Assassin's Creed 2 Review and test of DRM

Tweaks guide posted a review of Assassin's creed 2's DRM in action.

http://www.tweakguides.com/AC2_1.html

 

tha article has many good points but this kind of drm does not work for me as i move from place to place.
and there are some times when i dont have a reliable internet connection. if i gamed on a desktop then it wouuld not be a problem. but i dont have a desktop and im not home or in the office half the time i use my laptop.
i guess im not buying this game...

 

I was planning on buying this game 100% but after confirmation of the new DRM method, I will no longer be buying this one period. Note that when the reviewer disconnected his ADSL line, the game stopped running and resumed only after he had re connected to the internet. I play the majority of my games offline on my gaming laptop too. Good luck to them with this new method because they will need it.

 

Tweakguides has one of the most thorough and detailed anti-piracy articles around. Definitely worth a read. http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html

DRM and piracy are going to be a problem for a long time. The solution to piracy will be one of the biggest breakthroughs in computing history.

 

The number of games I can play offline is quickly diminishing haha.

Soon, I won't be able to play without an internet connection. I am sort of getting used to this, but I really hate it.

 

It will be cracked/bypassed no matter what.

 

The solution to piracy is realizing that infinite goods cannot be artificially treated like finite goods. We'll see more games as services rather than end products. I'd be happier if more games came with things that I actually wanted... various levels of Assassin's Creed with different mini figures or something like that to get people to actually want the official product instead of this phone-home crap. The problem is that the producers aren't responding to the market, which is realizing that this stuff is priced artificially high when you look at the profit levels of certain companies and compare the actual quality of their product to their lower-priced competitors. Consumers are not stupid. If game companies keep treating people as wallets instead of customers, they're going to keep learning the hard way.

 

As the article stated, there's no correlation between price and piracy, or developer size and piracy.

If you honestly think that pirates go through that thought process that you detailed, you're fooling yourself. People pirate because it's easy, it's free, and there's very little chance of getting caught.

I don't know where you get your sense of entitlement from. Video games are a luxury item. Companies are never required to provide you a luxury item at a price you dictate. That's not how any market works. You view a video game company as a source of entertainment, they view you as a source of profit. They're not in it for charity. Why would you ever expect any different?

 

something that made me laugh hard...


...



...



there is already a crack out for it...

 

^ Haha, damn. Obviously expected, but that was quick. Since Ubisoft knew that would happen, they shouldn't have wasted their time implementing it.

 

Yes it was.

Yes it will be.

Likely it will be hardware/software based closed system.

 

Which makes one wonder exactly why they bother considering it's a given that it will be cracked. Perhaps it's to see HOW it's being done. As if the developers are studying the pirates and crackers in order to one day learn to build a better mouse trap.

*shrug*

 

"Pirates" are a VERY large class of people. Some do it because they bought the game but can't get it to run or don't want the limitations of the DRM required (where I fall... I buy all the games and software I play, but I crack them, so I'm counted as a "pirate" by the companies). Others just keep copies because they can... I've seen lots of software packrats that never use the apps that they download. Of course there are the people who don't want to pay at all, and then there are those that want to try before they buy (seen a demo for a recent game? I haven't seen many lately.) You have the same problem as the industry... you don't seem to understand that everyone is a customer or a potential customer, not just "evil pirate" or "not a pirate". If people pirate, it's because it's a better value for their time and money than what is provided by the producer. It's an untapped market.

That's exactly how a market works. A market works where producers and consumers come to an agreement on what something is priced. When things are priced irregularly (say, $100 for a loaf of bread) you start seeing more people stealing bread. A producer in a functioning market does not unilaterally determine price, and they do not do things to hobble their legitimate customers. Piracy will happen, period, end of story, because it provides the consumer with a better value than buying it legitimately. Producers need to recognize that, and fight it by providing the consumer a better value. You can even make money with it. Look at the lessons from Steam... lowering the price drives sales so hard that it more than makes up for the lower profit margin. It's easy and convenient to get new games, easier than finding a torrent, and worth money to pay for the service knowing you're getting a virus-free, controlled, working product.

Don't accuse me of being entitled. I simply understand economics and how to deal with a cost of $0, whereas you and most of the heads of studios (and many companies from music to manufacturing) seem not to.

Exactly. Things will be cracked and pirated. End of story. The way to profit is to make the product you get by paying money a better product than the one you get from piracy. It won't stomp out all piracy, but there's still value to having the real thing. Give people a reason to get the real thing over the pirated product, and piracy becomes advertising.

 

yaharrr assassins creed 2!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVXCr6upWUo

 

no idea, just noticed that there was a crack out so quick....made short work of thier whole point of DRM

and the lost sales just hurt more now

 

Continuous online legitimate copy verification? I wouldn't touch this game with a ten foot pole. Whoever thought this ridiculous DRM up is an ------- and whoever buys this game is stupid.

 

It's a two way street. If they want PC Gamers to pay for the games, they better stop making console ports and make games optimized and perform flawlessly on PC. THere is no reason why PC Gamers need to upgrade yearly when they make the same game and looks and performs better on a console.

Starcraft 2 I'll buy it if I play it. I'll buy Diablo 3. These are games I'm willing to pay for. These are games that try to introduce something new and fun to the PC Gamers. Blizzard remains my favorite developer. Though I have my gripes I have supported Valve by buying every game except L4D and L4D2 as I hated the demos. Horribleness.

Borderlands is insanely fun and worth the $50 I believe. I can't say that about MW2 the most pirated game in a long time.

Conclusion: I believe if these companies want to focus on console and half the PC version as a horrible port, then they haven't seen anything yet. Piracy will just get worse.

My solution?

Publisher like Ubisoft or EA offers subscription. $15/Month and you can play any of their games. That would be awesome, and very profitable for them I believe.

Or pay GFWL or Steam $30 a month and play any game you want.

 

DRM and piracy are NOT correlated.

The availability of a demo and piracy is NOT correlated.

The market for those who don't want to pay exists, and is VERY tapped. NotebookReview is in that market. Almost all internet based companies are in that market. They provide a service free to the end user by having a middle man, such as advertisers, pay the bills.

Video games cost many millions of dollars to produce. Advertising alone is not a viable profit source.

I find it absolutely befuddling that you would extend such sympathy to those who participate in a clearly morally dark activity such as piracy, and yet hold such disdain for the companies that are trying to protect their intellectual property.

Your solution for those companies that have their merchandise taken away from them is to stop locking their doors, to keep their primary merchandise out for anyone to take, while offering figurines to those who decide to pay.

It's great that there are games that you're willing to pay for, but when did the rule become "take for free what you don't want to pay for"?

Quality of a game and piracy are NOT correlated. (You guys get the hint yet?)

That's not actually a solution. Nothing really prevents the user from not paying the $15/mo and just pirating the games instead.

 

Maybe not but there are a few games I did not pirate before buying. But you have to ask, did I pirate it then if the end result I still paid for the game?

That's why I don't believe these numbers for pirated games. I do not think I'm alone with the above. So how many of those download figures also include the players who buy the game once discovering it was worth the money?

I disagree. I don't think all people who have pirated a game before pirate EVERY game. Doing the option above makes gaming more economical while giving UbiSoft/EA/Steam/ whatever more money at the same time.

PC Gaming piracy issue is the same as music and movie, the industries need to change how they sell their product. It's not going away, so instead of doing stupid crap like DRM and suing their customers, they have to become innovative or adapt to the new consumer behaviors.

Netflix is a great concept. And it's working.

 

Tweakguides posted an article!?!?!?! Koroush must be getting antsy lol.

Wow, for once I actually agree with you on something!

 

I also believe the people who pirate the game are not always a loss in sale. As others mentioned, if some people didn't pirate the game, likely they would just not play it, not buy it either.

It's a tough one. I like the idea of Steaming forming partnerships with all the publishers and they getting a percentage on sales from a monthly subsription or EA/Ubisoft/Acitivision and others publishers offering a direct subscription system.

 

imo IP laws might be a bit outdated.
for now, publishers could write anything they want into the EULA. if you don't like the terms, don't agree to them.
the best thing you could do to stop this drm madness is not buying this crap.

 

If I could just subscribe to one digital service I would probably be in favour of a "Netflix" for games if it was cheap and reliable. The problem is every bloody publisher wants to pwn digital distribution and you end up with fiascos like EA Download Mgr or GFWL. I would never subscribe to garbage like that and I just wouldn't bother if i had to have all kinds of accounts everywhere just to play a game. So if publishers want my money, they'd have to agree on one quality service to deliver the goods.

 

Because you say so? I'm saying that "piracy" numbers don't tell the whole story and are an accurate reflection of what's going on in the market.

I never said anything about advertising. I said there are many ways to make your product more valuable than the pirated one, and that game companies are by and large not pursuing those.

Thank you for proving so succinctly my statement that you do not understand how the economics of a $0 marginal cost of production works. The problem is what they are trying to claim as merchandise. Development is a "sunk" cost. You can make a really great game or a really crappy game for the same amount of money. The investment has NO CONNECTION to how you charge for it. If you invest more in a product than you realistically have of recouping on it, that's your failure in a business model. Piracy is blaming the wrong thing... it's like blaming the wind for knocking over your house of cards. The problem isn't the wind... it's that you chose to build it in the wrong spot, or decided to make a card house instead of a stone one.

BTW, you're assuming that simply because something is "intellectual property" that OF COURSE someone needs to have them. Remember that Leonardo DaVinci never had intellectual property laws protecting his work, and he still got paid quite well. Same with Michelangelo. And many, many other artists and creators throughout the centuries.

Tell ya what... next time you buy a game that sucks, try to return it. Tell me how that goes for you Then try that with an mp3 player or TV. As soon as my rights with your "intellectual property" work the same as my rights with normal, scarce property, you can start pulling the moral card. As it is, consumers get the short end of the stick.

Again, just because you say it doesn't make it so. A crappy game will get pirated initially, and then it'll disappear. Go ahead, find a torrent for Daikatana and see how many seeders there are, and then find one for, say, Quake 2 and do the same. A good game will keep being seeded and pirated. But the point is that the producers still need to give people a better product than what they can get pirated (which isn't honestly that hard) and people will buy it. If they do that, then DRM becomes pointless because people will still go for the better product. DRM is simply an admission that you have failed at economics and want to blame someone other than yourself for your incompetence.

 

Exactly. I encourage everyone to play AC2... just buy a used copy on Craigslist at $35 for your PS360. If you don't own a console, just skip it. There are many good PC games out there which don't extort paying customers. You don't need AC2, trust me.

 

The answer to that question is much easier than you think it is. The answer is yes. The end does not justify the means. Can you get charged with theft if you take something from a store only to return a month later to pay for it? Undoubtedly yes.

Again, Netflix or a subscription model payment system doesn't address piracy. The two topics do not have anything to do with each other. You are correct in saying that by providing a good service, the customers will come. But it doesn't have a noticeable impact on piracy.

 

World of Goo is a great game with a demo developed by 3 programmers with absolutely no DRM. It has a piracy rate of 90%. Let's say that 40% bought the game after the fact (I'm making this figure up).

First off, there's no way in hell I would believe that 40% of people would buy a game after the pirate it. I don't believe you would believe that number either. Second off, even if that were true, that still results in a 50% piracy rate.

Please list them so I can rebut them. I can't work with nothing.

So your solution to piracy is that we use tax-payer money to fund game studios? Really, that is what you just suggested.

I agree that this has to be addressed. A short return period (7 days) along with keeping track of those who abuse the return period can solve this issue.

It's not me that's saying it. It's what the available data shows. You can choose to ignore the data, but ignorance is not the solution to piracy.

 

as pita has mentioned,i think the real solution to piracy is giving the consumer a product at a price point that he is willing to accept and that he believes it is worth.
for example, lowering pc game prices to 30usd would significantly increase its value for money, and hence be a good deterrent for piracy. it is a price point that i myself and a number of my friends (and most people) would be very happy with. in bs psych we usually try to determine a consumers price threshold for a given product (thru many experiments), and i believe 30usd could be it for pc games.
sure there will still be guys goin the pirated route, but i think a vast majority would be happy paying for a fully supported, virus free game at that price point.
i really dont believe in the argument that game price and piracy are not correlated. pricing is an accepted social contract between the producer and consumer. and when both parties 'agree' a sale is made. as with my above example, i believe many gamers will 'agree' to purchasing a legitimate game at 30usd. publishers would also make up for the lower margins by selling more volume. so really it seems like a win-win situation. pricing is the key.
ubisoft alone declared earnings of 950million euro in 2008. so piracy itself isnt killing the gaming industry (just pc gaming). it just is a matter of them earning 1billion euro (with piracy) vs 1.5billion euro (w/o piracy). it would also be wise to remember that it is the publisher and not the game developer who dictates price and puts these drm measures. so for them , its just a matter of getting more profits by trying to limit piracy.
i do feel for game developers though, since i believe they get a smaller share of the pie ( as compared to publishers), and many of them have been a victim of declining pc game sales. and theyre mostly the reason why i buy original games, to help out the game developers i like more than anything else.
the only reason why i feel game publishers are loathe to lower pc game prices is so they can protect the price point of their console videogames. by signifantly lowering pc game prices, they could inadvertently destabilize the console market, with many customer complaints and gamers shifting back to pc gaming. it could also cause certain contractual and legal issues with the console makers.
just my 2 bits

 

First off, you can choose to believe what you want, but the facts are that World of Goo sold at under $20, and was frequently on sale for $10 or less.

Secondly, my real problem is with the sense of entitlement in that if someone doesn't agree to the "social contract" over price, then they are allowed to just take the game for free, and even more so, THAT THIS IS THE FAULT OF THE GAME COMPANY, AND NOT A LACK OF MORALITY BY THE PIRATE. This backwards way of thinking is preposterous.

 

well one game wont do it. im talking about the whole pc gaming industry lowering their prices.
i do not contest your second point , but i believe that the game companies are doing it the wrong way.
correct me if im wrong but i think what your trying to say is that people will commit piracy as long as they can get away with it.
i myself dont see the pc gaming community as a lawless , chaotic bunch who would commit a crime just because they can get away with it.
like i said the reason i believe that most people resort to piracy is that they feel they arent getting their moneys worth or they believe they are being taken advantage of by these big gaming companies.
just ask yourself this:
would you rather buy a legit clean,copy of modern warfare 2 with all features intact for 30usd or download a pirated copy with all the possible caveats that come with that (virus, no mp, etc)
for me that choice is as obvious as daylight

 

or imagine this:
what if steam lowered all their best selling games to 20-30usd
would you be interested?

 

Those talking points have been repeated over and over. They are just not true.

 

hmmmi dont see how your quotes address the issues and solutions i mentioned.
i just believe that having restrictive drm could even lead to even poorer sales. just as not having drm is not a hindrance to excellent sales as pointed out by your quotes.
it all goes back to pricing and that 'social contract':
if steam sold ALL top games for 20-30usd ALL the time where would you d/l from: steam or the ptb?
the same argument holds true for any software: photoshop, office, windows, etc

 

You just keep repeating yourself, even after I've addressed your issues.

Again, price and piracy are not correlated. DRM and piracy are not correlated.

 

This DRM does only harm and no benefit for the game producer.

People who will actually buy this game would turn away because of unable to play offline.

 

price is correlated
drm is not correlated

in our world today price is correlated with everything material. to not accept that is majorly missing the point

 

Obviously Lithus we disagree. I see no harm in pirating a game to see whether someone likes it or not. As someone else mentioned, the consumer is the one getting screwed with games, not the developer. We are asked to hand over $50 for a game we don't know if we will like or not. And if we dont' like it, we are told too bad. Sorry, I'd rather pirate then buy it after if it's worth it.

Even with a car, I can go to a dealership, touch it, look at it, fiddle with all the buttons, drive it. Tell the sales person I'm about 75% in favor. Come back another day, drive it AGAIN. Bring a friend and get their opinion.

Gaming industry just puts out too much junk to expect the consumers to just continuously blindly give them money.

I don't blame the consumers or the gamers. I blame the industry. They need to re-strategize how to make game development profitable and improve quality and more consumer friendly.

The MMORPG industry got it right. 10 day trial, subscription fees for a game they brings months, years of fun. FPS and other games are failing, that's something they need to address.

 

Price and piracy are correlated. Imagine for a moment that every game was only 1 dollar. You think people would still pirate games?

And DRM and piracy can be correlated only in some specific cases. Why pay 50 bucks for a game that will require an permanent internet connection when you can download it in a couple of hours and crack it?

 

Not only that, pirating a game still takes time and effort. Who would put time and effort to pirate a crappy game? Pirating definitely correlated with price and quality. Lithus refuses to believe and a few others, but whatever, I personally would disagree.

 

Seriously guys, when I say not correlated, I mean within a reasonable range. $1 is not a reasonable price.

You say that I'm the one who refuses to believe, yet I'm the only one supporting my positions with actual data. You guys keep saying "bring more value, be more customer friendly, and lower prices". Yet I show you games without DRM, from great developers, and at low prices with a piracy rate of 90%.

How can you honestly sit there and justify piracy? DRM may be intrusive, it may be unfriendly, but piracy is completely morally bankrupt. There is NO justification for piracy. The gaming industry can be release Barbie's Pony Adventures day in and day out, you have NO right to that software without paying for it. The gaming industry can be releasing rootkits in all of their games. You have NO right to pirate that either.

Where do you get this thought process that says "I don't think this is worth what they're charging for it, but I still want it, and I'm going to take it for free"? And how can you possibly justify these beliefs?

When you are in a business, and you have to compete against someone that can provide the same product at a low cost, you are in a very precarious position. Piracy basically makes software companies compete against a competitor that is offering their products for free. That is near impossible to compete with.

 

lithus, i am not morally justifying piracy. in fact i am against it. but piracy is partly caused by the consumers reaction to the gaming industry.
imagine shelling out 60usd for a rushed game that you can hardly play o your top of the line 3000usd system. you wait a year and 5 patches to play it the way it was meant to be played. if thats not frustrating, i dont know what is.
although i also see the allure of piracy in getting something for nothing and getting away with it. i think this is what your trying to point out.
the last time i checked tpb saw quite a number of "if you like it, buy it" posts. so not everyone there is a lawless, cheapskate .
i myself buy a lot of original games but only from game companies i like and sometimes i look for sales.
however i would buy impulsively if indy games were 5-10usd and top games at 20-30usd all year round. heck id even buy a game at that price to check it out.
it sure wont eradicate piracy, but it will have a major effect.

 

You just attempted to justify piracy one sentence after you said you weren't. You basically just argued that if developers release poor quality games, then consumers are entitled to piracy!

 

i did not justify it, i mentioned its cause.
i never said that they are entitled to piracy, just how it got to where it is.

 

I think what needs to be considered is that there are those who will pirate, regardless. They are a hardened group that cannot be turned around. And then there are those who opt to pirate because of various considered reasons.

With that in mind, holding aside those who will pirate regardless, what entices those who opt for piracy?

Is it simply because they can? No, that mode of thought belongs to the group who is dedicated to piracy which we set aside. But for most who opt for piracy, they will need to justify doing it before they do it. They don't look at gaming and entertainment as a "luxury." They look at it as a necessary part of their life. After all, they were paying for games before. So what happened? What "drove" them into piracy? How was piracy weighed against doing the right thing and continuing to buy?

To say that DRM and piracy are not correlated or even consequent to one another assumes that all people merely pirate because they can. Worse, that if presented with the means and method to pirate, they invariably will.

So let's discuss and perhaps examine what drives consumers into piracy? We know it's not simply because they "discovered" that they could. Most of us here KNOW where and how we can get games for free yet still buy them anyway. So what makes people cross that ethical line?

The idea of examining it, is to determine how piracy can be stemmed. It's growing more an more with PC games. What's causing the rise?

Is it because honest consumers are being increasingly burdened (and punished) with ineffective measures designed to attempt to thwart those who will pirate regardless?

Is it because of increasing disappointment with the entertainment and production value relative to the increasing price of these games?

Is it because some feel they won't get their money's worth considering that in order to get your money's worth, they have to have an expensive computer system to get the full effect of the game which they don't have? So they are forced to play at lowered resolutions and less effects? Effectively enjoying say, 50% of the game yet paying full price. (Which differs from consoles in that everyone plays the exact same game with all effects and options - the only difference is preference for TV/monitor size and surround sound or not.)

What say you?

 

There is a negative correlation between Human Development Index and Piracy than price alone. When HDI goes up, piracy goes down and vice versa.

If these western-centric corporations think HDI is indifferent, then they better start pulling their heads out of their butts. They're really not benefiting countries with low HDI. That's the problem. These people either have nothing or they steal.

In the US, we can afford almost anything. Piracy rate is low in the US because we have a higher HDI.

 

Honestly, I believe it's because piracy has become a social norm. People don't go through that detailed of a thought process when they choose to start a torrent. All those reasons that you have listed are what I consider justifications. People who pirate hold these beliefs, in part because they honestly believe them, but more-so to avoid cognitive dissonance. There will be people without a moral compass, but the vast majority of people know outright that piracy is wrong, and use those arguments you provided as justification for their acts.

I'm sure that some people say, "I don't want to deal with DRM, so I'll download a cracked version", or "I believe the developers are treating me unfairly, so I won't patronize them". But the vast majority do it purely out of value. Free is hard to beat, and piracy is rarely punished. That leaves a no-risk, high reward situation. Normally, when someone crosses that legal/ethical line, there's an authority to keep them in check. However, this is not the case with piracy.

And that in itself I believe is ingrained the anonymity of computing. No one really has anything at stake, so it's all zero-risk. But then that would mean that the solution to piracy is removing this anonymity, something that I don't think anyone wants.

So it comes down to this:
1. Pirates are not going to police themselves.
and
2. It's near impossible to police them otherwise due to anonymity.

So what you end up is either say "screw it, we're not going to care about piracy", which quite frankly can be viable, though I'm not convinced that it is a permanent solution.

Or you end up with DRM, which perpetuates the vicious cycle.

 

i think what lithus and game publishers fail to see is that there are basically two kinds of pirates.
one that just wants a free ride and another who is a frustrated customer.
the freeloader is just in it because its relatively easy. he is not what id call a real gaming enthusiast but will try as many games as he can- for free. he gets something for free and it ends there. if for all of a sudden piracy disappears from this world, he would be quite pi**ed but he would not end up spending a single dollar for games or any software he used to/could get thru piracy. in that sense he is a non-entity in the business model of the sofware publisher because he can never be converted to a paying customer. he was just there for the free stuff.
the second kind however, is the disgruntled customer. whether he feels the software is too expensive, got an inferior product, didnt get adequate customer service, etc, he feels that he has been let down in some way.
now thats the pirate we should be concerned about.
whether be it the 60usd assassins creed he bought or the 900usd photoshop he got, he feels that at that price point he got the raw end of the deal and has almost reluctantly looked towards pirating as a solution.
now if the price point were much lower, to a point where he feels that he is not being taken advantage of, or is just the proper worth of the software, then he would evidently stick with legal versions.
its that paradigm that all software companies should take a look at.

 

I don't buy the "frustrated customer" argument for a single second. Yes, there are frustrated customers that turn to cracks, but make up a small minority of pirates, and are really insignificant to the problem.

There are DRM-free games, the are cheap games, and they get pirated just as much as the DRM-filled games, and the $60 games. That's what I mean when I say non-correlated. If a large portion of pirates do come from the "frustrated" base, then there should be very little piracy on greatly reviewed titles, and on DRM-free titles, which is certainly not the case.

 

Yeah but the freeloader is the predominant one

 

Justify is too strong a word for what people are actually talking about. Rather, they are explaining what might be the cause of piracy. Or even why they themselves may have opted at one time or another to pirate.

Moral high ground posturing, honestly, belongs in a religious or philosophical discussion.

"Completely morally bankrupt" is a subjective POV. One that intentionally or unintentionally absolves the producer of any and all responsibility for playing a part in the motivation for piracy. It also takes a narrow view of the situation in favor of justifying one's closely held belief and worldview.

We can say theft is wrong and agree. Hard pressed to find someone who wouldn't agree to that. Yet as the proverbial anecdote goes, "if a man steals a loaf of bread when he's hungry..." Most people would sympathize with that man. Why? Because rather than fixating on some absolute moral constitution, they are taking into account the situation and judging accordingly.

You might think to rebut the anecdote with "but he's stealing out of biological and instinctive necessity but games aren't a necessity." But that would miss the consideration that to many, games are a necessity. Albeit it a psychological one. A means of escape and how they deal with the stress and hardness that life brings. For some, it's a social necessity. Others perhaps an alternative to the real thing. Others a vice. And there are other reasons why some consider gaming a necessity.

Point is, like anything people have come to enjoy, to them it is a necessity and they will reason what they will do to satisfy that need. Are they morally bankrupt for seeking to satisfy that need via piracy? I wouldn't paint them with such a broad brush. But they are indeed committing an unethical act.

I think in understanding why they are committing the unethical act is part of the key to addressing piracy at the level of inducement as nothing can be done about the hardened pirate who literally steals because he can.