The Indian film industry has an interesting idea.  I'll bet if all the content creators stopped producing new stuff and took all their content off the broker's sites (like this one), the pirates would realize what they're doing to the industry. 

http://torrentfreak.com/movie-group-to-kill-piracy-by-not-releasing-movies-for-months-150309/

So what will happen? The pirates will provide the older stuff, the brolers will die and nobody will create new items. I have no idea but IMO the piracy may affect 2 or 3 % of the revenues and so nobody will follow your idea as 97% of the revenues is better than 0 %, am I right?

No offence, but the article is so laughable I didn't even bother to finish it :-D

I hate piracy, but I don't see how the tactic described in that article will have any effect, in fact, I can tell you right now, it won't have any effect whatsoever.
Do they honestly think that some pirate sat in his bedroom, filesharing, gives a toss about the lack of Bollywood movies?

The problem we have with piracy is the result of technology and greed in the industry.  They thought they had it bad when people would hook-up two VHS machines and make copies of their favourite porn movies for their mates.  It was a problem then, sure, but nothing like the scale it is now.  Basically, what happened is that the industry fell in love with "Digital" because they thought they could use the technology, Apple-style, to limit what consumers can do with it.  They saw $$$ signs in front of their eyes believing that encryption and DRM would give them the control they wanted.  They were wrong, so wrong in fact that due to all this inferior junk, pirates can now distribute a movie to millions of people without even lifting their asses from the chair they're sat in.

Try doing that with a Vinyl Record, an Audio Cassette, or a VHS Tape.  I mean you can copy them, sure, but being physical, it cannot be done on anything like the scale that piracy is done today.  It's easier to intercept and shut-down pirates of physical media than it is to locate people in cyberspace.  I mean even those dodgy VHS stores who used to specialise in pirate VHS, those guys couldn't dream of the sort of numbers that we're talking about in the Digital age.

I doubt many pirates even visit the brokers...

I dunno, somebody has to buy the first copy. Well, unless you're talking about "screener" DVDs. I've heard they often get out via assistants "borrowing" them. And of course, there are hackers, like the bunch that hit Sony. 

I dunno, somebody has to buy the first copy.

Heh!  You are right of course;  I was thinking of the poeple downloading the pirated copies..

Not really. swipe a thumbdrive, get into someone's poorly protected system at school, a good buddy lets you copy his stuff just for your use, etc etc. Hell, some of the stuff I've heard about could only have been recovered from an old hard drive, probably sent in with a computer to be fixed, and instead it was mined.

That being said, the 'damages' being flaunted about are -highly- inflated. They lump any and all together, and throw the highest loss numbers that can be metadata-ed  together to make it seem far worse than it actually is. It is a problem, but nowhere near what's claimed.

2 or 3% pfft.

My losses to piracy exceed $1,000,000

My Hierarchy Builder sold less than ten copies before it started to appear on the wares boards.

bands solution was $300 concert tickets. I saw Ozzy,Kiss etc etc for $10 way back when. 
so they depend on concerts for there $$$. it's a viable solution.

India’s Tamil Film Producer’s Council (TFPC) .quitting is never a solution .it's a surrender.

The ISP's could stop 90% of it but why should they ?? it "might" cost them money

@hflam:  Tesla died penniless.  Not a good role model.

Couldn't be bothered to post more last night but ...

You need to be weary of crap like this, cause the chances are that it's some corrupt scheme designed to give governments an excuse to erode your rights and your freedom. SOPA and all other such crap are perfect examples of this.  Don't be surprised if yet another rights infinging system starts being thrown around because of this, and if/when it does, just remember your rights and freedom are more important than a bunch of A-list assholes bank balances.

Fact is, if Bollywood and Hollywood both closed their doors right now, they'd be doing the world a favour.  Almost everything that comes out of there is rehashed crap anyway, so without them, people would be forced to look into indie film producers etc.  There are thousands of sites out there dedicated to the stuff they produce, and believe me, there's already enough films that people haven't seen, to last 100 lifetimes.

I only wish it were true, I wish both Bollywood and Hollywood would shut-up shop, good riddance :-D

The Indian film industry has an interesting idea.  I'll bet if all the content creators stopped producing new stuff and took all their content off the broker's sites (like this one), the pirates would realize what they're doing to the industry. 

http://torrentfreak.com/movie-group-to-kill-piracy-by-not-releasing-movies-for-months-150309/

... I don't even.. "Bollywood", known for ripping off any IP possible in order to make a buck, is saying that they shouldn't release any movies for three months in order to put piracy websites out of business?

First of all, they can all take a flying leap through a rolling doughnut. They specialize in putting out crap not worth watching to audiences who are starved for anything. I'm sure there are some great flicks produced by Bollywood, so they're surely not all rip-offs of Hollywood IPs. Right? Right?

This is a non-solution. It's not even wrong. This solution is saying "In order to defeat piracy on the high seas, we just won't go anywhere for three months!" And, once they start going somewhere or start releasing movies, again? What happens? Riiiight.

I can't stand pirates. They kill creators. They destroy the business model that people use in order to feed their kids. They actually limit the amount of quality available in a distributors products by making those quality, skillfully crafted, products unprofitable to produce. The way to get rid of them is simple - Arrest them. Shut down the sites. Nuke them from orbit. Dump "alertware" in false products that "phones home" to a watchdog to alert authorities of stolen intellectual property. Force third-party authentication schemes. Give out dongles with Poser and DS that ties a fingerprint to purchased products.

Of course, all of that makes the environment less pleasant for honest users and could, eventually, kill the products those consumers are trying to purchase content for. Unrelenting piracy will eventually kill whatever it preys upon, just like any unrestrained parasite.

The ISP's could stop 90% of it but why should they ?? it "might" cost them money

ISP's are not members of law enforcement. No matter what country you reside in, I assume you have some sort of "Rights" where you are allowed certain freedom to access the internet and that your ISP isn't part of the government or law enforcement. It is not within the domain of ISPs to "enforce the law." Moreover, they should not. If I were an ISP, the last thing I would want to do is to appear to take an active responsibility to uphold the law. That means that I would be placing myself in a position of responsibility, unasked, and I open myself to possible litigation, both private and governmental. If I actively, directly, searched to "investigate" infringements upon the law, I could be held responsible for "allowing" illegal use, just because I failed to investigate it.

Law enforcement is empowered to enforce the law, not private individuals or companies. A company can, however, act to protect itself an its interests and can report violations of that to authorities or, during the course of due diligence, it can report possible violations to authorities, just like any private citizen can. But, that's as far as it should go. We don't need commercial vigilante groups policing the internet, motivated by profit.

PS - Sorry for creating a second post, but I'm just not going to jump through having to edit my post in third-party sofware in order to include a response to yours, since copy/paste deletes the contents of a post and this forum doesn't allow multi-quoting. Sorry.

Tesla trumped Edison with the AC current theory!

Does anyone honestly believe a vendor who is trying to make a living is going to stop making new products and give up potential sales of old products for six months?  They would be cutting off their noses to spite their faces.  The pirates wouldn't go out of business or starve.  It would be the brokerages and the vendors who would go under.  The pirates would just move onto something else. 

Does anyone honestly believe a vendor who is trying to make a living is going to stop making new products and give up potential sales of old products for six months?  They would be cutting off their noses to spite their faces.  The pirates wouldn't go out of business or starve.  It would be the brokerages and the vendors who would go under.  The pirates would just move onto something else. 

Hi PhilC.  It looks like you're one of the few who understand the gravity of the situation.  I have an acquaintance who had a experience similar to yours with his sales dropping to zero after his first item hit the sharing sites.  He pulled his product, when into the torrent and sharing sites to give the immature and uneducated punks a taste of his mind (and was quickly banned from them) and finally vowed to never try selling his stuff again.  The Poserverse lost a talented and enthusiastic content artist.  This is why I'm keeping  my stuff on my harddrive.  I'd love to contribute but not with the pirates having a field day with stuff I've put so much time and passion into.

Morkonan, I like the way you think.  I've been making my presence known in some of the torrent sites and love to play 'you're a pompous ass and self aggrandizing narcissist' with that scumbag phougdzu, who runs a bunch of sites. I get banned then quickly join again under a new nym.  I've been through so many Gmail and Yahoo accounts I've lost track.

Morkonan, I like the way you think.  I've been making my presence known in some of the torrent sites and love to play 'you're a pompous ass and self aggrandizing narcissist' with that scumbag phougdzu, who runs a bunch of sites. I get banned then quickly join again under a new nym.  I've been through so many Gmail and Yahoo accounts I've lost track.

The problem is that most admins and users of those sites simply "don't care." They don't care about the damage that they do and they don't care about whether or not someone can make a living providing products that they would obviously like to have. For this sector of e-products, we're generally talking about a much more focused impact than movies or music, which have huge production chains and large monetization footprints. In this sort of product, anything that happens with it effects a very small number of individuals. That doesn't mean that there "no harm done," quite the opposite - The risks and opportunity costs are much more severely felt by the creators.

But, these pirates continue to think that it's all the same, that an "information is free" consumption model applies to anything that can be copy and pasted. That's just not the case. The impact is much more drastic in this particular market. The number of producers of quality products for Poser/DS could probably fit around a conference table in a rented room at a Holiday Inn. These are generally the people that can make a living producing 3D products for other uses, where their work has more intrinsic value-per-hour than that for Poser/DS. When their return upon the invested hours in creating a Poser/DS product drops below a certain rate, they will not create Poser/DS products. They just can't afford to. So, the entire product market is effected, reducing the overall quality and range of products available. Eventually, this negative impact will be felt by the producers of the platforms being used. If Poser/DS content continues to shrink or continues to drop in quality and variety, people will not invest in Poser/DS.

But, those who pirate this work don't care what happens beyond the download they're greedily watching. They don't care that noted artists who produced great content not that long ago are no longer producing content because they can't pay their bills by doing so. They don't care that what's available in some marketplaces is work that is far below the standards that used to be accepted. All these people care about is getting what they want for free, not only in regards to cost, but in regards to responsibility - They don't feel responsible for damaging other people's lives and don't want anyone to tell them that they are, preferring to adopt a crazy counter-culture ideal that serves only to provide an adolescent's false sense of righteousness when their hand dives into the cookie jar.

How do we stop them? I think the solution is a tough one, but involves the use of dongles and third-party encryption and distribution schemes that periodically validates content. But, those draconian measures will not be taken. They're just too invasive for most users. Instead, what is likely to happen is that products will be bundled into executables that require server validation before they can be installed and require the addition of encrypted file types that must be periodically validated. Even then, due to the non-proprietary nature of much of the products being produced, once unpacked and installed, those products can be easily repackaged.by pirates for redistribution and will likely be easily duplicated in non-encrypted formats, for permanent or, at best, temporary use until the validation scheme changes.. (.obj, texture formats, and every other file type used by these programs does not rely on any encryption or validation schemes, so they can easily be copy/pasted in to a new file structure and "pirated.")

Legally, the only solution that could help involves international copyright protection. And, it only takes a few minutes of searches to see that international copyright protection for artistic media is, for most purposes, a sieve of loosely defined laws that are only functional in that they take up space and ink in some nation's legal papers. And, protection under such loosely defined laws is laughable. By the time Disney, one of the most voracious pursuers of litigation on the planet in terms of IP protection, produces a movie, there are five knockoff titles, in just as many countries, that directly infringe upon the IP in all but actual "name." (I'm looking at you, Bollywood, and you, Eastern European slush markets, and you, Chinese sweat-shops.)

If anyone can solve that sort of problem, then we can solve the Poser/DC pirate problem. But, it's not going to happen, is it? Do you see a world in which there aren't any Disney products being pirated or infingements upon their IP in international markets are being fiercely litigated? I don't and without the "deep pockets" of these sorts of large producers of IP, us little guys can not mount an effective attack or defense of personally owned and produced intellectual property and e-products.

As a result, it's going to have to rest in the hands of the platform producers and their adoption of encryption schemes or even mechanical safeguards in order to not only protect their products, but to product the companion products that fuel the sale of these platforms. When Smith Micro or DAZ3D starts paying serious attention to this problem by beginning to incorporate validation schemes, then we might see some wider progress. I don't see that happening any time soon, though.

Lightwave had a dongle ,didn't bother me to much but they quit having them now.
if every app had a dongle ,there's only so much ya can pile on to ya PC.
they where pointless anyways didn't stop anything.
just something to pointlessly aggravate ya paying customers.

FXRealms wanted me to jump threw to many hoops ,I hate them. there out of business.
Ya can't make ya paying customers suffer for ya paranoia over pirates.
pirates are your problem.do not bloody make it my problem.

I would do my best to keep my paying customers happy.

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the movies in the theaters makes a lot of $$$.
ya they bootleg the movies but the quality can be awful and the ones that bolt the bootlegs for $5
would have never payed $20 at wal mart anyways. they might of stole it out of wal mart. 
so ya there copyright got stepped on there movie stolen but they didn't lose any money.

well there losing a foretion by not having a movie in theaters. 

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Morkonan,  We've obviously taken some of the same marketing and business courses.  I've been snooping around the pirate's butts long enough to understand (but not like) their attitudes.  A niche market like ours could easily die because of theft and I find that intolerable.  I'm hoping that engaging them in conversations will turn a few from the dark side and make them paying customers.  There has yet to be a software or hardware solution that's lasted more than a few minutes under pressure from the cracker/hackers so that method is a waste of time.  The vendors could also be doing a lot more issuing of takedown notices in the torrent sites.  This is the most popular distribution method and only Renderotica issues DMCA complaints.  There's one main torrent site for Poser/Daz stuff and I never see their stuff there.
     The vendors themselves could also take a little time to engage the pirates in the sharing forums.  If they saw that the content artists are just regular folks trying to make a few lousy bucks doing something they are passionate about, I'm certain it would turn a few.  I confess to having been a serious (and damned proud of it!) pirate for many decades but was turned by gaming.  I loved the Half Life universe and began buying the games and add-ons to support it.  It felt so good that when I left games for Poser, I continued supporting the artists.

...The vendors could also be doing a lot more issuing of takedown notices in the torrent sites.  This is the most popular distribution method and only Renderotica issues DMCA complaints.  There's one main torrent site for Poser/Daz stuff and I never see their stuff there.
     The vendors themselves could also take a little time to engage the pirates in the sharing forums.  If they saw that the content artists are just regular folks trying to make a few lousy bucks doing something they are passionate about, I'm certain it would turn a few.  I confess to having been a serious (and damned proud of it!) pirate for many decades but was turned by gaming.  I loved the Half Life universe and began buying the games and add-ons to support it.  It felt so good that when I left games for Poser, I continued supporting the artists.

Takedown notices only work if the administrators can be sued or the server host is within an appropriate jurisdiction. You can also find just about any DAZ product you want for free without having to go through a torrent site and even when DAZ knows about it, there's little they can do against the people distributing the files. Once the site goes down, another pops up overnight. (As far as Renderotica products go, I actually haven't seen very many products there I'd want. I'm no prude, but there just ain't that much there that's worth stealing. Admittedly, I haven't scoured their offerings - I suppose there could be a few neat items. But there's only so many ways to put Tab A into Slot B...)

I suppose one can attempt to rely on the kindness of strangers when asking a pirate, nicely, to stop breaking the law... So, the next time that someone is in my house, robbing it, I'll try asking nicely for them to stop and, perhaps, maybe ask them to pay me for the damage that they have done to my door. Maybe that will work?  :)

I guess the point is this: Should an artist have to beg people not to steal from them? Is that the sort of marketplace that this genre will turn into? "Pardon me, I can't work on that new project, yet. I have to go out to the torrent sites and engage people there so that some of them might stop stealing my stuff." It's sad. It shouldn't be that way.

I think that taking the personal approach can work. And, I think that's one of the only alternatives that artists have in order to directly affect some sort of solution. But, that's only going to net a few momentarily conscientious thieves who, once that artist is out of sight and out of mind, will just start downloading another stolen product. What are distributors for if artists have to go point-to-point in order to protect their IP or attempt to gain some sort of compensation from their work from people who now have their product in their hands?

I commend you on your "conversion." :) You're a success story! You turned from your evil ways and now walk in the light. ;) But, for every one of you, there's five people that don't do that. There's five people sitting in a pirate site or on the darkweb that are sucking down torrents and downloads with abandon, simply because they can. Whether or not they'd ever actually want to buy such products is beside the point - If I steal a car, but don't want to drive it, that doesn't mean I can't get charged with stealing. It's still theft, regardless of why I did it or whatever other intentions I might have. It's not an "evaluation copy", it's not a "test drive", it's not a quick "trial version." It's just stealing and stealing is wrong. Stealing hurts people. Theft of IP damages the system that directly supports the creation of new IPs and that helps support the propagation of new ideas, ideas that have value.

One of these days there is going to be a reckoning. Somewhere, somehow, someone is going to finally have had enough of this and they'll be joined by many, many whom have lots of money and lots of lobbying power in their respective governments. Is that what we want to see? Do we want to see more internet legislation, more government control, more censorship, more clandestine monitoring of user's activities, more random DMCA notices and "let's make an example of them" sorts of lawsuits? I wouldn't think so, but e-product pirates are rushing forward with near complete abandon and that is the sort of internet environment that they are going to force upon the rest of us, should e-commerce continue to be held hostage by them. Eventually, something is going to break and we'll be the ones that are forced to pay for fixing it.

I really makes me wonder when I see someone saying that you should issue a DMCA to a torrent site... Now that there have been more than a few server take downs, many torrents only host links, and there is nothing illegal about a link, even if it points to copyrighted material. Storing or transferring it knowingly is illegal. All they have to do in most places is claim the did not know, and prove they did not store it outside of RAM. The info is on someones computer, and proving that they don't own the rights to it is not so easy. I have filed more DMCA's than I care to count and run into this first hand, and there is nothing you can do about it if the server does not store it in many areas. You might think better laws would help, but none have really helped yet have they.

As far as the isps stopping it, how are they going to do that? If you have any experience or knowledge of the amount of data that goes threw an isp you would know that it is a daunting task to look for one thing let alone millions.

There is a reason that the governments sue large isp's for certain info, and that is because you can't sort that much info live anymore.

Look up G.987 fiber optics throughput, let me save you some time, 10+ gig a second per fiber, and there are fiber optic cables in the US with 14,000 strands per bundle between PONs. If you know of a computer that can process that much info (exabytes a second) you found one part of the solution that is missing, just one.....

Most people have no idea how much traffic you merge into when you hit go in a browser.

I am all for stopping the pirating, but there are logistics involved would require a huge investment that someone has to pay for. The best thing to do is just ignore them. I know that sounds odd, but is unfortunately the best way to deal with them. Others have mentioned Dongles, etc, and the past has proven that the cost of producing them was an even greater loss than not even bothering. Besides, any investment you do in that area is passed onto the customers that pay to buy it, which passes the cost and the frustration to the people you didn't intend too in the first place.

Maybe someday there will be technology that will help, but to date there have been more that hindered than helped.

Renderotica are pimps.pimps are some of the meanest around.

1 pimps either host the pirate sites. so there not going to give there own stuff away for free.

or

2 they told the pirates if ya still from us .we'll send ya site and you to ...

Are you being serious, RorrKonn, or just messing around?  Are you saying that if I were to sell a product on Renderotica, I'd be safe from piracy cause they'll send some heavies around to the pirates if they pirate any stuff that is sold on Renderotica?

Have to say I like their style then, I'd actually look into creating some products to sell there if that were the case :-D

I'm being serious, I mean why would I care if someone piece of shit pirate gets dealt with on my behalf?  Sounds like a good system if it were true, I like the idea of my stuff being protected by the 'Heavies of Renderotica', because if that was the case, those 'Renderotica Heavies' would be doing a necessary and honorable job IMHO, so good for them!

If only it were true, RorrKonn, you nut :-D

Morkonan,  We've obviously taken some of the same marketing and business courses.  I've been snooping around the pirate's butts long enough to understand (but not like) their attitudes.  A niche market like ours could easily die because of theft and I find that intolerable.  I'm hoping that engaging them in conversations will turn a few from the dark side and make them paying customers.  There has yet to be a software or hardware solution that's lasted more than a few minutes under pressure from the cracker/hackers so that method is a waste of time.  The vendors could also be doing a lot more issuing of takedown notices in the torrent sites.  This is the most popular distribution method and only Renderotica issues DMCA complaints.  There's one main torrent site for Poser/Daz stuff and I never see their stuff there.
     The vendors themselves could also take a little time to engage the pirates in the sharing forums.  If they saw that the content artists are just regular folks trying to make a few lousy bucks doing something they are passionate about, I'm certain it would turn a few.  I confess to having been a serious (and damned proud of it!) pirate for many decades but was turned by gaming.  I loved the Half Life universe and began buying the games and add-ons to support it.  It felt so good that when I left games for Poser, I continued supporting the artists.

This might work for the original uploaders, but I think those who post download links may not even be involved in 3D, but are likely in it for the money, by way of the kickbacks that the download sites give to those whose files get downloaded...

pumeco : I wasn't being amusing.

they said Renderotica stuff isn't on pirate sites.why do you think that is.

Seriously if any one coast me a $1,000,000 I wouldn't need Renderotica
I would personally take care of it with my own hands.

Interesting ... but who said Renderotica stuff isn't on pirate sites, who told you that?

Even if it's true, that doesn't mean Renderotica are behind piracy, I mean blimey, piracy is so widespread now that it would be impossible for anyone at Renderotica to have influence over all of them, even if they had influence over some of them.  Pirates operate from all over the world and speak different languages, the admin of Renderotica would have to be seriously influential to pull-off what you suggest!

my bad I should have said renderotica isn't on that site.

in this thread ,I got threre's one big daz poser pirate site and reneroctica wasn't on it.
so otica either runs that site or threatened that site. 

I know even gov's can't manage world wide pirates.

when I first started with poser came across some warez sites and I found some of the stuff was freebies anyway, sure there maybe "kickbacks" or "ad money" to be made on those sites but I think they drop "stuff" on your drive you really don't want (keyloggers,trojans etc )

fact is IF no one took a d/l from them they would give up !!!!!!!!!! (anno all of us is ok but you know what I mean )

do feel for venders, but if Microsoft or autodesk cant stop them what chance has a "small" vender have ?

Actually, it's kinda simple. Renderotica is aggressive in dealing with copyright issues. I don't know if the old threads are there, since Diane sold the site and things changed again, but there are years worth of threads where someone finds something, posts and asks if this was allowed (usually with links), and if it is identified as from Rotica, the copyright owner is contacted. I also know that there was some guidance if it was needed. And it isn't just one or two 'copyright nazis' doing this; most of the folks at Rotica do a good job of covering each other's backs Plus when it comes to content, they tend to come up with traps, not barriers. They can't stop it, but at least two or three introduce anomalies that can be traced back to a specific purchaser.

No, they don't send knee breakers out on courtesy calls, and they certainly have no affiliation with the sites mentioned (as a simple trace can show).

Part of the reason for that aggressive stance is pure survival. The simple truth is that you can leech something from here, and who the hell cares among the parents, law enforcement, etc. But let 'adult' content get away from you, and be unable to prove you chased the perp to hell and back the instant you discovered it, and you will most likely find yourself shut down by some pinheaded DA looking for a soft kill to bolster their chances at re-election. Then there is the fact that they work hard for a smaller market, so that makes it even more necessary to strike quickly.

Well, like I said, good for them if they take steps to deal with piracy.
A big thumbs-up to them!

And it isn't just one or two 'copyright nazis' doing this; most of the folks at Rotica do a good job of covering each other's backs 

   Glad you caught that.  I've had a lot of fun with them for many years and we certainly had a tight-knit community of sick, twisted, perverted, warped, strange and just plain messed up folks.  Sadly, many have drifted away to other things and the community has changed.  There's a couple of small forums where the vestiges of the old days still hang around but... sniff, sniff

United We Stand

United We Stand

And it isn't just one or two 'copyright nazis' doing this; most of the folks at Rotica do a good job of covering each other's backs 

   Glad you caught that.  I've had a lot of fun with them for many years and we certainly had a tight-knit community of sick, twisted, perverted, warped, strange and just plain messed up folks.  Sadly, many have drifted away to other things and the community has changed.  There's a couple of small forums where the vestiges of the old days still hang around but... sniff, sniff

Tell me about it. At least Davo still hangs his hat there. And I miss Diane and Jack and Doc.... I just really hope the new owners pay attention; they have a few new artists that are kind of pushing the age envelope. at least as far as proportions go. Hopefully the testers get rapped on the nose before the do something stupid.....

Doc is still very much there.  He's the one sending all the take-down notices. 

Davo kills me (figuratively of course).  Just when you thought that everything had been built, he comes out with the 'Prichard' series.

So far I have only created and uploaded free stuff here so piracy has no effect on me that I care about. However, I do feel for venders here who are trying to sell stuff and make a few extra dollars on their hard work.

I think there are probably at least two types of people who engage in and therefore perpetuate piracy, those that do what they do because they have no money and those who do what they do despite having money because they have no scruples. The former type I actually sympathize with. It's tough when you don't have money and even if they do pirate a product, it doesn't come at the cost of a paying customer because they couldn't have afforded to purchase the product anyway. However, the latter type, the ones who have money and still don't wish to pay for what they get do not have my sympathy. They are the ones who truly ruin it for everyone because they are a paying customer who refuses to pay for something someone worked hard to create.

Just my proverbial "2 cents" on the matter...

Doc is still very much there.  He's the one sending all the take-down notices. 

Davo kills me (figuratively of course).  Just when you thought that everything had been built, he comes out with the 'Prichard' series.

 Yeah, I know the Doc is still there doing his thing in that department.... I just miss his gentle touch and delicate verbiage when dealing with dumbasses....... :P  Doc Legume in his prime was...amazing. And funny as hell. Particularly if Jack set them up for him to feed into the wood chipper. You may not be able to cure the stupid, but you can sure prune it back...
As for Davo....The man is either insane or a genius. I've yet to find one of his kits that couldn't be used in some way with any of his other kits (and that includes the sci fi and vanilla set kits). I don't know if he plans it that way, or it was just a roll of the crazy karma dice, but sum of his parts is greater than the whole, at least digitally.

Lets look at this from a different angle.  People download pirated IP because it costs them nothing - agreed?  So what would happen if each person was charged 10 cents a megabyte of data they downloaded?  That would work out to 10 dollars a gigabyte and for a standard DVD it would cost about $40.  Much more then the price of going to the store and buying a legal copy.  This would have the effect of slowing down the downloading of pirated content, it would also slow or stop the legal sales of products at site such as Renderosity or RDNA or CP etc.  The solution to that problem can be found in public parking.  I went down to the doctors office and had to park in a car park garage.  They charge $2 an hour for parking and I spent 3 hours at the doctors so the cost should have been $6.  however because the doctors office validated parking it only cost $2.  The same idea could be applied to the internet and legal shops would need to purchase a bond to put up against them breaking the laws and providing pirated content.  Much the same as contractors need to purchase building bonds to ensure they complete the job they contracted out to do.  The contractor fails to complete the job the Bond is paid out from the insurance company and the next time the contractor goes to get a bond it will cost them an arm and a leg it they can get it.  As a store such as Renderosity might have to purchase a $10,000 bond (which is the cost of doing business) they would be placed on a list of companies that allow for validation of downloads so the cost to the end user would be waived.  Since in the US the FCC has just declared the internet a Title II utility they can impose any type of regulation on it they want.

This will not stop pirate sites but would dissuade their customers from downloading content that will cost them more then if they bought it legally.  So even though the sites would exist trying to shut them down would cease to be an issue and companies would not have to worry about getting the governments of third world nations to help them stop IP theft. 

Your freedom to go to any site  you want to would not be impacted, except that it may cost you more to go that route.  The reason for the bonding is to prevent a pirate from setting up hundreds of site since at some point they will run out of funds and they will give up. 

And this benefits Internet users...how?  :/

Richard60,   what a brilliant idea...I love it.  Unfortunately there are too many sleazy (ie: greedy) jurisdictions where folks can set up shop for nothing and the admins will look the other way.  phoundzu has sites all over the place including Somalia and several Asian countries. She's in Vietnam and seems to see the pirating of western content as some sort of revenge.  

As for Davo....The man is either insane or a genius. I've yet to find one of his kits that couldn't be used in some way with any of his other kits (and that includes the sci fi and vanilla set kits). I don't know if he plans it that way, or it was just a roll of the crazy karma dice, but sum of his parts is greater than the whole, at least digitally.

chuckle  I like to use his stuff to 'Frankenstein' some ridiculously over-complicated machine for nefarious purposes.

"Unfortunately there are too many sleazy (ie: greedy) jurisdictions where folks can set up shop for nothing and the admins will look the other way.  phoundzu has sites all over the place including Somalia and several Asian countries. She's in Vietnam and seems to see the pirating of western content as some sort of revenge."  

I guess it's a coin toss whether a person is Robinhood or realy just a wretched criminal. I  suppose it depends upon where we were born and what sort of life we lead. I've almost given up on trying to understand the world. However, unfortunately the world always seems to beg an effort from me to try to understand it. It's a Sisyphean task.

Morkonan,  We've obviously taken some of the same marketing and business courses.

And falling into the same old trap that a lot of people are when it comes to understanding what a modern digital economy means, that thinking of it in "traditional" terms is going to screw you up.
There have been assorted people looking at how you can make money in this type of environment, and the first thing that it requires is to stop thinking of digital content as being the same thing as physical products and that the business models of the latter are appropriate for the former.

For example, just off the top of my head, quite a few creators could easily adopt the Kickstarter business model. If X dollars is raised (and you can determine whatever X is however you want), then the software, or 3D model, or whatever is released. However many computers it ends up on, it doesn't matter. You got paid in advance. And, in fact, the more the file is shared and the more people who use it, the better for your business model because that means there will be greater demand for your next product.

In essence, what you're selling isn't the product, it's your reputation, that it's coming from you. And the better your reputation, the more you could ask for in advance. All those file sharing and torrent sites? They aren't your enemy, or "stealing" from you any more, they're your marketing team.

I know some artists who have had their digital work taken from subscription sites and it shows up on assorted free sites and torrents, but the way they look at it, sure, they might lose some money on subscriptions, but they make good coin on commissions. The piracy creates a demand for their work which they then exploit in a different manner.

This obviously won't work for everyone, but I could see it working for content creators with good reputations.

And this benefits Internet users...how?  :/

 

Well since in the US at the moment and probably will spread to the rest of the first world the internet is now an utility and the way it is paid for will be changing.  The first 500KW of electricity costs 9 cents a KW, the next 300KW costs 12 cents   the next 250KW costs 16 cents and anything above that is charged 25 cents.  Thus the more you use the more you pay.  Currently most people pay a fixed amount to have unlimited access.  It is this unlimited aspect that causes the problem since it does not cost anything more to download 5 bytes or 300 terabytes. 

So under the plan I listed above your ISP will be allowed to charge (all made up numbers to demo the point) 0.1 cent per Megabyte of data from validated websites this money will be used to offset the cost of operating the utility much the same as your water or gas bills.  And 10 cents for un-validated websites.   The excess funds to be paid into a holding account for artists that can prove their content was downloaded without being paid for.  This practice has been going on for many years with the sales of blank VHS tapes, Audio Tapes and blank CD/DVD's.  Part of the price for the blank media has been sent to the content providers to help offset the cost of lost sales.

How this will help the individual internet user?  Directly it will not show, indirectly the content creators will be rewarded and thus be encouraged to make more content.  Basically this is a way to change the way people act.  If someone downloads a movie and it does not cost them anything they will do it because it saves them $20 that they will not spend at the store to buy that movie.  However if the downloaded movie will cost them $40 then they will think twice about doing the download.  Much like I use to do when I lived in England.  I could call the local CompuServe number @1200 baud and pay local telephone charges or call the number into London and connect @9600 baud, but pay the long distance charges.  Sometimes I called London because the cost was less and I knew I was going to download a big file so wanted to have the fastest transfer or if I was just browsing I would use the local number and save money that way.  

As I said in my prior post this will not stop pirate websites.  However it will dissuade people in the first world countries form using those sites.  For the most part the sales of digital content from places such as Renderoisty and RDNA is directed at people who live in first world countries.  And if you can dissuade the pirating of content in your target audience then your profits will go up. 

Is this idea perfect? No.  However it does place the burden of cost on the person mostly trying to get something for nothing.

 

 

 

Morkonan,  We've obviously taken some of the same marketing and business courses.

And falling into the same old trap that a lot of people are when it comes to understanding what a modern digital economy means, that thinking of it in "traditional" terms is going to screw you up.
There have been assorted people looking at how you can make money in this type of environment, and the first thing that it requires is to stop thinking of digital content as being the same thing as physical products and that the business models of the latter are appropriate for the former.

For example, just off the top of my head, quite a few creators could easily adopt the Kickstarter business model. If X dollars is raised (and you can determine whatever X is however you want), then the software, or 3D model, or whatever is released. However many computers it ends up on, it doesn't matter. You got paid in advance. And, in fact, the more the file is shared and the more people who use it, the better for your business model because that means there will be greater demand for your next product.

In essence, what you're selling isn't the product, it's your reputation, that it's coming from you. And the better your reputation, the more you could ask for in advance. All those file sharing and torrent sites? They aren't your enemy, or "stealing" from you any more, they're your marketing team.

I know some artists who have had their digital work taken from subscription sites and it shows up on assorted free sites and torrents, but the way they look at it, sure, they might lose some money on subscriptions, but they make good coin on commissions. The piracy creates a demand for their work which they then exploit in a different manner.

This obviously won't work for everyone, but I could see it working for content creators with good reputations.

Unfortunately, that is not a business model. That is a "hope and pray" model. There is no fundamental paradigm shift in economics introduced by "teh internetz" when it comes down to analyzing a standard "value" for "work performed."

A producer works xx hours creating a product. Let us consider that, for the moment, we are examining the current business model that is actually in use by Poser Content manufacturers, not an ambiguous model that is not currently in use by Poser Content producers, which is what you exampled.

The content producer works xx hours and uses an online marketplace to distribute their products. This model is no different than producing a widget and giving it to a distributor who distributes it on a commission basis to buyers.

However, the internet and the nature of the widget makes it such that the widget can be multiplied, many times, without the intervention or consent of the manufacturer or the distributor and, as a result, the widget can be freely distributed amongst recipients without any money changing hands. In short, the product can be purchased, only once, and then freely distributed without ever having being purchased again. The producer receives no remuneration for the copying and distribution of their work performed.

In the standard economic model, a Poser/DS Content producer is choosing the most lucrative and most profitable sort of business model available in any market. That simple model is "work once, get paid multiple times." That model is used by the most lucrative professions in a capitalist economy, namely investment strategists, stock brokers and patent-holders. For one button-press, one innovative invention, the worker gets paid for multiple transactions for the same amount of their work, which was performed only once. (ie: The value of the work done is multiplied, repeatedly, without any additional labor being performed. So, a Poser Content producer, due to the nature of the product, works once and gets paid multiple times for that work. In theory... )

However, where that basic model, which has not changed in this market, gets disrupted is alarming. What happens is that the table is turned and the producer is not getting paid multiple times for the same work, but the product is getting devalued multiple times, so much so that the consumer is the one who is receiving the benefit as the product gets constantly devalued through the "copying and redistribution (illegal)" of it, many times. The producer is now working once, but benefiting multiple consumers, many of whom may not have paid the producer.

What happens, then? The single instance of work performed or value produced is inverted and that means that for every bit of labor exerted, it returns only a very small amount of value, enough for initial and incidental sales of the product produced followed by a slew of missed opportunities due to illegal distribution.

The result is that the artist may have to choose to produce many more products in order to obtain a "living wage" (or some other arbitrarily derived income amount) and their "work" no longer has any truly definable value based on either its quality or the amount of effort involved. In short - All value of the work performed is left out of the control of either the producer or the distributor and is, in short, left up to the whims of the marketplace - "Value", from the perspective of the producer, becomes a slave to the Random Number Generator.

Or, the artist may try to choose to increase the initial price of the work performed, raising their prices in hopes of recouping lost monies by expanding the profit margin of the product. Which is, in this market, not a very good choice, since pricing for products is fairly standard and higher prices also act to encourage illegal redistribution.

One can not operate with any predictable results in such a system where Piracy is a significant factor. The only way that one can achieve some sort of predefined, imagined, returns on labor performed is to rely factors that are outside of their control. The strategy to build on, in this instance, is simple mass production and hoping that random sales of many products will, somehow, net a desired income. A slight increase in profit margin would also be a likely possibility, in hopes of recouping the cost of labor within fewer sales. But, only a slight increase would be absorbed by even paying customers without resulting in increased losses due to increased desirability of piracy.

You can not have a predictable economic model for small producers in this sort of environment if you must include upon and rely upon product theft in order to somehow,  with some stretch of some sort of imagination, "market" a product or a producer.

All your example does is encourage the future piracy of a desired producer's products, which nets little to nothing for the producer. This is not some new, amazing, Kickstarter dynamic nor is it some neat and innovative justification for piracy and theft. There is no new dynamic here which can come to the economic aid of Poser/DS content producers, considering the model that they, many as individuals trying to make a living or gain a little needed income, must use in order to gain value for their labor. The current market, as it is in use now, today, is not one that is robust enough to weather such losses and content producers often do not have the resources to continue to expend effort for continued reduction in returns due to piracy/theft.

You can see that effect in action, directly, considering, for instance, Aery Soul's products. At one time, these wonderful artists produced some of the most outstanding and desirable products in this marketplace. Then, in the heyday of places like the first Pirate Bay and during the first torrent-frenzy of piracy, AS's products were raped, repeatedly, by pirates and consumers who had no interest in remunerating AS for their work. The result? AS left the marketplace and did not produce new products, no matter the quality of their work nor the desirability of their products. (They have returned, somewhat, marketing on another site, but only after a very long hiatus.) (Note: This is just an assumption, on my part, and relies on my memory of this particular period, which may not take into account unpublicized facts. But, I think it's a good assumption, nonetheless.)

Note that "Contract Work", encouraged by illegal distribution of products, is just so far outside of any predictable mechanic that it's just not something that can even be rationally introduced into such a discussion. It basically shifts the profession being discussed from one thing to something entirely different. And, the consumer base is not willing to pay fifty to a hundred dollars an hour for a conforming outfit for V4. A few consumers might, but that is a tiny market and completely unpredictable, certainly nothing that most current content producers could rely upon to pay their light bill or to feed their children with.

I respect and accept your opinion and input, but it's just not applicable nor, more importantly, is it anything that is predictable. One may as well suggest that unicorns will solve the problem, so it's okay for those who steal content to continue doing what they're doing and they should feel good about it, for some reason...

People who are intent on finding illegally copied content because they don't want to pay for it aren't really lost sales. They won't pay at all if they don't have the free option.

However, there are a large number of people who will take the opportunity to download free illegal content if it's basically handed to them on a silver platter. And I think these people are the ones who represent actual lost sales.

Currently, when you search for a particular Poser product in a search engine, there's a decent chance that you'll get an entire page (if not several) of download sites before you even see a mention of a legitimate copy. That's absolutely ridiculous. And of course it tempts those people in the second category I described because it makes it just too damned easy.

Google was supposed to be doing something about this precise issue -- and it certainly has the power and the ability to do it. But so far, I haven't noticed a big change.

Would making illegal download sites invisible to search engines make piracy go away? Of course not! Some people will always be more willing to expend the effort to get something for "free" than to work a traditional job and pay for it, especially when that something is, I dunno, a fully functional copy of C4D.. But not handing these sites out as the top results in a search by every single Joe Ordinary who is looking for a $10 Poser product might well put a big dent in illegal downloads of the products made by small businesses and freelancers. 

Edit: I don't like the idea of a sort of "tax" on data transfer because there is a TON of legitimately free or creative commons content on the web, and it and open source creations are some of the most beautiful aspects of the internet. All the tax would do is give money to the government at the expense of creators who want the joy (and often the powerful marketing juice) of sharing (at least some of) their stuff with the community.

Hi PhilC.  It looks like you're one of the few who understand the gravity of the situation

PhilC is right on. A lot of people are pirating Poser content. In some cases, they are even reselling it as their own. If you visit the Meshbox blog, you'll see how our Toon Santa gets pirated by vendors selling through major brokerages. What's especially frustrating is how enabled it is - finding multiple uploads of our stuff (often bundled with GB's of DAZ stuff) on sites like Upload.com multiple times, then linked to through free blogs. Most network providers hide behind the DMCA and pull the content, but they do not unplug accounts or pull the blogs that are used entirely for piracy (many Ive found our stuff on, there are also links to cracks of Adobe products, etc).

There are a number of sites related to Poser / DS that have had our pirated stuff linked to, but our little community is small enough, and nice enough, that Ill often get informed the same day its posted, and the offender gets shouted off. But still, it will get downloaded.

Google was supposed to be doing something about this precise issue -- and it certainly has the power and the ability to do it. But so far, I haven't noticed a big change.

Google enables piracy. Have you ever seen the "Chilling Effects" warning? That appears if Google gets a DMCA takedown notice. What Google does is remove the link from their engine, but they provide a link to the Chilling Effects site, that in turn has the original link. So they spread it to other sites, and then link to the site.