Before I begin I'd like to say that I'm not an economist, so I might not know much of what I'm saying. Even so, everyone seems to have their 2 cents on piracy, so here are mine.
SOPA, PIPA, ACTA etc are threats to the internet. Part of the reason the backlash from the online community is that while copyright holders claim that the bill protects them, they are in fact already protected adequately and the bills give them a disproportionate amount of control over the content of the internet.
But there are, and always will be too many pirates and content thieves for them to keep up with. But let's not judge the pirates. We can sit here and play the blame game but in the end when markets collapse, share prices drop and people lose jobs pointing fingers won't do anyone any good. People need to realise the true problem.
See, piracy is simply a market force. It's a symptom, and not an illness. And the disease is pricing.
Piracy, or at least large scale piracy exists because there is a difference between what the publisher sees as the value of their product, and what the consumer see as it's value. Clearly the pirate is interested in the product, and would probably consider buying it but the prices are too damn high.
Look at it this way. Piracy is a calculated risk. The pirate's mind makes it into an equation: Perceived value of product + risk of prosecution < publisher's perceived value of product. Now legislating to increase the odds of prosecution does seem to balance out both sides. However, that will only lessen piracy. What it won't do is increase the value of the product. So it won't make people more likely to spend money, only less likely to pirate, which, obviously won't increase industry profits.
The solution is simple = increase the value of your product to the consumer. You can't legislate your product into becoming more valued. Make them see that your game is worth more, that they get more for buying from you than they do from pirating. Provide them with a better service than illegal sites. Jim Sterling goes over this point very well in his recent
Jimquisition.
But also lower prices. And I don't mean let retailers drop prices after a few months. I mean actually lower them right out of the gate. Now I can't find any official statistics but isn't the biggest pirating group teenage boys and young men? Let's be honest, as a demographic they don't have a lot of money, many are in school or college and can't afford to pay £40 per game more than a few times a year. Yet that demographic is repeatedly punished for lending to a friend, buying second hand.
But it's very easy for me to say 'lower game prices'. That's a strategy that serves me best, not the publishers. Well here's the thing: I'm the consumer. The publisher is supposed to serve me. Yeah, the publisher provides me with entertainment, but I provide them with money. I put them in a job and food on their table. They're not my friend, they aren't even on my side and would, as recent turns would show, take every penny from me if they could. They are simply a necessary evil which I endure to get to the work of the developers, who are more than anything far closer to being friends of the gamer.
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As far as the value of the product, it's impossible to come up with a solid way to do that. Some people who find absolutely no value in something may be met with others who think it's awesome. Take the Wii game, Calling, for example. That game was panned by EVERYONE, but I absolutely loved it, and paid full price for it after I had already finished it once.
Obviously piracy is wrong. At no point am I trying to justify it, if it seems to you that I am then I must have not been particularly clear. What I am trying to do is understand piracy from the mind of the pirate, which I think is the only way to deal with it. Obviously in a perfect world there would be no piracy. but there would also be no drm, online passes, patches etc. But so far it's been the gamers making all the concessions to the publishers by accepting these measures, I think they should meet us halfway.
And I agree that value is subjective, I wouldn't buy Calling for £40 whereas some would and play it through multiple times. Neither of us is 'wrong' in our valuation of the game but from the publisher's point of view if they could offer me more then I would be more likely to make that purchase. And yes, sometimes you find gems but that's more the exception than the rule. So it's impossible to make EVERYONE value a certain game highly, even if it is well received, publishers can compensate for this in other ways.
I too agree that increased legislation isn't the way to go... legislation already exists and they need to do what was done in the music industry - a bunch of high profile cases where they sue the shit out of some of these pirates for losses. If they invested half the money they spent on SOPA, PIPA and the other failed legislation into better software to track and identify pirates, then that seems like it might be more effective, because in the end, maybe fear is one of the few human qualities that will override greed.
That type of tracking software might also be useful in finding and convicting some of these Anonymous-type internet attacks on various businesses, which does as much financial harm as piracy does. :(
The laws are there, it's just difficult to get the proof needed to enforce existing legislation.
You can't change human nature. Even if somehow you can it's difficult and probably much harder than adjusting an entire industry. At the risk of sounding like some sort of communist, capitalism conditions us to get the best deal we can in all areas of life, so when people try to get something for nothing we shouldn't be surprised,although that obviously doesn't mean we should sit idly by and let them. And like I said playing the blame game helps no-one. An while I don't expect piracy to ever be completely eradicated there are things that publishers can do to lower it. And with the industry's best and brightest they should have done a lot more already than their persecutory measures which confuse and annoy legitimate customers.
And yes, there are indie games but the biggest problem for the indie game industry is convincing people that they offer a product that is close in value to the big budget games and, not to disrespect the indie devs but they haven't managed to convince me yet. Yeah there are some very good indie games but on the whole it doesn't offer an experience that for me matches big-budget production.
As for self-styled internet vigilantes, well at least they're doing something which in ways is better than sitting there taking it. But their approach is wrong and immature and often hurts the very thing they claim to protect.
And while there are laws in place let's be honest, people know where the big pirate sites are. Megaupload just got taken down - a six-year old equipped with google could find enough copyrighted material on their site. I'm sure most gamers could name at least a couple of sites. Finding evidence and issues of jurisdiction may be slippery but as we've seen it's only a matter of time. And infringing on the rights of millions of consumers is not the way to help the industry.