Copy Protection and Games: Lessons for DRM Debates and Development
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Progress on Point Release 14.2 February 2007 Periodic Commentaries on the Policy Debate Copy Protection and Games: Lessons for DRM Debates and Development by Solveig Singleton* Technical protection measures for copy protection for music, movies, and books are sometimes controversial. Digital rights management (DRM) may allow consumers to use content as they became accustomed before digitization and before the Internet. But it might not. It is tempting for policymakers, like consumers, to take a backwards-looking view of what the media consumption experience "should" be like, particularly with regards to fair use. But this would be bad policy. The market landscape is just too complex and fast-moving. And it offers plenty of protection for consumer interests without legal interference. Content producers want and need to reach their audience; and consumers do not care about the right to make backup copies at any cost. The history of computer and console games illustrates this need for forbearance very well. This paper compares the evolution of better-protected console games with that of the somewhat less well protected games developed for the personal computer (PC). The history of games shows that the vision of protected content as automatically less desirable or as being used to foist other undesirable features on consumers is a distortion. Competition among protected and unprotected formats is alive and well, and consumers have a wide array of products at different price points from which to choose. Also, the technological picture changes with astounding rapidity in the face of changes to the distribution or storage media. Any top-down mandates are likely to be outdated almost before they are written. One piece of the puzzle that is missing from the history below is, exactly how much did game file size, distribution media, and other factors affect piracy and industry revenues over time? The extent of piracy is difficult to measure even today, and early game producers either could not or did not reliably track sales, much less illicit copying. Piracy might substitute for sales or to varying degrees; some illicit copying might lead to sales or add subscriptions revenues. This is frustrating for policymakers. But it is useful to note that entrepreneurs developing new games must live with this same sort of uncertainty and risk, and so for the purposes of this paper, we have left these questions largely unanswered. * Solveig Singleton is a lawyer and an Adjunct Senior Fellow with the Progress & Freedom Foundation. The views expressed here are those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Foundation, its Board of Directors, officers or staff. 1444 EYE STREET, NW SUITE 500 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005 PHONE: 202-289-8928 FACSIMILE: 202-289-6079 E-MAIL: [email protected] INTERNET: http://www.pff.org Page 2 Progress on Point 14.2 PC Games In the early 1980's, the very first generation of games for the personal computer was released with no copy protection whatsoever.1 This state of affairs came to an end rather quickly, with some exceptions continuing to this day.2 One early next trend in copy protection was to write instructions into the game file to restrict copying. This was abandoned because it caused compatibility problems with many new PC's coming on to the market, and users complained about the nuisance.3 Another strategy was hardware-based--a small slot in the side of the floppy was covered, preventing copying entirely. The measure could be defeated by the careful use of an Exacto knife, but this was tricky enough to limit its appeal. In those days games were kept on 5 ¼-inch floppy disks; they were small enough that there was no need to copy them to a hard drive. Furthermore off-the-shelf machines did not come with hard drives. As software began to use more memory, hard drives came into general use. Consumers also wanted to make backup copies.4 In the late 1980s, therefore, early copy protection systems that prevented copying entirely were largely abandoned, first for software generally5 and then eventually for games. Another method of copy protection had developed during the same time and survived into the early 1990s. This method involved requiring the user, when prompted, to enter certain phrases from the (paper) manual that came with the game. Sometimes this was a part of the game itself; "Conquest of Camelot" required the player to have learned certain medieval "flower codes" described in the manual. Manual-based copy protection could be defeated by enterprising youngsters making photocopies of the manual. Some game makers made this harder by printing one page of the manual on special paper, or including a layered "code wheel" with the game the use of which was required to identify the proper section of the manual. But manual-based copy protection schemes did not survive the advent of the Internet in the early-mid 1990's, over which 1See Jack Scholfield, "Computer Guardian (Newsview): How to Come Out on top in Games," The Guardian, December 5, 1985. 2See Brendan Sinclair, "Copy Protection Company Encourages Piracy," Gamespot Video Game News," available at http://videogames.yahoo.com/newarticle?eid=445011&page=0 (quoting Brad Wardell, lead designer of Galactic Civiliations II: Dread Lords, explaining, "[Copy Protection] is only industry-accepted in the PC game industry… Most of our business is in the application software market . and such copy protection measures are not used. I don't have to keep my Adobe Photoshop CD in the drive to use it. We simply applied the PC application software model of IP protection to our games--release the game with no CD-based copy protection and include a unique serial number that they need to use in order to obtain updates.") 3 Kenneth Lee, "Teens Add to Piracy Problem," Los Angeles Times, January 23, 1992, p. E3. 4 Philip Elmer-DeWitt, "A Victory for the Pirates?; Software Firms Abandon Their Key Defense Against Illegal Copying," Time Magazine, October 20, 1986, p. 86. 5 Lillie Wilson, "Computer Whiz Still Feels Bit of Program Piracy," The Post-Standard, June 12, 1988, p. C1 ("Most home computer games have kept their built-in copy protections, but the rest of the software industry gave up such protections one or two years ago, [Professor J. Robert Cook] says. The built-in devices created trouble because they prevented legitimate owners from making back-up copies of their own data… But perhaps more compelling to the industry, the protection devices never really worked."). Progress on Point 14.2 Page 3 copies of the manual and simple "cracks" of the segment of the program that referred to the manual could be readily distributed. Pre-broadband, in the early 1990's, many games began to be distributed on CD. At first, the file size of these games compared to the average hard drive and available bandwidth for downloading was huge. Pirates would sometimes distribute copies with the video and audio tracks removed, but these had limited appeal. As broadband took off, what ultimately evolved was the use of the CD key. PC games today require that one enter the unique 16 digit string of numbers that comes with the purchased game in order to install the game. After that, one may generally make copies so long as you enter this key, although some distributors allow only a limited number of copies to be made. PopCap, for example, which makes relatively simple "casual" games for the PC, limits copies to six; each time a copy is made the game checks with the PopCap server as to how many times the key has been used. Multiplayer games will not allow two users to log on simultaneously with the same key. Finally, some wildly successful multiplayer games such as Blizzard's World of Warcraft have limited their need to control piracy of copies of the software--because everyone who actually uses the software to play must give their credit card number to subscribe and become a member of the online world. Because PC games use media, equipment, and copy protection systems compatible with general-purpose hardware, storage media, and software, PC games have been more susceptible to piracy than console games. 6 They face interoperability challenges and must work with a more complicated interface (keyboard/mouse), and as such tend to be harder for the user to install, set up, and master. On the other hand, PC games are generally more innovative than console games, because the general-purpose platform is constantly being upgraded. (The exception is console games for which a new console has just been developed and released; the console developers will be able to deploy cutting-edge tech that has not yet made it into standard general purpose computers. As of this writing, the Nintendo Wii is a good example.) Partly because of the appeal of the specialized console interface to consumers, and partly because investment flows to media more easily protected from piracy, PC games have been steadily losing market share to console games. Microsoft's Vista represents an attempt to boost the PC's popularity as a game platform for players and 6The effect is even more pronounced for Macs than for PCs, as Mac developers are working with a precariously small market to begin with. See Peter Cohen, "Piracy Bleeds Mac Game Makers Dry," Macworld: Game Room, available at http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/gameroom/2006/06 (Describing a visit to a site where pirated copies were downloaded, "It wasn't at all unusual to see three or four times the number of downloads than retail sales… the difference between selling 5,000 copies of a game and selling 2,500 copies and seeing another 2,500 stolen can be the difference between breaking even or even making a small profit--or losing money hand over fist." Page 4 Progress on Point 14.2 developers,7 and it remains to be seen if it will catch on.