Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Piracy

In ancient ages, piracy referred to robbery at sea. Pirates used to mark down ships and boats and capture people and rob them.

In recent times, piracy refers to unauthorized reproduction and distribution of materials covered by copyright law.

So if you buy an mp3 cd with the latest songs for 50 rupees, you are supporting piracy.

But there is no stopping piracy. Looking it from the consumer point of view, an original DVD would cost around 800-1000 rs while a priated DVD would cost around 100 rs. The difference is huge. Why should a consumer - an end user pay 800/- for something that he can get for 100/- only. Because the end user is interested in the media or software and is not concerned with the source.

And then you keep on seeing those ads which try to make you go against pirated stuff.

But would you?

Recently i got an Xbox 360, and when i went out looking for games for xbox 360, i was shocked to see games priced around 2000. I was shocked. Paying 2000 for a game is too much. Earlier i used to get game cds for 100 rs (ofcourse pirated). But after some research, i came to know that games are locked using region codes. So games made for US cannot be played in a Xbox sold in india. That is something that only microsoft could think of. I have always worked with open-source stuff. Have always got the source and compiled it as i liked it and used it. And microsoft ofcourse would not support open-source.

Every businessman works to make money. And so does microsoft.

some more research led me believe that if i get my console modified, i could play region free games and also play pirated games which i can obtain for 100-200 rs. I would have gone ahead and modified the console, but then i thought, why spend so much time and money after modifying the console. I am not going to be a hard-core gamer. I would be using xbox for occassional gaming only. So i would be getting new games once in 3 months.

Maybe i would be able to find friends and share/exchange games.

Modifying software is ok - it should not cause any issue - since it is a low cost stuff and can be easily replaced. But modifying hardware is a costly issue. If anything goes wrong you could lose your hardware. And there is no easy replacement.

Maybe after an year of use, i find that i have become a very avid gamer, then i would get my xbox modded and play tons of games.

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