Of course, as gaming companies have gotten smarter, so have the gamers. Gaming piracy is still rampant on the Internet and torrents are one of the fastest ways a person can get hold of a pirated game. In fact, TorrentFreak recently released their list of the top 10 most pirated games of the year, which made for some interesting reading.

At the top of this unofficial list is Electronic Arts’ Spore. The game has been downloaded 1.7 millions times since it was released in September. The top position can be attributed to the game’s ridiculous DRM, which allowed a user who purchased a legitimate copy to install the game only three times. Spore also holds the distinction of being the most downloaded torrent on Piratebay for a full week, a rare feat for a game.

Other games released this year that have made it to the list include Fallout 3 (#8), Far Cry 2 (#9), and Pro Evolution Soccer (#10). The second to the seventh positions on the list are occupied by older games like the Sims 2, Crysis, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, etc. In most cases, these games were available on torrent sites well before their actual release.

The general trend in gaming piracy seems to be greater the copy protection, the more chance a game will be pirated. Price is also an issue that encourages piracy. If I’m paying $50 for one game, I wouldn’t want to have my gaming experience restricted in any way. Another factor that promotes piracy is that games are often not released worldwide at the same time. So while a U.S. resident gets first crack at a game, the same title may only be available for purchase to someone across the world after some months.

Ironically, piracy can sometimes be used as an indicator of a game’s popularity. Almost all of these games occupy a position in the ‘best-selling games list’ released by Amazon. What do you think of the top ten games on the list? Is there a game you expected to see on it? What would you like gaming companies to do to ensure that games don’t get pirated? Let me know in the comments.

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As LimeWire is open-source, several forks of it exist. One of these forks is called FrostWire, a client which appears and works in a similar fashion but removes many limitations of the free version of LimeWire. FrostWire also has some features which LimeWire Pro lacks, such as BitTorrent support.

Unlike LimeWire Pro, FrostWire is completely free to use and download. FrostWire is based on LimeWire’s Java engine and as such, it works on OS X, Linux and Windows, providing Java 1.5 or above is installed.

FrostWire can identify files tagged as Creative Commons in searches, much like LimeWire does, it can filter out junk results like LimeWire, supports proxies, works well with iTunes and there’s no viruses or spyware with it. A more in-depth review is on my weblog, Webby’s World.

FrostWire is an easy way to save $35 if you really wanted to buy LimeWire Pro. It is also a way to ensure people do not profit from tools which mainly facilitate piracy!

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Ban someone from the Internet because he is a file sharer ? Would not that be the equivalent of banning someone from using knifes ever again because he stabbed someone with one ? No sorry sir, you have to use the spoon to put butter on your bread, you are banned from using knifes ever again.

Well you used a car in the bank robbery, that means that we will ban you from driving around with cars ever again, sorry, no buses either, use a bike or walk. That’s silly I know but that’s how I feel about this proposal.

They act like if file sharing was the only activity for those users on the Internet. No information gathering, chatting, talking with friends, watching videos, movies, exchanging knowledge and all the other activities.

Someday they will understand that restrictions, drm, bans and all the other crazy ideas that they have to make the life of real consumers miserable and more expensive will not help stopping piracy at all. But go ahead, ban a huge part of the population from accessing the Internet and see what happens to the economic power and progress of that nation.. and your job in the next legislation..

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Paul Coelho is a successful writer, he did write the Alchemist for example, a book that sold millions of copies. He was recently talking about this book and the distribution of the book in Russia. In its first year the book sold 1000 copies. That is not really much if you consider that Russia has a population way above 100 million. The book was also copied and distributed in Russia on the black market and Paul decided to publish the Russian version of his book on his website.

To his and his management’s astonishment the book sold 10000 copies the next year, 100000 copies the following and over 1 million copies the year after up to over 10 million in 2008. He attributes this success to the free publication of his book on his website because marketing and distribution remained exactly as they have been before.

Link: sevenload.com

Since he discovered that his books sell better when he gives them away for free on the Internet he created his own Wordpress blog called Pirate Coelho where he is offering download links for many of his books using various ways like emule and file hosts.

via Techdirt

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Guess how many times I had to see this announcement ? Seven Times ! Yes that’s right. They put it on all DVDs. I was not able to skip it and that is why I’m writing this article about it. Let me ask you another question. Tell me how many times users who download 24 season 4 from the Internet are seeing this message ? Zero Times ! Yes that is right. If you pirate the tv series you get a clean copy without that nice Piracy reminder that people who BUY the DVD get.

Am I the only one who thinks something is seriously out of line here ? It’s like those game copy protections that do more harm than good. Buyers have to live with the copy protection even though it could mean that the game won’t play on their computer but guys who download it ? They get a crack and can run it without DVD at all.

Let’s talk about DRM in music. Do you think that the majority of songs in Peer to Peer networks has DRM ? The stance of the Music Industry is thankfully changing on this matter and I really hope that the Movie and Gaming Industry will make the changes as well.

If I purchase a DVD I do not want to see ads against Piracy. This is insane. The same is happening in cinemas all over the country. You see anti-piracy ads in cinema. Are they going to try to convince the one guy that might sit in one of the cinemas with his cam to stop making a recording the movie ?

One could say that they try to sensitize the public but do they have to do that in front of people who actually purchased a product ? Why don’t they do tv commercials instead ? That would probably be more effective and buyers would not feel so irritated with all the anti-piracy ads in their purchased products.

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We want easy access to music. Want to play it at home, in our car, in our mp3 players, Walkmans, Stereo Recorders and everywhere else we like. They want us to pay for every device that we play the music on. You’ve got a car, a mp3 player and a home computer ? Pay three times for the new record of your favorite artist.

This is in my opinion the number one reason why the Music Industry is doing so badly these days. They don’t want to understand what their customers want. They surely know what we want but they stick with their old, oppressive system without taking advantage of the new possibilities.

“When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song.” Making “a copy” of a purchased song is just “a nice way of saying ’steals just one copy’,” she said.

Lets remember that we are not talking about stealing music, at least not from my point of view. If I purchase something I would like to be free to use it everywhere I want. It simply does not make sense to pay multiple times for a record only to be able to listen to it in all of your places using all your purchased devices.

My prediction is that the Music Industry is going down if they do not change their attitude and business model. And no, this does not mean to increase prices for digital downloads. This means, give us what we want. Make us happy and your business will thrive.

Support Online Radio instead of fighting it. Support independent online services that introduce new concepts instead of ignoring them. Understand that times are changing and that music itself has to compete against several other entertainment sectors such as movies, mobile phones and games.

Read More:

Arstechnica

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It is not illegal in Sweden to link to a torrent file and I never quite understood why linking to something would be the same as actually downloading it. This would in essence mean that selling weapons should be equivalent to killing someone with weapons. Another prime example is the paragraph about allofmp3, the Russian mp3 provider operating perfectly legal in Russia. Forbes sees it this way:

Not every scheme to evade intellectual property laws is so subtle. The music-selling site AllofMP3 uses a simpler business model: Base your company in Russia, steal music from American labels and sell it cheaply.

Again, the service is perfectly legal in Russia. This is actually globalization, something that all companies are so keen of. Only that this time the consumer is profiting from it and not the global companies who sell their goods worldwide, buy cheap labor in poor countries and give a **** about the country that they are based in.

I also find it quite fascinating that Forbes is directly linking to websites of copyright offenders. Isn’t it illegal to do so according to their logic ? (Linking to torrents is illegal but linking to websites that host torrents is not ?)

What’s your take ?

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Sure, no one is forcing anyone to buy music online but I think it is important to let as many people as possible know that this is not really a step in the right direction. Why are the prices for DRM free music songs higher than those for normal songs ? Is the Music Industry still fearing that buyers will upload the songs to p2p networks ? Don’t they know that all their precious albums exist on those networks days, weeks and sometimes even months before release ? How can a customer who is actually buying the songs hurt them even more ?

I’m thinking that many sites who report favoredly about this new marketing move should get their facts straight. They are upselling you something that you already had 10 years ago. ArsTechnica has an interesting article worth a read entitled “DRM, lock-ins, and piracy: all red herrings for a music industry in trouble”

The new old concept is not convincing me at all to purchase music online. I will continue my boycott as long as they try to fool their customers and not listen to them. I’m listening to web radio at the moment, if they manage to shut that down I will listen to my old records and independent bands from online portals such as Jamendo. And yes, I do purchase albums from those bands from time to time. I know that they receive the largest share from my money and that is what counts..

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Reuters reports that Universal Group Chief Executive Doug Morris may want to fashion an iPod royalty fee with Apple Computer Inc. in the next round of negotiations in early 2007 which could mean that customers would have to pay a similar fee as the Zune’s for a newly purchased iPod to the music studios.

This basically means that customers are paying compensation fees in advance for something that they probably never do with their media players. It is also interesting to note that some customers seem to see this advanced piracy tax in a way that would allow them to copy media because they already payed for the privilege.

Movie Studios are also demanding that Apple reduces the number of devices that are allowed to play back a movie that has been purchased from iTunes.

I think it is really funny that they become more and more restrictive against the people that are buying their movies. Would not it be better for their business if they would actually listen to what their customers demanded instead of communicating the message that all their customers are movie pirates ?

Customers on the other hand have to take a stance against this, the earlier the better. I advise everyone to stay away from the Zune player and stay away from any other player the movie industry gets a share of. Don’t buy it, don’t buy their movies, let them bleed until they understand who is in charge..

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This copy of Windows is not genuine; you may be a victim of software counterfeiting

Brian Krebs got some answers from Microsoft about this procedure, here are the interesting tidbits.

Customers who opt in to the pilot and learn they are using non-genuine versions of Windows will receive a message during logon that their copy of Windows appears to be non-genuine and will be directed to the WGA Web site to learn more. If they choose not to obtain a copy of genuine Windows at that time, the customer will receive reminders until they are running genuine Windows

The pilot is opt-in, so all participants are given a choice about whether or not they wish to participate. The opt-in is via a License Terms dialog, and users can chose to accept or decline. Only users who accept will receive the software. Once installed, participants will have the option to suppress notifications for some length of time. Users will not have the option of uninstalling WGA Notifications

WGA Notifications is for Windows XP users. Our client software does not collect any information that can be used to identify or contact a user. We use the same process used by many popular search engines and Web sites to determine where their users are from — a form of IP lookup. This IP lookup process does not include any information that is used to identify you or contact you, and only gives a rough geographic representation of where users are located

It seems to be opt-in for now but it could very well become a must if you want to recieve further updates for your operating system.

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