2 ’ OPINION TechNews | Tuesday, Apn'115, 2014 TechNews STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGYSINCE 1928 McCormick Tribune Campus Center Room 221 3201 South Syate Street Chicago, Illinois 60616 E-mail: editor@technewsiit.com Website: http://www.technewsiit.com TechNews STAFF Editor-in-Chief Kori Bowns Assistant Editor Hannah Larson Opinion Editor Austin Gonzalez Campus Editor Utsav Gandhi Sports Editor Nathan McMahon Business Manager Kyle Stanevich IT Manager Pranava Teja Surukuchi Distribution Manager Khaleela Zaman Copy Editors Vijai Baskar Travon Cooman Kristal Copeland Shireen Gul Anoopa Sundararajan Layout Editors Rachael Affenit Sijia Wu Financial Advisor Faculty Advisor Vickie Tolbert Gregory Pulliam MISSION STATEMENT Our mission is to promote student discussion and bolster the IIT community by providing a newspaper that is highly accessible, a stalwart of journalistic integrity, and a student forum. TechNews is a dedicated to the belief that a strong campus newspaper is essential to a strong campus community. GENERAL INFORMATION TechNews is written, managed, and edited by the students of, and funded in part by, Illinois Institute of Technology. The material herein does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Illinois Institute of Technology or the editors, staff. and advisor of TechNews. There will be no censorship of TechNews publication by the faculty or staff of IIT. Sole authority and responsibility for publication and adherence to the values set forth in this policy rests with the TechNews staff. This paper seeks to bring together the various segments of the Illinois Tech community and strives through balance and content to achieve a position of respect and excellence. TechNews strives for professionalism with due respect to the intellectual values of the university and its community.All materialsubmitted becomes the property of TechNews, and is subject to any editorial decisions deemed necessary. 5 U B M I SS | O N S TechNews is published on the Tuesday of each week of the academic year. Deadline for all submissions and announcements is 11:59 pm. on the Friday prior to publication. Articles, photos, and illustrations must be submitted electronically to the TechNews website at technewsiit.com. EDITORIAL POLICY The editors reserve the right to determine if submitted material meets TechNews' policy and standards. For more information about our editorial standards, please email assteditor@technewsiit.com. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Letters to the editor may be submitted by anyone, but are subject to review by the Editor-in-Chief. All letters-to—the-editor become the property of TechNews upon submission. TechNews does not accept or publish anonymous letters or stories. ADVERTISING Legitimate paid advertisements, from within or outside the IIT community, which serve to produce income for the paper, are accommodated. TechNews holds the right to deny any advertisement unsuitable for publication. Media Kits are available upon request. Ad space is limited and is taken on a first-come. first-serve basis. Contact the Business Manager at business@ technewsiit.com for more information. LOCAL 8 NATIONAL ADVERTISERS To place an ad, contact us via email at business@techneWSiit.com. Let the online pirates eat cake Austin Gonzalez OPINION EDITOR The battle between pirates and mega-cor- porations rages on as media conglomerates launch a major assault on a Russian social media platform similar to Facebook for copyright infringement. Media corporations claim losses in the billions and spend billions more trying to reclaim them. In my opinion they are making a mistake; let the pirates eat their cake. The people in headquarters are intelligent people. I have no doubt for a second that the corporations know me bet— ter than I know myself sometimes. However, from my side of things it looks like they’re missing some key points about the future of product development. Let’s- break it down. The majority of people who use your software are the ones who stole it. Pi- racy is huge. One of the most popular games in app stores right now is Game Dev Tycoon which was created thanks to some indie de— velopers. Their clever way of combatting pi- racy was to release their own pirated version of the game, but with a tweak. After a few levels of advancing your video game tycoon your revenue would slowly be eaten away to nothing as “pirates” stopped buying your work: “Boss, it seems that while many players play our new game, they steal it by downloading a cracked ver- sion rather than buying it legally. If players don’t buy the games they like, we will sooner or later go bankrupt.” The irony was thick. Shortly after the release the forums were a buzz about how difficult the game was. After one day, and of 3,300 users, only 214 (6.4%) actu— ally had purchased the game. This is heart breaking to hear about, especially when it’s a struggling indie developer getting hurt, but there’s something that’s very clear. The people who determine your reputation stole your product and the people who use your product, stole your product. There are ways of preventing, stall- ing, and fighting piracy, but it’s like a nuclear defense program; for every developer you waste on designing protections, five are ready to tear it apart. Electronic Arts (EA) has been rated the worst company in the world, two years in a row. They are known for not caring about their community, their content, or anything but the bottom—line. Regardless of whether this is true, it’s how they are seen and will be seen for years to come. EA games are some of the more difficult to crack, and feature every piece of digital rights management (DRM) this side of the Mississippi. There have been examples where downloading EA games illegally was faster and easier than buying and download— ing from their site. I’ll let you research the aftermath of the SimCity. Let the public have your games, music, and movies. Put up a weak defense, but ultimately you want as many people en- joying as much of your product as possible. Trying to use DRM you are hurting and in- conveniencing those who love your product, wasting energy better spent making a better product, and not preventing piracy in the slightest. If the internet wants your prod- uct, they’re going to get it whether they have your consent or not. Why not make this an easier process for everyone and enjoy the good will of the people? Electronic media has had this funny problem where people’s opinions are largely made up before they purchase your software. People have to like your product before they buy it. There is no returning a software package once you’ve opened it. People have to be convinced of the value of the nonexistent product. The way to create a great digi- tal company is to give a nod to those who would take it and let them use it. Let them generate the publicity of how great your product is. The usability of your product has less to do with the outreach you receive than the ease of access. The value of your product is arbitrary, but the value of your company is determined by the number of people using it. Sports cars are valuable because you can say any version of: “nah nah you don’t have one.” Tools are valuable because you can use them to be productive. Music, games, movies are valuable (especially in an electronic form) because you said so. Giv— ing the pirates less protected software makes more people use it, they show their friends, and soon everyone is using your product. There is no shortage of how many people who can use it, so why object to letting all of them use it? “But! My shareholders will dis- approve of giving away our products with gaining remuneration!” False. Twitter filed for a $30 billion IPO float, Facebook was valued at $104 billion, and Google has a market cap of $290 billion. These companies offer free products and are valued on the number of users you have. You can talk all you want about advertising dollars and in service revenue generation, but the fact of the matter is, Tumblr was purchased for $1 billion because it was the equivalent of buying the users. Why do you think Zuckerberg is pushing to bring inter- net access to one billion more people? It’s not because he wants to advertise local sin- gles in their area, but because he wants more people to use Facebook. Your product is not valuable to a consumer in a measurable way. Ten thousand dollars for SolidWorks? Two hundred dollars for Adobe Photoshop? Sixty dollars for the latest AAA title? One dollar for a given song? Where are these numbers coming from? Your company is more valu— able to shareholders and investors in your clout and outreach and in physical sales. Why not boost the numbers? Ultimately, when people bring up numbers of lost revenue they assume that every “stolen” copy is a lost purchase, which isn’t true. Similar to how if you buy some- thing on sale, you haven’t saved money un- less you had intended on buying the item as higher price. Companies are fighting for earn— ings that can’t be recaptured because they never existed to begin with. Not only is this a wasted effort, it produces detrimental re— sults in terms of popularity, publicity, and quality- Until a better, more standard mod- el of valuations are created for digital goods the concepts of worth and stealing will con— tinue to be vague and there will be little to no progress against digital piracy. They name of the game right now is to garner users and brand recognition. Worrying about your product is not going to resonate with your users and alienating ninety-five percent of your baSe of value is a worse than bad decision. Let the pirates eat their cake, be— cause in the end you’re the one who controls the way they live through their use of your product. Reputation of Pakistan precedes realities, accomplishments Shireen Gul COPY EDITOR I come from the land of pure, where we are Iold on every step to live your life for others. iut unfortunately recently my homeland Pakistan. is known as 1 place where people are not safe and they are be ing killed for no reason. And trust me it hurts me to see my coun name like this because my country is “ country" after hear anything all. I belong thereand I can against it. We all hear and read about how people criticize and insult Pakistan. and unfortunately there are times when we cannot blame most of the reasons due to the increasing violence. But if there‘s one thing I’ve been taught. i ‘ vcr to general- ize. "ll ’ good points of L)( {istan have been hidden in this layer ofviolcnce. But what we can do is that at least change our perception and try to look for positivity in it. Let me point out some good and interes ng facts about P n‘ in the last five year". Pakistan’s literacy rate has grown by 250 percent, the trend of early and arrange marriages has almost vanish and women have started to come out of their boxes and grow. Abdul Sattar htllii is running the world’s largest ambulance network, we produce about 50 percent of the world‘s footballs, we are known as world‘s seventh largest pool ofscienlisls and engineers and we are ranked as the second largest gas in— frastructure in the world. In medicine, not only have we produced world class doctors that now practice all over the world, we also have stateioilil ) 'll‘t medical facilities that of fer se ' zit a fraction of the cost that is charged for similar facilities elsewhere. To name a few. these facilities include Aga Khan, South City Hospital. Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT). Shankat Khanum Memorial Hos— pital, Burns Center, Kidney Center. Ser— vices Hospital Lahore and Indus Hospital among others. On the other hand, we also have some of lhe South Asia’s master musicians in every genre. Whether it is the world far mous qui" vali ofNusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the ghazals of Iqbal Bano, Farida Khanum or Mehdi Ha: . The pioneers ofpop mu~ sic in the subc, itinent such as Nazia and Zoheb Hassun or bands such as lunoon. Fuzon, and Atil'Aslam all come from Paki- stan. Apart from this, Pakistan has produced master artists such as Sadeqain, Abdur Rahman Chughtai, Ustad Allah Bak‘ ' ' Ali and others’ whose work is not only recognized in this part of the world but is the predominant feature of many art auctions all over the world at So~ theby’s and Christie's. Our artists are the product of a i cultural heritage that dates back thou- sunt s of years. We are the one who value our families and relations more than our— selves. For us our parents always come first and no matter where we are we never for— get our culture and tradition. Because that is our identity and that is what makes us a Pakistani. Despite all the mishaps, destruc~ tion and loss. we‘ve shown a lot of prog— ress. One of the most amazing facts which we are seeing is that a majority is protest— ing against the violence. We still have time to improve more. and I know we ca if we try to look for n , vation and po- tivity within our— selves not others. We should get united, and stand up for one cause. and that is that we want to change. And guess what since we‘re still living let’s bring out the best of us and our country. Long live Pakistan.