Posted 11/01/09 at 09:56:45 PM by Justin Kerr

Measuring the impact of illegal downloading on the music industry is a nearly impossible task that only seems to make the lawyers rich, but a new UK based study has concluded that illegal downloader's not only don't hurt music sales, they help. According to the survey which looked at the buying habits of about 1,000 16 to 50 year-old computer users, those that regularly downloaded music illegally also spent nearly 43% more per year through official channels than their legitimate counterparts. According to the UK Secretary of State for Business Peter Mandelson, this proves the shortsightedness of the new "Digital Economy Bill" set to become law next April which aims to boot any user off the Internet accused of downloading copyrighted material three times or more.

Peter Bradwell, from the think-tank Demos who commissioned the Ipsos Mori study agrees and claims, "The latest approach from the Government will not help prop up an ailing music industry. Politicians and music companies need to recognize that the nature of music consumption has changed, and consumers are demanding lower prices and easier access." The UK music industry however remains unconvinced, and insisted that the figures cited in the study show a skewed picture. It turns out in fact, that nearly 61% of all illegal downloader's surveyed claim they would stop downloading illegitimate tracks if they were threatened with losing internet service for a month.

So will illegal downloader’s spend even more money on digital tracks if they get cut off from Bit Torrent's? Or does it help to create fans who would have otherwise spent less on music using traditional discovery methods. It’s an interesting debate, where do you fall on the issue?

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Posted 06/23/09 at 04:12:51 AM by Nathan Grayson

Having your main moneymaker relentlessly plundered roughly 200,000 times weeks before its release should be no laughing matter, but that’s not stopping Sims 3 publisher EA from having the last laugh while ostensibly losing thousands of dollars.

"You identified our secret marketing campaign!" EA boss John Riccitiello said jokingly of Sims 3’s recent theft. "That was a very large scale – concentrated on Poland and China – demo program."

"In the game that was pirated there's [only] one city [out of two]... and Sims 3 has a massive amount of content, and a lot of it is downloaded once you register with EA... and join the online community" he explained. "So you get that content in addition to the second city [which is downloadable for people who register], and that's a major component... A huge amount of the gameplay is an overlay for the community, where you are sampling assets created by other people".

The hope, then, is that pirates will chomp onto EA’s lure and get hooked into spending money on the features they’re missing. So basically, it’s like a bigger demo.

Not a bad idea, either – and not unlike the moneymaking strategies free-to-play MMOs tend to employ, where the game costs jack, but the good content costs George, Abe, and a bunch of other presidents. Also, some unsolicited advice for EA -- Let pirates’ Sims live as kings, with the exception of two items: swimming pools and swimming pool ladders. Or just remove the ability for things to catch on fire. We don’t know about you, but those features alone would make us drop the full 50 bones.

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Posted 11/26/08 at 12:30:36 PM by David Murphy

Left 4 What?  If you're not one of the legions to be playing Valve's newest zombie shoot-em' up, fear not.  Just because you aren't killing the undead with your friends doesn't mean that you can't partake in the best open-source and freeware zombie titles! Better yet, fire up some of these games while you're waiting for your big Steam download to finish.  Because nothing gets one in the mood to kill zombies like, well, killing zombies.

Check out our favorite freeware zombie titles after the jump!

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Posted 11/18/08 at 05:54:44 PM by Andy Salisbury

It’s an all to common story; boy gets Blu-ray player, boy wants Blu-ray movies, boy doesn’t want to pay full price for said movies so boy goes to China to snag bootlegs – we’ve all been there. But should you find yourself caught in this conundrum wait a moment before you do anything. Those fancy new Blu-ray movies you just got could very well be DVDs.

High-end movie pirates in China are ripping the legitimate Blu-ray movies (which use 1,080 lines of resolution) and then burning them onto writeable DVDs (which only support 720 lines of resolution). The swindlers are reportedly making roughly $7 a pop per movie.

Reports say none of the movies have made their way out of China yet.

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Posted 12/07/06 at 05:04:43 PM by Norman Chan

A mod for Half Life 2 turned Indie release, The Ship takes twitch reflexes out of the mix and substitutes a healthy dose of wit.

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