DivinedSin

Piracy certainly brings the comments, eh? I suppose I don't really have an agenda but just wanted to make a few observations. Reply if you will:

Piracy reminds me of the war on drugs. Drugs are so cheap and so rampant that police have a difficult time stopping them on a user-per-user basis. Therefore, the DEA and other major crime units focus on the proprietors, or the "big fish." This isn't to say that they flat out ignore casual drug use, it just isn't worth their time to bust every single little person with a gram here or an ounce there. It appears the mentality is "cutting the head off the snake" and let the impact trickle down. That being said, the war on drugs is not so much a battle to win, but just a battle that needs to be fought because, well, most governments flat-out do not tolerate it. There really isn't an end-game strategy, but on principle, one cannot just sit there and let it happen.

If you see that something is screwing up your world, as Sony does right now, they will fight it on principle, even if it is a losing fight. From this perspective, it doesn't really matter who the people are that are cooking up the dope and what their intentions are (to continue with my previous analogy). It can be a college student making money to pay for tuition, or a druglord financing his terrorist plot, you are screwing with Sony's world and they have to do something about it, futility aside.

Okay, so to reiterate, Sony is fighting a war on piracy, similar to a war on drugs. I talked about Sony's side, so let's go on the other: Piracy. Piracy and drugs have a lot of similarities in their arguments for and against, hence my correlating analogy. For example, at its very core, drug users are only affecting themselves. It is their body, and nobody has the right to force you to treat yourself a certain way. If I want to screw up my life, it's on me. Similarly, the PS3 is MY system, not simply because some document says it is or isn't, but because it is in my possession. Screw the legal garbage, I bought it, took it home, opened it up, it's mine. Thus, if I want to take a hammer to it (literally or digitally), I'm going to do that. Now whatever your individual reasons are to get high (read: use piracy), that's your business. It's not really important if it inspires you paint or your life just sucks and drugs make it feel a little better, it's your body and that's on you. Everyone is going to have an opinion and judge your lifestyle as noble or not or whatever. Again, not significant.

To be clear, nobody cares why someone uses drugs, if they think its wrong then there really isn't anything one can say. Some people use the lines drawn by their legal system to decide what is right and wrong, and if something is illegal, then it's wrong. I, for one, consider myself intelligent enough to decide on my own, and many comments here echo rationality on either side of the piracy argument. I've thought a lot about it and, if anyone has to argue with me about anything I've said, argue about this, because I'm interested in hearing a retort:

Does piracy actually affect the quality of gaming? I know the tendency is to use the logic Piracy = $ Lost, then $ Lost = developers not getting paid for their hard work. Then developers not getting paid = games not being made. I find this logic hard to follow near the end because of one simple truth: despite piracy having a presence on nearly every platform, good games are still being made. Similarly, despite Napster, music is still being made. Despite torrents, movies are still coming out. I simply cannot imagine a world where games, movies, and music cease to exist no matter how bad piracy gets.

One reason being is because despite piracy, these items still make a ton of money. Of course I realize that this is because people pay for them instead of downloading them, but it is fallacious to think it is because people are making the conscious choice to pay instead of pirate. Yes, many of us have that option available to us and choose one or the other, but there are many people who buy because, in their world, it is easier to buy music, movies, games then to even pick up a mouse.

I'm not concerned with that reason, however, because it is self-evident. Everyone knows there are people out there and buy stuff because they either don't know or don't know how to pirate. Others, despite knowing how, refuse to out of their own personal convictions. Again, your opinion is yours and that's cool, but what I am really interested in is the concept of quality and piracy:

I, for one, equate gaming with art. I find games able to evoke everything that cinema or fine art can. In all mediums, there are awe inspiring endeavors. To be clear, I'm saying that movies, music, and gaming are on the same level with me. I am also saying that all of these have the potential to be very moving, but also have the potential to be flat-out failures. Why is this? Certainly there have been poorly funded movies that have won award after award. Similarly, there has been multimillion dollar projects that have fallen flat on their faces. The deciding factor here isn't money, although it certainly can help when in the right hands. The deciding factor here is talent.

I am an artist - a graphic designer to be exact. Anyone that is passionate about their work can't help themselves but to create. It doesn't turn off, when you put your fingers on the keyboard or wrap your hand around a paintbrush, it flows from you. That's what talent is. Thus, the amount of money coming in or out has little to do with the quality of the project, nor does it inspire talent. I'll concede to the fact that sequels rely heavily on the money made by its predecessor, but no matter what, good games will be made because talented people give two shits about how much they're getting paid. They do it because they don't know how to make garbage.

In this specific argument, I'm not defending piracy. To avoid any confusion, I am not saying people should not be paid for their work. What I am saying is that the argument that piracy affects the quality of the games is not valid.

To come full circle, Sony is fighting a war that it can't win, but isn't fighting to win either. It's fighting because not fighting is a worse strategy. Sony cannot be seen to condone practices that affect their products intended use. Similarly, the government can't be seen to allow illegal drugs, no matter how quickly a drug dealer will pop up after another is taken down. That being said, the fight on piracy is one about money, plain and simple. I'm not trying to focus on whether or not a pirate = $ lost, because in some cases it is, and in other cases it isn't. In some cases, piracy generates interest in a product that otherwise wouldn't be there, so there is that variable. No matter what though, piracy is a money problem. What I want to make clear though is that piracy is not a quality issue in regards to the artistic merit of anything. People will continue to make good music, movies, and games whether the money is there or not. Additionally, people will continue to make bad music, movies, and games whether the money is there or not. Piracy is not and will never be the downfall of entertainment. People want to be entertained, they want to be entertained well, and there will always be people that fill that void because they want to, and they'll do it whether or not they get paid or not.

@kgoo867

Care to elaborate? I said there were attempts since the beginning, but until I hear different, my understanding of the PS3 piracy scene was that of mild to moderate interest. I can't recall any teams or individuals claiming a serious effort or commitment to it. Even when Hotz announced back in 09 about finding an exploit using the OtherOS feature, after it was removed, the endeavor was basically abandoned. Yet, keeping old firmware to maintain exploits is very commonplace. It seems a reasonable conclusion that nobody was interested in picking up where Hotz left off, including Hotz himself.

@Dalrint

Honestly I think the PS3 wasn't hacked due to lack of interest. If you look at what actually happens to the PS3 when you put in the dongle, then the security hole was actually a huge gaping one. Now with the encryption keys leaked, it's busted wide open.

In some cases, like with the PSP, one person may pioneer the entire hacking scene. Or, like the iPhone, it's teams of people. The popularity of the system is usually proportionate to the amount of people simultaneously trying to hack it. Although there has been efforts to hack the PS3 since the beginning, with a few little nips at it here and there, I don't think it is a coincidence that right around the time Sony started picking up steam with it's reboot/rebrand, suddenly there was a breakthrough in PS3 piracy.

It looks like the 3DS will be wildly popular, (or at least I'm excited about it) so I think the interest in the system will match the interest in hacking it. So, probably a few months.

Pretty meh this year: bunch of gift cards for the most part and a few little knick knacks.

I don't know if it's because I'm getting older or what but every Christmas has gotten gradually duller. Actually i know for a fact it's NOT because I'm getting older - if i would have gotten a new car or something I would be as happy as the day i got my N64.

Co-oping Halo 3 on Legendary with a good friend of mine whom I never see.

I just came from Vegas and would appreciate some more win and luck and all that.

It's no leg-shaped lamp but I think it's still very appropriate for a Christmas gift.

C4Eva and Team Jungle have already talked about circumventing these checks on both the new slim console and the dashboard update. It sounded like it was a minor annoyance, but nothing they couldn't handle. Slim is supposed to be hacked this month, with the firmware dubbed LT+, now with FirmGuard+ or something like that.

But as well all know, it's cat and mouse. No winners, just temporary advantages.

@Shimmy He didn't talk to someone playing Black Ops yesterday? o_O

Black Ops got leaked like, a week ago.

Ugh, GameStop uses Arial. Figures.