Life In 19x19

kirkmc wrote:To be honest, though, I've noticed an increase in Japanese players on KGS in the past year or so.

I mostly play automatch, and for the last two monthes, many opponents were using a japanese client (and looking from their graph, started playing in KGS in october).

I wondered what happened, maybe this is related.

topazg wrote:It's just like DRM / piracy prevention stuff.

No, not really (at least to me it is not). If there was a service that was for a fee only to people in Finland, and free to everyone else, I would certainly circumvent it. I won't go around DRM, because it is not discriminating.

kirkmc wrote:

tj86430 wrote:

Harleqin wrote:IGS is not free in Japan.

How is that done? I mean, how do they know if someone is from Japan or not? IP-address is not a reliable measure.

Yes, they are, actually.

If you're using a local ISP, then yes, they're reliable. However, they can easily be subverted by, for example, using an overseas based proxy

tj86430 wrote:

topazg wrote:It's just like DRM / piracy prevention stuff.

No, not really (at least to me it is not). If there was a service that was for a fee only to people in Finland, and free to everyone else, I would certainly circumvent it. I won't go around DRM, because it is not discriminating.

Ok, I was meaning more from a "having a policy that gets hold of the majority, and never mind the minority" corporate issue as opposed to a moral / ethical issue

tj86430 wrote:No, not really (at least to me it is not). If there was a service that was for a fee only to people in Finland, and free to everyone else, I would certainly circumvent it. I won't go around DRM, because it is not discriminating.

You would also have to know it's free to everyone else. I doubt most of the Japanese players on IGS know that. It's been a good gain recently for KGS, so it's no big deal.

Yugen no Ma (wbaduk) here is free for Japanese users and advertised heavily by Nihon Kiin but has some pretty serious limitations if you don't pay about $20/month.

topazg wrote:

kirkmc wrote:

tj86430 wrote:How is that done? I mean, how do they know if someone is from Japan or not? IP-address is not a reliable measure.

Yes, they are, actually.

Basically, and simplified for clarity, IP blocks are assigned to countries, whose ISPs assign blocks to residential and commercial use, of which at any point a user connects he will be given one. There are plenty of cases where you can't tell so easily whereabouts the user is precisely (even with trace routes, although you can normally track down the nearest ISP exchange), but I'm not aware of cases where the same IP can source from more than one country.

The main exception as always is proxy-ing, but I suspect there aren't many Japanese IGS players getting their games for free via this method.

If I follow you right, you're telling that IGS crew is filtering access to the IGS servers for japanese only? In that the case, may I ask you why only japanese are concerned? That strange a policy : it's free or not. So if it's free it is, if it's not everbody should pay to play...That a software company proposed a non-free software for Japanese why not but filtering IP is a bit tricky...

It could explain one thing in fact: I play quite often on IGS and recently I notice that a lot of japanese players are asking questions about KGS ("you EU so KGS???"). I haven't been banned for that (yet!).

There is nothing intrinsically wrong about filtering IP addresses. It is common practice, for instance, in the case of internet broadcasts of sports events (ie. from the Netherlands, I cannot watch the footage from the BBC website). It is completely up to IGS/Pandanet to determine their business model. No law is being violated, and users are free to avoid their service if they want to. It also seems this business model has been making them plenty of money for a while, so why would they change it?

gaius wrote:There is nothing intrinsically wrong about filtering IP addresses. It is common practice, for instance, in the case of internet broadcasts of sports events (ie. from the Netherlands, I cannot watch the footage from the BBC website). It is completely up to IGS/Pandanet to determine their business model. No law is being violated, and users are free to avoid their service if they want to. It also seems this business model has been making them plenty of money for a while, so why would they change it?

I understand your point of view, I'm simply a little disappointed because I thought IGS was a free server, first, and second I do not find that fair for japanese ppl...If I take your example: you're dutch, I'm french; both of us cant watch BBC footage ( ).Whereas one of us could go free on a go server while a japanese couldn't...I just tought it's quite unfair and not thorough but this just my point

gaius wrote:There is nothing intrinsically wrong about filtering IP addresses. It is common practice, for instance, in the case of internet broadcasts of sports events (ie. from the Netherlands, I cannot watch the footage from the BBC website). It is completely up to IGS/Pandanet to determine their business model. No law is being violated, and users are free to avoid their service if they want to. It also seems this business model has been making them plenty of money for a while, so why would they change it?

I'm fine with IGS charging money, it's just sad how people pay it to play there instead of playing for free on a better server. And the actions of IGS admins, known for banning people for mentioning other servers, are dishonest and morally wrong. It's hard to approve of any business model that relies on the clients' ignorance and actively cultivates it.

kirkmc wrote:

John Fairbairn wrote:

The increase is attributed to the internet, naturally enough. As to why there was a sudden increase in 2009, the methodology of the survey may play a factor but I suspect it was because that was the year when many Japanese discovered you could play go online for free - many in Korea, some in USA/Europe. There had been an effective monopoly before then.

Was it IGS that was a monopoly? I always understood that they were "big in Japan," but were they that big that free servers weren't known?

To be honest, though, I've noticed an increase in Japanese players on KGS in the past year or so.

Surprisingly enough IGS had nothing to do with this, but Yahoo Games of Japan recently stopped providing Go or games all together from what the japanese KGS admins have said. We did get quite a number of new people which is awesome.

I think there are dozens of go servers in Japan you never heard of. Pandanet is one of the go servers available there.

I guess you (the speculative minds) didn't look at the numbers too closely: How many million of Japanese go players have we got in KGS?

Cheers,
Vesa

Vesa wrote:I think there are dozens of go servers in Japan you never heard of. Pandanet is one of the go servers available there.

I guess you (the speculative minds) didn't look at the numbers too closely: How many million of Japanese go players have we got in KGS?

Cheers,
Vesa

5 million?

Seriously though, going back to an earlier question was there any change in the counting method?

I cannot approve of banning people who mention other servers, but I'm agnostic on the decision to charge only Japanese players.

Their reasoning is that they presumably thought they must charge to stay in business. A debatable assumption of course, but not insane. In that case, what is really going on is that they are subsidizing Go outside of Asia (Japan?) by giving a special offer to people in Europe and so on. I am not 100% sure, but I seem to recall hearing that promoting Go was the rationale.

Note that when the Nihon Ki-in sends pros to non-Asian countries to lecture or compete, they are taking money out of the hands of their own players and giving us a benefit. Or again, colleges do much the same by providing financial aid for some at the expense of higher fees for others. Of course helping people of lesser means go to college seems more morally significant than letting people play Go for free.

P.S. I believe pandanet is IGS. senseis.xmp.net/?IGS

How much do you need to pay for playing on IGS in Japan?

Javaness wrote:
Seriously though, going back to an earlier question was there any change in the counting method?

They're using Chinese counting now.