Thats not how it works dude. If its okay that we steal it, its okay that they are placing boobytraps.
Why dont you just give away ur pc? U used it enough to make ur investments back.
Why dont you just give away ur pc? U used it enough to make ur investments back.
- Apr 28, 2021
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If that's true to you I hope you get put in front of a judge at some point and try to defend yourself with that logic.
- Jun 30, 2018
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Don't bother trying to argue logic when it comes to the laws. I learned quite some time ago that "The inmates are running the Asylum". Try explaining to a Judge for example that, in order for something to have an age, it must actually exist in order to be affected by time... Then try explaining that fictional characters don't actually exist and are therefore not affected by time...
In a logical world that would make sense, but in the real world, logic is irrelevant. Apparently the law makers are unable to distinguish the difference between fictional and reality. Hence "The Inmates Are Running The Asylum".
It's not even about that though, let's not focus on a keyword like "stealing". The guy he is originally responding to is incredibly entitled. As someone who pirates I know I'm not entitled to SHIT, I have no demands to make when it comes to the content I consume without paying for it.
Suggesting they should make their content free as soon as they "make their investment back" is incredibly entitled. They can attempt to earn money from their content for as long as they want, they made it, and they're not bad people for it.
Now am I saying that adding trackers is a great idea? Nah. And they definitely shouldnt contain personally identifying information. They should be required to add a disclaimer to their patreon or w/e they are using if they add any trackers. But even then, if they add a tracker that has no personally identifying information (like an internal ID), and that's it, I'm pretty sure there is no way it's against any law. It's not calling home, it's an internal ID that's stored only on your local version. The moment you spread it you are the one sharing that non-identifiable ID (which the creator probably has linked with your supporter ID) with the world. Again, this is assuming a scenario where a creator does it like that, I'm not saying they actually do.
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- Dec 23, 2021
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No, that's not true either.
If I setup a boobytrap in my house, and a burglar breaks in and gets killed by it guess what? I just committed, at the very least, manslaughter if not murder. If what you said was true we wouldn't have seen Sony BMG get in trouble for installing rootkits in 2005 which they did in an effort to combat, you guessed it: piracy.
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Besides that: VAM creators aren't tracking us, the people getting their content for free, they are tracking the people who are actually paying them for the content. IMO what they are doing is like 2 levels of extra stupid. Most pirates were never going to pay for that content even if no avenue to acquire it for free existed. Their efforts are only rolling the dice on whether they go just a bit too far and trip up legally. Even if they don't at the very least they are probably pissing off their paying customers, the very people they want on patreon.
- Jan 14, 2024
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Wow, those guys are putting a lot of effort into something that doesn't even really benefit them; there are two kinds of people who pirate, ones not predisposed to paying for the type of content they're pirating at all (common with porn in particular; and those people will just go somewhere else when they hit a paywall anyways so you won't sell anything to them no matter what)
And ones who are willing to pay for content, but want to ensure the quality is what they expect before paying rather than after (very sensible in today's world too! it's fairly common to get something less than what you paid for from the gaming industry after all)
That latter type will either just pay you without pirating when they're convinced beforehand of the quality, or not pay you at all if they cannot be certain that they're getting what they want from you first (so working this hard to prevent piracy is, if anything detrimental to the seller. It's been proven time and time again that piracy is good for the seller.)
And ones who are willing to pay for content, but want to ensure the quality is what they expect before paying rather than after (very sensible in today's world too! it's fairly common to get something less than what you paid for from the gaming industry after all)
That latter type will either just pay you without pirating when they're convinced beforehand of the quality, or not pay you at all if they cannot be certain that they're getting what they want from you first (so working this hard to prevent piracy is, if anything detrimental to the seller. It's been proven time and time again that piracy is good for the seller.)
I used to look at pirating games like a rental. If I liked it, I usually wound up buying it anyway. In a few cases, I wound up pirating after I bought the game because it had some PC breaking DRM on it.
- Sep 26, 2020
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I really dislike xxxa for this. Not only do I have to use his bullshit website, but he made the determination that my password was too simple and blocked me from using it until I contacted him. So just beware to anyone subbed to him, he can see your password you set on his site.
- Feb 21, 2023
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I actually stand for creators，f95 is good but you can't assume others be same to it especially the Chinese ones. It's not a matter with sharing the paid content, but many scalper will recselling their work in China.( I prefer not to criticize my own country, but the mojority of chinese do lack appreciation for intellectual property)
I‘ve sponsored many kinds of creators such as kk, asmr, painter...... They may dislike sharing, but they hate some resell their work. Not all the people are able to find the original creator and sponsor them. So the creators don't receive money, and the customers don't get the deserved survice either. You may not be familiar to this phenomenon, while it's really common in China...... Anyway, there's no creator who track their patreons in the beginning.
I'm not asking you to do something but may you try to more tolerant.
I‘ve sponsored many kinds of creators such as kk, asmr, painter...... They may dislike sharing, but they hate some resell their work. Not all the people are able to find the original creator and sponsor them. So the creators don't receive money, and the customers don't get the deserved survice either. You may not be familiar to this phenomenon, while it's really common in China...... Anyway, there's no creator who track their patreons in the beginning.
I'm not asking you to do something but may you try to more tolerant.
um ACKSHUALLY she's a 12,000 year old dragon, your honor
Ex-creator here. Since I'm pretty much blacklisted from the hub and made into a social pariah there, I won't mind sharing this; most of the well known creators are on a private Discord server where this discussion comes up a lot. Long story short, the common sentiment there is that if they could put a virus into your computer as a form of punishment for pirating their content and get away with it, they would.
The reason why I am bringing this up is because a major security hole with plugins have been found and the newest VaM version (1.22.0.6) attempts to remedy some of that.
While I do not equate the addition of trackers being put into vars at the same level of severity as injecting viruses into their files, it is due this unsecured environment that I personally believe that creators who add trackers or otherwise attempt to procure personal information from their supporters without being upfront about it, should be made to cease these actions as this is very bad optics for VaM, in addition to being a genuine security concern.
The reason why I am bringing this up is because a major security hole with plugins have been found and the newest VaM version (1.22.0.6) attempts to remedy some of that.
While I do not equate the addition of trackers being put into vars at the same level of severity as injecting viruses into their files, it is due this unsecured environment that I personally believe that creators who add trackers or otherwise attempt to procure personal information from their supporters without being upfront about it, should be made to cease these actions as this is very bad optics for VaM, in addition to being a genuine security concern.
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- Jun 30, 2018
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There are a bunch of creators who are from less well off countries where they run on a completely different set of rules for justice and morality.
While a few hundred (or in extreme cases a few thousand) USD is not a lot to live off of in the US compared to the time put in to make content, for some creators living outside of the US, it is a significant portion of their income if not the entirety of it. So they do not look favorably to people 'stealing' from them.
I remembered a discussion that went something like "if a man tries to steal from my house and I can stab him, why can't I brick their computer if they stole my online content".
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- Oct 7, 2022
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Ironically, they pushed the update to (1.22.0.6) after I mentioned dynamiccsharp doesn't protect vam users: here. Someone must have known the security hole for a long time and decided to push the update now since I disclosed it! It just can't be this fast
. Also, I can confirm Applicationopenurl security issue has been fixed in the latest update, meshedvr didn't mention it publicly. However, it's not the only vulnerability, I managed to bypass security on the latest version (1.22.0.6) & execute malicious code even getting persistence but I don't bother reporting, hub mods have given me bad impression lately, don't feel like wasting my time with people who ban & view F95 uploaders as bad all the time.And for those creators trying to punish the community, it's impossible because I scan every single var for malicious code before uploading, any .cs file is scanned, any dll file is decompiled automatically to text and scanned, you would be wasting your time, you can fool the hub for sure but this ain't gonna work here.
How incredibly stupid.Ironically, they pushed the update to (1.22.0.6) after I mentioned dynamiccsharp doesn't protect vam users: here. Someone must have known the security hole for a long time and decided to push the update now since I disclosed it! It just can't be this fast
And for those creators trying to punish the community, it's impossible because I scan every single var for malicious code before uploading, any .cs file is scanned, any dll file is decompiled automatically to text and scanned, you would be wasting your time, you can fool the hub for sure but this ain't gonna work here.
If a single virus were tracked back to a creator (which would probably happen within hours of its release) they would likely end up losing most, if not all, of their supporters. I know I would never trust someone who did that ever again. Not to mention Patreon and other services take a pretty dim view of spreading viruses, so they'd probably lose everything from there as well.
If multiple creators started releasing viruses, it could potentially kill VAM entirely because users would lose faith it could be operated safely and it would be hard to find new users if the reputation were that the program was a host for viruses. A few petty creators could potentially kill the livelihoods of all of them in that case.
- Jan 14, 2024
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Yeah, taking something you didn't make and reselling it is more in line with theft than piracy since you're now directly taking money that should have gone to the creator of that thing. Art theft is annoyingly common for instance, and it looks roughly like that.
But those kinds of people, they're not gonna stop, none of these kinds of measures are going to stop them, reselling something like this is a much more easily persecutable crime than standard piracy, but that doesn't stop those people, nothing will stop those people; in southeast asia it's common for products to be sold as if they belong to one brand or another, but they aren't really of that brand, the brand is just put on there to make it easier to sell, and people will knowingly buy those fakes too because the real brand is expensive.
That is a dangerous game to play, but a lot of people do that, it takes more effort than reselling pirated content, it's more dangerous legally speaking, and yet that doesn't stop people from doing it.
Which should put into perspective how this little song and dance can't and won't really achieve anything for them except waste the creator's time on nonsense. Because that's all it is, wasting time on something that's not preventable in the first place. These measures don't even really make it harder to pirate either, all it does, it make things more difficult for their actual customers, and makes the creators themselves have less time to work on creating more goodies becaues they're spending it all on policing their existing stuff.
You know how authors handle this? They just release content faster than it can reasonably be expected to be pirated.
Piracy takes time, it generally doesn't happen on day 1, and people are impatient, some people when they want something, want it immediately, you can never have that with piracy, with piracy you're not even really guaranteed to get what you want because for you to get it means somebody else has to decide to share it first.
So what the authors do, is they release their story online for free, but then on patreon you can read maybe 5, 10 chapters ahead, it's unlikely for any individual pirate to hound those author's patreons to re-release the content that those authors are gonna make free in a few days or weeks anyways, I haven't even really seen it happen ever.
Basically, volume is one of the best actions that can be taken against piracy, if you make more stuff, the pirates will lag behind the official releases, and the impatient big spender type people who want a thing now will still flock to your patreon with no more action needed from you as the creator. The pirates will still get your stuff, but the ones paying will get it a lot faster.
Instead of playing a game of trying to stop piracy, play the game of offering something better to those who pay, something that won't carry over as easily to piracy.
PS: WIth all this crap about toxic creators wanting to put viruses on pirated vars (they could if they embraced piracy btw, just upload the pirated versions themselves before anyone else does it lol, that's how hackers spread viruses in the first place through piracy, I have personally witnessed someone do exactly this to spread a virus; of course these things do get caught, usually doesn't take that long either, but vars are actually uniquely well suited for this kind of scheme) I'm actually kinda relieved that I alwasy run vam through wine, so the damage such a thing could do is absolutely trivial unless wine users are specifically targeted (which is extremely uncommon; and would still be quite limited in scope even then).
Also I don't think it'd harm VAM at all if some creators released viruses on it. League of Legends' playerbase didn't meaningfully change when they forced everyone to install kernel level chinese spyware to continue playing.
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