What are the possibilities of security on the gaming console and the games? How can it be improved to prevent piracy in the next generation game consoles?

• What does "piracy" mean?

Piracy has a very broad and historical definition. In the 'oldies', piracy was seen as a robery on the high seas; these were men that originally were adventurers who attacked different ships. Their main purpose was to use violence to commit theft or any other crime. Nowadays piracy can be seen more as a sort of plagiarism; the copying or distribution of computer software, and in this case games, without proper authorization. In other words, this term is most often used to describe the theft of commercial software programs, which are routinely cracked by either hobbyists, who distribute it over the Internet as "warez", or by organized crime triads that resell the software on the black market.

Background information:
http://www.pcguardiantechnologies.com/

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• What are the total costs of piracy?

Background information:
http://entmag.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=6295

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• What are the factors that stimulate piracy?
• Illegal websites or Bittorrentsites
• Peer-to-peer networks
• High-speed internet
• DVD-RW
• Emulators
• Modchips

Another interesting issue that stimulates piracy has to do with the relatively young age of the primary target market of the video consoles and games. Lot of gamers are between the age of 16 and 25. Often they cannot afford the high prices of games. Most of the gamers are also students that have to pay high bills such as electricity, car insurance, rent, food, and phone. They have broadband too, which is another monthly payment, just to enjoy online gaming. With this in mind, how can anyone believe that people that pirate games are able to afford every game they would like to play. Another point that stimulates piracy is that if you buy a game and after a while you come to the conclusion that it is not the game you were looking for. It wasn’t fun, and you can’t return the game to the store due to popular no-return policies at software stores.

Background information:
http://articles.filefront.com/Macrovision_Finds_Big_Jump_in_Console_Game_Piracy/;559;;;/article.html http://3dgpu.com/archives/2004/08/02/the-state-of-game-piracy-today/

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• What are the existing security technologies for game consoles and how did this develop over time?

The most important technology, security and method for our current video consoles is Digital Rights Management (=DRM). Previously, Digital Rights Management focuses on security and encryption as a means of solving the issue of unauthorized copying, that is, lock the content and limit its distribution to only those who pay. This was the first-generation of DRM, and it represented a substantial narrowing of the real and broader capabilities of DRM. The second-generation of DRM covers the description, identification, trading, protection, monitoring and tracking of all forms of rights usages over both tangible and intangible assets including management of rights holders relationships. Usually the content is a copyrighted work that belongs to the vendor. For more information see driving force 'Preventing game piracy: DRM'.

Background information:
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june01/iannella/06iannella.html

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• Is it legal to make a copy that you own?

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• Is it legal to download a copy of a game that you own?

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• Is it legal to download classic (old-school) games?

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• Are emulators legal?

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• Are modchips legal?

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• Which countries try to prevent game piracy and which countries are pro-piracy? How is the relation between them?

Most of all, the US and some european countries (like the UK and also Holland) are trying to prevent illigal copying and gaming piracy. On the other hand, countries like China, Indonesia, Maleysia, and India are the biggest markets for the distribution of illigal games and also piracy.China has the world's second-largest population of Internet users, with 78 million people reportedly online. The concerning side of China and India is that these countries are expected to grow into a dominant economy in the nearby future. The most important piracy that has been identified in these countries are the Revenues for its Internet game makers are expected to double this year to 2 billion yuan ($250 million). Games also are estimated to create an additional $1.4 billion in business for telecoms firms and other industries. This also the reason why the US puts more pressure on the governments of these countries.

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• What kind of punishment are there for game piracy?

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• How will the various game consoles try to prevent game piracy in the future? And what could be the advantages and drawbacks of these technologies?

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• Which kind of institutions or organisations try to prevent piracy?

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• What are the main activities of these organisations and how do they communicate with their primary target market?
  

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• How is the relationship between these organizations and the authorities (=government)?

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• Will game developers provide games for free in the future and what are the possibilities to achieve this. (commercials in games)
  

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• Will we still pay for online gaming in the future? (opensource xbox connecet , new business model: give the game away for free, then charge for content Or you can release free content to extend the game lifespan)
  

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• How can we classify game piracy?

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• Who are the main characters in the process of file sharing and how do they work?

1. THE INSIDER
Industry and theater employees run their own straight-to-video operations. Hackers looking for prerelease videogames target company servers. But the employees can also be corrupt and sell their works or leak out valueable information to these hackers. And before that long-awaited game hits Play.com, moles inside disc-stamping plants have already got a copy.

2. THE PACKAGER
The pirated goods are passed on to a release group. These groups take multi-gigabyte movie files and squeeze them down for easy online trading.

3. THE DISTRIBUTOR
Release groups are known to have exclusive relationships with certain so-called topsites. These are the highly secretive sites at the top of the distribution pyramid. When a topsite operator drops a file, the avalanche begins.

4. THE COURIERS
Alerted by release groups, worker bees spring into action, copying and transferring files from the topsites to lower-level dump sites, and then from there to P2P networks like Kazaa and Morpheus. For the couriers, the payoff is props from their peers and credits redeemable for goods on upper levels of the pyramid.

5. THE PUBLIC
After the file is copied thousands of times the P2P networks saturate, allowing casual file-traders easy access to the newest movies, music, and videogames.

Background information:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.01/topsite.html?pg=4&topic=topsite&topic_set=

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