For The Record: I Don't Condone Piracy
It’s true: I’m not big on software (especially video game) piracy. That said, I noticed a curious link in StatCounter yesterday; someone arrived at the site from The Pirate Bay (no link). What I found there was a fairly standard pirated ISO image of Ultima 9, but it was in the comments that I also tripped over this:
Well, I say!
And you know what? There’s a certain inescapable feeling of having “got it made” that comes from Aiera being listed as a go-to resource for getting Ultima 9 running on modern systems, even by software pirates.
The Forgotten World team also deserve a nod; it’s their patches for the game that get the actual mention above, and it’s worth noting that they have in fact done some incredible things with the game (as have their partners, the Beautiful Britannia team).
That said, let me again re-iterate that I don’t condone this sort of thing. The game is easy enough to find on e.g. [amazonify]B00002EPYD::text::::Amazon[/amazonify].
I doubt EA would really care at this point. They don’t make money of the Amazon sales afterall. I kinda like the idea that Ultima is still circulating among some newer fans.
That said, I’m also not a fan of piracy. I’ve used Ebay to get a bunch of old games I’ve wanted to play, and when new ones come out that I want, I tend to get them on Steam (if it isn’t ridiculously priced just because I’m in Australia… gotta love paying two/three times as much for a game that is simply downloaded over the net and shouldn’t incur any extra cost)
Agreed about piracy. It’s not like PC games are much to buy used, and frankly, I think if you cannot afford it, then suffer through and buy later. Or just play one of the hundreds (thousands?) of freeware games. Just google “abandoned pc games” for sites to peruse.
Philologus: I trust that wasn’t a reference to so-called “abandonware”?
Because as far as this site is concerned, that’s piracy as well. To be fair, there are freeware and free-to-play games, but abandonware is neither of those (legally speaking).
If it was a reference to abandonware, please refrain from such references in the future…at least around here.
If I was an exec for a game company, I would actually attempt to monitor the amount of times certain titles were being downloaded, mainly the titles that were no longer being sold, and not fuss about it. Coupling this data with internet discussions about the game that are still ongoing, I would determine whether or not to revitalize the game/series.
Perhaps this is what the Ultima IV/Ultima Forever/Lords of Ultima business is all about.
WtF, thou hast broken thy own rule. Twice! Let the abandoned word be spoken no more by neither Lord nor knave.
The irony is the nature of this article, specifically the screenshot, which according to recent laws in the United States (yes, yes; you’re in Canada which can’t seem to pass a reasonable DMCA equivalent) is illegal. Around here (the U.S.), we can no longer link to sites which contain infringing content. So if I put up a link on eightvirtues.com to thepiratebay.org my domain name could be legally confiscated by the DHS and an image like this would be put in its place:
http://www.eightvirtues.com/sanctimonia/misc/fuck_you.gif
Of course the judge issuing the warrant would have a complete understanding of my site and the subtleties and context of the content in question, so most likely I would deserve the hell that lay before me.
My point is that you walk the line between befriending fans who don’t care/know so much about these things and the industry professionals who at a whim could crack the whip (as you’ve mentioned) on your site and those of your associates. I wouldn’t choose to walk such a line, but if I did then why would I post a link to a torrent of an application which by source and method of distribution violates multiple IP claims of a company which has showed me (you) so much good will up ’til now?
If you’re going to play with fire, at least don’t chastise commenters for playing along with you. I’d delete the entire article, or just say, “Fuck it,” and let it ride. Unless of course it’s all part of the master plan, muahahahaaaaaaaa!!!
Sorry in advance for this cranky and cOntroversial post but here it goes…
I find it more disturbing that you track this and sort through the logs of where your readers come from and go to. I know it’s common practice but I really don’t like this. Why the need to do this?
So is it anonymized or do you see the IP address as well? Do you need to know whether I have been to youtube or youpXXX before I came here or whether I’ve been to piratesofthecaribean.com or pirate bay?
Me Not Like.
I’ll make sure to open a new window b4 coming here in the future 😉
I think it might be one of Google’s crawlers offered as a service. I haven’t used any but it sounds like how they work. Any mention of certain keywords gets sent to you somehow. It probably indexes all that Google does, including apparently isohunt/etc. comments. Probably lets you filter results and browse by category, if it’s proper.
What’s funny (not really the right word), is that I was scouring the nicks looking for someone on here who would have posted a comment on tpb in the pic. I was half expecting to see “thepal” or something as a commenter (random name…no message there).
Hell, remind me not to comment with a recognizable name on the torrents I download. Which are all legal…just making sure everyone knew that. A good lesson to all of us, and no foul to WtF on that point. Consider it a public service announcement for people who forgot the Internet is forever.
And while I’m in a foul mood today, another apology and I really don’t mean this to be personal because I like this site and Kenneth… BUT…
Writing you don’t condone piracy and condemning abadonware is fine and good and I approve but when you look at the Ultima manga scanlation this looks like a double standard. The scanning and offering the scans on a website is an obvious breach of copyright. Yes, the company who published those is probably no longer in operation but that argument is familiar from the abandonware scene, isn’t it? It looks like pirating of software is bad and pirating of print is ok…
I’m really not judging you, just pointing this out. I have been guilty of infringing comics copyrights myself in quite a few instances but I knew my legal status 😉
Anyways, when in doubt, lay it on my foul mood today 😉
(no idea if I did the quote thing right…)
I dunno… Would it really be logical to expect one of us there? I’d say most people here have owned a legal copy of U9 since it was released (and possibly own more than one by now). I know I had my copy pre-ordered.
Nope… guess I didn’t do the quote correctly…
Haha, it’s okay. I don’t suspect Aiera fans of piracy automatically or anything… But as a reasonable observer one might expect to see an abbreviated but familiar name in the comment list, especially considering the torrent comment’s reference back to Aiera. If my disk was corrupt I might hit up another source rather than call Origin for a replacement.
I still own all my Ultima copies. I got them all in the store…what a time! I’ve only lost my ankh from Ultima IV. I used to wear it during high school around my neck on a white shoe string. It slowly wore down in the middle from the string. I gave it to a friend and have never seen it again.
My official stance is that piracy is only wrong when it costs someone time, money, etc. It doesn’t matter if it cost nothing or everything to produce the work, but whether the pirating of it helped or hurt the owner. An old contract being violated doesn’t always mean the parties are harmed. Sometimes there’s either no effect or the parties are helped. Either way they retain their legal rights, so the brand is not diluted unnecessarily. The net harm/help is the bar of piracy’s ethicality.
Anyone have a copy of the original IBM-PC versions of Ultima I, II or III? I have the I-III box set (IBM-PC), IV, V, VI and VII, but that’s it.
Dominus – every site does what you’re talking about re tracking. It’s part of regular analytics and really isn’t to be taken personally. If you do have a big problem with it, you should consider going dark on the web 🙂
As I wrote, I know it’s common practice. I just wonder why this site needs this kind of stuff. Does Aiera NEED to know which sites I was before going here?
And this is a case where I can ask the owner of the website and will get a reasonable and honest answer AND where I can vent my frustration about this needless tracking 🙂
WTF: I didn’t know “Abandonware” was illegal. It’s that simple. The definition I read seemed to be innocent enough; I was searching for old games that were free (and legal) to download. The definition from one website was as follows:
“Wikipedia: “Abandonware is computer software which is no longer being sold or supported by its copyright holder. Alternately, the term is also used for software which is still available, but on which further support and development has been deliberately discontinued.”
Since the software is no longer sold or supported, the copyright holders are not directly harmed in any way. This is why abandonware sites are, for the most part, ignored by the law.
The distribution of copyrighted software however is, and will allways be, illegal!”
Don’t know what else to say.
Philologus: There really isn’t much else to say, I suppose. Freeware and shareware are — and remain — legitimate forms of free software which can be distributed openly. Anything else is illegal to distribute, plain and simple. That’s roughly the rule I try and follow on the site here.
No harm, no foul; didn’t mean to come across like I was cracking the whip. The “a-ware” (there, how’s that, Sanctimonia?) concept comes up periodically, and because I don’t want to gin up too much negative attention from EA, I try and discourage such talk. But I usually prefer to ask people first before I start editing or deleting comments. It’s the nice thing to do.
Dominus: I have a few reasons for tracking traffic stats, not the least of which is financial. The site attracts a certain baseline amount of traffic; if traffic spikes to sufficiently higher levels for a sufficiently long duration, that’s good for me to know, because it means I have to do what I can to reduce the load the site places on the server or else pay an overage fee.
Plus, it’s nice to know who links to me; I’ve put up a few “scratch my back/I’ll scratch yours”-type posts over the last year or two thanking various people for the traffic they send my way.
An important point, though: the site only tracks where you were before coming here if you clicked on a link to get here. If you were browsing Dilbert.com and then clicked on your Aiera bookmark, it wouldn’t show up in my stats that you were looking at Dilbert comics first; as far as StatCounter is concerned, your visit would be a straight-up visit rather than an arrival from somewhere else. Only direct, inbound links to the site get tracked like that.
The stats do track the IP address of each visitor, but legally there’s no way to tie an address to a person, and I make a point of keeping that information out of public view. The stats also track the ISP that the IP address is registered to, which is a source of interesting information as well (I’ve found records showing visits from EA, LucasArts, NASA…).
However, the archive of tracked stats is small; I use StatCounter’s free service, which means that I only have 500 entries in my tracking database. That means that by the end of the day, I’ve already lost stats collected around lunchtime, and by lunchtime I’ve already lost stats collected in the morning.
Sanctimonia: There’s a reason I only posted a screeny of the site, and was pointed about not linking to it.
Dominus again: If we want to get technical about it, the manga scanlation wouldn’t be the first time I linked to something which later got the crap DMCAd out of it. Not that the scanlation would fall under DMCA, most likely; it would fall under whatever the Japanese equivalent would be (if there is an equivalent). And to be fair, I don’t actually host anything other than a picture of the front cover on the site here; the rest is hosted at Blu3Vib3’s site.
Which is about the same as I did for e.g. the now-taken-down Flash-based remake of Ultima 4.
Let’s add Sanctimonia back in: You’re right that I walk a fine line here, and in truth I almost always have. Much of the remake community has, in fact; how can I possibly run a site that tries to comprehensively track that community without ending up in similar circumstances?
I don’t mind creeping up to the line with posts like this, and I don’t mind it when commentators chime in to opine about copyright laws and the nature of piracy. That stuff is always up for discussion, regardless of whether I agree with anyone’s position on the matter. The reason I will, even on posts like this, clamp down on mentions of things like “a-ware” is that it is still my site; if anyone is going to creep Aiera close to the line on issues like this, it’ll be me, because that way it’s a controlled approach.
bah, don’t sestroy my foul mood!!! (even though a good nap already did that) 🙂
Thanks for the explaining of the tracked stats, I understand and appreciate your explanation. Especially that my Dilbert sessions stay untracked!!!
when you look at the Ultima manga scanlation this looks like a double standard
Sometimes double standards are a good thing. The price of having contacts within EA is, at least for now, one worth paying. There is no other Ultima site that can get you this information.
Nothing to worry about really. As soon as you make something good people will link you and sometimes the link will be from places that you might not approve and that just the way that it is :).
Sanctimonia: I must say i do find the DMCA laws stupid and i can not see that Ultimaaire will get into any problem mention the fact that Ultima IX can be found at Pirate Bay. That can not be a surprise to anyone really and i do not think that EA (or who holds the right for Ultima these days) would gasp in shock about a posting of this kind.
Ohh might be time to reinstall Ultima IX and try out the mods. Was some time ago i played it.