many logical
However, despite the strong copyright policy and punishment of the United States Federal Copyright Act, as enforced by police as well as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), piracy still rages on, especially...
Hyman, P. (n.d.). Gamasutra - PC Game Piracy: Why Bother With DRM?.Gamasutra - PC Game Piracy: Why Bother With DRM?. Retrieved November 10, 2013, from http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1
Since early in the 1990's, software publishers have been concerned about their losses from software piracy. The music recording industry now faces a much larger threat than the software industry. Its very existence is in question as music is extensively pirated through internet downloads and copying CD's. The total cost of pirating music is estimated at $12.5 billion annually, of which $5 billion is a direct cost to the recording industry. The recording industry has experienced dropping profits and has lowered employment because of the effects of music piracy (Blyth, 2008). Many argue that as a result of music piracy, the structure of the industry must change and the era of both big record labels and superstar bands is ending (Dvorak, 2003). Nevertheless, many people, especially college students, do not seem to regard music piracy as unethical. Understanding consumer attitudes may be an important step in developing a solution to the economic problem of music piracy. This study develops a model based on the Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) to promote further understanding of attitudes toward music piracy and how those attitudes influence music piracy behavior.
It is first beneficial to know the definition of piracy. Piracy has been characterized multiple ways from multiple disciplines. For the purpose of this paper, I will apply the definition of piracy from the 1982 United ...
The world as we know it is a world full of Technology, where anyone who has access to the internet can either stream or share film conveniently and quickly. A consequence of all this new technology is that a lot of people have the ability to access it, which is the theft of copyrighted products by means of the internet. Based on information from a new study by IPOSOS and Oxford Economics ‘The Economic Consequences of Movie Piracy: Australia’,
In this paper, I will attempt to describe the piracy problem in China, discuss how the Chinese government is dealing with it, present the global effect, and finally arrive at what would be an ethical solution to piracy fitting for China's situation.
"4 Ways In Which Internet Piracy Can Be a Good Thing." MakeUseOf. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2014.
Therefore, video game piracy will impede developers’ ability to create new games. If this trend continues, many great companies will go out of business: it would be horrific for the economy because many jobs would be lost. Piracy chokes the developer’s will to innovate and deprives them of funds that are used to create games of worth. In summary, mass video game piracy discourages the production of quality games, which in turn reduces game sales, leading to more rampant piracy. It is a vicious downward spiral towards the abyss of rubbish games from which the true game aficionados can have no deliverance. It is up to the consumer to decide whether or not it is worth it to pirate video games.
Stricter legislation both advantageous and disadvantageous for the video games industry is expected. As governments become more concerned about the increasing violence among teenagers the control of video games content is strengthened. On the other hand the laws against piracy aim to reduce the number of the illegaly copied games.
Physical piracy-the copying and illegal sale of hard-copy CDs, videotapes, and DVDs-costs the music industry over $4 billion a year worldwide and the movie industry more than $3.5 billion. These numbers do not factor in the growing (and difficult to measure) problem of Internet piracy, in which music and movies are transferred to digital format and copies are made of the resulting computer file. Journalist Charles C. Mann explains why Internet piracy has the potential to be vastly more damaging to copyright industr...
The movie industry is a booming market during this century. 72/100 of americans go to the movies each year and there are millions of dollars made only on the price of a movie ticket alone. Pirating movies is a common action in the united states and around the world everyday but does this actually have an effect on the movie industry and profits? To answer this question, one must look at three aspects, the industries market, how easy it is to pirate movies and the laws against piracy. With these three aspects, the effect of pirating movies should become clear. Could a simple download have this big of an affect on an industry that makes millions a year in profits?
Internet piracy has been a cause of a lot of argument. It’s grown and become the new thing of communicating in our generation. The internet gets so many people together with so much content. Not many of the people and products are being honest. A lot of musicians feel that their art is being used. They feel like their rights have been taken away. What they need to do is stop all the people who are behind this and ...
Technology today has changed immensely but still we find ourselves in the same habits of sharing. Friends can now burn CDs within 5 minutes and DVDs within an hour. The one thing that has changed is the ability to protect the media using encryption keys, water marks, and other Digital Rights Management (DRM) that prevents the media from being copied. The overall effect from this is the average person is left with the headache of not being able to do what they want with their own media, while the pirateer continues to hack and bypass security measures.
Online piracy is a huge problem, one which costs the U.S. economy between $200 and $250 billion per year, and is responsible for the loss of 750,000 American jobs. These numbers seem huge: $250 billion per year loss would be almost $800 for every man, woman, and child in America. And 750,000 jobs – that’s twice the number of those employed in the entire motion picture industry in 2010 (Freakonomics). In 2010, the Government Accountability Office released a report noting that these figures “can be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology,” which in English means these figures are legitimate and that piracy really does hurt our economy.