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Ah, waking up every Sunday morning at 9am, seeing the fresh air and going around the Car Boot Sales used to be the high point of my day, until recently.
I have stopped going to Car Boot Sales for 6 months now, for one reason, Piracy.
I used to be able to put up with it, with the odd Amiga floppy disc being flogged for a pretty penny, and that was just a few years ago, years after the Amgia liquified. There were a fair shair of con men out there as I should know, after buying Terminator 2 for 50p on the Amiga. When I went home and inserted the floppy into one of my 2 external disc drives, the game failed to load. At the time, I was only 7 and I boiled my eyes out, thinking that someone could be that mean to a 6 or 7 year old boy, but that's just the begginning.
Just by looking left or right at a Car Boot Sale, you would see pirated games for rediculously cheap prices. My friend brought home Worms World Party for an amazing £10, just a week after it was released full price.
Games are not the only thing. Many films are being brought in too. Once my friend went abroad and brought home Jarrassic Park and it hadn't even come out at the cinema yet. We put it into our video recorder and pressed play. To our surprise and misfortune, it was a video of someone who had taken a video camera into a cinema and zoomed in on the cinema screen. The quality was terrible and I only sat through about 10 minutes of it and waited for it to come out on video.
I have also been shown Silent Hill, months before it's release and Metal Gear Solid, 6 months before it's UK release. MGS is very different in America. When you face Psycho Mantis, you and Meryl have to pick off loads and loads of guards.
The films in boot sales have been imported from America or other contries and somehow been recorded onto either VHS, VCD or Mini Disc.
However, Mp3's are yet to be seen. Well, at least since I last went. My friend got a couple of albumns but I've never seen any pirated albumns. He found some Metallica, Nirvana and Led Zepplin albumns at a very cheap price.
I am disguested by this as it is just not the same as the original. The book, the case and the covers are all missing. Some people buy the cases and scan the covers but the covers are not of a glossy quality and the cases do not have the "Dreamcast" logo on the blue spine. Some people have ways of getting books as well but not many.
A lot of my friends have offered my pirated Dreamcast, PC and PS games but I have refused.
Nintendo have the best system with cartridges. The only way to pirate them is to use a contraption called the Z64. It makes a copy of the game onto the memory of the Z64 ( a few gig ) and then you can play the game from the Z64 memory, without having to own the original counterpart.
The Playstatition never thought of piracy at the time of PS's release. People made copies and then the problems began, until the release of Dino Crisis. This game had an error written into it so that if you tried to copy it, it would not copy. People downloaded cracks off of the internet and broke the protection. Dino Crisis is the only game to use this as it failed miserably.
Sega though that they had protection beaten when they released the Dreamcast. The games were recorded onto GD-Roms, a new type of CD, bigger than a standard 650MB 74 minute CD. It has a few more rings around the disc than a PS game. However, this was again cracked. People connected their Dreamcasts up to their PC's and uploaded the games to their computers and then used a programme called Winrar to make them into files of 19MB each, called ISO files. They then uploaded them to a server and people download them, Unrar them and burn them to a disc. It takes about 1 day to download a game.
PC gaming is almost the same, except, you download RIPS, instead of ISO's. RIPS are retail games with the intros and some FMV's removed, to save space when downloading files.
The creators of Bleem an emulator for the PC, that lets you play PS games on the PC, have the right idea. They have put a copy protection on the CD's that cannot be "cracked" or broken as of now. Why do music, cinema and games companies not use this? It cannot be too expensive as the creators of Bleem worked on a low budget.
How to identify a pirate.
All pirates are exactly the same to spot, turn the CD over and look at the back. If it has a black back, it is original, if it has a rainbow-like back, it is a pirate. It will have 2 rings, showing how much the CD has been taken up by the game. Beware though, don't think that a game is original by looking at the front and seeing the CD design because some people print them off and glue them to the front of the CD.
Piracy is a huge business and not just game companies, but the movie and music industry need to do something drastic, NOW.
I have stopped going to Car Boot Sales for 6 months now, for one reason, Piracy.
I used to be able to put up with it, with the odd Amiga floppy disc being flogged for a pretty penny, and that was just a few years ago, years after the Amgia liquified. There were a fair shair of con men out there as I should know, after buying Terminator 2 for 50p on the Amiga. When I went home and inserted the floppy into one of my 2 external disc drives, the game failed to load. At the time, I was only 7 and I boiled my eyes out, thinking that someone could be that mean to a 6 or 7 year old boy, but that's just the begginning.
Just by looking left or right at a Car Boot Sale, you would see pirated games for rediculously cheap prices. My friend brought home Worms World Party for an amazing £10, just a week after it was released full price.
Games are not the only thing. Many films are being brought in too. Once my friend went abroad and brought home Jarrassic Park and it hadn't even come out at the cinema yet. We put it into our video recorder and pressed play. To our surprise and misfortune, it was a video of someone who had taken a video camera into a cinema and zoomed in on the cinema screen. The quality was terrible and I only sat through about 10 minutes of it and waited for it to come out on video.
I have also been shown Silent Hill, months before it's release and Metal Gear Solid, 6 months before it's UK release. MGS is very different in America. When you face Psycho Mantis, you and Meryl have to pick off loads and loads of guards.
The films in boot sales have been imported from America or other contries and somehow been recorded onto either VHS, VCD or Mini Disc.
However, Mp3's are yet to be seen. Well, at least since I last went. My friend got a couple of albumns but I've never seen any pirated albumns. He found some Metallica, Nirvana and Led Zepplin albumns at a very cheap price.
I am disguested by this as it is just not the same as the original. The book, the case and the covers are all missing. Some people buy the cases and scan the covers but the covers are not of a glossy quality and the cases do not have the "Dreamcast" logo on the blue spine. Some people have ways of getting books as well but not many.
A lot of my friends have offered my pirated Dreamcast, PC and PS games but I have refused.
Nintendo have the best system with cartridges. The only way to pirate them is to use a contraption called the Z64. It makes a copy of the game onto the memory of the Z64 ( a few gig ) and then you can play the game from the Z64 memory, without having to own the original counterpart.
The Playstatition never thought of piracy at the time of PS's release. People made copies and then the problems began, until the release of Dino Crisis. This game had an error written into it so that if you tried to copy it, it would not copy. People downloaded cracks off of the internet and broke the protection. Dino Crisis is the only game to use this as it failed miserably.
Sega though that they had protection beaten when they released the Dreamcast. The games were recorded onto GD-Roms, a new type of CD, bigger than a standard 650MB 74 minute CD. It has a few more rings around the disc than a PS game. However, this was again cracked. People connected their Dreamcasts up to their PC's and uploaded the games to their computers and then used a programme called Winrar to make them into files of 19MB each, called ISO files. They then uploaded them to a server and people download them, Unrar them and burn them to a disc. It takes about 1 day to download a game.
PC gaming is almost the same, except, you download RIPS, instead of ISO's. RIPS are retail games with the intros and some FMV's removed, to save space when downloading files.
The creators of Bleem an emulator for the PC, that lets you play PS games on the PC, have the right idea. They have put a copy protection on the CD's that cannot be "cracked" or broken as of now. Why do music, cinema and games companies not use this? It cannot be too expensive as the creators of Bleem worked on a low budget.
How to identify a pirate.
All pirates are exactly the same to spot, turn the CD over and look at the back. If it has a black back, it is original, if it has a rainbow-like back, it is a pirate. It will have 2 rings, showing how much the CD has been taken up by the game. Beware though, don't think that a game is original by looking at the front and seeing the CD design because some people print them off and glue them to the front of the CD.
Piracy is a huge business and not just game companies, but the movie and music industry need to do something drastic, NOW.
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In reply to Wookie:
I wont say the same about the film industry because I generally think theyre concerned about Piracy, as usually people watch a film once then dont watch it again till its on TV! Therefore the film industry will lose a load of cash due to DVD piracy.
My point is that I see DVD piracy as becoming mainstream in 2 years (although Im certain it already occurs I just havent seen it down the local market yet!) meaning PS2 and Xbox piracy will be commonplace.
Yes Im sure GameCube piracy will occur but it will never be as cheap, as the miniDVDs will always be more expensive (As 8mm tape is dearer that VHS!). By the time the prices are comparable it will be 4 years at least. As a console only has a life of 5 years this wont be important, as GameCube game prices will drop by then meaning piracy is discouraged.
I wont say the same about the film industry because I generally think theyre concerned about Piracy, as usually people watch a film once then dont watch it again till its on TV! Therefore the film industry will lose a load of cash due to DVD piracy.
My point is that I see DVD piracy as becoming mainstream in 2 years (although Im certain it already occurs I just havent seen it down the local market yet!) meaning PS2 and Xbox piracy will be commonplace.
Yes Im sure GameCube piracy will occur but it will never be as cheap, as the miniDVDs will always be more expensive (As 8mm tape is dearer that VHS!). By the time the prices are comparable it will be 4 years at least. As a console only has a life of 5 years this wont be important, as GameCube game prices will drop by then meaning piracy is discouraged.
How to identify people who buy pirate games:
Low intelligence: A key factor, watch for uncontrollable drooling, stooped posture, knuckles scraping along the ground when they walk. Also, eyebrows growing close together is another dead giveaway.
Lack of employment: Generally your pirate copy purchaser will be either school age or unemployed, because of this they are low income and believe that it is truly their right to have a copy of the latest computer games whether or not they can afford it. They don't consider it theft, they consider it subsidised gaming paid for by the games industry. The word 'consider' is used loosely, they normally drool as an alternative to thinking.
Lack of reason: Pirate games buyers can't understand the damage they do by buying pirate games. No matter how many times you tell them that people are losing jobs, companies are going bust, and point out hard facts like 1,600 EXTRA quality titles could have been produced in the USA last year if it wasn't for piracy, they just stare blankly at you and drool.
Lack of concern: The attitude "So what, I'll still have plenty of games when the games industry folds *drool*," is a typical one. This short-sightedness comes from a youthful outlook, where they have yet to experience how bad the graphics are from games released only 10 years ago.
Lack of understanding: Point out that games prices are high as a result of the amount of money that goes into them and the pirate copy buyer will retort that games publishers are greedy. Point out that games prices will continue to rise as a direct result of piracy, and the pirate copy buyer will retort that games publishers are getting greedier. Point out that more quality games would be produced if there were no piracy, and the pirate copy buyer will retort that they wouldn't, the publishers would just have a nicer fleet of company cars and bigger corporate entertainment accounts. When a pirate copy buyer retorts, they generally drool.
Lack of gaming skills: Due to the huge amount of pirate copies they buy, the pirate copy buyer has a distinct lack of gaming skill due to their propensity to play each of their games for only about 5 minutes at a time before getting bored and moving onto the next one. They never realise that games have more than one level unless they are using cheats. (To use cheats, the pirate copy buyer generally asks a friend to input them for him, as he his incapable of doing so on his own, due to lack of intelligence, hand eye coordination, and drooling).
Pirate copy buyers are evil, stupid, a drain on the gaming industry, they drool alot, and personally I think they should be shot, stabbed, hung, drawn, quartered, burnt at a stake, skewered incessantly, garrotted, poisoned and fed to the sharks just like the pirates themselves.
But then, even sharks have taste.
Low intelligence: A key factor, watch for uncontrollable drooling, stooped posture, knuckles scraping along the ground when they walk. Also, eyebrows growing close together is another dead giveaway.
Lack of employment: Generally your pirate copy purchaser will be either school age or unemployed, because of this they are low income and believe that it is truly their right to have a copy of the latest computer games whether or not they can afford it. They don't consider it theft, they consider it subsidised gaming paid for by the games industry. The word 'consider' is used loosely, they normally drool as an alternative to thinking.
Lack of reason: Pirate games buyers can't understand the damage they do by buying pirate games. No matter how many times you tell them that people are losing jobs, companies are going bust, and point out hard facts like 1,600 EXTRA quality titles could have been produced in the USA last year if it wasn't for piracy, they just stare blankly at you and drool.
Lack of concern: The attitude "So what, I'll still have plenty of games when the games industry folds *drool*," is a typical one. This short-sightedness comes from a youthful outlook, where they have yet to experience how bad the graphics are from games released only 10 years ago.
Lack of understanding: Point out that games prices are high as a result of the amount of money that goes into them and the pirate copy buyer will retort that games publishers are greedy. Point out that games prices will continue to rise as a direct result of piracy, and the pirate copy buyer will retort that games publishers are getting greedier. Point out that more quality games would be produced if there were no piracy, and the pirate copy buyer will retort that they wouldn't, the publishers would just have a nicer fleet of company cars and bigger corporate entertainment accounts. When a pirate copy buyer retorts, they generally drool.
Lack of gaming skills: Due to the huge amount of pirate copies they buy, the pirate copy buyer has a distinct lack of gaming skill due to their propensity to play each of their games for only about 5 minutes at a time before getting bored and moving onto the next one. They never realise that games have more than one level unless they are using cheats. (To use cheats, the pirate copy buyer generally asks a friend to input them for him, as he his incapable of doing so on his own, due to lack of intelligence, hand eye coordination, and drooling).
Pirate copy buyers are evil, stupid, a drain on the gaming industry, they drool alot, and personally I think they should be shot, stabbed, hung, drawn, quartered, burnt at a stake, skewered incessantly, garrotted, poisoned and fed to the sharks just like the pirates themselves.
But then, even sharks have taste.
Logan wrote:
> ISS Pro wrote:
> Very helpful.:) Havent Codies come up with
> something on Op
> Flashpoint to make copies degrade the more
> there copied or played?
YES! For now!
Look... take the DC as
> an example.
Sega used a propietry format that you can't even buy
> blanks for as a media storage... LIKE THE GC'S OPTICAL DISCS!
It
> was impossible to make copies of these because you couldn't copy
> them onto another propietry media storage. JUST LIKE THE
> GC.
Someone thought of something cunning. Program a CD to make
> the console think it was a DC disc, and tell the console to play the
> game.
The fact is NO system to stop piracy will ever remain
> unbroken... ever!
ah but logan only the small optical discs fit into the GC so using cheap cd's wouldn't work , that is untill they release the dvd gamecube coz that can fit everything in it , or untill they release writable optical discs. So nintendo have added another twist to pirating their games !
> ISS Pro wrote:
> Very helpful.:) Havent Codies come up with
> something on Op
> Flashpoint to make copies degrade the more
> there copied or played?
YES! For now!
Look... take the DC as
> an example.
Sega used a propietry format that you can't even buy
> blanks for as a media storage... LIKE THE GC'S OPTICAL DISCS!
It
> was impossible to make copies of these because you couldn't copy
> them onto another propietry media storage. JUST LIKE THE
> GC.
Someone thought of something cunning. Program a CD to make
> the console think it was a DC disc, and tell the console to play the
> game.
The fact is NO system to stop piracy will ever remain
> unbroken... ever!
ah but logan only the small optical discs fit into the GC so using cheap cd's wouldn't work , that is untill they release the dvd gamecube coz that can fit everything in it , or untill they release writable optical discs. So nintendo have added another twist to pirating their games !
Logan Wrote :
Here's a solution. Make a
> game with all the languages supported form the start. Then realease
> the game universally over the world. With a universal low price.
> Seeing as the gaem has to be translated anyway, why not do it from
> the start! It's more ecconomical. By universally releasing games
> then retailers are forced to keep game prices in tab with those
> abroad.
like they did with chu chu rocket! on the gba , you have the options for english , german , spanish , french , and chinese !! no translating problems , but when you translate the german , french and spanish it dosent fully translate it.
Here's a solution. Make a
> game with all the languages supported form the start. Then realease
> the game universally over the world. With a universal low price.
> Seeing as the gaem has to be translated anyway, why not do it from
> the start! It's more ecconomical. By universally releasing games
> then retailers are forced to keep game prices in tab with those
> abroad.
like they did with chu chu rocket! on the gba , you have the options for english , german , spanish , french , and chinese !! no translating problems , but when you translate the german , french and spanish it dosent fully translate it.
Additionally, why would any company encourage piracy simply to sell more consoles, when they don't make much (if any) profit from hardware sales?
Additionally, why would any company encourage piracy simply to sell more consoles, when they don't make much (if any) profit from hardware sales?
Shocktrooper wrote:
> It's very good, you have advanced knowledge on piracy matters - it's
> a shame you know sooo much, because you've now dashed my hopes...
Somehting to remember... if MS says xbox will be the best console ever, you don't believe it. If ninty says GC will be pirate proof you believe it...
always take things with a pinch of salt
> It's very good, you have advanced knowledge on piracy matters - it's
> a shame you know sooo much, because you've now dashed my hopes...
Somehting to remember... if MS says xbox will be the best console ever, you don't believe it. If ninty says GC will be pirate proof you believe it...
always take things with a pinch of salt
It's very good, you have advanced knowledge on piracy matters - it's a shame you know sooo much, because you've now dashed my hopes...
New Jimmy wrote:
> My point is Nintendo are not going with the flow,
> yes it may be possible to copy a GameCube minidisc but it will be a
> lot harder than copying a DVD...and more expensive.
But as with everything, *only* until the hardware/software becomes commonplace - which it will in time, and that time will be shorter now that Nintendo are making it 'mainstream'. As I said in another post elsewhere, DVD writers were prohibitively expensive only a year ago, but now they're a few hundred pounds.
> Buy using the DVD format Sony and Microsoft are openly welcoming piracy.
Then you can easily say the same about the film industry, and it's not the case.
DVD writers will soon be commonplace, as recordable DVD units replace VCR's, and while these will no doubt be prevented from freely copying discs, they will no doubt drive down the cost further still, and this will have a knock-on effect to the other formats, inluding mini-DVD.
The format will be safe for a short time, but it won't give significant advantage with piracy for very long.
> My point is Nintendo are not going with the flow,
> yes it may be possible to copy a GameCube minidisc but it will be a
> lot harder than copying a DVD...and more expensive.
But as with everything, *only* until the hardware/software becomes commonplace - which it will in time, and that time will be shorter now that Nintendo are making it 'mainstream'. As I said in another post elsewhere, DVD writers were prohibitively expensive only a year ago, but now they're a few hundred pounds.
> Buy using the DVD format Sony and Microsoft are openly welcoming piracy.
Then you can easily say the same about the film industry, and it's not the case.
DVD writers will soon be commonplace, as recordable DVD units replace VCR's, and while these will no doubt be prevented from freely copying discs, they will no doubt drive down the cost further still, and this will have a knock-on effect to the other formats, inluding mini-DVD.
The format will be safe for a short time, but it won't give significant advantage with piracy for very long.
Rickyfire wrote:
> The main problem with piracy is that it causes problems for the
> developers, as they don't get as much money for the gasmes they
> make. Some people would say that a few pounds here and there make
> little difference for the developers, but it does. Take sega, they
> could have done with a few more sales.
Not really... Sega realised that if you aim all your games at the DC market then you will only have 10 million potential customers. If you make games for all the consoles you have 100 million potential customers!
> The main problem with piracy is that it causes problems for the
> developers, as they don't get as much money for the gasmes they
> make. Some people would say that a few pounds here and there make
> little difference for the developers, but it does. Take sega, they
> could have done with a few more sales.
Not really... Sega realised that if you aim all your games at the DC market then you will only have 10 million potential customers. If you make games for all the consoles you have 100 million potential customers!
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