Piracy: Software and Video Games

Piracy: -noun, plural -cies.

1. The practice of a pirate; robbery or illegal violence at sea.
2. The unauthorized reproduction or use of a copyrighted book, recording, television program, patented invention, trademarked product, etc.: The record industry is beset with piracy.
3. Also called stream capture. Geology. diversion of the upper part of one stream by the headward growth of another.

It's funny how one word can have so many different meanings isn't it? In this article though, we will be focusing on the second definition, that of copyright piracy, but still the word itself has many different connotations. This is the first of a series of articles looking at piracy in its many forms, how it is done, how we can stop it, and why it occurs in the first place.

When someone says Pirate, what springs to mind? A Black Beard-esque figure with a hook hand and a speech impediment? A guy sitting in a nondescript room torrenting the latest films? How about a sneaky hawking merchant selling bootleg DVD's in a marketplace? Or even to some people, a hero trying to bring down a corrupt and outdated industry. Read on and see if your opinion changes at all.

The Software Pirate

I think my first experience of software piracy was back when I was still very young, maybe twelve or thirteen. A friend of mine had one of those "chipped" playstations, and these weird gold discs as opposed to the black ones. That alone was pretty cool, but when he told me he could get any game he wanted for a fiver a disc I was amazed. Hence was my introduction into the world of software piracy.

At first it seemed too wild to be true. I looked in various PS magazines and found that chipping, as it was called was dangerous, voided your warranty, broke your machine and was very, very illegal. As far as the first part goes, all I can say is that eventually I was given that playstation- and it still works. The second part of course was very true. It didn't stop my friend though, today he's moved up from grey stations to the Xbox 360.

The point in case here is that the law does not discourage software pirates. And with the advance of PC technology and the internet, Piracy is now even easier than ever. All you need to do is download the image file of your chosen game, burn it and voila, you have your game. Chipping consoles is easier too; firmware updates mean that any moron can now play copied games on their consoles without even thinking about a soldering iron.

Then of course there's PC piracy. It's so damn easy, all you need to do is torrent a file and apply a crack. Anyone with more than a few months of computer experience can do it. All the hard part of cracking the game's protection is done by someone else, for FREE. The crackers themselves break the protection on games for many reasons. For many of them, the challenge of breaking the system and gaining some recognition from it is more than enough to justify their time. Read a short piece called the mind of a hacker by the mentor for a glimpse into this mindset.

So we've established that the Law does not stop piracy, and with apps like peer guardian, the few people who are worried about being caught can rest easier. So how do we stop Software piracy? The answer seems to be a digital arms race between publishers trying to develop bigger and better copy protection, and crackers efforts to break them. And there are so many crackers out there that no copy protection can hold up to the sheer number of attempts to break it, let alone the efforts of the lower numbers of coders who are highly skilled.

Nevertheless, the video games industry (and the software industry in general) seem to have blinded themselves to this fact. Adopting the politician approach of sticking their fingers in their ears and going nahnahnahnahanahnah! Whenever anyone points out that the current system just isn't working. Point in case, Mass effect on the PC, by Bioware.

Do a Google search Mass effect activation. Take a look at a few of the websites that come up. The general feeling (outside the official forums anyway) is that people have been ripped off- and it's easy to see why.

Three activations, and after that your serial key becomes null and void. Look at it this way. You install Mass effect, but the install was pooched for some reason. One activation. You uninstall and reinstall. Two activations. You play through the game for a while, but something happens (You're using a Dell and it catches fire for example), that causes you to loose the game files. You reinstall. Three activations. You complete the game and uninstall it for the sake of precious disc space (that porn needs to go SOMEWHERE). After a month or two you decide to replay the game, this time doing things differently. Only you can't activate it at all. Oh dear, don't you feel like a chump? If you want to play it again you need to buy another CD key sucker