PureBasic Forums - English

Trond wrote:

Your minds are totally closed. I should pity you but my opinion of why you are so opposed to DRM doesn't allow for that.

I repeat what case said: People who want to steal software couldn't care less about this discussion since they don't have to deal with DRM. Cracked software is DRM-free. Is this so hard to understand?

Not taking part on the flaming, but doesn't your statement only apply to offline games? People who crack their games to enjoy* them without DRM might just as well be afraid when going online and the server instantly recognizes them as thiefs. Stupid thing is, once you're banned from the server it's not just your IP but your IP range as well so dynamic IPs won't help much. The case is even worse with gaming consoles (though the factor of DRM is smaller in the console world); once you're banned from XBOX Live then that's it. Bye bye. You can't just dynamically or magically change the ID of your XBOX unit, you're just banned so freaking live with it :roll:

Something most people do when cracking their games is to even shut down their anti-virus in order to "proceed" with installing the crack and believe it was a "false positive". I know many who had their PCs sent to hell with endless worms and trojans. For the record only two had formatted HDD's

So in a way "we, the annoyed," legitime customers might suffer less than h4x0rz in the long run. The bottom line is, DRM wants to give you the impression that you have your freedom and that it is only a way to stop piracy, but what it really does is put a stop to your freedom. If I pay for a song online, say on iTunes Store then no one should stop me in making hundreds of copies on CD's. I'll keep one with me and store the 99 other copies safely in different areas of my cellar. Just in case CD number 1 gets scratched or damaged, I have 99 other CDs to kill. But NO, f**king morons knock on your door, take a vaccuum cleaner and blast your CDs to hell and your internet cord as well!

(A improved and slightly longer second draft of this post is published on http://emsai.net/journal/?post=Rescator20081018194709 but the gist of it is the same, only not quite as nicely written as on my site obviously.)

DRM (and even copy protection) is just a panic/kneejerk reaction.

Spore was cracked around the same time it was released right?
After which point, pirates suddenly had a "easier" product than legitimate users.

Obviously legit users have all the online content stuff in addition, but that could easily be served by a initial serial tied to a registered user account.
BioWare did this with Mass Effect, you got a downloadable expansion if you where a legit customer. (Luckily the other DRM stuff of the game hasn't hurt me "yet")

In the case of Spore it's possible the copy protection/DRM prevented earlier leaks. But once cracked, EA really has no reason to still have it. (they could have released a tiny patch removing it for example).

The odd thing is that most copy protection and DRM prevents a customer from casually making copies to friends and families.
Commercial pirates and "underground" file trading networks/groups always circumvent these measures.

I have no love for commercial pirates, those "are" genuine thieves as they steal actual sales. (These are assholes trying to sell stuff like PureBasic but take all the money themselves, or relabel/rename software or rewrap software and sells as if they made it.)

Trading networks/groups (aka what most media and publishers calls Pirates these days) fall into the "lost potential sales" category, which after all these years there exist no imperical statistics on whether it does affect sales or not, nor how much.

The latter is a giant group, but there is no proved direct loss due to them. (they are basically non-customers) but publisher execs see those huge stats and think that 1 download = 1 shop sale, which is obviously way wrong.

If there was less media focus on this latter group, then the "average" customer would still be mostly unaware of this, but with all the media attention (thanks to the RIAA and MPAA in large parts) today "everyone" knows about this. How many "pirates" has the industry itself created due to this? At least when this was mostly underground/hush-hush the "scene" was smaller.

Is there a solution to this though? Nah, I doubt there ever will be. Even with the DRM "chips" that are in/will be in most new motherboards. Again legit users will get the drawbacks while the "pirates" will only be slowed by a few weeks, then a crack or something is available and the software is "liberated".

For years I've bought games and then fetched a no-cd crack. If I'd never had the annoyance of cd-protection I probably would never have needed to look for a workaround and thus never discovered no-cd cracks and that part of the "scene".

It's a catch-21, the more DRM or copy-protection publishers add, the more aware people become, and the more knowledgeable they become in getting rid of it. I'm sure there are grandma's out there now who know how to get no-cd cracks etc.

THE IDEAL SYSTEM

I've always been in the belief that you buy the product, you get a serial (kind of like a receipt, ideally this serial is generated on purchase thus "keygens" will be almost useless.) This serial is then tied to your user account with the company you purchased from, after this the serial have been "used". (again making keygens even more useless)

All that is needed now is a friendly periodical check, (can be done with the version check update for example) or during downloading of extra content, during login when asking for support/support tickets. Owners only forum section, exclusive chats with the developers, wallpapers, art, music tracks, etc, etc.

All that adds value, all that makes being a legit user rewarding, and registering your game and tying the serial permanently to your account is worth it. And if someoe should steal your serial or missuse your account, tyou can (depending on the system used) either self block, control, re-issue the serial, or have the company do it, in other words the system also helps protect your investment as a customer.

And should you ever loose the install media, or if it's download only, then you can re-download the software from the company. Remember you want the customer to not only return, but buy other product and services, but also show brand loyalty, grow the brand or product community, spread the word to others, persuade others to get the product and much more.

Impossible idealism? Maybe, but it's surprising how many of these things under "THE IDEAL SYSTEM" that PureBasic actually seems to match, and that's even without really trying that hard.

Google has the slogan: Don't Be Evil!
Maybe publishers should have: Don't Be Greedy!

Treating the customer as the actual valuable itself, or a nuisance on your path to the money.
Which is the better road?


(A improved and slightly longer second draft of this post is published on http://emsai.net/journal/?post=Rescator20081018194709 )

For those that did not notice, the post above is a practical example of how customers should be treated.

The post above is a 1st draft, so lazy (or "pirate" if you need an analogy) get that,
but those of you that click the link and read the post on my site are a visitor (again, the analogy here is "customer") and get the 2nd draft.

The 2nd draft has nicer layout, more spell checking, rewording and rephrasing, extra content, and so on.

Don't click (do nothing, aka, don't pay and pirate if this was a game)
or click. (do something, aka pay if this was a game).

Now which of the posts do you prefer, the one above or the one on my site?
Imagine this scenario again but with a game, with DRM (the post above) or without. (the one on my site)

Give legit customers a better treatment than non-customers, simply really. after all, the legit customers will hopefully be there, again and again, if you treat them right.

Rescator wrote: Spore was cracked around the same time it was released right?
After which point, pirates suddenly had a "easier" product than legitimate users.

Spore was cracked and available through bittorrent before it was legally released.
http://kotaku.com/5045120/spore-cracked ... ed-already

I read both thoroughly and carefully. I must say that to imagine as if this would be a game is hard. I can't adapt myself into an environment which I never have been part of, but been part of the control of it. This is again "outside-the-box" thinking, but getting into deeper context and thinking inside the box, I get the message. Truth is, it does good and bad at the same time yet isn't neutral. There are good and bad uses for it, but none of them help keep a balance.

Synopsis: The society is divided into four different races; the wise, the wise, the masters, the unknown. The wise are honest. The wise utilize. The masters rule. The unknown are silent.

Hypothesis: A new powerful social norm can restore the balance between the races. However, there are two races of the same type, the wise. They can be good and they can be bad. No matter what you give them, they won't agree to create a bond between each other. Neutrality is lost and can not be found again.

Resolution: From a statistic view, nothing. From a developer's view, nothing. From a publisher's view, nothing. From a customer's view: live with it. From a thief's view: stop it, break it. The customers (wise) and the thief's (wise) are expressing the opposite of their own minds.

Trond wrote:When I start PureBasic I do not have to any wait extra time, because the software is "pure" and uncrippled.

I hate to burst your bubble but PureBasic DOES have a form of DRM in it. Your license data is in a file called "datakey" in the Compilers directory, delete that file and PureBasic quits working. I'd call that DRM.

Ideally, the "datakey" file shouldn't be packaged with the full version but instead should be created with each buyer's information making it unique to each user, that way when it is illegally shared, Fred can find out who the culprit is and terminate their license. But Fred chose to use the same file for everyone, that is his choice.

So.... Since you all believe that DRM is bad and that software with DRM should be boycotted, I have to ask, why are you still here and using PureBasic?

Trond wrote:Maybe that's true, but the state-of-the-art DRM system in the game Spore didn't stop the availability of a cracked version without restrictions even before the official release.

Everyone is so fond of saying that, you all must think its a good thing.

You opinion of DRM is your opinion and you have a right to it. I will no longer argue with you whether it is good or bad.

Go ahead and boycott all software that has DRM, all you'll be doing is depriving yourself of a good game or whatever. Enough people pirate the software to encourage developers and publishers to continue to use DRM and enough people buy the software to tell the developers and publishers that the DRM boycotters are a very small minority that can be ignored.

Tipperton you're walking on thin ice.

PureBasic does not have a DRM system. Try this: run PureBasic, delete the datakey file and continue working in PureBasic for the rest of the day. Does it lock up? Does it tell you to quit itself? No and no. If PureBasic had a DRM system it would continuously check that the datakey file is intact and genuine. What PureBasic uses is simple and harmless type activation through a shared file.

Tipperton I think the case is more that you are upset of the bullshit about Spore. You are the first one to comment that it's a great game whom I know. So don't get off the hood. Focus on the real thing, DRM, and not the opinions of faggots.

Cheers, Berry.

Tipperton wrote:

Trond wrote:When I start PureBasic I do not have to any wait extra time, because the software is "pure" and uncrippled.

I hate to burst your bubble but PureBasic DOES have a form of DRM in it. Your license data is in a file called "datakey" in the Compilers directory, delete that file and PureBasic quits working. I'd call that DRM.

You can surely call it whatever you want, but everyone else in this world wouldn't call it that.

Australian government says: "DRM limits what a user can do with that content even when in possession of it." (http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_1498)

That's DRM.

Slightly off topic, but Trond that alien in your avatar might have a use for its red card soon

DRM penalizes legitimate customers. I've had my own experienecs with being penalized by DRM, and it does not involve Spore either.

I've a lot of music purchased on line from WalMart, Yahoo, and MSN. When I play that music DRM kicks in and contacts the key servers and decides if i can play it or not. Recently, all three of these decided they would take their DRM key servers off line. That would mean the money I spent for the music will have been wasted because I would no longer be able to listen to the music because no DRM key server would have been available to authorize me, a legitimate paying consumer who legitimately paid for the music and had it physically on my computer, who had a legal right to listen to the music I had legitimately paid for.

Does WalMart, or Yahoo, or MSN care that I have a legal right to listen to the music I had paid for? Nope, not at all, and they don't mind usurping that right from me in pursuit of the all mighty dollar.

WalMart, Yahoo, and MSN were transitioning to a DRM free model for distribution of its product because they have found out they can make more money WITHOUT DRM, thats the reason they were doing away with the DRM Key servers. After thousands of complaints about their decisions they recently changed their minds and decided that the servers would remain on line for a while longer. MSN decided to leave its DRM key servers up until 2011, and Yahoo gave coupons to its music captives so that they could re-purchase their music, DRM-free, through Rhapsody. I'm not sure what the plans are for WalMart as they announced they would leave the servers up but not for how much longer really. The ONLY reason they went to DRM was because big content was forcing them to in the beginning and had threatened long drawn out public law suits, so it was another case of big content trying to control for profit use by proxy by forcing them to go DRM, why you might ask....because big content got paid for every one of those songs I paid for, not once, but EVERY TIME I PLAYED IT, and WalMart, MSN, and Yahoo were paying them and it got to the point where they started losing money on the deal. Bet ya didn't know that.... took me a year of research to find out. Sure they didn't get paid much per play for a single person like me, along the lines of $.0001 per play. But...multiply that times the estimated minimum 60 million customers of these three for this DRM music times each play on a daily basis for 365 days a year - thats millions of dollars a year additional revenue for Big Content that goes on for a period of approximately 2 years for which Big Content got paid once for initially with the full price, then a second time, then a third time, thats called rent in most places on planet earth. This is transparent to the user as all they see is the one time cost when they purchase the music, and this does not include the royality fees each had to pay to continue hosting the music for sale. On an individual basis, per customer, this means around $3000.00 a year that Big Content made on each song they sold.

Now lets do a little generalized math and put all this together; approximately $3000 a year for each song, multiply that times the number of songs each person buys (I have approximately 300 titles I bought), but lets make the math a little eaisier because we don't know how many titles each customer bought, so lets say that it averages just some low number, lets use 10 titles per customer; 60 million customers X 10 titles/customer X the royalties X the per play use + the initial cost = approximately, but lets say that our figures are too high to begin with so lets cut them down some say by a factor of 10, so all this ranges from $100,000,000.00 to $600,000,000.00 per year profit or more ! That is simply obscene, but this is what DRM is intended to do plain and simple, maximize profits and income and thats all DRM is intended to do. Big content probably has lawsuits ready to go when WalMart, MSN, and Yahoo move completly away from a DRM model, with over 1/2 a billion dollars a year profit yanked from them I would bet they will sue and i'll bet they bring the piracy lie crap into it too.

Now lets look at it from another perspective. When the servers do eventually go off line guess what...if I want to be able to listen to the music i've already purchased it means I will have to buy some of the same music all over again to get a DRM free version. Even a move away from DRM to DRM free is penalizing to a legitimate customer once they have been affected by DRM to begin with. I've already bought the music, why should I have to pay for it again simply to continue the use of my legal rights to use a product as intended? I've been penalized by DRM, no doubt about it, and i'm a legitimate consumer and paid good money. Yes, I highly object to DRM, these are the effects of DRM, these are the reasons for DRM in a real world example, the reason for DRM existance is not to combat piracy although a lot of people have been hood winked into believing that, the reason for DRM is so big content can make money and have control over how, when, and where, you use something - thats it plain and simple. All this is just one very small example, think about the obscene amount of money to be made when everything is this way with almost every computer or console. It becomes very easy to see that DRM is not about piracy and is only about control for profit despite the deception people have been hood winked into believing that its about piracy. The DRM piracy lie, its purpose, is simply training people to get them to accept something that has a hidden agenda so when it does fully bloom into what its supposed to be it has more of a chance of being accepted simply as "the way things are" and the norm. Its about greed and $$$$ and a way for big content to enjoy both and the hell with you or I or any rights we have.

Will someone that believes the "DRM doesn't penalize legitimate consumers" lie, please tell me a fairy tale that will make me, and about 60 million others, feel all warm and fuzzy about being penalized by DRM ?

Sure, I could go out somewhere on the 'net no doubt and find the music in some form, MP3's for example, that have been pirated. Am I going to do that? No, I don't pirate things and i'm not a thief. But in the view of some because I oppose DRM i'm automatically a pirate and want to some way circumvent or steal some ones intellectual property - thats about the stupidest, narrow view, delusional, thing i've ever heard. My opposition to DRM is about having control over my own computer and to be able to exercise my legal rights to products i've purchased without intrusive, usurping, snooping, spying, controlling, unwarranted, forced, and profit motivated big content intervention that violates my legal rights and dictates how, when, and where I can use a product i've paid for and use legitimately to begin with as well as not having to pay rent on something I already paid for. Its not about piracy at all, wake up and smell the coffee.

SFSxOI, nice and dramatic post. I did work on a project called "MP3 SafeCopy" more than 2 years ago. The purpose for it was to take an MP3 as input, stream its output into a WAV and re-encode it to a new MP3. Why? I initially wanted to have a way of removing the ID3 copyright tag and all the other ID3 tags as well, but if I hadn't removed the source it could be useful today to make DRM-free copies. Of course I would have made it open-source probably in the Public Domain so I would be free of legal threats.

I don't remember exactly how it was coded, but it was half PureBasic and half C. I implemented a C library that streamed PCM data 10 times faster than the normal speed. So a 3 minute 16-bit MP3 encoded with 44.1Khz sampling rate was streamed in under 20 seconds. This stream was then directly fed to LAME which encoded the WAV with the options "-h -b 256" and took around 2 seconds to encode each passing second of the stream resulting in around 40 seconds for the whole procedure. I think the 40 seconds wait to "SafeCopy" a 3 minute MP3 is worth it to have DRM free music. I am not sure if it would work with the MP3s you purchased, but it was still a cool project. I remember though that the code for the timer was around 500 lines of code. The procedure was too fast to handle with normal timing and I had to make a special RTC and timer core to make bit-perfect streaming possible. The same RTC core is utilized in my newest project, a S/PDIF on-the-fly encoder (current working name FlyS/PDIF).

@berryoxide,
Don't know if this is what you are talking about, but I am sure I used this snippet a few years ago to make a small app to convert & compress a heap of my mp3's to put on a really cheap nasty mp3 player I had to use in my car's "cassette" player, & it worked like a charm. ( Got enough music on a 512MB player to drive from my place to Melbourne without repeating a song. ( distance of 1,400Km each way )
http://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtopic.php?t=16891

This piece about DRM was published in Stardock's 2008 Customer Report.

I found it refreshing compared to all the blind hate everyone else is throwing out over DRM.

Policy on DRM

Digital Rights Management is one of the most misunderstood concepts in the industry. DRM has become a catch-phrase for basically any type of copy protection. Stardock’s position isn’t anti-DRM or anti-copy protection but rather anti-stupid-DRM and anti-stupid-copy protection.

Broadly speaking, Stardock’s position is that companies/individuals have every right to protect their intellectual property any way they want. However, we feel the most effective way to increase sales is to protect IP in a way that doesn’t seem to punish legitimate customers.

Stardock’s software and games don’t require users to keep their CDs in the drive for instance. That only punishes legitimate customers. It’s annoying to keep track of a CD and a pirate certainly doesn’t have to worry about that since they’re running a cracked version. So you actually end up better off if you’re a pirate.

Similarly, DRM that has arbitrary activation limits for the lifetime of a product are counter-productive. A pirate doesn’t have to worry about such limitations because they’re running a cracked version. Yet the legitimate customer is stuck in the situation where they can’t use a game or program because, a year later, they’ve bought a new PC and run out of activations. That’s madness.

Customer concerns: Legitimate and illegitimate

There is no solution to the issue of protecting intellectual property (IP) that will satisfy all parties. There are customers who will accept nothing less than publishers acquiescing to a quasi-honor system for purchasing software. That doesn’t work.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are publishers who want customers to have an always-on Internet connection to play a single-player game. They have every right to require this if they want, but it will cost them tremendously in terms of goodwill and sales.

So what are the issues people have with DRM?

• Legitimate complaint: They don’t want the copy protection to interfere with their enjoyment or use of the software or game.
• Legitimate complaint: If a program wants to have a limited activation system, then it needs to provide a way to de-authorize other computers (ala iTunes).
• Legitimate complaint: A program should not be installing drivers or other hidden files on the system that use system resources.
  Stardock Customer Report 2008 15
• Legitimate complaint: Activation-based DRM means that if the publisher goes out of business or simply stops supporting their content that the customer can no longer use their legally purchased item.
• Legitimate complaint: Having an arbitrarily low limit on personal activations makes the program feel like it’s being rented.
• Legitimate complaint: Requiring the user to always be online to play a single-player game. Though we do think publishers have the right to require this as long as they make it clear on the box.
• Borderline: Requiring the user to have an Internet connection to install a game. If the game makes this explicit on the box, that’s one thing. Customers should be able to make informed purchasing decisions.
• Illegitimate complaint: Keeps people from installing the program on as many PCs as they own. I own an office full of PCs. I don’t think Microsoft would be happy if I installed Office on all of them. If I’m only using one of those machines at a time, that’s fine.
• Illegitimate complaint: Keeps people from easily having LAN parties with one copy of their game. We allow this but demonizing publishers who frown on this seems unreasonable.
• Illegitimate complaint: Requires people to get updates through a specific source (Steam, Impulse, publisher secure website, etc.). This is one of our biggest pet peeves. If a game ships and there’s some bug found that materially affects gameplay, then sure, put out a patch wherever. However, we’ve had users complain loudly that Sins of a Solar Empire v1.1 (essentially a free expansion pack) requires Impulse to download. Publishers have every right to make sure the people downloading updates are legitimate customers.
• Illegitimate complaint: Makes it harder for people to resell programs. (Not saying reselling programs is right or wrong, only that it is not the function of DRM to make it hard or easy to do this, it’s a separate issue.)
• Illegitimate complaint: DRM is just wrong in principle, you buy something, you own it and should be able to do whatever you want. This is a view held by some but the person who makes the thing has the right to distribute it how they want. If I spend $5 million making a game, someone paying $50 doesn’t “own” it. There has to be some middle ground on serving customers and protecting IP holders. Users who disagree and want to stick with this principle have my respect but we believe a balance needs to be made that is satisfactory to most users and most publishers.

Stardock’s position is that IP holders have the right to do whatever they want with their IP. That doesn’t mean what they do is necessarily a good idea or good business.

For our games, we will continue the policy of releasing our retail games without any copy protection or DRM on the disc. However, we will require customers who want updates to download them from us and to make sure those updates are meaningful – not just bug fixes but actual improvements based on player feedback.

On other games, we think it’s legitimate if publishers want to require activation to install them. I don’t pretend to know whether the sales lost by users who have no Internet connection is greater than the sales gained from less piracy. I don’t think there’s any problem requiring a user to type in a unique serial number on installing a program.

We do think there’s a problem having a user be told they can’t use a program anymore because they installed it three or five times over the course of a year – and this isn’t an obscure problem. There’s plenty of software, not just games, where this has become a significant and obnoxious issue.

We are going to add IP protection services to the Impulse Reactor platform so that publishers at least have an alternative to methods like SecureROM, Tages or Steamworks. As a practical matter, most game publishers who want to protect their IP have few options right now.

That first line about DRM being misunderstood was the biggie for me. Too many people are willing to believe whatever they hear without doing their own research. This wouldn't be a problem if what they were hearing was accurate. But unfortunately most of what they are hearing is rantings and ravings to outright lies and fabrications perpetrated with the sole purpose of spreading hate rather than trying to honestly inform.

It then goes on to discus a "Gamers bill of rights" which was also very interesting. You can see the whole report here:

http://www.stardock.com/media/stardockc ... t-2008.pdf[/list]

Ligit or illigit (for compliants) ...

Well, thats the whole point isn't it!. This is not citizens fighting govt laws here, this is customers fighting corporate decided conditions of use.

Yes, the companies have every right to set whatever conditions they want within the bounds of the law and I think the customers should use their consumer voting power (wallets) to balance this. In the end, if no one buys a product due to the conditions then a company has little choice but to change them or lose money on a product.

So, given that this is in essense, what the companies want vs what the consumers want which are very different things I think the consumers should stand up and use their purchasing power and not just lie back and wait, then whinge in the future when you need your OS's vendors' permission to turn on your own PC and get charged by the minute as your usage is just a service provided.

pdwyer wrote:Yes, the companies have every right to set whatever conditions they want within the bounds of the law and I think the customers should use their consumer voting power (wallets) to balance this.

I agree, the problem I see with the current debate though is that people are ranting against DRM in all it's forms which is really misdirecting where they should be focusing there energy.

The problem with games like Bioshock, Spore, Far Cry 2, and others, isn't so much that they're protected with DRM, the problem is with how companies like EA and 2K Games set up the DRM. My opinion is that EA and 2K Games and others like them aren't using DRM, they're abusing it.