You are hereShame on you Italy and Spain. Shame on you.
Shame on you Italy and Spain. Shame on you.
Two countries to blame for over 30% of game piracy
- During the month-long study, piracy was concentrated in two countries - Italy and Spain, accounting for 17.1% and 15.1% of total piracy activity, respectively. The ESA believes that the lax approach taken by the countries’ internet service providers to anti-piracy initiatives is to blame.
Original story at That Video Game Blog and a link to the ESA 2009 Annual Report.
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There seems to be a concerted effort by the content producers to lay the blame for what they call "piracy" squarely on the internet service providers. This makes about as much sense as blaming road pavers for me speeding. But then it doesn't make sense to charge some kid tens of thousands of dollars for downloading a song, either. When is the government going to wake up and stop the IP bullies from turning ISP's into their own personal police force? It's bad enough that border guards are now expected to check laptops crossing between countries.
The thing about many European countries is that circumvention devices are readily available (the laws about banning these devices are not enforced very well).
The other thing is that while the industry likes to blame poor sales on illegally downloaded games, the truth is that it is very hard to quantify how much of a loss a company really gets from this. Would all the people who pirated the game have bought it if they couldn't download it? Maybe by downloading a game you can increase the awareness of it and have some of your friends buy it instead? Maybe people pirate it just to try it then buy it (I've done it, or if there is a poor demo or no demo out)?
The biggest problem is really what is called "zero-day" piracy, where a game gets leaked online before the release date (where most of the game sales occur, unless you are Nintendo). Most developers know that if you can reduce or eliminate this, then piracy after the game is released won't be much of a factor.
And as I mentioned before, a copy of Spore in Portugal, for example, would cost (at the time) 60 euros. While in England it would be 40 euros. Games are much more expensive in these countries.
Real video game news, I am impressed (even if it's a couple days old).
But seriously, I do wonder why Italy seems to be always at the top for game piracy. It's possible that the prices are too high and the distribution of games is very poor (like in Australia, where a game like Fallout 3 would cost about 100$ CND but it is banned anyway since they lack a rating system for games above 15+).
I am so happy I could cry.
Post it your goddamned self next time!
Or just stop whining about it.
Either/or
n/t
You could, but you don't...