Karaoke Forums

http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/ingam ... -6C9693066

With just two employees, brothers Patrick and Daniel Klug, Greenheart Games is the spitting image of an independent game studio — passionate, frantically overworked and exceedingly vulnerable to online piracy. Lacking the funds to protect against intellectual property theft, the brothers came up with a unique way to teach pirates a lesson in its debut title, "Game Dev Tycoon."

Along with the $8 game's official release late last month, Greenheart also sent a "cracked" version of the game to sites frequented for illegal downloads. As the name "Game Dev Tycoon" implies, Greenheart's first title is a business simulator in the tradition of "SimCity" or "Rollercoaster Tycoon." Both versions of "Game Dev Tycoon" seemed identical, except for one key difference: People playing the pirated copy would eventually be onset by virtual pirates of their own.

"We are not wealthy and it's unlikely that we will be any time soon," wrote co-creator Patrick Klug in a blog post, "so stop pretending like we don't need your 8 dollars! We are just two guys working out butts off, trying to start our own game studio to create games which are fun to play."

In the cracked version, after a few hours of normal gameplay, players receive the following message, a dismal sales report:

Boss, it seems that while many players play our new game, they steal it by downloading a cracked version rather than buying it legally. If players don't buy the games they like, we will sooner or later go bankrupt.

Pirate justice follows swiftly. Players's studios start to hemorrhage money, and any new games created become increasingly vulnerable to illegal downloading. Eventually, the entire game company goes bankrupt.

Gotta tell ya- this drives me nuts. Anyone who uses their business PC for the forums as I do will be smart enough not to open an unknown link. Would you be kind enough to copy and paste?

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"No Contests, No Divas, Just A Good Time!"

" Disc based and loving it..."

No I will not copy and paste. , I doubt many people still use their business PC for surfing the internet without proper protection however a few Luddites may still do so the following directions are provided.

1: Google NBC news
2:In the seachbar for their site type "illegal downloaders feel pain of piracy"
3: Hit enter
4: OPEN the first article listed titled illegal downloaders feel pain of piracy in new tycoon game.
5: Enjoy the text and the screenshots

Link works fine for me!

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

Did you post that link because you think there are folks here who support piracy? It's interesting that if you disagree with a certain company's tactics, you must be a supporter of illegal activity.

Like this article, there should be karaoke tracks where the lyric swipes say something like "The song I am singing was pirated by the KJ."

I guarantee you about 1/2 of the people would actually try to sing those lyrics!

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C Mc
KJ, FL

It's not an "unknown link". It's NBCnews.com. Surely you can see that.

Make sure the status bar is enabled in your browser. Hover over the link and read the URL. If it is a reputable domain, then click. If paranoid, then don't.

I liked the article. Especially that people are contacting support and essentially turning themselves in.

There are some bad tracks that have been recirculated through the pirate community for years that have the same graphics glitches in the same spots. I have seen them at several shows in the past few years. It's actually one of the few ways that you can tell with 100% certainty that someone pirated a track.

At the very least, I think the karaoke manufacturers should be watermarking the audio and swipes so that when someone is accused of piracy, that there is a definitive means of determining where a file came from.

Seems to me that for the paid download sites, it would be a simple enough process to embed a user ID or other identifying information in the files upon download.

The disc based manufacturers can only manage this for new content of course. The old stuff is out there and isn't ever coming back.

-Chris

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-Chris

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Paradigm Karaoke, The New Standard.......Shift Happens

"Shure has an in-house legal team that works with a cadre of outside legal counsel and investigators..."

Uh-OH!

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Never the same show twice!

If you are duped into buying a counterfeit SHURE microphone, can SHURE stop you from using it? Will SHURE file law suits against you to recover their lost sale? If you buy a ROLEX watch from some guy while visiting N.Y.C., can ROLEX file a law suit against you for wearing it?

doesn't matter Bruce, they are being cheated and stolen from and we should go bar to bar with information packets about it to help Shure and Sennheiser.
those hosts that go use the cheap knockoffs are hurting the industry and can do their shows for less than you and i can after not buying expensive equipment.

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Paradigm Karaoke, The New Standard.......Shift Happens

It may come to pass.... Look at what's in store for you in NY if you purchase that fake Gucci Bag:

http://fashionstyleology.com/ny-shopper ... ake-goods/

http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/2013/04/10/ ... r-products

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/nyreg ... .html?_r=0

http://www.mrketplace.com/15020/new-yor ... eit-goods/