Should small scale piracy lead to lawsuits?

This is a very controversial point – and one that is hard to make in a few lines, so bear with me.

We have a generation of parents now who just missed the technological boat, so to speak. They grew up just before computers (and the Internet) became popular and many can only use it for the bare minimum. Now, computers are everywhere: every kid needs it for school and most kids know way more about then than their parents ever will. And therein lies the problem: Kids are kids and you may be as good a parent as you want, but you know your 14 year old son will end up looking at porn just like you know he’ll find a way to download music and games even when you tell him not to.

Now, the dilemma is caused by combining the two: kids will do things that are illegal AND theyusually know more about computers than their parents. Even the parents that are smart enough to put a parent lock in place, would be surprised how quick their kid can circumvent it. So this poses a problem: as a parent, you’re responsible for what your kid does, yet the current reality makes it incredibly easy for your kid to do stuff online that could cost you millions as a parent!

And that’s where I object. This is simply not right – the current legal system basically forces parents to know more about computers than their kids (which is virtually impossible for most parents, ask them). A few years back, a mother was fined an enormous amount for downloading a pinball game – except her son had done this, not her. She could barely use a computer let alone prevent her son from downloading content illegally. What was she supposed to do? Take his computer away? I’m sure she did after it was too late – but it’s hardly a realistic thing to do. Kids need computers for school – a lot of school content is online so you can’t even unplug the Internet.

Some people say “just watch over what your kids are doing” and I call them naive fools. When I was 13, I was allowed 2 hours of computer every day (back in 1993) and my father had added a password so I couldn’t cheat. It took me less than a week to figure out the password and sneak on while I was home alone. You can try as hard as you want, but when kids get the chance, they’ll do it. That’s what teenagers are – they do stupid stuff. The thing is, in the past most of the stupid stuff involved petty crime – which the police would usually ignore unless it got too out of hand (like vandalism) – but considering the large scale of downloading music, games, movies, etc. AND considering how hard it is for a parent to prevent your kids from doing it, it strikes me that the current laws are far too harsh.

Of course, you may say it’s a non-problem because only a tiny tiny percentage of people who pirate get caught which is partially true. It’s not like a load of people have to pay these outrageous fines, but that’s just it – because so few people get caught, most people shrug it off and it essentially becomes a game of chance. It’s like lining up 10.000 people and shooting one at random!

If they increased the rate of prosecution and got the fines to be a lot lower to a more realistic level, I’d be more fine with it all but of course, fines wouldn’t go to the greedy corporations so, gee, I wonder why this never happened …

Top 50! Top 100! Top … oh, who cares …

Has a list of the best games, music, movies, books, etc. ever done anything but annoyed people? Or, rather, sparked discussions and arguments?

Having read the Top 100 list of adventure games over at Adventure Gamers, I couldn’t help but wonder “surely they added the Portal games to make people get upset and drive more traffic to their site?”. Yes, they actually consider Portal 1 & 2 to be adventure games … which doesn’t work for too many reasons to name (and that would surely be a different blog entry altogether) but considering virtually no-one who has seen the Top 100 believes they should be in there, it does seem a pretty odd decision to include them.

In reality, these lists are 100% pointless and useless. At best, it shows you what the writers of a site believe and helps you decide whether they represent what you like or not. At worst, it’s a complete waste of time with no value what so ever. These lists always crop up on forums – especially if they have controversial entries (like Portal above). “What?? Justin Bieber best artist of 2011??” or “Dragon Age II a better RPG than The Witcher 2! What, are they braindead??” being just two examples. Okay, okay, I admit: that last one was actually a real comment of mine when I read IGN‘s list of best games of 2011 where they didn’t even mention The Witcher 2. If anything, it shows how easy it is to fall into the trap of getting worked up – everyone knows to totally disregard IGN since they’re less reliable than a 50 year old Lada and yet I still couldn’t help but get annoyed.

See, instead of writing some pointless numbered list, why not simply mention the games you liked and write some explanation next to them instead of feeling you have to put them in a certain order. It will still get people to go “Why didn’t they mention game X?!” but it’s better than the endless “game Y should be 5 spots higher than game Z, and … etc.” arguments or complaints. Not only that, but it might send a signal that maybe, just maybe, games aren’t so simplistic that they can be shoved in a numbered list. Review scores are another such thing, but that’s for another post of mine …