Software Piracy: Terrorist-Related Activity?
I read this article on Gaming Piracy, which suggests that buyers of pirated video games support terrorist activities.
This was the reaction of a reader to the claims of Ric Hirsch, senior vice president for intellectual property enforcement of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), who I interviewed for my Infotech article “Game piracy may be financing other crimes: ESA exec” (http://news.inq7.net/infotech/index.php?index=1&story_id=31028). Hirsch had pointed out that consumers might not realize the possible links between pirated games (and other counterfeit products, for that matter) and organized crime.
The rest of the article can be read here.
I emailed the article writer, a Joey Alarilla, this feedback:
Re: Your article on gaming piracy
Joey,
You are SUCH a writer: all rhetoric and no sense of opportunity.
Filipinos wanting things for free or almost for free? Then how do you explain Starbucks blooming around every corner? Why are Filipinos buying overpriced coffee while living in this ‘pitiful state of our country’?
Because Starbucks is about service, something not so easily pirated, unlike cds and running shoes. And here lies a clue on how to win in the gaming industry; in any industry, in fact.
Filipinos wanting things for free or almost for free? Since when is THAT a bad thing? The great people at Level Up give away free installation disks of Ragnarok Online. Radio plays free music all of the time. Inquirer Online publishes the same articles as its broadsheet counterpart, minus the P18. This is a another clue.
‘[S]top this endless cycle of thinking that it’s OK for people to break laws because they’re poor?’ This reminds me of a true story: as part of the Baywalk area development, the City of Manila installed steel benches along Roxas Boulevard. 24 hours later, the benches were gone. Someone had the audacity to steal them for resale, por kilo.
The City eventually installed concrete benches.
The lesson? It’s easy to moralize on the poor when you have a full stomach, indoor plumbing, and separate bedrooms. The better idea is to make law-breaking an near-impossible endeavour.
The best idea is to turn a disadvantage into an advantage. Are people buying pirated CDs of Avril Lavigne? Then have Avril perform here live in The Fort: not only are there more people willing to attend her performances now that they are better acquainted with her hits, but it gives her a chance to earn her wealth for a change, one audience member at a time. This is a third clue on how to win in the gaming industry.
Finally, I remember my marketing professor sharing a story of how Meralco released a pamphlet about the ‘electricity’ monster. There is the problem of people stealing electricity, and someone from operations thought that calling some of their consumers ‘monsters’ was the way to go about it. They were MONSTERS for stealing their electricity.
Joey, you dream of the day when the Philippines will become a world-class game development center, instead of becoming a developer of games and gaming systems that lots of people enjoy. You dream of the day when our country will become a major market for international game publishers, instead of some local entrepreneur seizing dominance in a market deemed too small to be touched by the global players, (he can develop games like Patintero Online and World of Sungka). You dream of the day when Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft will launch their consoles in the Philippines, instead of wondering why we need to make these corporate bastards richer than they already are.
Stick to writing, Joey. The entrepreneurial mind never regards the buying public as criminals and terrorist supporters. And as syndicated columnist Dave Barry once said, ‘Don’t you wish you had a job like mine? All you have to do is think up a certain number of words! Plus, you can repeat words! And they don’t even have to be true!’
And you get paid, whether or not people like me enjoy reading your article/s for free.
Lyndon Gregorio
In a two-ice cream scenario…
Should a man clean an ice cream scoop before scooping into the second ice cream?
I was in the Via-Astris Wholly Trek Day festivities (another morally dubious scenario, as it was during Maundy Thursday) and they were serving Rocky Road and Cookies and Cream for dessert. I plunged into the Cookies and Cream, the scoop still heavy with Rocky Road residue.
Two guys criticized me for dirtying the Cookies and Cream. Said I wouldn’t be getting chicks with that kind of swinish behavior. I might as well be using the spaghetti ladle for the ick factor registered.
By the way, the event inspired the comic page you see above, which will be included in the next book.
~L..
