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Snarboo

Don't copy that floppy...again!

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Apparently the sequel to the award winning "Don't Copy that Floppy!" has been released today:



The video features members of id software, namely Todd Hollenshead, speaking out against software piracy. Brief footage from id's new game Rage is also supposed to be featured, although I haven't watched the entire video yet to confirm.

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Who in their right mind would buy a pirated copy of something? The only point I can discern this video is trying to make is not to sell pirated media, but I'm willing to bet that the majority of piracy these days is free filesharing. I can't figure out if they're actually trying to convince anyone or just talking out of their asses like those stupid unskippable piracy warnings on some DVDs.

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Hey, at the end they advertise a site where you can download free copies of that song! I'm reporting them!

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Heh, Mondello's voice is weird. I guess prison does that to a guy eh?

Nomad said:

Who in their right mind would buy a pirated copy of something?


Not really the same situation but when my mate was in Bosnia with the army a few years back, it was hard to buy a legal version of software or music there. There were stores on the high-streets openly selling pre-packaged, and ready-cracked copies of virtually anything that came on a CD, and usually before the legal versions were even available in the UK, let alone in Bosnia. These stores had catalogues of literally thousands of titles. Just like the genuine article, if it didn't work, you could take it back to the store and get a refund/exchange. And it was cheap too. For a couple of $ you could get a CD with all the albums ever from a particular artist on it in MP3 format. At that time, it was more a question of "Who in their right mind would buy a genuine copy of something" in Bosnia. At that time, it really was big business and, just like the anti-piracy commercials say, it was very much a part of organised crime - but very open, up front and "honest". ie, the public felt that they were getting a good deal out of it.

I believe, however, that situation no longer exists there.

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Nomad said:
Who in their right mind would buy a pirated copy of something? The only point I can discern this video is trying to make is not to sell pirated media, but I'm willing to bet that the majority of piracy these days is free filesharing.

In the "first world", but in many places (where I'm at included) warez selling is relatively common. The reason is that the media costs about the same as in rich countries, but people only earn a fraction, and they often don't have the technology or affinity to it to download stuff as much as a Swede or American would. Besides, downloading illegal stuff costs time, and like Benjamin Franklin noted, time is money too. If you have more money than time but not enough money to buy legit things, you buy cheaper copies ($5 per copy instead of $25).

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It used to be common in Eastern Europe, probably still is in some places. The Bosnia example matches what was going on in Poland 10-15 years ago. I still have 2 store-bought CDs worth of cracked games. I also have 7 CDs of MP3s, albums which I picked from a catalogue and had them burned.

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I understand about many foreign countries having a problem with that; My dad bought a lot of pirated DVDs in South Korea during an assignment for the Air Force. However I'm pretty sure this video's target audience is in the US, MAYBE the UK and other "first world," English speaking countries. I seriously doubt there are that many people in said areas selling pirated materials.

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Nomad said:

Who in their right mind would buy a pirated copy of something?


I got asked this question long ago, and here is how I answered.

Yeah, when internet was still "for many but not for everybody" and pirating multi-CD games wasn't exactly physically possible, there were neighborhood pirates (the only ones who could afford a SCSI 2x CD-R ), floppy swapping, etc.

Also, blank CD-Rs cost like $20 a pop back then (1996) so pirating multi-CD games wasn't an option: however you could fill a CD with many smaller ones, in one or more writing sessions.

The "pirates" themselves, in turn, got their stuff from major pirate groups like Chaos or Tarkus in the form of hard disks or streamer tapes and those groups openly advertised themselves on magazines as "software clubs"...well read my linked post above. There was a whole underground scene.

Today you can still physically buy copied CDs and DVDs off the street even in the "first world" (although the DVDs are usually press-only releases with a huge "PRESS RELEASE - PROPERTY OF XXX" red caption over everything), and the CDs may sometimes be fucked up shit like e.g. a tape-to-CD copy instead of
a "proper" CD-clone.

Nomad said:

I seriously doubt there are that many people in said areas selling pirated materials.


Italy? Greece? Germany? It's full of (mostly blacks) seeling DVDs and CDs on the steet. Also when I visited London a couple of years ago, there were warez peddlers on the street (of course, they had shills to warn them of incoming police officers). Then again I have a thing for locating this sort of business. You won't be seeing much of it if you only hang around Harrod's or something :-p

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Don't Internet warez piratez benefit the same way free software developers do (through site advertisements)?

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In general, anti-piracy ads range from inane/bland to overly crass.

Anglosaxons prefer the inane/bland genre (stealing is wrong etc.)

The Italian "RIAA" on the other hand preferred a different approach: calling pirates "losers" to their face, check out this older thread:

Funny Italian anti-DVD piracy ad.

And the video on the above thread isn't the only one, either. But they all revolve around the concept that "whoever warezes stuff, is a poor loser nerd with no life that isn't getting any". They even got as far as using the "nerd with no life" stereotype in the most recent ones, showing how a "cool" guy degenerated into a "nerd" as the warez downloads completed...pretty sad.

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In the early nineties I'd go to a game store and buy copied Atari ST games. However, I don't think you could do that with PC games.

You could buy shareware disks of games like ROTT and Doom though.

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I could do that too, in the few shops that bothered bringing in PC games that is. Some -otherwise legit- shops offered even to convert games shipped on 5.25" disks to 3.5" and viceversa, in order to get a sale.

However, getting legit software outside of major urban centers was nearly impossible: piracy and simple "friendly swapping" was the primary method of getting new games and software for most users, no matter if they used Atari ST, Amiga or PC.

The only -brief- period where piracy wasn't viable was when CD-Rs were still very expensive (like $20 a pop) and multi-CD games started appearing. That was the only period I recall where a copy could end up costing way more than the original, but it was a brief one at that.

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Maes said:

Italy? Greece? Germany? It's full of (mostly blacks) seeling DVDs and CDs on the steet. Also when I visited London a couple of years ago, there were warez peddlers on the street (of course, they had shills to warn them of incoming police officers). Then again I have a thing for locating this sort of business. You won't be seeing much of it if you only hang around Harrod's or something :-p


Well, I did say:

I'm pretty sure this video's target audience is in the US, MAYBE the UK and other "first world," English speaking countries.


And in either case I also say who would buy pirated stuff in these countries. It may be cheaper, but 9 times out of 10 it's probably also going to be of lesser quality than the real deal.

My step mother bought me this big "Seasons 1-7" deal of Scrubs DVDs for xmas last year on "uBid.com" or whatever, and when it got here we found out the disks were all pirated; the first six seasons weren't all that obvious although most of them were missing all the special features and had the numbers on the disks scratched off. There were only nine episodes of Season 7, and they were all OBVIOUSLY recorded straight from the TV and still had the NBC watermarks in the corner!

In my experience buying pirated material is a waste of money. I just don't see why anyone who has the option of having the real deal would do it, even if it is slightly more expensive. Though in poorer countries where the price difference is much greater I have more understanding. But still, I personally would rather have a higher quality product for more money over slightly cheaper and shoddy.

*shrug*

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I too don't understand why in the digital era, pirates deal with inferior stuff at the source level. It takes much less effort to buy (or warez) a full-DVD quality release of whatever, and then directly copy that, rather than going through analog hoops.

But yeah, it happened to me too: I once bought a pirated "Hot hits" compilation, only to discover that the overall duration was limited to 60 minutes (!) instead of the full CD length, and tracks were forcibly clipped way before their ends.

Now, why on earth, if you were a pirate, you would even lose time doing that instead of hitting the "copy" button on your favourite CD copying program....

This all makes sense if the "pirates" were actually not very computer literate, and used stand-alone table equipment instead of computers e.g. a stand-alone consumer-grade audio CD recorder. These have some quirky limits like working only special "For consumer" CDs, which were once limited to 60 minutes and refusing to make direct digital copies of SCMS protected audio CDs (pretty much everything on the market), and used one of those at some point during the process (the CD-R used however was a normal 80 minutes computer one). Same goes for the analog/air-to-DVD shows.

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Maes said:

I too don't understand why in the digital era, pirates deal with inferior stuff at the source level.

They might have acquired their original from someone who isn't as well equipped as themselves.
Alternatively, they may feel that if they're publishing imperfect copies, then it's just like giving away a sample, as a "try before you buy" kinda deal, and there is still a reason to obtain legit versions.

I'd expect it to be the former in at least 95% of the cases.

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kristus said:

You could buy shareware disks of games like ROTT and Doom though.

PC World in the UK still sells shareware games on CDs.

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Interesting story about Jeremiah Mondello: he used stolen bank account information and fraudulent accounts to sell pirated software on eBay. In addition to pleading guilty for copyright infringement, he also did the same for aggravated identity theft and mail fraud.

This is the prison he is currently serving his sentence in. If I had to guess, he's probably in the minimum security satellite, which is hardly the sort of place a person would be forced to give tattoos to other inmates.

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Bloodshedder said:

Interesting story about Jeremiah Mondello: he used stolen bank account information and fraudulent accounts to sell pirated software on eBay. In addition to pleading guilty for copyright infringement, he also did the same for aggravated identity theft and mail fraud.

This is the prison he is currently serving his sentence in. If I had to guess, he's probably in the minimum security satellite, which is hardly the sort of place a person would be forced to give tattoos to other inmates.

He hardly sounds like the casual pirate that the video is trying to target.

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Nomad said:

Who in their right mind would buy a pirated copy of something? The only point I can discern this video is trying to make is not to sell pirated media, but I'm willing to bet that the majority of piracy these days is free filesharing. I can't figure out if they're actually trying to convince anyone or just talking out of their asses like those stupid unskippable piracy warnings on some DVDs.

Yeah, it's retarded. I've always been of the mind that the record/movie/software industry isn't actually losing any money because the people who pirate their stuff weren't going to buy it anyway.

Back in high school when I rarely had $20 to my name and only a 56k modem, I knew some people who could hook you up with anything for $5 if it fit on a CD. Aside from that, I never bought any pirated anything. I'd rather have the original.

Enjay said:

Not really the same situation but when my mate was in Bosnia with the army a few years back, it was hard to buy a legal version of software or music there. There were stores on the high-streets openly selling pre-packaged, and ready-cracked copies of virtually anything that came on a CD, and usually before the legal versions were even available in the UK, let alone in Bosnia. These stores had catalogues of literally thousands of titles. Just like the genuine article, if it didn't work, you could take it back to the store and get a refund/exchange. And it was cheap too. For a couple of $ you could get a CD with all the albums ever from a particular artist on it in MP3 format. At that time, it was more a question of "Who in their right mind would buy a genuine copy of something" in Bosnia. At that time, it really was big business and, just like the anti-piracy commercials say, it was very much a part of organised crime - but very open, up front and "honest". ie, the public felt that they were getting a good deal out of it.

I believe, however, that situation no longer exists there.

Back in about 2000, I went to the International District (Chinatown) in Seattle and it was pretty much the same situation there. The friends I was with were looking for anime and such and seriously every single video store we went into there had rows and rows of DVDs in white boxes with black lettering (in Engrish), and we couldn't find anything legit. I don't know if that's still the case there as the only places I visit there are Uwajimaya and Pink Godzilla, which are both legit.

Coopersville said:

This is awesome. I've been wanting to see this since the trailer was released. This is probably the lamest thing I've waited for.

Hah, me too.

kristus said:

You could buy shareware disks of games like ROTT and Doom though.

I remember when all computer shops had those (I also remember when all computer shops were locally-owned hole-in-the-wall stores that were mostly hardware for building computers from scratch, but I digress). They would have a rack where you could buy shareware games for like $3 a piece. I always thought that was dumb since my dad was always downloading shareware from the BBSs for free. I also remember video rental stores having racks where you could 'rent' shareware.

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Here in Puerto Rico, you can buy pirated movies and games on the side of the road (literally!) for $5 a copy...some places will even give you discounts for volume purchase (5 for $20...it's a STEAL!). There was a brief time about a year ago or so when there were some stings to try to stop it (very few arrests, actually), but once the people involved went back to the USA, the piracy peddlers were right back on the street.

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I note that a lot of people have questioned the quality of pirated stuff and, yes, absolutely, it is usually inferior, often vastly so. However, my mates experience in Bosnia was that, sure, you could get some badly copied stuff but, on the whole, it was absolutely fine, very good quality, perfectly ripped stuff. And, if it required activation, or registration codes or whatever then it was already pre-cracked and "slipstreamed" onto a new install disk.

He also suspects that a great deal of the customers for these pirate copies were as much the members of the international peace keeping force as much as the local residents and, perhaps, the deals had to be attractive to them. Like I said, organised crime was behind it and they have the resources to make sure an acceptable product is made.


Jeremiah Mondello... hmmm, yeah, definitely not the casual pirater that the video is trying to discourage and which the video implies he is. What's more, it's a dead cert that he is appearing in that video solely to try and get his sentence cut or increase his chance of parole something.

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