@Chewy
"The fact is if you want music published by a major label you have to play by their rules. "
Oh yeah ?
Who's the customer here ?
Customers lay the rules.
If I'm not happy with their rules I'll just buy elsewhere, this is the law of offer and demand to its simplest.
This is why legal download companies are switching to DRM-free formats.
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Just a lil' side note for the sake of it:
Mid december I came accross the test of PC game "The Witcher".
I started grabbing the demo from fileplanet at a whopping 80kbs speed; fook that.
I checked on torrents and newsgroups, no *demo* to be had there, but a full game.
Ah well, I took the full game from newsgroups over an encrypted connection for which I pay monthly, around 1200kbs is much nicer.
Install game, play for a few hours, like it.
End result ? I asked my gf for the Collector (and pricey) edition for Xmas.
P2P nets them a sale yet again.
I can quote some games I bought after getting them "illegally" (either before ADSL was widespread via friends, or by downloading nowadays), by chronogical order:
-Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 + addons
-Icewind Dale 1 & 2 + addons
-NWN 1 + addons
-Dragonshard
-Temple of Elemental Evil... basically the whole Dungeons and Dragons series really.
-Total Annihilation
-Jagged Alliance 2.
-Dungeon Keeper 2.
-Silver (a nice RPG actually).
-Black and White.
-Morrowind.
-Fable.
-Oblivion.
-Supreme Commander.
-Two Worlds.
-Overlord.
-and The Witcher lately.
Hey I was almost forgetting, World of Warcraft.
Yeah right, girlfriend and I wanted to try it out but there was no Demo offer yet, downloaded a version via torrents, installed, played 30 mins on a private server and we both got ourselves a copy + account.
LOST SALES ?
SERIOUSLY LOST SALES ?
They need to stop considering everyone like thieves really.
I consider games I download more a demo version to be honest, seeing I get full versions at around 1mbs via newsgroups, as opposed to 2gb demos at 80kbs via fileplanet.
Don't like ? Uninstall and remove the heavy ISO.
Bioshock ? beeeh, I'm definitely glad I didn't buy it, played it a full hour before uninstalling.
F.E.A.R ? Same.
This reminds me I need to write to the editors of the Witcher and tell them to put a demo available via torrent and newsgroups btw.