Sam rants again!

[Borg12345]

http://mad-doodles.tumblr.com/post/25607014124/piracy-why-theres-no-excuse-any-more

Loads of people have been whining about the lack of The Pirate Bay, and not the legitimate reason that this could be the start of a slippery slope. No, they just want MOAR FREE STUFFZ!

*sigh*

So yea, have a rant. Swearing is at a minimum but I get quite riled up about this subject.

[Swix]

I pirated The Dark Knight, however there was a good reason for it. Namely that I couldn't get a hold of it anywhere. Not in media shops, not in supermarkets, not even on Amazon. Ebay had it for extortionate prices, like the most was two hundred and fifty pounds which wouldn't have gone to anyone involved in the film. Of course they all had their own excuses for why they didn't have it. I think the supermarkets was that they underestimated it's popularity so they hadn't bought anywhere near enough. So I went looking for it. I had seen it at the cinema before then, which is why I wanted it so bad in the fisst place.
Eventually we found a copy. A blu-ray disc with a bonus disc attached, and it's sitting on my dvd shelf.

So, where's this flying pig you were going to show people Borg?

[Borg12345]

Depends, can you honestly say you've done that every time?

[Swix]

Hey, you never said that in your rant! *nitpicks the nitpicker* XD.

No, I honestly can say I haven't done that every time-but quite a few times, when I feel it's worth it . Unfortunately I can't do this with every one, because a few of the awesome ones are so old you have to be damn lucky to see one actually for sale.

The movie sites are great in theory. Admittedly I've only looked at two so far but what I've seen doesn't fill me with confidence. One showed what it offered before you decided to sign up, that feature is cool. However they had nothing at all I was interested in. The other site, had zero info about what they offered until after you've committed your money to them, which is not cool and tends to make me highly suspicious of that company's motives.

I wish all the rental stores hadn't closed around here. I have fond memories of demanding my money back ten minutes into watching Uwe Bolls gods-awful House of the Dead movie. If you make a zombie movie where the viewers cheer at the death of what was supposed to be the sweet girl that makes the heroes tragedy at the start then you're doing it wrong.
Also the Dead or Alive movie-though that wasn't quite bad enough to demand rental money back.

I agree about the games though-Let's Plays are about as honest and genuine as you can get.

And the songs-although I'd recommend not using iTunes ever.

I'd also recommend Thomas Leeb, Lindsey Stirling and Malukah for awesome music.

And the independent and small artists-never ever do it (pirate) off them. Ever. In fact I have a little dvd documentary about Romanian paranormal folktales that I'd recommend to anyone interested in the subject. It's fairly cheap to buy, you won't find it anywhere but their website, and you get an awesome little poster with it too.

Never done this sort of thing with books though-after all, we do have libraries .

[Borg12345]

For the record, as I said in the blog post, I don't actually care if people pirate (to a degree). I just get wound up when people act like it's their god given right to pirate everything not nailed to the floor. (I also make a point of not calling it stealing, because it's not. )

[Swix]

That's fair enough, I was on the bus and felt there were a lot of points in your rant I should have covered but didn't the first post ^_^.

[3kul]

Apparently 1 in 3 Australians are guilty of piracy! I try to avoid doing it, and don't pirate music or games at all, but I can't consider myself entirely innocent of this crime either.

Foreign movies (mostly anime, but I watch other stuff too! ) or manga are somewhat harder to obtain without resorting to the equivalent of pirating them, as they are only released here months after being aired/published in their country of origin. Sometimes they are released as an incomplete product (censored, or without the original language) or not at all. I would love to build up a collection of foreign DVDs, but cannot do so due to region locking. Lately, however, more and more online services are catching up in this regard, and offer things like subbed anime almost as soon as it comes out - although even though many of these are free services, they can also be region locked, frustratingly enough.

Region-locking links in with another reason that you don't touch on (perhaps because it's not an issue in the UK?) that does affect Australia. In spite of the fact that our dollar is currently equal to or even a little higher than the US dollar, we often have to put up with inexplicably higher prices for digitally distributed computer software, movies, games and music than most other locations in the world, which makes many people here feel that piracy is still justifiable.

For example, if you buy a digital copy of Microsoft Office 2010 Professional in the US, it will set you back US$349 (AU$349 and six tenths of a cent) - in Australia, that digital copy will cost you AU$849 (US$849.57). Microsoft is not the only culprit (Mac OS X Server 10.6 Snow Leopard = US$499 in the US, AU$699 here), just about every media company is guilty of this, and this is hardly a new issue. For a long time, AU$100 has been the standard price for a new game on just about every console (from as early as N64!) - the excuse is usually something about the Australian market being too small, and production/shipping costs being too high, but digital distribution is where their excuses have finally come across as being too weak. A few months ago our govt launched a price probe into this a few months ago, I'm not sure what, if anything, that will achieve, but it's better than nothing.

And just so that it doesn't seem like I'm completely excusing piracy, there is one complaint that I do have to make that isn't on your list - I really despise how lax kids are in regards to piracy (saying that makes me feel so oooooold!). Every year 7 that I teach has the latest Need For Speed on their computer, but how many do you think actually paid for it? Most of these kids are well off enough to own an iPhone, so it's not like they can't afford it, but they don't see a need to when they can just get it for free from their friends. Our school, and many other schools, become pirate havens, where kids use the school network to share movies, music and play games with each other without ever paying a cent. It would be nice if, when ensuring that every student in the nation was provided with a computer to enhance their education, the government actually took steps to try and prevent this obvious outcome. I look at lawsuits like this and wonder if the kids at my school (or any schools in Australia) have any idea of what they are actually doing, and what the potential consequences are - no doubt their parents would blame the school for allowing them to share illegally downloaded content if they ever did get in trouble

[Borg12345]

Actually to be fair I did forget about region locking. It's almost a non-issue in the UK, most of our media players are region free due to the fact that we just unlocked them anyway. Whilst getting around DVD/Blu-ray locking isn't hard however, more digital products are being region locked, and that's harder to get around.

I'm almost certain there's a way to get around it most of the time to be honest, however the fact you have to is insane. The whole concept of region locking is incredibly archaic, and I thought we were finally moving away from it. Just like with release dates across different countries, it's a completely artificial barrier created because... companies hate money I guess? O_o

The internet has no oceans, but you wouldn't think it would you?

So okay, I admit that in the countries where region locking is screwing you over you have more of a case, and I completely forgot about that. I'm still not convinced it's a proper excuse (because again pirating it still shows that it's popular whilst giving publishers the excuse to lock down their product), but you can't exactly vote with your wallet if they won't take the contents can you? :/

In short I'm pretty sympathetic for this reason, but I'm sure there are legal alternatives. I will however update the blog post to include this.

[Swix]

Can you not play region-locked content on your PC then 3kul? We have two physical dvd series that are region locked on the disc and we can't play them on anything but the PC-not even on a PS3 or 360, which are new-ish compared to the two series-although one was bought recently (and promised it wouldn't be locked... :S). Pretty sure there had to be a small amount of tinkering with the PC to get it to read them, but still.

[Borg12345]

I've gone and done it again, only this time it's about two extreme ends of the spectrum when it comes to Warhammer (and similar games); Win At All Costs and Fluff Fanatics: http://mad-doodles.tumblr.com/post/25961739727/waac-ff

[3kul]

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>Swix</dt><dd>Jun 25 2012, 11:28 AM</dd></dl><div>Can you not play region-locked content on your pc then 3kul.[/quote]Nope, I can't. One of my colleagues is an Italian teacher who bought some DVDs in Italy to share with her class, but when she got back here she found that they would not play at all. I tried to help her get it to play on her computer (she's quite a bit older than me so she's not very computer-savvy), but I could not get it to work on either of our computers. I think it depends on what kind of hardware your computer has - some computers have region-locked DVD drives that will only play discs from a certain region, and some don't. Just so you know, Xbox 360 and PS3 are region-locked as far as DVDs are concerned.

Ultimately it was much easier to download the movies in Italian from a torrent so that she could play them for her class, which has greatly discouraged her from buying movies from Italy again. This is one of the many reasons why I despise region locking, because she (like me) would be more than happy to pay to build up a collection of movies that we can use in our LOTE (Language Other Than English) classes, but thanks to region locking and Australia's bizarre region code we can't.

You can see more about the region codes here, but just to quickly focus on Australia, we are code 4, which is for: Mexico, South America, Central America, Caribbean, New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea and much of Oceania. WHY?&#33; :blink:

I read through your latest rant as well Borg, but I know next to nothing about Warhammer and other tabletop games so I'm not sure what I can add to it other than that it sounds like a pretty frustrating experience&#33;

[Borg12345]

This time I rant about Doctor Who: http://mad-doodles.tumblr.com/post/31306125452/doctor-who-we-hardly-knew-ye

YAR&#33; THAR BE SPOILERS&#33;

EDIT: Note the re-blog from someone purely so they could tell me I was wrong and not back it up. I'm moving up in the internet world&#33; XD

[Borg12345]

I ranted all over the internet again, it was messy: http://mad-doodles.tumblr.com/post/34230969293/difficulty-in-games-and-the-toxic-attitude-surrounding

[Swix]

THEY WANTED TO LOWER THE DIFFICULTY ON THE PC VERSION OF DARK SOULS? HOW DARE THEY&#33;

Now that that's outta the way... I can definitely sympathise about these so called 'Real Gamers' and their outdated ideas. These are the same ones that bemoan the save feature or the fact there are games aimed at young girls, or the fact that some girls, like me, like games in general.

It also sucks to hear that just because of that group the PC version won't be getting a lower difficulty setting, because quite frankly that would have me far more tempted to buy the Prepare to Die edition than the extra content they put in. As much as I love Dark Souls challenge with the difficulty like it is and the non-cheap deaths, it does get in the way of the story quite a lot sometimes.

[Borg12345]

Well we can sit and laugh at them as the news broke that the devs sent the hardcore player base on a wild goose chase.

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>IGN Interview with Hidetaka Miyazaki</dt><dd>&nbsp;</dd></dl><div>When Dark Souls first came out, an answer Miyazaki gave in a Famitsu interview said he'd choose either nothing or a pendant for his starting gift in Dark Souls. The pendant, which has no in-game function, became a focal point for the wilder elements of the community, and the centre of every conspiracy theory going.

I ask Miyazaki whether Manus is a little dig at the series' more obsessive players. “That is a very interesting consideration,” says the devilish fox. “But I suppose I did not include the meaning.” And as for the original pendant speculation, brace yourselves Dark Soulers for Miyazaki's final word: “When it comes to the pendant, I actually had a little bit of an intention to play a prank.”[/quote]

BAHAHAHAHA. Serves 'em right.