Piracy. Greed or grievance?

Opinion: Meet my wealthy Uncle, Torrence. On piracy and why it happens, and what can be done about it.

Piracy is one of many pastimes in the technological world. From the good ol’ recording music off the radio onto magnetic cassettes, to torrenting the latest copy of Windows - for some, such acts are a part of living. Despite its social acceptance, piracy violates copyright law, however, and is arguably an unethical act. Because of the daunting prospect of loss of sales, companies add DRM technologies to their products in an attempt to thwart pirates. Of course, this does little to prevent piracy, and instead deters legit users who find it increasingly difficult to use their purchased software and data. Meanwhile, pirates download a freshly cracked fully functional version from their choice of P2P network.

It’s not surprising that many users are now opting for the illegal solution for the ease of use, if not the conveniently missing price tag. Nonetheless, a question must be asked. Is this phenomenon a case of greed, or the global outcry of users for a system that works for the people’s and not the companies’ best interest? And do these companies really know what their best interests are?

The act of piracy is spurred by many factors. Want and greed are the obvious ones, in addition to retaliation against DRM, and just plain old lack of funds. Pirates tend to attract criticism that typically fills only one of these criteria, instead of tackling the whole spectrum. For instance, the music industry focuses on the greedy, without considering those who just want a better product without the accompanying copy protection induced mental trauma. Convenience is also a contributor to piracy, as game publisher Valve recently identified. There are people who don’t want to scout their large CD collection for a game in order to satisfy genuine checks. Similarly there are those who don’t want to go out and buy games from a retail store, nor do they want to wait for the courier if they decide to purchase online. It may be laziness, convenience, or a generous splash of both; nonetheless it’s another reason for piracy. It’s easy, fast and simple.

It’s becoming too easy to justify a visit to Uncle Torrence. Some refer to it as their duty to keep vendors in-line. If there’s DRM, alternate distribution paths are found devoid of it – legit or not. By doing this, the publisher loses profit, the end user is happy, and DRM will never see the light of day again. Right? Probably not, but it’s a nice fantasy, and the perfect alibi. Others just claim they need the software for work or study, while the rest just want a freebie. Whatever the reason, the industry fights back the only way it knows how - DRM. Too bad they’re fighting the wrong crowd.

Publishers hell-bent on combating piracy are causing legit users issues. The likes of SecureROM (and other assorted flavours of misery) are far from perfect in any sense. DRM is easily cracked, so essentially any hardship that was intended for pirates is only felt by users with legit copies. Since DRM is fundamentally useless, it would seem logical that it shouldn’t be included at all. But this is where the issue lies. Do you, as a publisher, risk having no security on your products?

You could argue that computer illiterate persons will be unable to locate cracked software, or bypass modern DRM. Assuming this to be the case, DRM is effective at this small sector of the market. However, the majority of computer users will know how to obtain cracked software, or know of ways to find out. A suitable solution may be to implement a basic form of DRM, one which will prevent common disc ripping/duplicating software from achieving its goal. This will thwart home users from distributing discs to friends and family. Unfortunately, this won’t solve piracy in its majority. What it will do is allow legit users to use their software without fancy DRM enacting its mystical ways upon the PC. And if legit users are happy, they won’t feel the need to obtain DRM free copies.

So how do you stop people from cracking DRM and distributing copyrighted material? The fact is, you really can’t. Where there is a will, there is a way, and there is definitely no exception when it comes to piracy. What can and should be done is alter the attitude of those who are out to obtain said pirated data. Price, convenience, and variety: service. Instead of selling a ‘game’ or some ‘music’, sell service. A great example is Valve’s Steam system. Steam has a large variety of games which can be purchased and downloaded with little effort. Yes, Steam games are known to be easily pirated, but how many people really do this? Surely there’s a clique of people who do so – tight arses – as you’d expect. After all, burglary in society is still existent; there are those who want without giving. Nevertheless, does this effect Steam? Not at all! Most users are willing to pay for their games because of the great service, if not the decent prices on offer.

When Valves Jason Holtman recently stated “Pirates are just underserved customers”, I thought ‘vague, but true’. Vague in that pirates aren’t one big community you can apply a stereotype to. You’ve got people who pirate for many different reasons, and yes some of them might do so because of limitations in distribution and DRM, but there’s always the human attribute of greed. And that is where the problem lies, a problem which rests in human instinct. Unfortunately this can’t be fixed, unless of course, you believe in the possibility of a Utopian society. Fortunately, Holtman identified a large part of the issue, and probably the only part that can be solved without resorting to drastic measures.

Let’s hope other distributers follow suit, for their sake, if nothing else.