Ultimately, the service they would provide would be content before any of the knock offs. Plenty of companies have tried to make knockoffs of wow, some even with otherwise very compelling universes in the baggage (lord of the rings online, warhammer online), but no one has come close yet. Star Wars the Old Republic might, but I doubt it. A rose by any other name is still WoW. And right now they have a critical mass of users, which is all they need. They could shit in a shoebox and call it Mist of Pandaria and millions will buy it on the release day.

Sure, there exists private servers of Wow at this point too, and some people like to play on them, but for me? I wouldn't even want to. There's no challenge when everything is possible. I'm certain that even if a joint effort between developers of all sorts banded together to copy and create an MMO like wow, it would likely be crap, because they have no other incentive to make it than "because we can". Design decisions based on that are not good - look at linux. Even Mozilla is a company nowadays. A command structure is essential in creating a massive work of art in a reasonable time.

Making a copy of WoW isn't "just" making a copy of WoW, it's enormous. By the time someone has copied it to the finer details, the game will have moved on to something else; systems change all the time.

A good example of something happening like you say is Vampires: Bloodlines where the community made a huge amount of "community patches" to fix the game, after the developer went bankrupt. I like that, but they could do it because the things they were fixing were straight forward. If they wanted to make entirely new things, who decides which things are good and bad? Like wikipedia, they would need custodians. A private company like Blizzard does not have that problem.

I was certainly a little too broad when I said all intellectual property is bunk. First of all I have a problem with the umbrella term of IP. I don't think it's helpful. Different types of IP have different solutions and problems. Some are more bunk than others. (Wtf is with they way rights to music works? What is it now, 100 years after the artist dies? Crazy.)

Like you I am philosophically on the "you can't own ideas, man"-wagon, but practically I'm more loose with my morals - hell, morals are fluid baby.

I'll say this. I would rather have 50000 people playing my game and 50 people paying for it, than I would have 50 people playing my game and paying for it any day.

>> ^NetRunner:

I think this is the most plausible way I've seen anyone square this circle. I'm just not sure it really holds up to scrutiny.
Philosophically, I'm in the "information isn't property" camp, but I also put food on the table by creating intellectual property.
The confluence of my own philosophical tastes on this topic would be that not only should "making copies" be legalized, it should actually be criminal to withhold any sort of scientific or engineering advance from the broader public, especially for selfish gain.
But, I think that would essentially destroy software companies as we know them. I think Blizzard & WoW would have trouble making the case to people that their service is worth $140/yr. That's especially true in the kind of world in which any content they generate can just be copied by a knockoff service provider just as easily as the original copy of WoW was in the first place.
I have trouble even imagining what sort of service they'd be able to compete on in that world. Uptime? In-game customer service? Best policing of player misbehavior? It can't be bugfixes (copyable), and it can't be content (also copyable).
I think ultimately WoW would have to become something more like an open source project -- the community provides all bugfixes and content gratis. Blizzard ultimately would have to give up any kind of creative or engineering control at that point, and also give up on having a revenue stream of millions of dollars a month, too. They'd just be a glorified hosting company. Companies like Microsoft probably wouldn't even be that.
It'd probably be better for the whole world that way, but not so awesome for incumbents in the industry.
You know, people like you and me.
>> ^gwiz665:
Essentially you couldn't. You would not be able to provide a better service without spending a very very large amount of money and effort into doing it. An MMO is a service, and you have to provide more than just stable servers for it to work, you also have to create new content, bug fixes etc to maintain the integrity of the product.
You can design your way out of it easily. Free to play is one way of doing it, which we have a lot of success with on iOS and the big shots on PC are waking up to as well, finally. Apple in general have their app rejection policy which keeps the most things at bay, but of course there is jailbreaks, which I don't much care for.
I don't have a problem with people copying, although I would of course prefer they give me lots of money. If they corrupt our product however, with map hacks, cheats etc. then it's a much different issue.
I think it's a problem that many different types of media is lumped together under "intellectual property", because I do think things like Art, music etc should be protected from forgeries and that the original artist should be compensated for his time, otherwise we would have no art at all.
The industry is changing to provide a better service still though. Look at music - who buys CDs anymore? We have things like Spotify and Grooveshark who stream just about any music easily supported by commercials.
Any Blizzard game, and all their future games, will need a persistent internet connection, both for piracy issues but also for better service - instant patching, social networking etc. Same with steam.

I think this is the most plausible way I've seen anyone square this circle. I'm just not sure it really holds up to scrutiny.

Philosophically, I'm in the "information isn't property" camp, but I also put food on the table by creating intellectual property.

The confluence of my own philosophical tastes on this topic would be that not only should "making copies" be legalized, it should actually be criminal to withhold any sort of scientific or engineering advance from the broader public, especially for selfish gain.

But, I think that would essentially destroy software companies as we know them. I think Blizzard & WoW would have trouble making the case to people that their service is worth $140/yr. That's especially true in the kind of world in which any content they generate can just be copied by a knockoff service provider just as easily as the original copy of WoW was in the first place.

I have trouble even imagining what sort of service they'd be able to compete on in that world. Uptime? In-game customer service? Best policing of player misbehavior? It can't be bugfixes (copyable), and it can't be content (also copyable).

I think ultimately WoW would have to become something more like an open source project -- the community provides all bugfixes and content gratis. Blizzard ultimately would have to give up any kind of creative or engineering control at that point, and also give up on having a revenue stream of millions of dollars a month, too. They'd just be a glorified hosting company. Companies like Microsoft probably wouldn't even be that.

It'd probably be better for the whole world that way, but not so awesome for incumbents in the industry.

You know, people like you and me.

>> ^gwiz665:

Essentially you couldn't. You would not be able to provide a better service without spending a very very large amount of money and effort into doing it. An MMO is a service, and you have to provide more than just stable servers for it to work, you also have to create new content, bug fixes etc to maintain the integrity of the product.
You can design your way out of it easily. Free to play is one way of doing it, which we have a lot of success with on iOS and the big shots on PC are waking up to as well, finally. Apple in general have their app rejection policy which keeps the most things at bay, but of course there is jailbreaks, which I don't much care for.
I don't have a problem with people copying, although I would of course prefer they give me lots of money. If they corrupt our product however, with map hacks, cheats etc. then it's a much different issue.
I think it's a problem that many different types of media is lumped together under "intellectual property", because I do think things like Art, music etc should be protected from forgeries and that the original artist should be compensated for his time, otherwise we would have no art at all.
The industry is changing to provide a better service still though. Look at music - who buys CDs anymore? We have things like Spotify and Grooveshark who stream just about any music easily supported by commercials.
Any Blizzard game, and all their future games, will need a persistent internet connection, both for piracy issues but also for better service - instant patching, social networking etc. Same with steam.

There are so many whitebox hardware platforms and open source operating systems, anyone can build a general purpose computer if they really want for cheap.

The problem is, most people don't want to or need to. Most of the capabilities of the windows operating system is not used by ordinary people and is actually a hindrance to a optimal user experience. That's why simplified tablet and smartphone platforms are taking off in some consumer segments.

As the great philosopher Janet Jackson once reminded us, this is about Control.

All I'll add to the perceptive comments and breakdowns above is that platform control is still important. People will say that the net offers different options but apparently music acts still want to be signed and promoted. Is there more money that way in the long term? The amount of artists for whom this didn't work out suggests to me there's got to be an alternative.

Alternatives to itunes, Xbox Live, Netflix, every app store out there and who knows what else.

It's strange the more you consider when so much software is open-source, there's crowd-sourcing, all kinds of online collectives etc, that there isn't a alternative distribution hub for artists of all kinds whose work can be digitised. A place where artists and consumers get a fair deal and individuals like Louis CK don't have to set up their own infrastructure.

I don't know, maybe I'm being terribly naive but my gut feeling says there is an opportunity here. Or maybe these things exist and haven't done very well against the prevailing orthodoxy.

>> ^BoneRemake:

Replace my old rant with a question.
Has this group done something noticeable yet ? I mean a measurable change in something, another way to phrase it would be "have they done anything they said they would "
I am most ignorant on this group.


Small stuff like the arrest of Chris Forcand, world-wide protesting against Scientology(Project Chanology), created a website during the Iran protests along with Pirate Bay and other hackers to subvert censorship of news and happenings in Iran to Iranians, they helped Wikileaks set up mirrors around the world when everyone was trying to censor the leaks that were being released, they were instrumental in taking down the websites of the Tunisian, Egyptian, and Libyan governments during their respective protests, they destroyed HBGary's credibility(a company competing for a government contract to create false identities online in order to subvert political movements), they attempted to boycott Koch Industries products because of the Koch brothers' history of donating money to political groups that try and destroy the middle class, retaliated against Sony (completely disabling the Playstation Network for over a month) after they prosecuted a fellow named George Hotz for his work on developing open-source software on the Plastation 3, organized protests against BART officers who disabled cell phone service to attempt to disrupt protestors from assembling violently after a police shooting.

Here you can find some more information if you'd like to read about it. I've been following them for a while now and this seems to be relatively accurate.

@Stormsinger of course 99% of them are script kiddies, but that 1% has a terryfing knowledge of 0day exploits and computers and is extremely proficient in doing whatever the hell they want to do.

In my experience, these guys want one thing more than most:

1. Freedom of information

If anything gets in the way of that, they will do what they can to try and destroy it.

You will have to let me know the details of your voyage if you take it! They don't really exist here in the states, so all my information is hearsay.

In reply to this comment by dag:
My interest in the Pirate Party has been growing too. I was following what happened in the recent German elections. I want to get involved and I've been looking into joining my local Australian chapter. Even if they can get some traction for copyright, patent reform and fair use - it would be a great thing.

In reply to this comment by GeeSussFreeK:
I remember you had a blog about government disappearing for web-like, open source community stuff (I might be mis-remembering the exact situation). But the PIRATE PARTY seems to be pushing this idea of the best of open source methodology with "API" for dealing with government, and government dealing with itself. Seemed pretty interesting, though, I haven't done any reading to see how different it would really be from a system of "laws" vs "API", perhaps just a paradigm shift in the way we think of governments. I like the shift of thinking of government as a tool instead of us as the pawns of its whimsy.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

My interest in the Pirate Party has been growing too. I was following what happened in the recent German elections. I want to get involved and I've been looking into joining my local Australian chapter. Even if they can get some traction for copyright, patent reform and fair use - it would be a great thing.

In reply to this comment by GeeSussFreeK:
I remember you had a blog about government disappearing for web-like, open source community stuff (I might be mis-remembering the exact situation). But the PIRATE PARTY seems to be pushing this idea of the best of open source methodology with "API" for dealing with government, and government dealing with itself. Seemed pretty interesting, though, I haven't done any reading to see how different it would really be from a system of "laws" vs "API", perhaps just a paradigm shift in the way we think of governments. I like the shift of thinking of government as a tool instead of us as the pawns of its whimsy.

I remember you had a blog about government disappearing for web-like, open source community stuff (I might be mis-remembering the exact situation). But the PIRATE PARTY seems to be pushing this idea of the best of open source methodology with "API" for dealing with government, and government dealing with itself. Seemed pretty interesting, though, I haven't done any reading to see how different it would really be from a system of "laws" vs "API", perhaps just a paradigm shift in the way we think of governments. I like the shift of thinking of government as a tool instead of us as the pawns of its whimsy.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I think he probably is a philanthropist – but it would be in some weird, Jobsian way – not a foundation or otherwise. The guy is a very, very private person. I’m sure there will be a lot of information that comes out after he passes. I suppose it would affect my opinion of him if he wasn’t.

Although I like my Apple products, I’m a big fan of open too. I use a lot of open source tools, especially on the web. I also love my Google products, Gmail, Google Docs etc. I feel like “Open” is misused a bit in the current IT world. Most of the tech titans have “open” and non-open technologies. Apple is a big supporter of an open web – and are behind and have contributed heaps to Webkit, the open source layout engine used by Safari, Chrome, Kindle and more. No, OSX and iOS are not open but neither is Windows and even Android is not quite as open as Google would like you to believe: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_15/b4223041200216.htm >> ^kymbos:

Do you think he is a philanthropist, @dag? Would it affect your view of him if he weren't?
It is interesting to me that he is viewed so differently to someone like Bill Gates, however. Gates seems to have copped so much criticism about Microsoft, while Jobs seems to be so revered by Apple fans. This is despite Gates' philanthropy, and the insular nature of Apple products.
I don't feel strongly about it, to be fair, but I find myself drawn to open platform products on principle.
What I see Apple doing in the language of economics is 'product differentiation'. They have created a point of difference between their products and their competitors that allows them to move away from competing on price.

the new spiderman is not spiderman

different abilities makes it a different mutant and should have a different name

many of the hardcore fans of marvel and spiderman franchise have already posted flames on the marvel forums, there is one thread over 2000 pages of protest

media will call it racism that we dont like it, but that's not true, the real spiderman in the alternate universe he got there from the normal one, but died.

this new thing they want to call spiderman has different powers and abilities, and to call it spiderman is stupid even Stan Lee has voiced his opposition to it.

If Stan Lee the "god" of the spiderman world is against it then of course the change is bullshit.

course no worries the sales will definitely tank, and noone will buy them in the first place. And those that are semi interested in it can download them off piratebay or demonoid and use free open source program comicbook reader to read them to see how bad they screwed it up

Makes me think about open source software. Their development communities are very comparable to VideoSift's.

Lots of people find a common bond and spend time/effort to contribute to the product. They do this out of their own self-interest in the process itself and interaction with other participants, not for any reward except self-fulfillment and the contentment provided by the rest of the community.

And of course, everyone else who doesn't participate can just harvest the fruits of the community's labor, enjoying all the content without ever providing anything in return.

And I think all that describes VideoSift's DNA. You would be hard-pressed to manufacture that type of community as a business plan, and if you did, it just wouldn't be the same.

>> ^cito:

I recently bought a rep rap printer, they are a cheap open source 3d printer that self replicates most of it's parts.
you get the basic kit once put together you have to 3d print the rest of the parts, there are also upgrades you can download to print out, so you can actually 3d print your own upgrades to your 3d printer.
rep rap open source 3d printer is sweet, cheap and great for hobbyists


Fantastic. I had no idea that that's where we were with 3d printing. Awesome, awesome.

I recently bought a rep rap printer, they are a cheap open source 3d printer that self replicates most of it's parts.

you get the basic kit once put together you have to 3d print the rest of the parts, there are also upgrades you can download to print out, so you can actually 3d print your own upgrades to your 3d printer.

rep rap open source 3d printer is sweet, cheap and great for hobbyists

I know 2 women who are professional open-source programmers, and 1 woman who is a systems administrator. The programmers are both well-deserved 'superstars' in their fields. All of them blog and speak (complain?) extensively about the problems of being a woman in the industry. It's not trivial -- they've had to take legal action in the past when men sexually harassed them at conferences. Part of the problem is that this field is a boys club, and an extension of that problem is that this particular boys club is one where a lot of the boys have poorly developed social skills.

TL;DR men are shit.

In fourteen years of software development, for companies large and small, I've never worked with a female programmer, developer, or engineer.

I've had female coworkers who were analysts, graphic designers, quality assurance, technical writers, IT jockeys, program managers, project managers, and "normal" managers of various levels.

There's definitely a male bias in the programming fields, so I'm not surprised that they're under-represented in open-source projects as well.