Illegal file sharing on the Internet, what should we do?

NeilFawcett said:
Many people download TV series to watch... This must be affecting the main income? Advertising during the program?
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Channel 4's VoD embeds Adds forcing you to watch them to watch the show. I hate adds but tbh I think they will be necessary to allow consumers to have free TV/Movies.

I think the Media companies need to change their business models and fast. They will put themselves out of business otherwise and new companies will rise up on the internet providing the services these companies did previously but without cost to the consumer.

Torrenting should be embraced by TV networks tbh, they should create a high def copy of their shows bung in a few adds before the show can be watched host it on their site for a few days and host the tracker indefinitely. Just by keeping track of how many DLs they have will mean that they can go to their sponsors and ask for an exact amount of money.

The torrent apps could have dynamic advertising space which displays adds associated with the current active torrents (as defined by the software owner)

Just having a legitimate store for purchasing the media works. iTunes is testimony to this.

Piracy will always continue but media companies can either embrace the technology and build a business around it, or they can attempt and fail to fight it and ultimately miss an opportunity to increase their market share and profits, which could eventually lead to their downfall.
 
The way I see it, I try to make a reasonable attempt to purchase things I want, However if I cannot find what I want to buy legally, I will download it.

For instance, I like reading manga, however to get the same content printed and translated from US, means I got to wait at least half a year then from the point it comes out in Japan. Add to that inability to understand the original Japanese version, I think it it fair that I can read the translated(fan translated) stuff online. For instance, the latest volume I can purchase from US is 20, the latest volume available in Japan is 52...

If there was a legal, international subscription based service that would let me be up to date and support the original creators, I would gladly pay for that.
 
PanMaster said:
Won't CD-keys prevent piracy?
If you don't have a real CD-key you can't play online e.g. red alert 3, battlefield 2, age of empires 3 ...
If the single player is removed then the pirated copy will be useless.
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Nope this can be worked around with so called "cracked servers" :) Obviously you won't get the full experience that the retail/legal game offers but still able to play on line.
 
PanMaster said:
Won't CD-keys prevent piracy?
If you don't have a real CD-key you can't play online e.g. red alert 3, battlefield 2, age of empires 3 ...
If the single player is removed then the pirated copy will be useless.
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Not so true, I have a perfectly legal version of Diablo 2 and the expansion, both purchased in a high street stores (I can't even remember which), however due to circumstances, I no longer posses a CD/DVD driver in my windows machine.

So I decided to download both of those(ISO), during installation entered my valid CD Keys, but the game is still refusing to run without a real CD in the drive... That is not helpful.
 
I think a possible way of helping the 'file-sharing' mess is the subscription packages that are now available where everything is streamed to your home pc :)
For instance one small monthly subscription to Netflix and Rhapsody for instance and you have nearly all the music in the world at your finger tips and an amazing amount of movies and TV series all there ready to press play!
I have Netflix at the moment and works brilliantly streaming! 'The way of the future!'
 
rsatd said:
Not so true, I have a perfectly legal version of Diablo 2 and the expansion, both purchased in a high street stores (I can't even remember which), however due to circumstances, I no longer posses a CD/DVD driver in my windows machine.

So I decided to download both of those(ISO), during installation entered my valid CD Keys, but the game is still refusing to run without a real CD in the drive... That is not helpful.
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You sir need to look for something else. ;)
 
rypt said:
A sequence of 0s and 1s cannot be classed as intelectual proerty really. The fact of the matter is, if I was to write by hand the same sequence of 0s and 1s it does not form any sort of design or file, it is just that a sequence ... it is how a computer interprets those numbers that matters. Now, who is to say that all computers should interpret all those numbers the same?

So does that mean we are protecting an idea, with no physical description or representation? Fine you might say, but then you cannot prosecute over transferring a bunch of 0s and 1s.
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You're really clutching at straws there mate. And that's being polite :).
 
anticonscience said:
You sir need to look for something else. ;)
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I have tried nocd's with my previous installation and they refused to work. At the moment, I got other things to do, like complaining to various people about what happened last night. But that's another matter, expect i'd try again on the weekend or something. But I really do not see why Blizzard thought it be a great idea to restrict my usage in such a way.

Windows doesn't even have a letter for the dvd/cd drive... Anyway I was just using that as an example as to how cd keys fail people who actually purchased the product...
 
the only way you will stop piracy is to make it cheap/free to watch vids or listen to music. give the people it for free, make your money off gigs. DVDs cost WAY too much for anything new ish as do CDs. you're never ever going to stop people pirating it, you just move the issue around. make a new DRM and people will crack it, hell they would do it even if they didn't want the music, just for the challenge!
or continue the way things are, some will pay, some will not, the big businesses will make millions/billions still and people who don't know how to get pirate copies will just keep paying and those that do will pirate when they want to.
places like oink showed the world that there was a market for all the music ever made ever but the big businesses still don't seem to be able to grasp that they could make a tidy profit from charging 10p a track or so.
 
rsatd said:
I have tried nocd's with my previous installation and they refused to work. At the moment, I got other things to do, like complaining to various people about what happened last night. But that's another matter, expect i'd try again on the weekend or something. But I really do not see why Blizzard thought it be a great idea to restrict my usage in such a way.

Windows doesn't even have a letter for the dvd/cd drive... Anyway I was just using that as an example as to how cd keys fail people who actually purchased the product...
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could be worse. I bought a copy of diablo 2 and the expansion ages ago but for one reason and another it never got installed, went to install it and it says the key isn't correct! what the hell should I do with it now?
 
Just keep doing what they are doing within a decade it will once again be a small percentage of people file sharing. The industry was caught with there pants down and it's taken them far far to long to respond. With there own online media stores. now we are finally seeing some decent affairs with fixed pricing. Fileshares are slowly going back to legal sources.
 
So many people think they are getting a fair deal when buying an mp3 from itunes etc.

Put that mp3 through a really good sound system and then put the cd equivalent, difference is night and day :S
 
The trouble is, any copyrighted digital file is essentially a string of ones and zeroes. That's just a number in binary. A very long number, but a number nonetheless. And you can't copyright a number, just as you can't copyright a fact.

Basically, the principle of copyright is incompatible with digital media purely because of the implied legal contradiction, let alone the ease of copying it. I guess the RIAA like to overlook that little inconvenience though.
 
VeNT said:
could be worse. I bought a copy of diablo 2 and the expansion ages ago but for one reason and another it never got installed, went to install it and it says the key isn't correct! what the hell should I do with it now?
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I had that with Half-Life, when I purchased it at the start of my first year at uni, the cd key was already banned. So I contacted valve support, they requested proof of purchase in the form of pictures(check + cd + key), and in the end sent me a new cd key.
 
Globalization

American shows need to cross the pond hours after they're aired. Demand is there.

Maybe you could pay a little bit extra on the internet subscription and the ISPs could cache the most popular stuff and limit access to their own customers like they already do with mail and newsgroups, cutting down drastically on bandwidth. The folks at SKY would probably kick up a fuss, though. :p

HiDef, ad free goodness. The way it's meant to be viewed.
 
Dont get me started on the steaming pile of turd that is Steam.

I own Half Life, Half Life Opposing Force, Half Life Blue Shift, have all CD keys and CD's, I recently tried to get into my Steam account to get back into CS, now my e-mail address is a really old NTLworld address I no longer have access to, can I play CS through my account, NO! Can I start another account with my CD key, NO! I am royally screwed unless I jump through hoops to get Valve to reset by sending proof etc etc.

That was the final straw for me.
 
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