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I pay for Sky TV, I get ads. I don't really complain that I have to sit through them, so I don't see the problem with having ads on a paid service, especially when the ads aren't interrupting anything.

there is a reason i dont watch TV anymore..

edit: except for when i BUY movies, seriess etc

I buy netflix, series and movies in the store. The day netflix shows ads is the day I cancel them.

I won't pay to watch ads.

There's only one thing about that "anti-pirating movement" that really annoys me - those "Pirate a movie, you'll get in jail" spots on purchased DVD's, that always play before the menu fades in and aren't skip-able.

Pirates don't have to see those spots, so why force the legitimate customers to sit through that crap?

It doesn't, in fact it gives me all the more reason to pirate the game instead of buying it (since no doubt the pirated version will have the ads removed).

The more you change your software to fight pirates, the bigger the chance I'll pirate it ( unless you change the software in a sense that gameplay is enhanced when buying it ).

I think the only way to defeat piracy is in a way that no user ever gets the game files. There was a thread a couple of weeks back about a company who stream games over the internet, and I think that's the only way to do it.

At least until the server farm gets haxxed.

You mean OnLive, it's a good service, but you need a good internet connection - 2mbps minimum and using it would greatly reduce the number of people who can play it. With the internet in my area, THE BEST it can do is at least connect to OnLive only if late at night where I can just about squeeze 2mbps, but the video resolution is pretty horrible, it is playable, just about. Friends who live in the city on the other hand get a good enough connection for them to get a decent resolution.

As for ads in a video game, I think I see enough adverts on other forms of media for it to drive me mad. Sky TV - they can interrupt an important part of the program, you pretty much have 3 mins of advertising for every 15 mins of TV, but of course that's not enough because on some channels you'll get adverts showing up as you watch the show. Then you've got plenty of adverts in magazines, on internet sits, on billboards, on the radio, in shop windows and various other parts of our lives.

Personally I would be against letting advertisement bug me even further. I think if I was getting something for free, like some games that are free but have adverts and like with Spotify, if you want to listen to music for free you listen to adverts and I used to pay £10 a month so I could listen to music uninterrupted - it was worth it considering how much I used it (I stopped because I could do with the extra £10 a month).

[edit]
I love the IT Crowd and that clip is totally awesome and spot on.

A person told me today that Hugo Chavez- president of Venisuela found a very clever solution to piracy. He established a so called Piracy tax which is about $15-$20 per month. this tax goes to publishers of software and digital media publishers in the country. Paying this tax pretty much allows you to legally pirate any content.

Personally i think this is actually a very smart solution and should be adopted. Infact it seemes a lot more cheap and practical and hassle free than censoring / filtering content. If you dont pay the tax and caught pirating than you could easily be fined and pressed charges against.

I don't like this idea at all.

Piracy tax?! If this be true, then Hugo is the hero of the new free world order. Its brilliant. Everyone pays, anyone gains. It makes sense. Hell it helps publishers because their product would spread quicker through the internet than any affordable means (it costs an arm and a leg for a 30 second TV add).

As for adds in games, well I don't mind if it's during a loading screen. Whats the difference between the loading bar and a picture saying "everyone, show your individuality by buying this product"? (btw check out MGS4 on ps3. It has fake adds during loading). I spose they could just offer two versions [game] - premium (free or extra low cost, say 10% of price. This with adds) or [game] - ultimate (normal cost, no adds). They do it with many sites and small apps as it is.

wanna hear the completley stupid Russian alternative to Hugos piracy tax?

but its a stupid idea for those who barely plays games..

even if I didn't play games, I'd rather get taxed for the people's entertainment than a government minister's or some fund to fund a committee formed to discuss the issuue of too many committees.

btw, a word of caution to us all: We're treading into the realms of politics. I wont be surprised if this thread gets locked in another few posts.

I'll bite. And what reward is there for a new company to come along and create something awesome? The population has no incentive to pay market value (they can just pay the tax). How would a new company even get paid? It seems like a policy where the big companies get richer and the independants can develop with another country in mind.

I wouldn't develop under those circumstances unless I churned out crap.

I agree that i think the tax should be higher if thats what youre getting at. But hey Look, This is already a somewhat progressive step forward! Nothing will ever be decided and accomplished if everyone just fugurativley stands on one spot and continues to spam the logic and methods that have been around for 20+ years without coming up with any new ideas on how to deal with it.

I just hope that a similiar tax will be developed for "regular" stealing in shops - getting a brand new flatscreen for some bucks would be quite the deal.

that^


what REALLY has to be regulated are THE LAWS considering piracy

at the moment, a pirate is getting a WORSE punishment than a RAPIST.


do you see anything wrong in THAT image?

rapist -> 8 years in prison and about 10k$ in bill

pirate -> 8-10 years in prison and about a couple million bill


hmm....

Communism has been around for more than 20+ years too. Communism didn't work out

I dont think everyone has realised this yet, but figurativley speaking, if you keep pushing people in a direction they dont want to go its no use to waste effort on them, you will just waste energy trying to do so against their will.

Where am i going with this? Americans of this forum!, Prepare to experience pride in your software industry. (Microsoft in particular).

So Mid 90s in russia, Piracy was so rampant, Bill Gates at that time being the richest man in the world was the most hated american in russia being a corporate CEO and the soviet mentality still fueled hate towards capitalism and wealth especially as Russias economy Fell. Horeds of uncontrollable Russian Linux geeks added to demonisation of Bill Gates and the general opinion of how bad windows OS was.

The west couldnt tolerate the uncontrolled piracy in russia therefore russian authorities would once in a while to a some big raid on some factory bacement that was used to make copies of pirated cassettes and CDs and stuff, Then they would pile up all that pirated content and run int over with a steam roller on the spot, and this kind of stuff was always big news on the TV and it showed the west that russia is actually doing something to fight the problem. Of course this didnt stop piracy and the cycle repeated. with more flashy raidsand bigger piles of medial and stuff.

Then i think in about 2003, once again, they had one of those big anti piracy media sensations when the authorities found out that a school teacher in some somall town installed pirated windows on school computers. Because this was in the news the central office of Microsoft in Russia got wind of the situation and informed microsoft people in the states about it. Before long Steve Balmer (sp?) and Bill Gates decided to get involved. They contacted the Russian authorities and declared that microsoft is not pressing charges against the teacher and demanded to remove any criminal/copyright infringment charges against the teacher and drop the case. Following this, Bill Gates announced that Microsoft has put into effect a new policy that gives every school in Russia a free unlimited licence of Windows even if its pirated, its still perfectley legal on any school computer.

This move by Bill Gates turned into a win-win situation for everyone. Common Rissians who were no strangers to their own corporate scumbag bullies, did not expect a CEO to stand up for a common school teacher who was legally guilty of copyright infringment under russian law and then give all schools in the country a chance to recieve a free licence oreven an open permission to pirate Windows withing the limits of school computers. Bill gates now earned the respect of an entire countrys population and this whole deal turned out toserve as a big marketing move that promoted Microsoft software in the country (the image of which was poor due to the reputation of MS software being generally bad, as well as widespread influence of unix/linux OSs whose large croud of suppoerters/linux geeks/ unix fanboys who were obsessed with bashing MS software any way they could). Microsoft could now greatly expand its establishment in Russia thus also winning from the situation.

Bill Gates knew that the economy was in a bad shape and most people couldnt afford or werent willing to pay $300 for a Windows licence and MS office. This lead Microsoft to radically change its policies in Russia. First of all, Microsoft never even bothered to fight piracy here. Instead, they lowered the price for microsoft products in russia, Often having special deals on the licences. Over the next few years they evolved their business strategies buy releasing a bunch of free and very cheap software. For example there are a few licences of windows 7 they have avaliable that vary in prices, the cheapest one being something like single use licence of windows 7 Professional for about $20. They also released a very basic trimmed down version of MS office for free that contains only MS Word, Exel and Powerpoint with some of the advanced options turned off. They seem to go in the direction of rewarding people who buy their software rather than punish those who pirate it.
Now Microsoft wants to set up an unlimited licence per person thing which pretty much registers an unlimited Windows licence on one person indefinaltley. purchasing such licence (this one costs the original $300-$500 depending on the version you get) of the gives you windows OS thats clear of MS genuine advantage and any anti-piracy measures that usually annoy people. You can install it on as many computers you want and if you loose your copy, since you are registered, you can always download a replacement of whatever you purchased hassle free.
Such policies again gained a lot of respect for Microsoft and i did actually notice that unlike some people in america (my programing teacher and classmates among others) who often spoke out hatred for microsoft (still dont understand why, i think they make good stuff), In Russia noone seems to have any negative feelings toward Microsoft, (my neighbor even considers himself a proud Microsoft fanboy).
But its not just the software that makes Microsoft one of the most loved companies in Russia. As far as i know, for Microsoft, software development is just a step towards bigger goals. As it turns out Microsoft is involves in a lot of projects all over the world many of which are some type of research & development projects.
The Nuclear research facility institute thats almost across the street from where i live turns out to house one of MS's biggest network infrustructure projects.The fastest internet hub in europe is about 400m from where i live. I even heard convincing rumours that the facility is sometimes visited by Bill Gates who apperentley frequentley visits Russia (not too surprising i guess as the huge influence of Microsoft in the city is quite obvious. I also read that microsoft is also involved in development of portable nuclear power plants for third world countries here as well.
Microsoft seemes to be peretty familiar with the way things run in Russia which brings me to the latest move by MS which made MS look very good (and maybe even embarrased the russian government).
Since 2008 the russian government and gov-corporations announced the construction of a city outside of moscow which will focus on stuff like scientific research, electronics development and other fields of high tech. This ambitios project was a public lauging stock because everyone is already used to the idea that people put in charge of these projects are corrupt crooks who will pocket the funding and get rich off of it while the actual projects are left on paper as budget plans and documentation and stuff.
After years of speculation, just a month ago Microsoft announced they gave the first donation for the first project that was planned- Development of advanced voice recognition technology. And no doubt that MS is proboly going to participate in it as well while making sure all the money MS donated is spent properly. People stopped mocking this as another failure and started believing that something serios might actually come out of it, if Microsoft is getting involved thus even saving the russian scientific community from failure that resulted from corruption and underfunding.

So thats how Bill Gates went from the most hated American in Russia to the most respected American in russia. The point i am trying to make is, unlike most corporations who try to brute force their way trough a situation with an army of lawyers to gain profit, microsoft not only tried to be more innovative approach to establishing their market in a foreign country, they came up with a more humane approach which rewarded microsoft as well as consumers of MS product in the long run.
If MS came in and did business the same way as in the states, they would have sufferred profit losses and ended up leaving russia to to the doomed fate of linux fanboys... and everyone today would proboly be running linux or BSD on their PCs (oh god)

Also by establishing itself in russia MS got acess to a stable supply of potential future MS employees/ software developers (Russia has a high concentration of computer geeks in general)

so idk, maybe someone could approach the issue of piracy in a similar way, Worth a try to see what happens.



not sure what you are getting at here but ussr seemed to have accomplished a lot more than the fight against piracy.

But yeah i was wrong with the 20 year thing, fight against piracy as far as i know started with Napster in 1999 i think? So yeah more like 10-12 years of fighting piracy.

[edit] it seemes i made a lot of typos... well just pretend that my english is bad

I just remembered something that adds to the Microsoft thing i wrote above.
I remembered that even my Grandpa on a few occasions spoke positivley of Bill Gates, I guess back then i didnt know why, neither did i care really and i guess now i know. It kinda surprised me actually because not many people his age (83) really knew or cared who Bill Gates was.

I've cleaned this last bit up. It appears that the problem has rectified itself (or himself, as it were). Let's keep things on topic.

From the founders of the internet:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/internet-inventors-warn-against-sopa-and-pipa

Of course, that link is to the EFF, and so they're not exactly unbiased when it comes to internet censorship xD

I'm not sure what you mean by that.

I'm personally biased against censorship too. I'm biased against changes to the Internet that decrease security. I'm biased against laws that assume I'm guilty and punish me without proof, and that I have to spend my own money to prove otherwise.

Doesn't mean that I can't say anything about those subjects though.

I would suggest to any company that uses a .com address, or a US payments provider to move their business elsewhere if either SOPA or PROTECT IP pass into law. I know there are companies that are already relocating their cloud business because of PATRIOT and the privacy concerns surrounding it. All of these attempts by the US to construct laws around the Internet, supposedly to protect US interests and jobs, are simply driving business away from the US and doing exactly the opposite.

This kind of internet censorship (based around copyright protection) is the worst kind in my opinion because it undermines the principal of the internet as a birthplace to new creative ideas. I am afraid that much of this creativeness and innnovativeness will be dulled since someones idea might violate someone elses copyright, and Large corporations can really use this to exploit the internet. Copyright is something that can be used to argue almost any idea that might be a threat to the copyright holder even if its some really vauge coincidence or BS sublimital messaging aimed at one thing or another.

This will lead to internet becoming boaring and corporate controlled and used as an arena for copyright lawsuits, people would be afraid to come out with a new original ideas out of fear of some jerk trying to sue your idea away from you.

If this is the future of american Internet? i think i wouldnt have anything against using Chinese internet which would now seem pretty liberal next to the american one.

watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJIuYgIvKsc&feature=source_video