• sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    If piracy is a market option, that implies it’s legal (or at least decriminalized), therefore copyright is not enforceable. There are all kinds of issues if that’s the case, depending on how much of copyright we choose to not enforce.

    If piracy is decriminalized, what’s to stop someone from setting up a store and completely undermining digital distribution?

    I think penalties for piracy are unreasonable, but I don’t think piracy should be completely decriminalized. The penalty should be capped at a reasonable number (say, median retail price times number of distributed copies, capped at 50, reduced based on means; if multiple games, cap at 10 games worth). That shouldn’t ruin most people, but it should deter enough to preserve demand for legal copies. Also, since penalties are reduced, it’s probably not worth it for big publishers to go after pirates unless it’s actually impacting their business.

    • TCB13@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      If piracy is decriminalized, what’s to stop someone from setting up a store and completely undermining digital distribution?

      Nothing, and that’s kind of the point. However due to the fungible and reproduceable nature of digital media one of those stores won’t last long because it will get quickly overrun by free alternatives. It would just apply pressure into “legal” platforms be behave better.

      To be fair, I would even agree that piracy for personal usage / not for profit should be okay, while privacy for profit could be a crime. I think that’s a more reasonable approach and mostly what happens today.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        Why would people buy from the legal platform if there’s no consequences to using the free platform that’s just as convenient? It’s really not hard to make a platform that distributes a game, look at Heroic, which is completely volunteer run.

        The reason people use services like Steam and GOG over piracy is because piracy requires more work due to legal restrictions. If you legalize it, game studios would respond by putting games entirely (or at least a substantial portion) server side, so there’s no way to back up your media. That’s absolutely not what I want.

        I think it’s important to keep piracy illegal, but drastically reduce the penalty so individuals don’t get completely screwed if they get caught. That would increase pressure on companies to make their games more accessible and reduce the likelihood that a company would sue someone, but still gives an option if piracy gets out of control.

    • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
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      3 months ago

      Interesting approach. Thanks for elaborating. The current copyright rules might be legal but they are both wrong and broken. Companies should not have the right to hold or enforce copyright at all, only the people involved in a project, which means all of them. Then there should not be companies larger than 999 mil which takes a lot of this dystopian shit out.