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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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
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."
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
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.
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 $200. Same goes for Office, Dev apps, Photoshop, etc.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
it started in 1988 actually:
;-)
but any internet tech that goes back farther than the web is old enough
In a 1996-97 survey of 148 undergraduates at three public universities and one private liberal arts college, the researchers found 53 percent of the students admitted to pirating software - meaning the true number likely was considerably higher.
Before I went back to school, I graduated from the police reserve academy. During the academy, I faintly recall a phrase along the lines of "anything you say can and will be used against you . . . " For some reason, if someone called me up asking me if I have committed a federal crime, I don't think most college students would 'fess up. Then again, there are the jocks and the education/sociology/psychology majors, many of whom are still using "that there new Internet thing."
When I took "sadistics" class, I remember something about a "valid" sample. 148 surveyed out of how many millions of undergrad students? Even at that, better than half still admitted to warezing! And he admits that most of the ones who said they didn't probably lied. In sum, you have an invalid sample reaching an admitted unreliable conclusion that, in itself, contradicts the article's "conclusion." Typical of the "news" you see on ./
Still a third issue affecting the decline in piracy is price. Software is simply cheaper now than it was in 1996, reducing the incentive to steal, Chiang said.
Not true for the largest company in the industry. Make no mistake about it, prices for M$ 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
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.
Anyway, if you are a college student, when are you not on the network?
When you're living off campus.
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of the Corporate States of America...