So you don't mind running all your traffic through a (probably already) overloaded proxy and dealing with the high latency you'll get through an international proxy?
It gets the job done, but I'd much rather not have to circumvent anything. If you're going through proxies, then what happens when someone decides they should be allowed to block known proxies to stop such a counter?

Stop the madness before you need to circumvent it.

yeah, but how hard is it for the US gov to do the same to find and block such proxies, or even enforce an ISP-based word block on "proxy"?

It'd just become another bothersome gray area.

lve never had a problem torrenting with one. Besides, you dont send all your traffic through a proxy...

But if you're just going to circumvent it, why have the act at all?

Ideally I wouldn't. All I'm saying is that should this pass I won't be affected by it, nor will any other potential criminals. Really only those who are completely innocent would be hurt by this. In the end, pirates will ALWAYS win, and everyone else will lose if they try to fight it.

True, but I just wish the politicians would see it that way.

Fighting piracy is an interesting concept. I can't actually think of n effective way to directly fight piracy at its core, except one: Make your software free. No reason to pirate it then!

But then you lose the profits anyways, unless you do some advertising stuff, which people will hack around, therefore "pirating" in essence your software once again.

They could ask for donations, too. There are a lot of people, I am sure, who, out of the goodness of their hearts, would love to give their money to the devs of an excellent, but free, program


I am not one of these people

Or, and here's a bold new concept, why not sell your software at a reasonable price without any strings attached? Just your software, as it is, without trying to control people?

Because then they can freely give it to their friends, which is, in essence, piracy, but it's legal since you specified they had total rights to the media. It would make piracy easier, and legal.

No, you can say that you aren't allowed to redistribute it, that I have no problem with. It's requiring internet validation and restricting how many machines you can install the program on that pisses me off. Just leave your customers alone to do what they want(within reason), and they will reward you with their loyalty.

But that is an attached string in your "no strings attached" concept.

It's generally accepted that if you buy something that doesn't entitle you to copy it and sell the copies. It's all the dictating of what you can do with the original version you purchase that irks me. I shouldn't have to connect to a secure server, turn two keys at the same time and input the nation's nuclear codes every time I want to play a DLC.

But that is DRM. What you're protesting is DRM that is over the top, and implemented in the software itself.

There is a difference, and the kind of DRM-free that companies really resist is the "no strings attached" version, although they also have serious doubts about removing the skimpy protections they do have, as anyone would, I'm sure.

If you were standing in a field of people trying to slash you to bits, would you rather have crappy armor or no armor? The crappy armor makes it harder to move, but no armor means a quicker death. That's the dilemma companies face.

Third option: Stop giving the field of people so many reasons to slash you to bits.

Piracy is like a briar patch, the harder you fight, the greater the pain.

That's where the analogy stops working. You can't turn a horde of people with swords into not killing you by simply accepting their view, because they're out to *kill* you. So, unless you intend to kill yourself...

How the corporate world works is different, Especially in this scenario. Here, you have the equivalent of violent rioters at your door because your company added a lock on the new version of the software. These rioters are at your door because they want you to remove that lock.

I agree with that to an extent.

You're never going to get people to stop redistributing stuff from their own channels except by not having any audience. The best companies can hope to do is limit piracy. This is best done by getting on the community's good side.

Exactly. There won't be a horde of angry people trying to kill you if you don't give them a reason to kill you in the first place. Only people like Charles Manson and Tim McVeigh kill for no apparent reason, everyone else needs a motivation. If you don't give them that motivation, you won't have that problem, save for the one or two Charley Mansons who were going to be out to get you anyway. And 2 against 1 is much better odds than 200,000 against 1.

The reason they do it is because they don't want to pay the money to get it legitimately. That's the true reason for piracy, no matter how you look at it. They might justify it through DRM complaints, but those are just to make them feel beter about themselves.

Piracy isn't entirely about payment.

That honestly depends on the individual pirate. Some may be greedy, others may not have the means to actually purchase what they pirate, others may feel something isn't worth money(and wouldn't buy it even if there was no pirate download), and others still may decide they're fighting some crusade against corporations and their greed(yo). There really isn't any way to conclusively determine how many pirates actually could afford what they pirate, or how much companies are actually losing. What can be proven is that they are *not* losing the total retail cost of all stolen content, as we've seen from lawsuits that totals greater than the entire Earth's GDP.