Thanks for the link. That lowers my opinion of CDP quite a bit. The basic message I get from that article is this:

"I'm sure you've heard about stories in the US when recording companies were chasing people. We don't want to be so harsh, but there is a chance that this might happen to some people if they download illegally. There will be an initiative."

So they don't want to use these measures because they realize they're harsh (maybe too harsh in many cases), are likely aware of the shady tactics employed by law firms and IP trackers and probably know about the controversy about innocent people being targeted... but they'll do it anyway. Great.

I know this wasn't a reply to me, but I find the issues presented interesting so i'll reply:

1. I hate it especially when people here and elsewhere have the gall to spout their own moral beliefs on piracy as if they were universal truths or fact. Then when you point up that their moralities aren't fact or universally true to everyone they bring up the "It's illegal" argument, even though as you said many illegal things aren't bad and vice versa & already stated that the legalities weren't what you were bringing up in the first place.

2. You didn't state whether piracy was good or bad in your eyes, just pointed out a truth(that downloading isn't a federal crime actually in many places.)....and people start putting words in your mouth. :\

3. I also don't find that as bad as people SELLING pirated copies or making a buck off of piracy. Or at least it that much worse to me than people downloading abandonware or music & movies.

4. I also have limited income....and I "demo" games before buying in alot of cases for various reasons boiling down to I don't want to buy yet more games that don't work on my system(despite me meeting and beating system requirements) because of bugs/etc. I could care less if people want to compare me to those who sell pirated games or call me a nasty person akin to Stalin for doing so.

5. Many of them also download music or movies or something else then complain about me torrenting some games, or have pirated at some point in the past.......utter hypocrisy and bollocks is what it is. And if they dislike what I do they can(as Supreme Executive Chairman Drek says so succinctly) "Form a line behind me and kiss my bloody rear."

What's also funny as well are those who could care less if it's morally alright....if it's illegal then in their eyes it's "bad"...because they HAVE to follow the gov't line without question.

Mostly what's legal or not is kind of a public consensus in democracies, so it's kind of the average morale of all people written in stone. I actually agree with the idea of copyright. I think, the practical handling reveals a large degree of complexity and not enough prioritizing sales enough but the published alternatives are even worse. Why is it that creators of video games never ever advocate piracy? Their motivation is probably not hypocritical bigotry, it's simply economic reasoning.

Hi,

so the whole discussion about piracy of media products is totally invane, when halve the globes population in china india russia, japan and other uprising super economies are happily copying our copyrighted material, technology and lifestyle by ignoring our laws and common ethics. And you know its a good thing.

People did copy good ideas from each other since beginning of time. Without it only one guy would drive a car, only one woman would drive a cycle and only one would fly around in a plane. Oh sorry the Mr. Car and Mrs Bicycle could not have made their technology breakthroughs without copying, because they had to pirate the invention of the wheel before. As little one we did copy behaviour from our parents, we little naughty pirates. As youngster in school we copied the ideas of our teachers and copupils. Our DNA is a fusion of the two DNA strings of our parents. The whole life is one big copyright infringement. Without it we would not exist.

But: Pay for your games, music and films, because they are awesome :).

Have a nice day

You have a point there. I didn't think of that. Let's hope some more information will be released soon.

General ideas are not subject to copyright laws, so that reasoning is simplifying the matter at hand. I agree that an exaggeration of the copyright concepts can harm progress and creativity, but I think that's a slightly different discussion. (I feel it's necessary to point out though that I'm not against questioning the necessity and measure of copyright laws in our time, just stating the status quo.)

As for the piracy issue, provided the info is correct, noone can deny that CDProjekt has a right to go after the people who pirate their software. The question is

(a) whether it helps their image and the credibility of their anti-DRM stance (because I always thought one point of the DRM-free campaign was that it's wiser to concentrate on customers than on piracy, on actual sales instead of virtual profits, at least that's how I understood the GOG philosophy), and

(b) whether the means they chose are appropriate. You don't have to be a supporter of piracy to see that this whole "spamigation" thing of cease-and-desists letters is not a practice to rationally enforce due copyrights but a profitable business mainly for law firms (and possibly a few big companies who hire them), which is totally out of proportion and mostly at the expence of people with lower income, some of them guilty of an offense, others probably not. Unless I'm misinformed I think it's possible for law firms here to specialize in this practise even on their own accord and profit from questionable laws that promote denunciation (most of them probably older than internet piracy itself and not passed with this practice in mind; IMO it comes close to an exploit of the legal system). Just because some pirate or "granny accused of piracy" is paying, doesn't mean the true copyright owner gets to see any of this money. Maybe CD Projekt does - again, just in case this is true -, but they're also supporting the abuse by accepting this practice as a valid measure.

I very much agree with your post and can bring some, unfortune, confirmation to your thoughts.

There are law firms specialized in exactly that. And they keep most of the money paid by the "victims". There is no "typical" or "normal" fee applyable to a game being pirated. The law firms figuratively draw them out of their asses. Depending on how the conrtract between the law firm and the right holder is, they don't see any of the extorted fee. Because they pay the law firm a flat fee. Right holders (like big music labels) are often OK with that, because the money gained through this is miniscule compared to the money they make with sales. And they already have an exisiting contract with a law firm that might cover this work anyway. But even if they get a small amount of that fee, it's not very much (30% - 50%). For "small" copyright holders, this might be different, as there sale numbers are also much smaller.

What makes things worse is, that in some cases, law firms work without knowledge or consent of the rights holder. Which is fraud. But they count on the supidity of their victims or their "shock tactics" to prevent victims from getting proper help. "If you pay now, it's only 500€ after a trial it might be 5000€, e.g.)

From a "legal community" viewpoint this practice is more seen as some kind of extortion than a proper application of law. And within the "legal community" steps have been taken to prevent the abuse of the legal system for those goals. (State attornies no longer work on connection identification requests, e.g.). Those firms are seen as "the worst", and most respectable firm try to avoid the "mass spamming" with those letters.

It's fast and easy money for a law firm. Therefore it is a very tasty business for people with low moral values. And let's be honest, that is not a lawyers strong point.

I'll answer this too, though if you need an answer to it there's no room for discussion:
a) You play a game first because you're curious about it.
b) You buy a game because you are able to do so (first condition - mix between your disposable income and the payment options provided), think it's worth it and want to support the developer (or even the publisher).
If a) is true but b) is not, well, you know what happens.

In that PCGamer interview, it was said that some 5 copies of the Witcher were pirated for every one sold. EA and Ubisoft, with their draconian DRM and armies of lawyers and all the additional expenses these generate, say that the piracy rate for the PC versions of their games is over 80%. Well, if all that heavy-handedness (at a cost) results in over 80% and relying on good will (for free) results in 85%, I'll say it DOES work.
And hey, at least for a while I think I'll be quite good with looking into the disposable income of anyone caught downloading copyrighted stuff and making those who can truly afford it pay for it. But then we do need to move to a resource-based economy instead of a finance-based one, at which point digital copies will simply be seen as what they actually are, a resource available in infinite supply and therefore freely distributable to every single person in the world. A way to ensure that the developers will still be able to have decent lives would of course need to be implemented, but seeing as Witcher 2 sold over a million copies, I'll say that relying on good will works well enough for that already.

As for my personal rules for software "piracy", it's quite simple: Buy what you couldn't (operating system, if you use a paid one) or wouldn't (antivirus in my case, again if you go with a paid one) use your computer without, plus anything you use for work that earns you money. Past that, your call, since it can very easily (though not legally, but being legal doesn't make something right and being illegal doesn't make something wrong) be argued that if you had to pay for it, you wouldn't use it at all, so there aren't even lost sales.
Personally, several years ago I made a goal out of always having more legally purchased software than "pirated" software installed on my computer at any one moment and so far I never broke it. But when it comes to games, see what I said when I replied to your reply to SimonG's message. There are a few games I refuse to play pirated, which in the past resulted in me waiting 5+ years after release until I could legally purchase them (without credit cards!) for little enough and currently is resulting in the same for the Witchers most likely. And there were others I purchased because I happened to be able to afford it at the moment and truly thought they were worth it. But the attitude of the developer and publisher weigh heavily into it, on top of the available "finances" and the quality of the game itself. I'll never buy an Ubisoft or Vivendi/Activision/Blizzard game, for example, considering their attitude, while (so far) I strongly want(ed) to support CD Projekt.

But by the way, seeing as there's a fixed amount of money available, even for those who can afford it, anything "saved" on digital copies of stuff will be spent elsewhere, right? If we're talking about "lost sales", shouldn't that same reasoning make all other industries rally against any attempt to stop "piracy", because they'd end up with lost sales if people'd spend more on such things?
Just wondering...

It's not hypocritical they pretty much promised to do it a year or so ago. Plus that's CDPR, not GOG, different company.

As for as hypocrisy goes that's really not relevant to anything. There's a reason why it's considered an ad hominem tu quoque.

The OP did and you seem to be under the delusion that they're supporting piracy. Pirates and people who legitimately own older games undermine the market that GOG has for their games. Now, legitimate owners aren't something that they can do anything about, but snatching gamers from abandonware sites is exactly what they should do.

I highly disagree with that section. I guess I own at least half of my GOG collection as retail. And looking through the community I'm not in a minority. As I said before, GOGs attitude and ease of use are their main selling points for me.

And you seem under the delusion, that the OP is supporting piracy. The logic many people follow in this argument reminds me a lot of 2003, "Either yor are for the war or against the troops."

I think it was obvious that I was citing the OP with quote marks and everything, when I wrote:

"I find it especially alarming that according to some messages people have thought wrong that GOG approves piracy, ie "GOG is cool with piracy". WTF??? Yeah, the potentional publishers would really love that message, not... "


You are mixing "re-using other people's ideas" with "taking goods into use without paying".

In the gaming world, example of the first one is e.g. how Rovio made Angry Birds reusing ideas from earlier similar games (Crush the Castle, which copied the idea from some other game...), or that one guy created Minecraft using ideas from some other games.

Do you believe you are only imagining two very active threads on this issue? Nobody is upset about anything? Or is it that you think pretending people aren't upset will make the problem go away, à la head in the sand? Are you so delusional? And of course it's CDPR: the parent company of GOG. It seems unimaginable they would be built on diametrically opposing policies.

They are supporting piracy (at least financially, if not in spirit.) That is a fact. What you perceive as a difference of opinion is your discolouration of the associated ethical grey area. Based on your beliefs, you are projecting moral judgements into my posts that don't actually exist and you are ultimately missing the point entirely. For example:

I agree. I even said as much in a post you conveniently glossed over. But here it appears as though you are attempting to imply otherwise, as if maybe my mention of this strategy itself could be construed as scorn when—in actuality—it is a reference point for scrutiny of the topic at hand, not the other way around.

If what you read out of my posts is that I approve of CDP/GOG uncharacteristically resorting to extortion and therefore they should be ashamed of the radically different and mutually beneficial initiatives that made them a shining beacon of hope in a turbulent sea of publishers vs. gamers; it's no wonder you don't understand: that doesn't make sense.

As always, feel free to vent whatever unrelated frustrations you may have and imagine whatever you like about me, but because I don't have all the time in the world, I will only be responding to on topic posts from now on.
Ya, I'm just giving you a hard time for the "pro-piracy" remark. That one was all you.

Okay, I was just thinking about something that would be a bad situation to be in. Some file-sharers claim to be ethical in that they only download something to check if they like it or not. Like a demo. Wouldn't it suck ass if you did that, bought the game the next day, and then got one of these letters in the mail?

Good post. If we had to reinvent the wheel every damn time we wanted to do something, we wouldn't have very many improvements to wheels. But, maybe copyright is nature's way of keeping us from becoming too efficient and overpopulating the universe. I don't know.

I think if you prove you legitimately purchased the game, you should be off the hook since you paid the money for it. I will not be buying The Witcher II on GOG for another reason; it is too large of a file and I will be paying extra money to my internet provider for going over the cap. I don't want to have to pay my provider for the privilege of paying someone else for a product, so I will buy the game from Atari on DVD rom instead since the local Best Buy and Walmart stores have a surplus of copies.

But to attack GOG over this is a bit silly. Bit Torrenters are not really good to anyone and they should not be allowed to take whatever they want for free. On the other hand, charging innocent people, in my mind, amounts to extortion and theft so anyone proven innocent or who has a legitimate paid copy must not be charged. If they are, the publisher will have fought fire with fire by turning themselves into thieves to fight pirates. As for catching real pirates, go for it.

I just read the news connected with CD Projekt sending 900 EUR bills to possible Witcher 2 pirates... what a terrible dissapointment. Please, name a 3 big budget PC games from last year whose developers did such a thing... And it seems to happen for company that was considered quite liberal concerning their DRM/copy protection policy. I absolutely do not accept piracy, it hurts the industry as hell, personally I have 300+ PC games in my collection, but CD Projekt sure looks desperate to do such a thing... Thumbs down!