id Software: Piracy is PC Makers' "Dirty Secret"

id Software's CEO, Todd Hollenshead, has pointed to finger at PC makers for secretly supporting piracy.

Speaking in an interview, Hollenshead said of PC manufacturers and piracy, “There's lots of things that they could do but typically just they just line up on the wrong side of the argument in my opinion.

“They have lots of reasons as to why they do that, but I think that there's been this dirty little secret among hardware manufacturers, which is that the perception of free content - even if you're supposed to pay for it on PCs - is some sort hidden benefit that you get when you buy a PC, like a right to download music for free or a right to download pirated movies and games.”

Asked directly if he thinks that PC manufacturers are secretly happy about piracy, Hollenshead said, “Yeah I think they are. I think that if you went in and could see what's going on in their minds, though they may never say that stuff and I'm not saying there's some conspiracy or something like that - but I think the thing is they realise that trading content, copyrighted or not, is an expected benefit of owning a computer.”

He pointed to the actions of hardware makers, saying, “I think that just based on their actions...what they say is one thing, but what they do is another. When it comes into debates about whether peer-to-peer file-sharing networks that by-and-large have the vast majority, I'm talking 99 per cent of the content is elicitly (sic) trading copyrighted property, they'll come out on the side of the 1 per cent of the user doing it for legitimate benefit. You can make philosophical arguments that are difficult to debate, but at the same time you're just sort of ignoring the enormity of the problem.”

Well, SPOnG lost its telepathic abilities in a battle with the local medium, so we can't look into the brains of PC manufacturers to see what goes on up there. But, here's what Dell says on the subject:

“At Dell, we believe that content owners have the right to protect their property from theft. That's why Dell is working with the content industry to make digital content widely available while protecting it through strategies that meet consumer expectations. Piracy is best addressed through consumer education, the enforcement of current copyright laws and new technologies and business models that make legal access to digital content easy, convenient and affordable for consumers to purchase.”

SPOnG would be interested to hear just what Hollenshead thinks the big boys in PC manufacturing should be doing.

In the UK, five publishers have just teamed up to tackle games piracy.

^{Source: GamesIndustry.biz}