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Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

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Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#461

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Manuel_D wrote: post #454
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By definition, illegal copies of games don't have DRM protection. I'm not sure what you mean by this. Games released without DRM are less of an inconvenience to legitimate purchasers. They don't get negative sentiment from past customers complaining about the DRM causing problems for people who actually paid for it and thereby deter others from buying it. This can even cause the effect you're seeing: The game comes…

> Losing X% of sales to pissing off customers with DRM in order to avoid losing Y% of sales to pirates is only worth it if X is less than Y, but they're only even attempting to measure Y, and probably overestimating it. But releasing a game without DRM means it's impossible to measure the value of Y, since a crack is immediately available. This is why this is sort of a nonsensical complaint. > In addition to that, on…

> But releasing a game without DRM means it's impossible to measure the value of Y, since a crack is immediately available. This is why this is sort of a nonsensical complaint.

If you're trying to determine Z, which is X - Y, and then you get some indication that Y might be 20 under a specific set of assumptions, you still don't know anything about Z because X could still be 0 or 20 or 40. Measuring Y by itself is useless. It's looking for your keys under the streetlamp because that's where the light is even though you know that's not where you lost them.

> If there really were a pool of buyers who would purchase legal versions of games absent DRM, the we should see a bump in sales once DRM-free versions are released. But no such bump in sales materializes.

That's assuming the removal of the DRM is well-publicized like the initial release. Otherwise people hear about the initial release, don't buy it because it has DRM and then most of them forget the game even exists. And negative reviews from when the game had bad DRM are still there even after it's removed.

It could still be net positive to remove the DRM after it's cracked but the benefit is naturally going to be a lot smaller than if it had no DRM when people were paying more attention to it.

Also, has anyone actually studied that? Most of the resources to do studies on these things are from DRM purveyors who want to make their product look better than it is. They don't have the incentive to find results that make them look bad.

> Is it really that hard to believe that if given the choice to pay or receive a product for free more people choose the latter than if there is no free option?

You're still focused on measuring only Y.

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#462

Post by Manuel_D »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #461
Manuel_D wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Losing X% of sales to pissing off customers with DRM in order to avoid losing Y% of sales to pirates is only worth it if X is less than Y, but they're only even attempting to measure Y, and probably overestimating it. But releasing a game without DRM means it's impossible to measure the value of Y, since a crack is immediately available. This is why this is sort of a nonsensical complaint. > In addition to that, on…

> But releasing a game without DRM means it's impossible to measure the value of Y, since a crack is immediately available. This is why this is sort of a nonsensical complaint. If you're trying to determine Z, which is X - Y, and then you get some indication that Y might be 20 under a specific set of assumptions, you still don't know anything about Z because X could still be 0 or 20 or 40. Measuring Y by itself is us…

To be clear, what is measured is the proportional change in sales following the release of a crack, relative to other released games that went uncracked for longer. I don't know what percentage of games removed DRM after the crack was released, but let's assume they do.

If there's Y amount of people who buy if there's no crack available and pirate if there is, and X amount of people and who refuse to buy the game with DRM but do purchase it after DRM is removed. The net shift in sales is the difference in sales is X-Y.

We're not measuring Y, we're measuring Z. And since Z is negative, we can conclude that the group of people who just want free games is larger than the group of people who buy after DRM is removed. We know that Y is larger than X.

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#463

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Manuel_D wrote: post #462
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But releasing a game without DRM means it's impossible to measure the value of Y, since a crack is immediately available. This is why this is sort of a nonsensical complaint. If you're trying to determine Z, which is X - Y, and then you get some indication that Y might be 20 under a specific set of assumptions, you still don't know anything about Z because X could still be 0 or 20 or 40. Measuring Y by itself is us…

To be clear, what is measured is the proportional change in sales following the release of a crack, relative to other released games that went uncracked for longer. I don't know what percentage of games removed DRM after the crack was released, but let's assume they do. If there's Y amount of people who buy if there's no crack available and pirate if there is, and X amount of people and who refuse to buy the game wit…

> If there's Y amount of people who buy if there's no crack available and pirate if there is, and X amount of people and who refuse to buy the game with DRM but do purchase it after DRM is removed. The net shift in sales is the difference in sales is X-Y.

Now you're assuming that all games immediately remove DRM after they're cracked, which is definitely false. In a statistical study it would need to be all of them or any that don't would be skewing the average.

And again, removing the DRM doesn't fully undo the hit from having it to begin with. Existing negative reviews or forum posts panning the game don't disappear the instant you address the thing they were complaining about. The network effect and word of mouth in subcultures that don't buy games with DRM is already reduced.

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#464

Post by Manuel_D »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #463
Manuel_D wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, what is measured is the proportional change in sales following the release of a crack, relative to other released games that went uncracked for longer. I don't know what percentage of games removed DRM after the crack was released, but let's assume they do. If there's Y amount of people who buy if there's no crack available and pirate if there is, and X amount of people and who refuse to buy the game wit…

> If there's Y amount of people who buy if there's no crack available and pirate if there is, and X amount of people and who refuse to buy the game with DRM but do purchase it after DRM is removed. The net shift in sales is the difference in sales is X-Y. Now you're assuming that all games immediately remove DRM after they're cracked, which is definitely false. In a statistical study it would need to be all of them o…

So if a game launches with DRM it's forever tainted and that group of people who supposedly would have bought the game absent DRM won't buy it - even if the DRM is subsequently removed. But on the flip side, if a game doesn't launch with DRM then it's pirated immediately and there's no way to measure the sales in the period pre and post-crack, because there effectively is no pre-crack period.

You've constructed an unfalsifiable claim here.

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#465

Post by Rury »

cedws wrote: post #302
quantummagic wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And replace them with other idiots, who also support this rubbish? There isn't anyone who has sanity and decency, as their platform.

It seems the fundamental problem with democracy is that all the wrong people seek power, and the most qualified shy away from it.

Sort of, but not really. It's more that people get complacent/ignorant when it comes to matters of power (they shy away), so by choosing to let go (a selfish endeavor) - a power vacuum is created, which others seize the opportunity for their own interest. In other words, democracy is not self-sustaining, it requires constant participation by everyone in order to sustain. As soon as people opt out, you have a minority determining things for everyone, and so you're no longer truly a democracy.

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#466

Post by Klaster_1 »

raincole wrote: post #92
llbbdd wrote: post #30

Assuming that "piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem" is still the prevailing wisdom, what is Spain / La Liga doing wrong that sports piracy is so prevalent as to warrant this? It seems like a no-brainer to expand stream availability and charge appropriately for it vs. scheduling daily kneecaps of other economic activity.

> "piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem" I never buy into this. If copyright law doesn't exist, pirate sites will eventually always provide better service than the official channels. One example is scanlation manga. Chinese scanlation sites have reached the theoretical ceiling of service: just serve images fast with a little nonintrusive ad. No login required. No way the official Japanese apps can provi…

I dunno, with advent of Mangaplus I basically stopped reading scanlations, except for a few cases that are not officially available online. Paired with Mihon, the experience is super smooth, all for 2 bucks per month - a very reasonable price. Compare that to Crunchyroll, which has some exclusives I'd like to read, but doesn't offer a good service and costs more - I choose to read something else and maybe download the rips some years later from Madokami.

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#467

Post by dieortin »

artyom wrote: post #244

If you know Spain, you know this makes total sense: - Half the country or more just doesn't work or do anything else when there's an important match anyway. - There's a big intersection between "people that doesn't care about soccer" and "people that knows how to use a VPN" - Matches are usually at night, past 7pm. It's well after the average citizen work hours. - There's not really huge internet companies there that…

> Half the country or more just doesn't work or do anything else when there's an important match anyway.

This is completely false. In the first half of this LaLiga season, the most watched match had 3 million viewers: https://barloventocomunicacion.es/informes-barlovento/el-fut... Spain has a population of almost 50M. So the most viewed match was around 6% of the population.

I’m not sure what makes you think you “know Spain” enough to throw this kind of ridiculous claim around, but please inform yourself.

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#468

Post by alt227 »

nradov wrote: post #190
alt227 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Spotify came along, music piracy all but vanished. It has already been proven in other media, it needs to happen with sports and streaming in general, then media piracy will be a thing of the past.

Perhaps, but I don't think the sports leagues and other video content providers will ever agree to letting their IP be devalued that way. They see what happened to musicians and record labels with Spotify as a cautionary tale, not a model to emulate. Otoh, maybe Netflix and other streaming video services will start their own sports leagues in order to vertically integrate and own everything end-to-end just like what…

Thats an interesting thought. Netflix are already starting get big sporting events like boxing matches, which are usually pay per view on other networks but included with subscription fee on Netflix. This might be crereping in the direction you are suggesting?

https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/82699237

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#469

Post by alt227 »

raincole wrote: post #213
alt227 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Spotify came along, music piracy all but vanished. It has already been proven in other media, it needs to happen with sports and streaming in general, then media piracy will be a thing of the past.

Music is the single field where copyright laws are enforced aggressively. Plus signers and bands earn pennis from Spotify. Practically Spotify did vanished music privacy - by proving how bad a business it is to sell music and pushing the whole industry to personal branding (tours+ad revenue).

Yeah I suppose the same alternative is not really possible for video based media. I sometimes see producers touring their independant films along with a Q&A session, but I doubt that it is ever going to become popular to go and pay a venue to sit and watch your favourite show every week!

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#470

Post by fragmede »

fluoridation wrote: post #376
fragmede wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone's poorer than you think, and sometimes the richest seeming people are under a mountain of debt. > own an aircraft, doesn't mean you have a budget to pay random EUR 10/month subscriptions. Still, if you can't afford a €10/mo subscription necessary to operate the airplane safely, when hanger fees are well in excess of that, then perhaps you can't actually afford to own an airplane? Airplanes aren't cheap to ow…

The reason people will tell you that is because paying for car insurance is rarely something you can just opt not to do, at least not without consequences. The consequence for not paying for a $10/month service is having to perform a minimally inconvenient chore once a week.

Yeah, for a fucking airplane. In most of the world, that's way up there with yachts as a rich people toy rather than a everyday necessity. The real question though is, upon having discovered this, why allow them to keep doing that?
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