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> Digital piracy in SR, what's your take on it?
Adhoc
post Dec 7 2004, 12:10 PM
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Hi,

I'm currently ripping a few of my own CDs to put on my mp3-player. It could have been someone elses CDs or it could have been mp3s that I've downloaded from the net. Piracy is so rampant and there's so many p2p-network out there nowadays, so I'd like to hear your take on software-piracy in Shadowrun:

Does it exist?
What gets copied?
What are the rules about it?
Who tries to inforce the copyright laws?
Are it all done over the matrix or do people have other venues for it?

Stuff like that; do you think piracy is an issue in 2064?

:wavey:
Adhoc

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Gem the Troll
post Dec 7 2004, 02:04 PM
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You know they bootleg BTLs. BTLs are unfiltered simsense (kinda like a movie I guess, but you're in it). I imagine that people still bootleg music as well. I don't see it having gone away. I don't know if SR3 ever released it, but in SR2 there was a book that dealt specifically with celebrities and that type of thing. If I were to try finding your answers, reference that...I can't remember what it was called but someone will chime in with the title. Sorry.
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Westiex
post Dec 7 2004, 02:48 PM
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QUOTE
I don't know if SR3 ever released it, but in SR2 there was a book that dealt specifically with celebrities and that type of thing. If I were to try finding your answers, reference that...I can't remember what it was called but someone will chime in with the title. Sorry.


That would be Shadow Beat (ID - 7109)
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otaku mike
post Dec 7 2004, 03:22 PM
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My take is that the corpos enforce copyright laws everywhere they can, putting the pressure on the govs in the process.
Now, there is the problem of the 3rd world countries, where piracy is not only a business, it's often the only way the poors can afford music, videogames or movies. And there is a twist: the corpos want to sell to those poors too, but they can't dump their prices too low in such an internationalized market, so they bootleg their own products, semi-officially, to cut the loses... I'd see that particularly in Africa and Southeast Asia/south China, infamous for their widespread piracy.
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Cochise
post Dec 7 2004, 03:49 PM
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QUOTE (Adhoc)
Piracy is so rampant and there's so many p2p-network out there nowadays

This is the kind of sentence that typically leads to some serious "brain pain" for me: Realworld comparisons that have the tendency to show up in SR publications sooner or later ... Regardless of them being suited or not ...

QUOTE
, so I'd like to hear your take on software-piracy in Shadowrun:


*hmm* Let's see ...

QUOTE
Does it exist?


Yes, but to a very limited extend ...

QUOTE
What gets copied?


Only stuff with very low program ratings ...

QUOTE
What are the rules about it?


No special rules ...

QUOTE
Who tries to inforce the copyright laws?


Any corp, with all necessary means.

QUOTE
Stuff like that; do you think piracy is an issue in 2064?


Not really ...
Why? Pretty simple: For me the SR-Universe took a very destinct route that departed real world developements way back in in the early 90ies, with some serious crash during 2029 that practically took out all known forms computertech and lead to the development of a completely different structure called Matrix.
And while the Matrix does know it's rouges and thieves in form of nova-hot deckers, there are some substential differences:
  • This world didn't have developments like Open Source or P2P Software. Neither in the late 90ies and the early years of the 21th century (unless some "creative" writers considers it a good idea to rewrite that part of SR-History), nor during the "current" time. The first part is "historical" fact, the second part is simply because of the environment of SR:
    Everything in SR is closed source. According to the core rules, it near impossible to copy programs in object code from chips that are designed to be "read-only" to other chips (a copy protection of that kind would be the rejoice of any real world company ... be in in software, the movies or music). Source code is normally not availible even to customers (again based on the info given in the core rules. There it says that source code normally doesn't come with programs. Matrix however contradicts that to a certain extend by saying that source code can be obtained when doing legal buys):
  • The SR-Universe and its megacorps are all about gaining as much information while simultaniously giving as few information as possible (be it voluntarily or involuntarily). In such a scenario DRM is one of the things that is heavily depended on and also carefully watched.
  • The Corporate Court constantly works against anything that could result into an all out corporate war. "Commercial" piracy on a larger scale would interfere with the business of all megacorps => They'll work together on that issue.
  • Non-commercial piracy is limited due to technical reasons: Fully operational cyberdecks that would be needed to a certain extend, unless you want to be traceable within the matrix. Since full blown decks are illigal by definition (unlike your home pc) and not that easy to come by with, the number of potential crackers isn't that high. The number of "customers" that could stay anonymous in the Matrix is even lower ...

Apart from that we also have to accept the following:

Although some players do whine about the "loss" of the cyberpunk attitude in the more current versions of SR, it's a matter of fact that SR and it's runners actually never where altruistic cyberpunks that sought to provide any information to anybody. Deckers as members of that shadow community do not exhibit such noble values either: Look at how difficult it is to get into Shadowland. You have to be a rather good decker or have to have the connections to go there. Doesn't sound that openminded to me. Look at how runners usually operate. They are hired by Johnsons and actually work for the system. So while they themselves might stay out of the system, they are not really fighting it like the more common "cyberpunk" would.

Of coures that's just my opinion and as always YMMV ...
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Kagetenshi
post Dec 7 2004, 04:21 PM
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Source code is easy to come by, but it accounts for 30% of program cost. With how expensive those programs get, that's nontrivial.

~J
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nezumi
post Dec 7 2004, 04:42 PM
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I suppose it's also worth pointing out that, unlike today, Renraku can 'award you' a free tour of their programming suites where they're currently working on Super Motorcycle Ninja Rampage IV. Then, as soon as you cross that line, they can shoot you dead for software piracy. Throw on that they can 'accidentally' release an easily copied, pre-release version of shield 4, which, most unfortunately, tends to brainfry the user under certain circumstances will make deckers think long and hard about what they plug into their head.
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hobgoblin
post Dec 7 2004, 04:54 PM
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sota63 had some info on virtual art and how to pirate them.

as for pirateing, its a issue not often coverd in rpgs (just like incompatiblity).

why you can sometimes buy the source along with a working object copy of utilitys is that your not buying a legal item, ever. if you have a legal account on a host then you dont need any utilitys unless your trying to perform a action that your account dont allow.

piracy will allways happen. you can only hinder it, never stop it compleatly. my guess is that corporate court and corp strike teams are what makes piracy in SR hard. if they can find you then either dissapear or die or gets sent to corp jail for x number for years with bubba the troll as your cell-mate.

allso, the software os that we have today only realy showed up with the pc and cheap hardrives. now how about a jump back to chip based os that only run specificly signed software? a bit like what the TCPA and NGSCB is supposed to do. whenever you connect to a matrix resource then the host checks your system and determines the signatures. if you download anything then the suff is wrapped in a encryption so that if you try to read it of the memory and transfer it somewhere else then it would refuse to run. therefor you can upload something to a computers memory but you cant download from that memory.

and SR uses chips for storage of stuff. this allows for a active media that detects a install and then locks itself until it can verify that the system you installed on dont have a copy present any longer and it will then allow for a new install. i recall a similar system being used on a set of disketts from microsoft. every install would alter a file on one of the disketts. after x number of changes it would refuse to do any more installs. now consider this being done inside a black box chip where you dont see every file on it but rather get a menu when inserted into a computer where you have the option to install if the chip allows it.

security must be multiplayerd so that if one layer (copy protected chip,signed files) failes then the next one pick up (cops and corporate court).
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KarmaInferno
post Dec 7 2004, 05:02 PM
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One ponders on whether the megacorps would have wisened up to the concept that they should be selling media services, rather than media products.

You often make more money off service-based fees than you do selling products. And you can't pirate services. (Well, you can, but it's much less critical than in a product-based business)


-karma
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hobgoblin
post Dec 7 2004, 05:07 PM
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well given that they seems to be heading that way lately i would say yes. why allwo a person to have music stored on this home device when it can be streamed as a service? your own made to order tv or radio channel maybe?
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Tanka
post Dec 7 2004, 05:30 PM
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QUOTE (hobgoblin)
well given that they seems to be heading that way lately i would say yes. why allwo a person to have music stored on this home device when it can be streamed as a service? your own made to order tv or radio channel maybe?

They're getting there with internet radio now.

Piracy? Oh, hell yes it's there. I'm sure there are sections of Shadowland dedicated to it.

However, if you happen to be on their pay-to-hear server cracking in for free, they've probably got some nasty IC to protect it.
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Cochise
post Dec 7 2004, 05:58 PM
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QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
Source code is easy to come by, but it accounts for 30% of program cost.

I guess that's why I wrote this:

QUOTE (Myself)
(again based on the info given in the core rules. There it says that source code normally doesn't come with programs. Matrix however contradicts that to a certain extend by saying that source code can be obtained when doing legal buys)


That's just one of the things that sometimes bothers me with more recent SR publications: Previous background info discarded without proper info on why this change came about (which in turn can leave the impression of bad editing) ...

________________

As for that Internrt Radio comparison and selling media services: "brain pain" alert again ... I still find it rather uncreative to copy our real world developments into SR. SR is still an alternate universe and not a 2060 copy of our world + magic ...
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Tanka
post Dec 7 2004, 06:02 PM
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QUOTE (Cochise)
As for that Internrt Radio comparison and selling media services: "brain pain" alert again ... I still find it rather uncreative to copy our real world developments into SR. SR is still an alternate universe and not a 2060 copy of our world + magic ...

Obviously, but the tech was being made up "on the fly" back when the game was created, and is now coming to life in the real world.

Chances are, if we can do it now, we can do it in 2060.
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Gilthanis
post Dec 7 2004, 06:52 PM
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QUOTE (hobgoblin)
allso, the software os that we have today only realy showed up with the pc and cheap hardrives. now how about a jump back to chip based os that only run specificly signed software? a bit like what the TCPA and NGSCB is supposed to do. whenever you connect to a matrix resource then the host checks your system and determines the signatures. if you download anything then the suff is wrapped in a encryption so that if you try to read it of the memory and transfer it somewhere else then it would refuse to run. therefor you can upload something to a computers memory but you cant download from that memory.

and SR uses chips for storage of stuff. this allows for a active media that detects a install and then locks itself until it can verify that the system you installed on dont have a copy present any longer and it will then allow for a new install. i recall a similar system being used on a set of disketts from microsoft. every install would alter a file on one of the disketts. after x number of changes it would refuse to do any more installs. now consider this being done inside a black box chip where you dont see every file on it but rather get a menu when inserted into a computer where you have the option to install if the chip allows it.

security must be multiplayerd so that if one layer (copy protected chip,signed files) failes then the next one pick up (cops and corporate court).

Sorry Hob, but I haven't seen any product that has come out yet that hasn't had a crack or hack to bypass the "anti-piracy" features. I would think that in a world where you have "Super Criminals" that can do all the wonderful feats described in the book, then they would still be capable of what hackers/crackers do today. If you build it they will come. Sure you can get more creative or come up with all the new techniques you want, but you will learn what all corperations learn...there is always some group of people out there pushing you to make better security features.

key codes - easy keygens
online activation w/ a server - easy cracks that replicate the server and activate the product
encryption - new software/hardware that gets arround it
hardware security - saudering (sp) iron and access to the internet for a how to tutorial. Sometimes features just need "unlocked"....a memory stick of some kind can usually hold the small program downloaded off the current internet can unlock these.

Not to mention reverse engineering.
Emulation software that makes your program think it is running on the machine when it is actually being monitored in a closed virtual machine and use the emulator to bypass the security.

Too many ways to stop them all. But, if you think No, then it's your game and not mine.
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Cochise
post Dec 7 2004, 07:46 PM
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QUOTE (tanka)
Obviously, but the tech was being made up "on the fly" back when the game was created, and is now coming to life in the real world.

To me that's still the wrong angle.
The tech was made up back then. That created the tehnological basis for the SR Universe and subsequently should always be the basis for new developments within that Universe. Some things that were envisioned back then may have come true (to a certain extend) in our real world. Other things obviously didn't happen.
But that doesn't mean that this should also work in the reverse, where our real world development suddenly pop up in the SR-Universe although its internal structure doesn't really support it ...

QUOTE
Chances are, if we can do it now, we can do it in 2060.


The thing is: It's not "we in 2060". It's "them" in 2060. And their technological, social and economic structures are so different to ours (at least they had been, when the game was designed and still were, when 3rd was published), that such 1:1 developments actually have rather slim chances of coming into existance in "their" world ...
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Gilthanis
post Dec 7 2004, 07:59 PM
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I totally agree Cochise, but I would have to say that the further you ignore todays tech. and pretend it never happened...just takes away the fun of roleplaying this game IMOO. It is kinda like saying Use your own imagination but don't go too far because we didn't think of it back then. The problem is basing it off of the Real World to begin with is where the troubles are. They just made it easy to begin with by doing that instead of coming up with an elaborate explanation on the entire world.
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Dashifen
post Dec 7 2004, 08:12 PM
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I, too, agree with Cochise, especially when you throw the Crash into the mix. Yes, the SR world might have had p2p networks like we do pre-crash though afterward they would have to be recreated to work with the new networking technology. While I wouldn't limit a creative player who wanted to use this idea in game, I think I would try to describe the p2p network in a way that didn't seem like a carbon copy of current technology.

Maybe the network exists on an "invisible host" so that it cannot be traced. Such a host might exist as a distributed system on a number of hosts using IC protected tunnels (sixth world VPNs) to communicate between the different host nodes. In this way, the systems are decentralized. Could take it one step further and say that they exist only in the memory of the hosts invovled so if the host goes down, the record of the existence of the network goes down, too.

Then, maybe the network hops from one host to another (sort of a Teleporting SAN I suppose) so that it's hard to find from one day to the next. Once you're on the host it could look like a Middle Eastern bazaar or market day in a medieval villiage or perhaps a shopping mall complete with store fronts and advertisements for jobs, etc. While you're on the invisible host, your datatrail would shift from one actual host to the next as you move from section to section on the invsisible one so that those who are using the network cannot be traced similar to how the network itself cannot be traced.

'Course, you shouldn't make it a one-stop-shop for all your decking needs. And if you want some fun, the sixth world RIAA/MPAA could raid the place while your characters are jacked in. What happens if one of the actual hosts goes down while you're part of the invisible host? Could be fun to put together :)
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Eyeless Blond
post Dec 7 2004, 09:03 PM
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Another thing you'd have to introduce with such a market are the bug rules, tucked away in Matrix p. 81. Just about everything open-source on the market there would have a decent chance of being fairly buggy, and any of the high-Rating programs would stand to be *extremely* buggy.

Overall, though, I really doubt that P2P networks and open-source software will be nearly as widespread in the 2060s as it is today. Most open-source and P2P networks today rely on corporate sloth and legal tricks to keep themselves safe, neither of which will apply in the Sixth World. Today the number of downloaders is high because the consequences are remote and usually difficult to enforce, but in SR it is disturbingly easy to simply make someone dissappear without too much real effort by a mega. They'd probably even have legal backing for such a move; I'd be very surprised if a worldwide and much more strict version of the DMCA hadn't come out decades earlier and was routinely being enforced by then. The days of hiding behind "Fair Use" or foreign countries were over for the software pirate the moment the corps took over the courts and gave themselves extranationality.
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hyzmarca
post Dec 7 2004, 09:20 PM
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The ting about open souce is that with so many people working on it bugs are easily found and weeded out. Generally, open source programs have a much better track record in this regard than their proprietary counterparts.

One idea is to treat open source programing in a manner similar to ritual magic, adding the programing skills of every decker who works on the project to the approperiate tests. With potentially hundreds of programers checking the source code this rule would go a long way toward eleminating bugs. Of course, the Corps would try to stop it using Shadowrunners if they can't buy out the project. Or, it is possible that they changed the international copyright laws to make open source projects illegal and I'm sure the megas wouldn't mind laws that specify only corporations can hold copyrights.

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Kagetenshi
post Dec 7 2004, 09:28 PM
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Even closely-coordinated programming projects just get the average skill of the entire team. Open source isn't some magic bullet that helps people program together; in practice, most contributions on any given project come from a very small number of people.

Simple or heavily-used open-source software tends to be comparatively bug-free. Complex and/or specialized software tends to be a mess.

~J
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Wireknight
post Dec 7 2004, 09:37 PM
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With how copying/uniqueness works on purely digital equipment, such as decking utilities, it's pretty clear that the majority of hardware, in Shadowrun, employs some sort of advanced integrated DRM scheme that takes a lot of effort to circumvent. I'd imagine, given that fact, that copyright infringement is dramatically lower in Shadowrun.
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Toptomcat
post Dec 7 2004, 10:09 PM
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DRM isn't the issue.
Psychotropic Black IC labeled "yellowsubmarine.mp3" is what would really kill P2P networks.
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Kagetenshi
post Dec 7 2004, 10:12 PM
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Which is actually an excellent point. How many people (corporate or otherwise) with such things would it take to kill filesharing, even if it were possible? IC, worms, etc. can be significantly more destructive in SR than they can in real life (destroying hardware and, under some circumstances, the unfortunate user).

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Wireknight
post Dec 7 2004, 10:18 PM
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So... the actually legally valid and growingly prevalent process of using encryption/access schemes to control the reading, modifying, and copying of digital data is irrelevent... but using Black IC to kill people who download audio files is more on-topic?

Even assuming someone's using a DNI for that kind of thing(and why they'd bother, I couldn't imagine), do you really think that any municipality, or other corporation, is going to stand for a corporation releasing what is essentially a deadly digital plague onto The Matrix? That's a can of worms no one would ever open. The ramifications and fallout from it would be apocalyptic.
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Kagetenshi
post Dec 7 2004, 10:26 PM
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I’m at work reading in a tiny window. Can overlooking a single post please be excused? :P

That being said, there’s no need for DNI to get your expensive hardware damaged something fierce, and everything you said about it being too extreme applies to Shadowruns, too. If it doesn’t get traced to the corp, no problem.

Also, audio files I could care less about. It's the Programs that would get this treatment.

~J
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