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College Students Are Buying More, Warez-ing Less
Keefesis writes: "This story from a researcher at the University of Florida states that software piracy among college students dropped between the 1996-97 school year and the 2000-01 school year. One reason cited is that software makers have found 'creative' ways to entice students to purchase software(rather than the heavy-handed and largely unsuccessful tactics of the RIAA)."
Maybe because the 96-97 crop of students are industry now, and know what it's like to have to purchase software and what makes the purchase worthwhile to students.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
A lot of students that I know consider software perchase just like a book expense. If they are taking a Flash course, they buy the software. If they are taking a design course, they buy Photoshop, both at Educational prices. Other things like Matlab or AutoCad or Pro/E are definitly educational purchases as well.
but i graduated in 97, with me out of the scene, i wouldn't be surprised at all if the numbers dropped drastically.
what do i do now? i write commercial software. do i feel guilty about warezing in the past? no. i didn't have the money then, i do now. am i mad at people warezing my software now? no. it is an understanding i guess...
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
A lot of companies are no realising that people stick with what they know. Give a student a discount on your software and when they go on to ear big bucks they will buy the retail versions. (Hello calling macromedia)
I can't actually think of a single person I know who has a legal copy of anything above windows 95. No one bothers. Same with application software.
There isn't a bit of guilt about it either. You don't even contemplate buying it. If it's obscure software, then you have to ask around a little, but it's no hassle.
Your payment - you copy it and pass it round more.
The more you steal, the less you admit?
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
Up until a year ago I warezed all my software(for Windows). Now, programs and games are becoming so sophisticated that it is useless to pirate something becasue you lose so many of the features that are included on the CD.
Every once in a while I will warez a program or game to try it out, and then if I like it I'll definitely go pay for it - having the CD and all the material that comes with the app. is worth the money.
~.Evanrude
One thing that I noticed while I was in school (1995-2001) was a large increase in the number of people using free software (especially Linux). Also, in 1999 my school started a deal with MS to provide "educational" versions of their software to students. Its much easier to walk over to the computer lab and borrow a legal copy of windows (or VS, etc.) than it is to download a copy, especially with the increase of monitoring on the dorm networks.
What the hell does the RIAA and MPAA think kids are made of money? A single software program I might use for a 10 hours a week for a year or more. Can't say that about anything they push. All I listen to are indie bands and noise generators.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
It used to be that only the hackers were playing around with computers, and for them pirating presented no significant technical hurdles. Now everyone and his sister is using a computer, and they're far more likely to just go out and buy their OS, office and a couple of games to go with this nice shiny computer mom and dad bought them.
The computer nerds are probably copying just as much, its just that the nerds with computers are a smaller ratio of the user population every day.
...is to use an OS the encourages the use of Free software. Since I've been using Linux and FreeBSD at home I've never been tempted (or had the need) to find warez.
...college students tell administrators they are all going to sleep at 9:30 pm and saying NO to alcohol, too! And that joint on the dresser was their roommate's, they swear.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
They had the same academic pricing on software in 1996. Note that students admit less to using warez, does not mean that they are using less warez. I think with the rise of broadband, and wiring dorm room, this has to be wrong. Maybe the students got smarter and are now not admiting to commiting crimes.
Outtasight, daddy-o. Me'n the droogs are gonna rumble the 'frames, try to shake down some code. Can you dig it?
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
If a piece of software is going to be used by me daily I consider buying it. Otherwise I copy it.
What sense is there in me buying Windows when I only use it on a laptop for my gf and for playing MP3s? What sense is there for me to pay $10 for the Office CD from school and only be able to install it twice (and have to keep that long number on record) when I can use a Warez'd copy that has no license?
I use Linux solely on my computer and I use only programs that I can get for free (WP, etc) but on computers that require Windows I rarely pay for software.
Sorry, I just don't have the money to be buying shit. If other college students do, they must have Free Beer.
Companies can succeed by selling service rather than software. It's the extras on the CD, the nifty stuff on the DVD, the nice documentation that makes the difference. And the students know it.
Mmmmmmm. Floor pie!
...software piracy among college students dropped between the 1996-97 school year and the 2000-01 school year. One reason cited is that software makers have found 'creative' ways to entice students to purchase software.
;-)
:: One Website To Rule Them All
creative
1. Setting up bogus honeypot websites like Amazon and CDNow in order to steal credit card numbers.
2. Hiring cute college girls to seduce rich undergrads into buying tons of software
3. Sending one new copy of their product to boxes #1-8430 of every college in Pennsylvania on a monthly basis. If they don't stamp the card with "CANCEL" and send it back within 16 hours, send them a bill for the software. If they don't pay the bill for the software within 36 hours, send them more software along with an overdue notice. Repeat.
4. See SSSCA
monolinux.com
There are only a few software packages that most students would ever contemplate using ... say, the OS, an office suite, and a few specific analysis packages tailored specifically for courses. Since most software companies make most of their money off industrial users, it makes sense to tailor cheap licenses for student software users. Modern packages also tend to be large, in the hundreds of megabytes -- even with university bandwidth that's not trivial, especially if your rez has capacity limits.
By contrast, there are hundreds of songs that the average student would be interested in downloading, and students are one of the more lucrative demographics for music companies. Most songs are a few megabytes at most, making them incredibly easy to download and share. The "creative solutions" proposed for software probably won't translate well into music piracy ...
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Does this report take into account the use of free software among students? Maybe students don't need to pirate XP/Office/Photoshop/etc. because they're using Linux/StarOffice/Gimp/etc.
This just proves that piracy is GOOD for consumers.
Piracy is really just another form of competition -- whine about it being "unfair" or not. Piracy offers the base product at no price.
Thus, producers are forced to lower their prices in order to compete and offer other benefits or increase the value of other benefits already offered (such as making customer support better). Those producers that arrogantly think the approach to piracy si to raise the price of products eventually find out that such only pushes more people to piracy.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
"In that survey, of about 700 students, Chiang and Assane found the number of students using pirated software dropped to about 40 percent, Chiang said, a 25 percent decline. The dip is all the more significant researchers, pointed out, because it occurred at a time when both the amount of software and students' use of computers increased considerably." Or it's possible that these students are following the recent copyright/piracy debates closely and are worried about getting caught, so more people are lying about what they're ripping off than in 1996. Hell, if someone came up to me and said "Hey, this is for a 'survey' - do you pirate software?" I'd lie. I mean, have you seen the microsoft piracy scare ads?
Triv
I think the whole issue of ownership of something tangible is given short shrift by just about everyone from the warez-ers to the RIAA. It feels good to own good stuff.
The problem faced by the software community is that consumers make their own decisions about how much that's worth. For university students, it's not worth much. They won't pay retail for Office, Mathematica, SPSS, or AutoCad. But if you lower the price enough, they'll buy it. That's what this study is showing.
The other side of the card is that lowering the value of ownership is going to get producers into trouble in a big hurry. Troublesome copy protection on audio CDs that prevents legitimate ripping and OEM OS "restore" CDs instead of full copies are examples. Here they are degrading the ownership value, and that's bad.
Carrots work better than sticks, and choice works better than either.
Careers should combine three things: what you can do, what you want to do, and what you can get paid for.
As an example let me talk a little about Trolltechs approach with Qt and Borlands approach with JBuilder In both these cases I as an end-user get access to a good product that I can try out and build my own opinion of, not influenced by marketing hype.
If I like the products, I'll be more inclined towards using them in a production enviroment, and I'll gladly buy The Product (pun intended).
On the other hand, if I don't have a chance to try out a companies products before I buy them, or if I am forced to withstand outrageous license agreements, phone-home "features" or Digital Rights Management then that company can forget to have me as a customer. I'll get something else...
These companies are still making far less money from students than they would from a same-sized population of other computer users. The reason students in particular pirate software is because it's stupendously easy to break the "laws" of supply and demand, simply because the supply of any given program is practically infinite. Since I MUST have Matlab in order to complete my degree plan (my work schedule is such that I can not spend hours on end at the school computer labs), if the software is not priced affordably, I WILL pirate it.
The sooner these software companies stop worrying about how many theoretical sales they "lose" to piracy, and start pricing their packages attractively to EVERYBODY (not just students), the better.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I think this is the future of all content. Realize that piracy is a given. Make piracy just hard enough that not everyone can do it, and create a tiered pricing structure with incentives for upgrade. Chances are that current 'student discount' sales are going to lead to future full price sales as a person's income and responsibilities increase.
The same model can also apply to other digital content. Sell crappy MP3 for cheap on the web, the CD costs more, the DVD audio version even more. Allow people to pay what they can and exchange lower quality/convenience for lower prices, instead of trying to lock your content behind steel bars with one fixed price.
-josh
First the number of software users shot up dramatically. Paritally because of the tech boom, partially because computer use wasn't confined to 'leet CS and engineering geeks. With that, the average ability to locate warez, cracks, or to crack themselves dropped, just like internet users at that time (what year did the "endless September" arrive?). BBS's and USENET, both major warez mediums, while still there, are not used by the common computer user anymore.
Plus, all the wealth in the late 90's made it easier for Jr. in college to ask Daddy for the several hundred $ for MS Office.
I'm sure the student discounts help -- a little. But that might be artifically skewing the results. Having been an student and an employee for a university, I know it's not uncommon for both to purchase that $100 copy of Adobe Photoshop for the guy next door, who would otherwise need to pay $700 (or whatever it is now). It does prove that a better price will sell better, though.
Method of processing duck feet
Here at our college Microsoft has done a ton to get their software into more and more PCs. In the next couple of weeks Windows XP Professional which typically retails for what $199 or $299 will be on sale for under $20. It's not crippled or marked as "Academic" or anything. All you have to show is a valid student ID. Same thing with Visual Studio .NET (although we were one of the launch partners so I picked up a copy of XP Professional and .NET for free anyway).
:)
Makes a ton of sense; there's also Photoshop, OS X, etc. all at great prices. Personally, if I can purchase the software for a wallet-friendly price I'm going to do so. It's awesome software that I don't mind shelling out $15 to help out in their efforts. $15 is greater than zero!
Thanks,
--
Matt
College students will always have a dangerous amount of two things, at least to folks like the RIAA and the MPAA:
1. Lack of spending money
2. Time
These two compounding factors are why students "pirate". Not that I'm advocating it, but if you could spend the afternoon downloading 3 albums (instead of watching TV) and then you're able to go out and drink that night because of the 50 bucks you just "saved" not buying those CDs, the fomer option looks pretty attractive to you compared to the latter.
----- rL
If I could get Visual Studio for $25 or whatever insane pricing they get, I'd buy too!
Might be worth going back to school just for the discount
I'd venture to guess that this is because of bandwidth lockdown and most institutions. At the small, private college where I work our 6mbps guaranteed bandwidth was showing spikes up to 33mbps at peak times before they finally blocked all P2P file sharing. When your means of pirating are taken away, what else can you do but buy what you need?
0.53*148 students = 78 students
0.40*148 students = 59 students
(78 - 59) / 78 = 0.24
and you get the same ratio from (0.53 - 0.40) / 0.53. So this is actually correct. Just like 50% of 50% is 25%, you have to remember that percentages are always relative, even when taken of percentages themselves.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
53-13.25 = 39.75%
So, 40% is a 25% decline. I don't see any flaw there.
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
PLEASE explain to me how 53-25=40. Something is HORRIBLY wrong with this story!
Easy. 53 * 0.25 = 13.25
53 - 13.25 = 39.75
Therefore, 40 is 75% of 53, and 25% lower than 53.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
If the study was comparing the piracy among students in the 96-97 school year and those same people today, you would have a point. However, it is comparing the students in the 96-97 school year and the students now, which in most cases are different people.
The point is that something has changed on campuses. Obviously, the people are different. But also, either the values or the software that they're using is different, too. Or the study is flawed, which wouldn't surprise me.
The piracy rate dropped 25%.
53% * 75% = 39.75%
>>This is a very small sampling of students, and from only one school.
It actually worse. The survey of 148 *undergraduates* was across FOUR different schools. The second survey was 700 *students* from TWO schools.
So basically, they're trying to compare the first survey with one that covered four and a half times more students over half as many schools.
Even political polling firms don't use methodology that bad.
Which of our favorite monopolies do you think will use this study to say that bundling provides customer benefit?
Am I off my rocker? Is there another way to interpret this that doesn't say that bundling provides customer benefit? Is this an endorsement of Microsoft's biz practices?
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
If software is reasonably priced enough not to make the average person determined to steal it, then the software producers still win, even if they take a reduced margin because their sales were through OEM.
I've often wondered when warezing would finally become something that is actually disdained by the mainstream, rather than implicitly supported. It looks like we may finally be arriving there.
You know, the strange thing is that I think that computer games were the leader here. They're the ones that pioneer new distribution and pricing models.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
I checked my school's CIS web site and signed up for the MS introduction of
Yes, at most big schools now they Universities have made deals with bigger software companies to get the software at discount prices. (So the students use the software in school, get sucked in and end up purchasing the software when they leave the University.) For example, Pennsylvania State University offers a "lending library" where students can stop by and borrow cds to install the software on their system. They get a week or so before they have to return it. Also, if you don't want to borrow the cd, you can download an installation file (Most of them are the entire cd in one huge exe file which you can directly install from)
Here anyone with a Penn State user access ID and the right privledges (student, etc) can download it. They offer Windows ME, Windows XP, Windows Visual Studio (plus Visual Java)... MacOS X licensces, Microsoft Office, and one REALLY useful product, Norton Corporate pro. (I work for a Residential Helpdesk at Penn State... and with all the virii sororites pass around..NO, NOT THAT KIND!!!, the computer kind, being able to install Norton Corporate pro on any machine in the University has made the job a thousand times smoother...)
The download system/lending library counts the liscense and tracks who downloaded what. I don't believe it's actually a bad system they have working here.
Who's the black private dick, who's a sex machine for all the chicks?
This raises one of the key points of why pirating occurs. Someone just wants to explore a program to see what it does or use it for very brief periods of time. I'm all for Lite Editions that cut out advanced features and just offers a stripped down utilitarian app for a significantly reduced price. I bet Photoshop say a decline in pirating when they came out with their cheap LE.
Piracy will never go away, but by making items reasonably priced from the start, those of us who'd rather buy the program would.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Is it any wonder?
A few years ago, I owned a computer store, in my college town. I was routinely asked by many of my student Clientelle how much a copy of WinXX was. when I replied with my near $100 price (dictated by the $70-something OEM price wholesale) I heard snickers and exclamations about price gouging...
I never understood this, as I'd called local retailers and found that my prices were on the cheap side, until I found out what the College was doing.
You could walk in with $20, and a student ID, and " borrow " a copy of Windows, or Office, or whatever! Complete with License sheet and CD. Everything you get in the "OEM" release! They didn't even write down your student ID #!
And, if you didn't return it, you were out only $20...
This, of course, made me FURIOUS, and I made sure that Microsoft knew about it. That's when I started getting Cease and Desist letters alleging that I was commiting software piracy!
That's when the tide turned, and I began to see the light of GNU....
I'm never going back!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
It just happens to turn out that companies pay more for *nix gurus than they do for Windows gurus. So if they wanted to make some money when they graduated, I'd assume they knew how to work in *nix.
> In a 1996-97 survey of 148 undergraduates at three public universities and one private liberal arts college
Hardly a representative sample, in my opinion.
> Assane said it helped to have Chiang, then a master's student at UNLV, involved in the survey because he was familiar with student lingo and culture.
So basically this economics major asked a bunch of people he knew whether they pirate software or not? Does his sample include geeks vs. non-geeks, or only the econ-savvy?
> For one thing, software makers now commonly make agreements with computer manufacturers to "bundle" software
Oh yeah, bundled software really makes me want to pirate less. I love the incompatible copy of MS Works and bloated image loads of Windows that come with new computers (which don't include the original CD anyway, requiring me to obtain a copy in order to load it my way).
> Equally important, software vendors increasingly offer licenses to colleges and universities allowing students to use expensive software cheaply
THIS fact alone is why I feel piracy has decreased (if it really has), although I question the validity of the study without seeing more details.
> Software is simply cheaper now than it was in 1996, reducing the incentive to steal, Chiang said.
Says who? I don't remember exact numbers, but after adjusting for inflation, do the most commonly pirated titles (Windows, Office, Games) cost any less than they did then? I don't think so. Where is their source for this factoid?
> These might include creating a market for "subscriptions" to libraries music and movies or a more efficient approach to the pay-per-download market, he said
Well, at least they got this right, even though it's missing a word.
So, even though I am no longer a student the fact I have maxxed out credit cards and a morgage to to mention car and 'other' loans, means I should be warezing all my apps??
I think I will stick to http://www.debian.org until my finacial situation improves
ERR 411[Max number of witty sigs reached]
They do have a lite version of it. It is called 3D Studio Max VIZ. They also have a free version that you can learn on and that can be distributed with games, but I am betting you didn't even look, and want to use that as an excuse.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
I hate to break it to you, but I doubt most students outside of IT and engineering have even heard of "free software". I don't think my housemates in biology/ecology/geography have ever heard of Linux, and they certainly wouldn't run it (Windoze works _fine_ for them). At any rate, I hope everyone uses GPL software someday (I don't... yet) but I think that students have yet to try it en masse.
Freedom: "I won't!"
jgerman wrote: "Maybe because the 96-97 crop of students are industry now, and know what it's like to have to purchase software and what makes the purchase worthwhile to students."
Your reply: "If the study was comparing the piracy among students in the 96-97 school year and those same people today, you would have a point. However, it is comparing the students in the 96-97 school year and the students now, which in most cases are different people."
I emphasized the point that jgerman was trying to make. The same ppl that were the pirates are now in the industry, they know why they pirated in the 90's thus they might know what would entice someone to actually buy the software instead of pirate it. There advantages to purchasing software legally, the trick is to make these advantages desireable to your target audience.
Well, it's true, isn't it? Content companies in general (game companies, movie companies, television networks, music, etc..) can't price their products and then expect people to pay that forever. Each of these companies have a serious problem looming over them, and that is too much content.
Let's look at the game industry, for example. There are at least 6 systems furiously competing today. (DC, PS2, XBOX, GC, GBA, PC) Each of these systems are releasing games like crazy. The problem is, my paycheck in the last few years hasn't risen high enough to buy that many more games, not to mention that the number of hours in the day hasn't increased enough for me to play them. If the number of games released is greater than the amount of disposable money people have to spend, how can they expect everybody to pay the same price for games?
Lowering the price of games for college students, for example, was a great approach! It'd be cool if one day your student ID could get you a discount on games.
I hope the RIAA pays attention to this study. The harder it is to copy music, for example, the more demand there is for somebody to do it. Where there's demand, there's fame. Where there's fame, there's somebody saying "Yes, I'm willing to invest hours into acquiring fame." But if the RIAA were to open up and say "We've lowered the price of CD's, and you're free to copy them and do what you want with them!", they will likely find that going to the store to buy CD's is preferable to waiting to download them.
One idea the RIAA should consider is releasing individual songs on those 2" CD's. Price them low, and then allow people to make their own mixes. Reward the customer for buying these little CD's by letting them create their own single CD that has the songs they want on it. Don't punish the customer for having other desires with music. That's what the economics game is all about. You'll make profit if you give the customer incentive to buy your product. But if you take features away, you're punishing them, and customers don't like that.
I know I don't like being told I'm a thief because I have an MP3 player.
"Derp de derp."
Before I started college as a CS major (this is my second year now), I was into the warez scene. Since my parents would never pay for any software that I needed, piracy was the only way I could get the apps that I needed (or just wanted). It was hard to break old habits, but I could afford the software now. Of course since I used to get everything for free, I look for the best deals. I purchased an oem edition of WinXP Pro for $130, and I'm soon going to recieve VS .NET Pro for $85 (academic discount). I also paid for all the shareware I use. Additionally, I don't even download mp3s I don't own anymore! I just get cds from cheap-cds.com or used cds and encode them to mp3s. That goes for movies, too. You might call me silly for doing all this, but I feel the software writers deserve it.
Of course I can't afford another copy of Windows for my other computer, but I use Linux on it anyway. I use my Windows box for Windows development, and my Linux box for Linux development, so I am well-rounded when it comes to writing on different platforms.
Steve
I definately see the logic in the following.
:)
:)
1. Offer Software to students @ 4% of list. This translates to less than most text books, and less than a pack of CD's
2. Corner a software market and saturate it to an entire generation before they hit the job market. *ahem Unix, AT&T*
3. Reap rewards when they make future recommendations to employers.
By Allowing students to pay a ridiculously small amount for software initially, they do infact purchase it for full price later on with corporations money....something they can justify
Now, the report says a decline in piracy? Nah, just a slight increase in "legitimate for school" software purchases. They still pirate Music and games, but at least we get the revenue of what they can afford for some APPZ!
- 50% of all taglines are, or are not.
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
In 1996/7, they surveyed only 148 undergraduates, finding that about 78 of them (53 percent) admitted to pirating software. This is really too low of a number in too specialized a location (University of Florida students, who may or may not be like students at other universities) to be of much use, even as compared to data on University of Florida students nearly five years later. As if the low sample size and scant other mention about survey design didn't cast enough doubt about the accuracy of their conclusions, the surveyors admit that this number is inaccurate! From the article: " the researchers found 53 percent of the students admitted to pirating software - meaning the true number likely was considerably higher, Chiang said." The purpose of survey design is to create a survey that by its design reduces these built-in biases. If you know that people will lie to you if asked, it's good practice to double-check somehow by, say, auditing their computers for stolen software (you'd probably have to bribe them, and you'd definitely have to assure them that their names would remain anonymous, but still: if they were interested in good survey design, they needed to do better than this)
Even the most recent survey is pathetic. With 700 students surveyed, they now conclude that only 40% pirate (though did they ask the same questions this time? Were students more or less likely to lie this time? What? We need more information than this). But since the original survey was so small, with such a high margin of error, how can they then say with any degree of certitude that there has been a reduction in piracy? There really isn't a big difference between 50% piracy and 40% piracy if the margin of error is +-5% (which it must at least be).
So yeah, while their conclusion that people can be legitimately enticed to buy software (or music) by increasing quality and usefulness, take this survey with a chunk of NaCl.
sig my booty, check my website
Dude, it's 25% of 53%, not 25% of the total. It says the percentage fell by 25%.
and sometimes the companies, i reason, like it that way. Consider for example, Pro-Engineer, a computer aided design program. The student edition sells for $300, which isn't a bad price considering it's about $40K per seat in industry- but it's still more than any of us Mech-E students would like to give up.
So we band together, buy one copy, and burn copies enough for everyone. Incidentally, I read the license, and it was pretty liberal- the only thing i saw anywhere restricting copying was somewhere along these lines- "There is no limit on the number of computers this software may be installed on, however, the cd must be in the drive for the program to run"
That's it.
I reason they probably want as many students to use Pro-Engineer as possible- so they're accustomed to it- and good with it- so when they start working for engineering firms, the firms are more likely to pay $20 - 40K per seat for an actual license, to make their engineers more productive.
It's really marketing. Of course, I may just be rationalizing my sins, but I've bought my fair share of windows software- and helped myself to the yearly upgrades. Do I feel sorry? no, cause I'm a piss poor college student. I'll pay for proper licenses when I'm a financially secure engineer.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Putting out a product worth buying at a price worth paying.
The RIAA has neither of those; the software industry, in some cases, does.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
It could be less a decrease in piracy, and more a decrease in willingness to admit to piracy. I remember when I was in college, we used to talk openly about who had the newest 0-day site on the floor, no fear. Then one of the kids got busted for selling burned PS1 games. Suddenly no-one on the floor was pirating anymore.. no really officer.. we all gave it up and got jobs...
Seriously though, with the insanity of the RIAA and MPAA lately attacking their own customers and the fans of their lables, maybe more folk are just spooked about owning up to trading warez.
-GiH
Translation: the numbers didn't match our agenda or preconceptions, so we assumed they were lying.
Oh, but these students are telling the truth....
It's unfair to speculate without seeing the full reports, but heck, this is Slashdot, right? ;-)
Here's a speculation. Ask 100 students if they're pirated software. What's the answer?
Might I suggest that the yardstick of lower copying isn't fewer students saying that they do, but higher sales? There's vague mention of sales incentives, but no actual data on increased figures.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
What does this article have to do with the RIAA? What does anything have to do with the RIAA? Slashdot is starting to remind me of Walter's character in "The Big Lebowski" who would turn anything and everything into a Vietnam issue. Get a grip!!
There coulde be a number of things. For professional software, companies like MS realize that winning over students is important as they make future decisions/recommendations. So through things like StudentDev and MSDNAA they get software to students at nothing to next-to-nothing prices. They realize the exploitable profit margins are slim, a student lacks money and will make due with what they can get, i.e. research cheaper alternatives or do it themselves, and when they go out into the workforce, they can recommend these cheaper alternatives to their business.
Of course, a huge part of piracy is game software. And lately the trend is for games to be massively multiplayer, and have to connect to central servers controlled by companies to play with other strangers. Part of the connection negotiation now typically includes the CD-Key, and if people try to share keys or generate keys that may be duplicate, they get shut out. While it may be possible to *eventually* cheat enough to get a CD-Key that is both valid and not duplicated, it is much more trouble than just buying the damn thing.
MS realizes this is the only way to prevent piracy, so they have to maintain a CD-Key to hardware hash database and use it to lock people out. Sure, you can generate CD-Keys all day long for professional and probably slip through WPA eventually, but there is a good chance that down the road someone else will be screwed over by doing that, when they try to activate. The only way is to disable WPA, and that isn't uncommon, since WPA offers no features. This strategy works extremely well for games, as the online verification is tightly tied to an important component of the games functionality that people don't want to give up.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
and that is probably the real reason why people bootleg less (bootleg, not pirate please). If I can go out and buy a full copy of Dreamweaver 4 that won't die after a year for only $100, that's incentive for me to buy a copy when I get the money. I'm a CS major so the same goes for Visual Studio (I'm more of a Java/Python geek, but knowing how to code for another platform is never a bad thing!)
The one thing I don't think that major software developers have taken into consideration is that if they would drop their prices even lower for students, remove all copy restrictions and make them perform like the real deal then almost no one would bootleg. If a student could get a full copy of Office XP pro w/out product activation for =$100 at their university bookstore they'd have little reason to bootleg. In fact if I could get a full copy of Dreamweaver 4 (my favorite web page editor) for $50 I'd go out to the JMU bookstore and buy a copy right now. And I know I'm not alone.
Side note to any entertainment industry drones in the audience: if I could buy a music CD for $5 plus shipping and handling or a DVD for $7.5-$8 plus S&H from your company website I'd be buying every week. That's how you make money in this day and age.
Let's think about who is using the software.
In 96-97, it was compuer enthusiasts. People who really felt that having a computer was necessary, because it was a tool that they could use to get great things accomplished. These people (due to their interest) were more interested in running software that was beyond their means, and trying out new things, and were savvy enough to accomplish it. These students tended to be more oriented towards sciences, or digital arts.
Fast forward to today, enter the AOL generation where school registration, bill paying, and even homework assignments are being done online. Every average joe needs to have a computer at school (or at least feels this need), and has little comprehension as to what's really going on when they swap their mp3s on napster. Oh sure, there are still scientific users, but the majority of today's computing users study other topics, like english, philosophy, dance, etc.
- passion
The school that I attend has software deals with all of the major manufactors, Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, etc...
:-)
I can walk into any of the campus computer labs and for free I can pick up a copy of just about any microsoft product. Win98, 2000, xp, office xp, visual studio, etc... Also I can get a full working version of oracle for $5.
My University has worked out software deals with these companies. They pay one fee each year and then the University can make as many copies of the software as they'd like.
I think this is a great way to go, because it keeps us legal, keeps the software cheap, and allows us to get experience on software we wouldn't otherwise be able to afford.
Well, the last piece of software I bought was RedHat 7.2. Maybe college students are buying more software because there are more and more viable alternatives from companies worth supporting. I've never paid for Windows--I never wanted Microsoft to have my money. But now that I run Linux I send my money even when I don't have to.
I feel like most of the cash I send to RedHat comes back to me in the form of better product and a stronger Linux community. Most of what I send to MS goes to advertising and shareholders.
-Erik
When I was a student, I paid (IIRC) $350 for the academic-priced Photoshop. Yes, I paid. And yes, that's a great deal -- Photoshop really is worth twice that.
But $350 was a fucking lot of money for me back in the days when a $3.50 sandwich seemed expensive.
Yes, a lot of student pirates out there have money to burn -- but a great many don't. Many students are working one or two jobs to pay their way through school, and struggling to make rent. Sure, games are cheap. But the software that students need for their education really is expensive.
I'm not necessarily defending rampant piracy, but don't get so cocky about students' spending habits. I think if you saw "an honest analysis of their lifestyle", you'd find out that a lot of them are genuinely broke.
How about some realistic pricing?
Macromedia Authorware 6: $3,084
Adobe Photoshop 6: $700
Adobe Premiere 6: $620
Adobe Illustrator 10: $470
MS Office XP: $580
MS VS.NET Professional: $570
Macromedia Director 8.5: $1,199
Now, I don't support warezzzzzzzzzzzzing
programs.
But the average student, developer, even small business cannot afford this. Period. When the
average cost of development tools, operating systems, graphics programs, etc. are $500 - $3000 EACH, and the market cannot support that kind of pricing, then potential customers will find another way: either they'll find a less expensive program that has much of the same capability, buy it second-hand, or do without.
This is one reason I think the market for second-hand software is increasing, as much as the publishers would like to have it otherwise.
One thing these publishers should realize is that not every potential customer is a cell-phone-flipping, white shirt and tie "IT Executive" with steel-rimmed glasses and access to a six-figure expense budget.
While I can't speak for any other university, the majority of the required class software (especially the large packages from Microsoft and Adobe) at my university are available for free use to students in any one of many computer labs on campus.
I think I've only heard of a single class where the required class software wasn't already in the lab. And in that case, the professor had already negotiated a site license with the developer and was able to give free copies to any of his students.
When it comes right down to it, there are two reasons a student would buy the software. One reason is for the *convenience* of being able to work from home. And remember kids...convenience costs money. The other reason would be that the student is going to use the software beyond the duration and scope of the class. In that case, the student would've ended up buying the package anyway regardless of the class requirement.
my favorite argument against software piracy is that it raises the cost to the consumer.
I learned in Econ 101 that the vendor charges what the market will bear...We appear to be bearing it just fine, so I really doubt that it'll drop.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
What kind of creative math brings you to *that* conclusion?
Again, let's examine who most of the game players are? As a general rule, they're younger people... teens, pre-teens, and a number of "20-somethings". These are exactly the demographics that don't generally tend to earn high incomes.
Just how many $50 games do you expect these people to buy in a year? Of course many of them have hundreds of pirated games - but they just copied them because it cost them nothing but the free time and a miniscule amount for the blank media.
Game developers need to face the facts that they'll *never* achieve more than a fractional number of people in the game-buying demographic who will buy any given game title. If you could completely stamp out *all* piracy tomorrow, I'd wager that software sales wouldn't go up noticeably.
The most successful games made recently sold as they did primarily because they worked well for LAN gaming and Internet play. This is the quickest way to achieve improved sales. (If you're on a limited budget, and you're ready to buy 1 new title, you're more likely to give in to peer pressure of your friends saying "Dude, you need to buy 'Cool Networked Battle-Bots' so we can duke it out this weekend!", than to just pick out a single-player game, based on some promises listed on the box.)
I can think of many reasons why this could be.
The first, of course, is that the guy is right. Software companies have shown students the value of paying for software. One of the reasons there is a value is that except for the price of the OS, which has risen, the price of most software has fallen.
Another reason is that more computers come prebundled with Office. I remember getting my first computer, and there were very few of the middle tier companies that pushed you into buying Office. Now it is damned difficult not to get office when you get a gateway, for example. YMMV with other OEMs.
I'd like to know how the question was phrased. A lot of the students don't realize that what they are doing is considered theft. At least that's what they tell me at the school I work with when I help students. But their lawyers in training, so they don't think anything they do is illegal.
Just some thoughts.
I'm in Comp. Sci. at university, and really, the only software I need is a text editor to write my code, a compiler to compile my code, and an OS to run it on. All the software I need is available for free. I'm running Linux, and I can use vi, nedit, or emacs to write my code. C, C++, Java, you name the language, there's a free (as in open source and beer) compiler available for it.
Not all the courses I'll be taking involve programming, however. I will have to take humanities courses, and an English (technical writing) class. There are free word processing applications too.
I don't have any commercial software on my computer, and won't ever need any to get me through my educational career. If the employment I find is at all similar, I probably won't need commercial software for the rest of my life.
-kidlinux.
If my younger sister is more inclined to purchase Office XP than I was to copy the Office 97 CD from the IT dept, it's because she can get it for 10 bucks at the bookstore. I didn't have that option.
- Dan I.
I got to Wichita State University, www.wichita.edu . The bookstore offers NO DISCOUNTED SOFTWARE. All of the windows stuff, etc. is supra expensive! My friends go to IaState and they gave me the lowdown that MS is trying to offer them cheap software if and only if the campus switches over to MS software for 'everything'. And then, rumor has it (aka prolly just forget about this sentance) that they will only get subscription based products that the fee of $10 a year goes up to full price when they graduate.
I know WSU run Unix/Linux for all of their systems. All the laptops that they use for freshman initiaition/enrollment all run Red Hat Linux. Remote campuses PCs are owned buy whoever is working there at the time, one guy owns a mac, the other guy has a windows box, and the other is running FreeBSD -- all use an SSH connection over the WSU WAN to get to the student information.
If wichita state switched to MS, offered me cheap software and the rest of our campus but then had to dump their current well working setup - I doubt it would ever happen. Would it decrease piracy? Hell yes it would. IMHO I would pay $10 a pop for WinXp - but not $200. Same goes for Office, Dev apps, Photoshop, etc.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
I know why theres less piracy among collegiate students. Its because the new consoles are far harder to pirate games for! You have to get ahold of one of those ps2 mod chips somehow, if you have a ps2; otherwise you're screwed. I suspect it will jump back up as ps2 mod chips become easier to acquire, and become available for other consoles.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
it started in 1988 actually:
;-)
but any internet tech that goes back farther than the web is old enough
In a 1996-97 survey of 148 undergraduates at three public universities and one private liberal arts college, the researchers found 53 percent of the students admitted to pirating software - meaning the true number likely was considerably higher.
Before I went back to school, I graduated from the police reserve academy. During the academy, I faintly recall a phrase along the lines of "anything you say can and will be used against you . . . " For some reason, if someone called me up asking me if I have committed a federal crime, I don't think most college students would 'fess up. Then again, there are the jocks and the education/sociology/psychology majors, many of whom are still using "that there new Internet thing."
When I took "sadistics" class, I remember something about a "valid" sample. 148 surveyed out of how many millions of undergrad students? Even at that, better than half still admitted to warezing! And he admits that most of the ones who said they didn't probably lied. In sum, you have an invalid sample reaching an admitted unreliable conclusion that, in itself, contradicts the article's "conclusion." Typical of the "news" you see on ./
Still a third issue affecting the decline in piracy is price. Software is simply cheaper now than it was in 1996, reducing the incentive to steal, Chiang said.
Not true for the largest company in the industry. Make no mistake about it, prices for M$ products have gone up, not down, especially for their latest monstrosity, XP. When you're a monopoly, you can raise prices, even when the market is in the toilet. But I digress. Anyway, many of those academic licenses provide cheap or free (just got a fully working copy of Win2K) software with the proviso that it is to be deleted upon leaving school. And of course, every single student does so immediately after graduation. Riiiiight. That, to me, comes perilously close to the dictionary definition of "piracy", further invalidating the "conclusion" of the "study."
Probably it's because the majority of the students on college campuses right now that have computers can't figure out where to get warez from.
In '97 or so, there was a significantly smaller percentage of students with their own machines. There wasn't even PPP connection to the dialup pool at my college in '96, let alone ethernet in the dorms. Now there's ethernet drops everywhere, wireless APs in a couple of buildings, and 80%+ of the students brought computers with them to college.
It's a completely different demographic, so naturally it's a different result. Computer geeks who know where and how to get warez are a smaller percentage of the whole now.
--saint
I think Linux wants to replace OSS with ALSA, so to answer your question, no.
Got friends?
That simple economics makes sense? If your prices are too high then the demand from those with less disposable cash will be lower. And if you lower your prices, more people might buy your product. If you make your product available to those who are in the education product, then they will be educated in the use of YOUR product, thereby making your product more valuable to those that might need to utilize your product later.
The student that buys Autocad (or whatever) isn't buying it to use it commercially. He's buying it so he can learn to use it. This means, later when companies are making CAD software purchases, and more of their potential employees know Autocad, what do you think makes more sense? Use the software everyone already knows how to use, or pay for training to use software that nobody is familiar with.
For every copy a student purchases, they're purchasing a lifetime of corporate upgrades for your product. TRY to see the big picture here.
Even if they warez your software, the end result is the same. Despite what the BSA might be telling us, most corporations of significant size don't make company policy for widescale piracy. They're going to buy the needed software, and they'll be paying through the nose for it, all to the benifit of the software companies that provide it. But they won't be giving the money to YOU if everyone learns to use someone else's software.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
"I'm curious where your sister goes... because I want to transfer. Here at Tulane, I believe OfficeXP pro is $199 (maybe $149... I don't use it so I haven't looked lately). The educational discount is good... but never THAT good."
Bowling Green State University. I know Office 2K was only ten bucks to cover the cost of the CD. I presume (perhaps incorrectly) that XP is the same way. It was part of the deal that the University arranged with MS and other vendors. I know a few other schools at least that are like that.
- Dan I.
I would bet that the decline can be contributed in large part to the fact that a number of large universities now have site licenses with Microsoft and other software companys. Who would bother with warez when you can get the CDs and a legal license for $10.
The first survey in 96-97 was of 158 students in 3 different colleges by an economics major interested in piracy. Most of these students were probably friends and/or acquaintances.
The next survey was of 700 students at only 2 universities. This was probably a lot greater spectrum of students many of whom were in less technically oriented majors. ie: Much of the population doesn't know enough or care enough about computers to even begin pirating software.
Perhaps the piracy rates have changed in the past 4 years, perhaps not, but I don't think these surveys will tell us a thing one way or the other.
[GIMP] will surpass photoshop [in the prepress department]. just wait.
Not until the patents on prepress color processing run out. This could take several years, or even longer if the pharmaceutical industry manages to get some kind of Cherilyn LaPierre Patent Term Extension Act passed.
However, GIMP (or $100 Photoshop Elements if you must) would be ideal for college students doing web work or game work, as those activities don't require CMYK or any prepress color correction beyond simple Image > Colors > Levels... and tweaking the gamma.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The big problem with the RIAA is that they think they can act like an economic cartel and continue to do so.
Problem: the invisible hand of economics will put cartels out of business fairly quickly. By pricing CD's at US$18 per album-length disc, this results in a price point that encourages piracy, not discourage it. If the RIAA were smart and price their CD's at US$11 per album-length disc the incentive to pirate music drops to negligent levels.
Why either buy or pirate a commercial product when the Web is overflowing with GPL'd goodies?
Because a particular GPL'd app doesn't exist yet (such as vector animation authoring or CMYK separation), and a potential pirate or purchaser typically doesn't have the means to either 1) write the software herself or 2) wait for patents to expire so she can do 1).
I do not advocate piracy unless the copyright law in question is unjust or otherwise unconstitutional.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Can't beat a $5 OS.
There is a catch though, you can only purchase once (even if you lose the disk). Of course the solution to that is to either make copies, or get someone to buy for you.
-
Anyway, if you are a college student, when are you not on the network?
When you're living off campus.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
It would be more correct to say that it is difficult to find new warez on the web. If I'm looking for c64 warez or mame roms, I can find them on the web *tons* faster than I can on IRC. same story for pc warez that are more than 5 years old. (#oldwarez has stuff, but not always what i'm looking for) New stuff, on the other hand, is best found on irc or usenet. (sometimes morpheus, before the split)
Well folks, what we could also be seeing is a side effect of Micro$oft eliminating or assimilating almost all of the competition.
Remember Lotus, DBase, Wordperfect, just to name a few?
What consumer software company is still alive in the desktop PC market? Most the the remaining big players offer large multi $$$$ packages. Think Oracle, C/A, SAP, etc. - no real interest for your average student. Even the big PC game bubble has slipped in favor of the dedicated set top gaming box.
So in the old days your typical non-engineering student would pirate 4-5 relevant packages - now
they pirate zip. There's no need because the DELL box Daddy bought has Windows and Office on it - what else do you need?
When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras
i'm a cgi student at the moment, and i talk to industry professionals once in awhile, at siggraph and such. i have a split opinion on the matter of software piracy/software protection. several companies are offering student versions for free, or with discounts(softimage, photoshop).
one of the reasons why software piracy is still present is that these companies cripple their software so much that none of the content generated with it can be put onto a professional demo reel. maya recent strategy, the watermark on all renders, is an excellent work around this issue; it offers all features, plus an employer is likely to appreciate your integrity if its clear that you followed the rules.
in addition to student version's increased availability, software companies are funding more and more schools. softimage xsi has an excellent strategy: train more xsi drivers, market needs xsi, xsi sales increase. everybody wins.
i don't condone thievery, but i also don't condone highway robbery. much of the software seems is in a price range that a production studio may view as nominal, but as a student is much too expensive. i've heard the "it costs money to make these programs, you know" argument a thousand times, and frankly it doesn't cost $10,000(alias wavefront maya 4.0 unlimited) a package to make ANYTHING. these high-end graphics companies are creating software for a high-paying demographic. i believe that they are gradually learning the harmful effects of creating an elitist market.
software piracy probably won't ever go away. too many people like free beer. there's alot that can done to minimize the blow. creating a new student demographic and marketing a seperate package solely for them is a great way to do this.
I have no desire to reach nirvana.
In my freshman year, I was using a pirated copy of Office 97 on a pirated copy of Windows 98.
In my senior year, I was using Star Office 5.2 on Redhat 7.0.
I guess I'm not pirating software anymore, but I'm certainly not paying for it either!
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
..that studying economics make you a more selfish, dishonest person. There were some sociological tests which showed that students who completed economics courses were
less likely to return found money
more likely to freeload in the face of voluntary, secret contributions to a common goal.
more likely to defect in the prisoner's game
more likely to cheat on an exam if they were certain they would not be caught.
more likely to keep goods which were shipped to them by mistake, even if they knew the intended recipient's address
These figures are higher than a control group which studied another subject (astronomy) and also the figures show an increase of dishonesty for the same students before and after they completed the class. There are a few such studies, very amusing to read. I can't find a web reference, but I read this, with footnotes to the actual studies, in Doug Henwood's "Wall Street".
So this might also have skewed the study.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
Just a little plea for the proper use of the language. Piracy is a violent crime which still carries on in some parts of the world, often resulting in the death of its victims.
The practice being referred to here is "Illegal Copying" which never results in its victim's death.
Dunstan
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town