While I can see the connection, to properly explain today's piracy (let's say Spore was a glass of milk), it'd go something like this:

The milkman delivers bottles of milk to a home daily, and feral cats break them open and drink the contents. Frustrated, the owners of the house kill a cat to deter other cats. They also decide to get thicker glass and tighter caps on their bottles.

Instead of deterring cats, the house is engulfed by an unholy barrage of cats, who are especially irritated over the death of one of their fellow felines. One of the cleverest cats figures out how to open the stronger bottles, and shares the milk with the other cats. The neighbors are amazed to find most of their significantly weaker bottles untouched.

After a series of attempts to kill more cats and make their bottles harder and harder to break, the owners of the original house give in, realizing that they've somehow attracted enough cats to block sun from coming in through the windows.

Hopefully, they finally go back to their old ways, and discover that few cats ever come around afterwards. Perhaps they may find a way of rewarding the cats for not breaking bottles, instead of punishing them for doing so. Everyone would live happily ever after.

Er, metaphorically speaking, of course.

When I was a young child, and milk was delivered to our home, we had a wooden box for the milk sitting on the front step. The milk man put the glass bottles of milk in the box and I never heard of any cats breaking any bottles, not even milk bottles belonging to neighbors who had not made milk boxes. The boxes were more for protecting the bottles from getting knocked over by wind or kicked accidentally by someone going in and out of the house.

I've heard that phrase forever, we got our milk from our cows so... I can't say much. But yeah, I really just don't buy games anymore. To many hoops to jump through for a game that isn't always good.

Eh, I want to see RIAA/MPAA/whatever deal with this...

http://www.neowin.net/news/iranian-...courages-piracy

There are a lot of phrases I've never heard, despite the fact I've lived in a lot of different places. And milk straight from cows mmm mmm good. So good.

I sure know how to derail a thread.

Yeah, I live in one of those countries. I've mentioned it before but here piracy is 100% publicly accepted and everybody does it. Even if you work at a large successful company all the programs on the computers their employees use are pirated, no one buys Windows or anything. If you call a service to fix your computer, they will install all the pirated software you ask of them etc... no one has to "hide" it or pretend they don't do it - it's completely normal here. In fact, I'm sure many kids and teenagers are not aware that in other countries, people actually pay for games and software. My friend couldn't believe I paid $50 in New York for the Sims 2 when they came out.

Just out of curiosity , does anyone know if RIAA ever sees a dime out of these lawsuits they spend a lot of money to win?



Sadly this is what has kept me from buying Assasins Creed II and Command and Conquer 4. With C&C 4 you have to actually be online to play the game. WTF? Not to mention the reviews on it were lousy on top of that

A dime, yes... but was it worth the cost?

http://www.dailytech.com/RIAA+Spent...rticle19034.htm

In my best Flavor Flav voice "WOWWWWWWWWWW" :P

Today is September 1, 2010. By the end of this month, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement will be finalized.

If you live in one of the participating parties, it may soon be within the jurisdiction of your government to not only block your access to sites, but to monitor everything you do on the suspicion of copyright infringement.

The biggest point of this treaty will be that, if prosecuted, you will be guilty until proven innocent. Pirate or not, it will be much easier to actually act on claims of copyright infringement.

Previous discussion be damned, we are inching closer and closer to the future we had all scoffed at five years ago.

And hackers keep getting better and better. It'll only be a matter of time before programs are out that'll completely bypass any of this.

However, on the other hand, it is pretty much impossible to actually do effectively. Think about how many people are on the internet at any given time of day in the US. Yeah, even for a machine, that's a freaking lot.

Plus it could be fought on Constitutional grounds (evasion of privacy).