A new way of looking at piracy

Last week, game dev and blogger Lars Doucet sounded off on his blog on the hot-button and ever-developing issue of piracy.

It wasn't another thinly-veiled rant a la TorrentFreak, mind you, but a open examination of the way content piracy is currently viewed.

Doucet's "four currencies" theory, which plans to differentiate the "cost" of pirated material from actual monetary cost caused quite a hullabaloo. As such, he's decided to expand a bit upon his little theory and turn it into a series of posts.

Read on and let us know if you agree with this new "model" of piracy.

Doucet says there are at least three other key factors that content fat cats fail to take into account when meeting or rationally discussing the issue (and dangers) of piracy.

Unsurprisingly, they tend to only focus on the revenue aspect - it costs "X" company "Y" dollars to make content "Z." Pirating content "Z" costs zero dollars, therefore people will always choose piracy over making a legitimate purchase. Doucet says you shouldn't lump everything into the money category:

"there are at least four currencies involved here, not just one (money-dollars).
I propose the following:

1. ($M) Money-dollars

1. ($T) Time-dollars

1. ($P) Pain-in-the-butt-dollars

1. ($I) Integrity-dollars

Whether a player buys or pirates a game depends on how much each service - not product! - "costs" in terms of these four currencies, as well as how much the player values each one."

If you're at all interested in where the confrontational stance on piracy will take the content industry in the coming years or how we might begin to change the content industry, I highly recommend you read Doucet's piece on FortressofDoors.com.

Click the source link below...

SOURCE: Gamasutra via Fortress of Doors Part 1 | Part 2