What better way to round off a day of arguing about gaming piracy than with some perspective. Real, rather frightening gaming piracy. From an article in the Washington Post:
Apparently pirates in the vicinity of Somalia have been stepping up attacks on [videogame carrying] trade ships beyond the Horn of Africa into the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, imperiling access to the Suez Canal. Those attacks are up from one every few weeks to four in a single day, according to Sam Dawson of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), speaking to Reuters. “This is not just guys in little fishing boats anymore,” says Dawson. “We know there are three probably ex-Soviet trawlers acting as mother ships.”
It seems these gun-carrying pirates could force a change to the trade routes, adding three weeks onto deliveries of games and gaming systems to Europe, which could be an issue for Christmas. And a slightly more immediate issue for the crews of those trade ships. The International Transport Workers’ Federation’s Sam Dawson told Reuters,
“Despite all the publicity over piracy it will really hit home when consumers in the West find they haven’t got their Nintendo gifts this Christmas.”
It’s not clear what other video games might be affected, but you’ve got to assume this will include much in the way of PC tech, if not PC games.
My plan for dealing with this? Send out false boats carrying only demos of games.
Via GamePolitics, and the link from Larington in the comments thread below.
Related Stories:
Um, I think being rude is what people call the practice of repeatedly using the word ‘fuck’. Might just be me. I don’t think anyone’s arguing about your destination – merely that it took you a heavy dosage of fuck and a sprinkling of CAPITAL LETTER!!!! to get there.
Then you’ll find your comments getting deleted a lot in the future. Thanks!
“Cargo ships going through Somalia should use DRM then?”
If by DRM you mean miniguns, then yes, yes they should.
Looks like more people will have to take the Steam™boat.
(sorry, was that cheesy?)
“If by DRM you mean miniguns, then yes, yes they should.”
What?!? How can you do that, it only inconveniences the end user. They package arrives with these huge, heavy miniguns on it. They swing around getting in the way of the legitimate consumer. I say we boycott any publisher who does this…
“(sorry, was that cheesy?)”
Yes, yes it was. Thanks. :D
I won’t talk about ships getting sucked into giant torrents of water…
I find it really strange that I didn’t even consider what this means for the people on the ships. I only thought: “oh well, I guess some people will have to wait a bit longer”. The only real alternative is not shipping valuable stuff over water but by airplane, but in the end, that’s almost as bad for the people on the ships as being attacked by pirates, because that would mean a lot of em lose their jobs.
Trying to wipe out the pirates isn’t going to work. Maybe it isn’t suicide to try and convince them they should get a new job. Arming the people on the ships only makes everything more violent, because the pirates will just get better weapons.
Except for one weapon maybe. Maybe the freighter ships should be armed with those sonic things. They don’t kill people, they’re dead accurate and they can really stop people in an efficient way.
@ RC-1290′Dreadnought’
The quickest way to persuade them to get a new job is to arm the crews.
This piracy is actually a very big problem, and is affecting every industry whose shippers travel through this part of the world’s sea network. The pirates will force the crew off the ship at gunpoint and take it and/or its cargo hostage for ransom. The big insurance companies are forced to pay out millions of dollars because the risk for rescuing the cargo from these desperate people is too great; the usual ransom sum is usually in the region of $1,000,000. Sometimes the insurers get lucky as these pirates aren’t educated professionals and can’t always grasp the true value of the goods unless they can get their hands on shipping documentation on board the ship in question. But the big issue is that no major response from any of the outlying naval bases stationed in the area has been made and there is no reason for these guys to stop just yet.
@Steelfist
random pirate: “You sailor guys killed my brother! You will pay!”
(gah I wish you could edit your posts within a 5-30 minute window like the good ol’ days)
To talk about possible solutions to the problem, there are two choices:
One option is to convince anyone tempted by this lucrative form of piracy that the risks involved are too great. Generally speaking these people aren’t in it for themselves, they’re most likely sending the vast amounts of money they receive back to their families and communities. If they die, or are imprisoned, they will know that they have risked this for their family’s security.
The only way of de-incentivising this form of piracy is to force a moratorium on payoffs and instead launch investigative and combative procedures.
The other solution would be to solve all the welfare issues in this region of Africa, which is an altogether tougher cookie to crack.
Trying to get the comment edit function sorted atm.
People like these have even been raiding passenger liners, I remember a story about someone who wasn’t happy because the sonic/audio cannon being used by the ship had messed up his hearing. They were firing RPGs at the ship as well.
Really, there needs to be a crackdown, even if it means having patrol boats of some form on random escort duty, sooner or later the luck of these people will run out, and they’ll be sunk by the defending enforcement vessels.
It’d be better to solve the issues causing this behaviour, but the world governments seem to be more concerned with their own issues even at the best of times.
MetalCircus – while I don’t disagree with your statement as it stands, I think that a PC Gaming blog may not be the best place to look for in-depth reporting on international news and the real problems caused by piracy.
It’s a GAMING BLOG. Of course they’re going to talk about how it will affect gaming.
Perhaps my statement was a bit rash and hasty, and as a result came out “rude” or whatever you lot define as rude, personally I couldn’t give a toss, an opinion’s an opinion regardless of how it’s put across. Nevertheless, I apologise for that.
Still, I stand by what I said. The lack of sympathy in those articles (again, not nescasarily RPS’ comments, apologies for that also) for people who are really in acctual danger, as opposed to us sitting at home bemoaning the lack of christmas presents…? THAT was unpleasant, not my comments. I mean really, guys, it’s not nice. I know we live in a soulless empire where people die to bring us luxuries and yes yes yes there’s nothing we can do about it but jesus! It doesn’t stop me being annoyed about it!
Also I think deleting my comments may be a bit… odd, considering I can’t figure out weather you’re deleting them because it’s a contrary opinion or weather it contains swear words – either way it’s not a good enough reason to delete a comment really.
But still, thought i’d make some apologies and clear up a few things. Ho-hum.
a thought experiment: if you want to convey something that’s emotionally important to you, use less “fuck off” next time. for some reason the audience finds it off-putting.
Forgot to add in my previous comment, the person not happy about his hearing being damaged by the sonic weapon was one of the ships crew rather than a passenger or one of the attackers.
dhex – I use fuck off all the time in my every day life though!
If you think that’s bad, you won’t like me in the flesh :-(
if you’re just interested in being angry then your approach is great. like masturbating in public, while it may upset other people it makes you feel good.
if you’re actually interested in getting other people interested in the thing you’re interested in, then it is counterproductive.
lol
Having read Meat Circus in this and the piracy thread, I presume we’re dealing with someone who regards themselves as a professional contrarian here.
P.
Wow. That was incredibly patronizing. I was going to litter this with horrendously harmful swear words but then I remembered how easy it is to destroy your childhoods with my four-letter rants, so I rectified that. And hey, i’m trying to be taken seriously afterall, right?! Sigh.
Why am I hankering for the approval of people who are willing to discount a valid opinion because it contains swear words? Sorry if I ofended your prim and proper sensibilities but these are issues that some people take quite seriously and it means quite alot to them, y’know, the whole “not wanting other humans to die in order to bring me entertainment” thing. So I apologise if there’s the odd “fuck this” or “fuck that” in there somewhere.
This shall be my final comment now as I’ve said all I wanted to and don’t want to risk running in circles – Sorry if some of you took my comments as a little offensive but don’t make the mistake of discounting the opinions within merely because you don’t like reading swear words.
Paul: i’m METALcircus, not meatcircus. I should probably change my name.
Shhhh. Calm. Let the flames die.
You tell me, chump—you’re still here bitching.
Gah. And there’s the RPS “shush” appeared. If we can’t have edit, we at least need preview.
My plan for dealing with this? Send out false boats carrying only demos of games.
I, too, lol’ed.
My plan for dealing with this? Send out false boats carrying only demos of games.
Yes, best part.
Though really, I can’t spend all my time worried about what’s happening to the people who supply me with goods. I wish them the best, and hope their all right but there isn’t much I can do but whine.
Or send the SAS and USMC after them.
Too much CoD4.
I did not close the italics tag. Woe is me.
I actually thought of that mission in Call of Duty 4 when I imagined a forceful recapture of boats taken by pirates. Can you imagine getting a mission objective like that in a game?
“Dammit, Miller! Secure the Wii Fit balance boards or the mission will fail! Summers, have you cleaned out the JRPG Storage Area yet? Summers? SUMMERRRRRRRRS!”
Those attacks are up from one every few weeks to four in a single day, according to Sam Dawson of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF)
So.. where are the numbers that provide proof to those HIGHLY ESTIMATED piracy rates?
Maerd: I wouldn’t call modern-day pirates modern-day ‘robinhoods’, for the same reason that old pirates weren’t classical robin-hoods. They take from whoever they can catch and give to themselves.
The only heroes in this are the ones not getting rich off of it. We need less people and powers taking advantage of the instability and more trying to solve it from the ground up. Peace comes down to individuals, instilling in them a realistic hope for the future and the means to improve it without destroying the lives of others. The pirates are no better than the greedy industrialists, revolutionaries, and dictators that have caused so much pain and death.
“But the big issue is that no major response from any of the outlying naval bases stationed in the area has been made and there is no reason for these guys to stop just yet.”
Although there isn’t a huge amount of news coverage of the area apart from when a ship gets seized, there are quite a few navies operating in the area. The yanks have a few boats down there, as do the Russians. A British frigate saw action defending shipping against a pirate attack just last week.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/7725742.stm
Unfortunately its a very busy shipping route and there are only so many warships to patrol it. There is a significant infastructure behind the pirates and it will be some time before the area is made safe once more.
I vote any and all gamers gather somewhere, hijack some kind of warship, take a trip down there and kill us them pirates keeping our games away from us!
“I vote any and all gamers gather somewhere, hijack some kind of warship, take a trip down there and kill us them pirates keeping our games away from us!”
I feel this is an idea that could only end well.
In fact, someone should make a game about it…
Excellent. My plan is coming to fruition.
Soon all your games am beloung to US!
muuhahahahahhahahhhahhahahhahhahahhahhahahhaha
Why don’t they just arm the merchant ships? I’m sure a single deck gun would scare those fishing boats away.
@Larington
Are you talking about conventional speakers? Because I was talking about a technology that allows you to send out sound in a straight line. You can really aim this stuff, because it starts out as sound with much higher frequency, or something like that(I don’t know how it works exactly). This is already being used by the (American?) army. Or maybe Discovery channel started lying to me.
[Edit] Or maybe you spotted a flaw in the system?
[Last edit(sorry, *sigh*)]
@Deuteronomy
Aiming a weapon at an armed pirate might only make you life worse… or stop. And unless you are going to arm the merchant ships with RLRM(Real life right management) nukes, those pirates will always find a way to get ahead in the arms race. “Just like on the internet”.