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Piracy Economics
Reader Anonymous Coward the younger sends in a link to an article up at Mises.org on the market functions of piracy. The argument is that turning a blind eye to piracy can be a cheap way for a company to give away samples — one of the most time-proven tactics in marketing. The article also suggests that pirates creating knock-offs might just be offering companies market feedback that they ought to attend to. (Microsoft, are you listening?)
Firrrrrrst pirate post!
Or the marker of a market that changes very quickly. And I think that currently the OS market is both.
Once a market is mature and stable, each major supplier within that market will have a product for all market segments. ( With cars, almost every manufacturer has a cheap sedan, a mid-size, an SUV, etc. Books come in limited signed editions, then the hardcover, then the quality size paperback, then the pocket paperback. )
There are some markets that are inherently unstable - like fashion - in which illegal knock-offs will always be practical. But in most mature makets the legitimate sellers fill every niche so well that the marginal costs of piracy are not worth it.
MS will get pirated until they have half a dozen or a dozen versions of their product. It would be practical for them to give away the low end version.
PS: This even applies to labor markets. In that case we call the piracy 'slavery', and the low end versions 'volunteers'.
...wasn't there some sort of memo that was leaked from Microsoft that basically said the only reason why Windows 3.1 became popular was because it was the most pirated software ever?
As it so happens, I used to sell a product which required a simple registration key to upgrade to the full version. (The free version never shut off, but it had fewer features.) After noticing a few Google searches for " crackz", I thought about seeding a few reg numbers to promote the product. Alas, I never got around to it, but it would have been a cool marketing trick.
That being said, I don't agree with piracy in general. Only that it can fullfill certain market needs. If it gets too out of hand, though, it can become a serious problem to the producer. (e.g. Napster) Of course, you don't get in that position unless you're failing to meet your customer's needs in the first place. (e.g. lack of legal MP3s)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Like, you know, "trials".
Gee, wouldn't it be a good idea if Microsoft/other software companies offered some of these "trials" so that people would be able to try out their product before buying it.
If ONLY there were some way to try out software before you bought it.. then there would be no need to pirate it, right?
Too bad software companies haven't thought of that..
Oh, wait..
I am the maverick of Slashdot
The MPAA/RIAA/MPA is well aware of this effect, which is why you aren't seeing them taking EVERYTHING down. But they fear - and probably correctly - that if piracy gets TOO popular it will destroy their businesses. Therefore they've been working hard to keep things limited. Good luck to them; they're gonna need it. ;-)
One bit of feedback that MS gets is that many people find the standard sticker price far too high.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Okay, this seems kinda bullshit to me... Why are we trying to prove that piracy, an illegal act, is somehow "good"?
Sure, there are certain issues to consider in terms of pricing and whatnot; some products cost way more than they should, or at least way more what some people can afford or are willing to pay, but there ARE always other completely legal options. If you don't want to pay for microsoft products, yell at microsoft, change your line of business, go open source, find cheaper alternatives, etc etc. Don't just sit there and pirate the software and then start spouting nonsense about how it's actually GOOD for the company because it's saving them the money for paying for free trials!
PIRACY IS ILLEGAL. Whether or not it's "helping" the company, IT'S ILLEGAL. STOP PRETENDING THAT YOU'RE DOING THEM A FAVOR.
The human power of rationalization is quite strong indeed; no one is stupid enough to think that piracy is legal, and obviously people feel bad about it, so they try and make up stories saying how they're actually helping people by doing it. Yes, there are definitely valid points that need to be examined, as I said before, but still, it's illegal, and everyone knows it, so stop trying to justify it.
ìì!
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Pirate Economics 101:
1. Plundering
2. Wenching
3. Yarr!
Microsoft just won't be able to compete against a developer and testing community as large as the FOSS community. We are everywhere. And I dare say we are having more fun than the Microsofties.
I've been a member of the Mises Institute for years. It's good to see Slashdot picking up on their articles.
The author's assertion was that the innovator produces the initial, high quality product. Then the pirates produce low quality knock-offs to fulfill a market segment the initial innovator isn't fulfilling. In the case of the record industry, I'm afraid they're well past the point of innovation and the production of high quality products (at least as far as pop music is concerned). In that case they're selling a low end version of their music, but still deluding themselves into thinking it's a quality product.
Either the quality has to go up or the price has to come down.
Apparently you don't have an MSDN subscription. It always has 180 day trials of their operating systems.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Ahoy there mateys! Shiver me timbers!
MS and other vendors would not have such a large market share without piracy. Piracy helps the large vendors keep their market share since anyone can install their software. Look at the copy protection systems in place for software ... they suck!!! They are not nearly as sophisticated as what the entertainment industry have developed, and it almost works.
... *Free* software. Copy protection will reduce the market share, which is more important than the lost revenue (since the customers don't want to pay at all, they want something for free). Piracy helps the customer being locked into a certain piece of software. So it's better for MS to give away copies under-the-table (piracy) than it is for the user to go to another vendor.
The main reason I don't see MS developing hardware copy protection soon is because they will loose up to 70% (wild guess plucked from the eather) of their users. Mostly in 3rd world countries. Where would they go?
Build in a copy protection into MS Windows and MS Office and the market share will reduce as the market goes to alternative software vendors (e.g. Openoffice, Staroffice, etc). This will fragment the market and make it more viable for businesses (the real source of income) to install Openoffice for their users, since their users are now using it at home. When this occurs you will see MS giving away their operating system and Office (a basic version) for free, but we are not yet at that stage.
Yes, some geeks will always break copy protection systems. But getting those warez is a little bit more difficult, doesn't look nice and shiney like your friends freshly burned copy of Vista and the user actually feels they are breaking the law.
Go Vegan!!!
I mean pirates do those things right? And I don't think they hand of free samples; unless those are samples of whoop-ass. Oh, we are talking about software pirates..... nevermind.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Original CNET Article..
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
lars ulrich sucks pirate wang!
They're using their grammar skills there.
...The effects on the environment are positive as opposed to having to throw away a lot of paper and plastic (the manual in 4 languages, warranties in 4 languages, the box it came in, the plastic-wrap for the 4 manuals, the plastic-wrap on the CD/DVD, ...) and eventually ending up with a bunch of retrostyle coasters.
When a law is unjust, people not only have a right to defy it, but a duty. Copyrights are unjust. They attack our culture, require the destruction of our privacy to be enforced, attack the free flow of information on the internet, and cause fragmentation to societies knowledge base of literature. The cost and effort to secure and enforce them is growing exponentially as society enters the information age.
The reason why anti-copyright behavior works so well in the free market is simply because copyrights are anti freedom and anti free market. http://davidlita.googlepages.com/copyrights/
Rationalizations? WTF! How about Copyrights are not "rights", theft and stealing is not copying, copyrights are monopolies and not "protection", and intellectual property is not "property". Hell, piracy isn't even piracy.
The article isn't trying to reduce the debate to some simplistic black-and-white issue of morality. The point is to show that software piracy, which is deeply entrenched in computer users across the world and which interested parties have had little success curtailing, is not 100% detrimental to those it targets--indeed, that the benefit may be far greater than we commonly (and moralistically) think, and in some cases (small/unknown devs) may outweigh the harm.
No one is advocating that software makers just bend over and take it, but the article DOES seem to suggest that blind rage against piracy is also harmful, and that it makes more economic sense to utilize and exploit something you can't get rid of.
If they could have stopped software piracy, they would have already. It's not going to happen any time soon, not when crackers are willing to go so far as to write new drivers and dongle emulators etc. Piracy is a fact in software. Smart software makers need to realize 1) that it is not a complete loss, 2) that they can exploit this mechanism themselves, too (offer tiered versions of product, free trials, free versions for noncommercial users, etc.) and 3) what message piracy is sending to them specifically (overpriced product, buggy, niche, restrictive copy protection etc. - any of the numerous reasons software gets cracked - and yes, sometimes it is just cracked because it can be, which is also a fact of software life).
The problem with software piracy isn't that it's wrong or that it's supposed to take revenues from companies. It's that companies don't want to embarrass themselves admitting that they LIKE being pirated.
It's being two-faced. And Microsoft's been doing it for years. (How else could they get a market so big?)
Slashdot, are you minimalists or libertarians? I'm a frequenter at Mises.org but I find it odd that you'd cherrypick and only cite them when market economics is useful to you.
Kaspersky helped get the name out to anyone who actually cares about WORKING anti-virus software. Granted, it is still not on the shelves besides Norton but any self respecting geek should know about Kaspersky by now.
This is one of those wierd "economics papers" from a far right "faith tank", where the solution to everything is an unregulated market. Notice that the paper is mostly vaguely relevant analogies. This is punditry, not research. It's from the Ludwig von Mises people, who are usually busy attacking the GPL as being "anti property rights".
For only $24, you can read the cited paper, "Software Piracy: Estimation of Lost Sales and the Impact on Software Diffusion", which might actually contain some useful info on the subject.
These are the "Educational Editions" of Office, XP and now Vista. You are supposed to show a valid student Id when you make the purchase, but shops are hectic, busy places and luckily most households have a couple of students lying around anyway. Conveniently some of these allow the software to be installed on multiple machines. So when Joe frowns that some Microsoft software is too expensive, he has a way around it. Microsoft get their money. Not as much as they would have liked, but they get it anyway.
Microsoft _have_ to know this goes on: If they wanted to they could make their educational program so draconian no one would use it, but households shrugging and installing Ubuntu on their machine is Microsoft's worst nightmare.
I always wondered why all of the 30-day software demos from Macromedia could be actually registered and made permanent; not only that, but they could be registered using an enterprise key which did not even phone home. AND the enterprise key could be located with a simple Google search which did not even require you to click through the results page to retrieve the key. The only conclusion I could draw (possibly wrong, I'll freely admit) was that Macromedia wanted people to do this so they could use the products at home for free, which would lead them to tell the boss at work that they had to have these tools to do their job. It just didn't make sense otherwise why they would make it so extremely easy to do this. (BTW, my copies have always been paid for...) So from my point of view, I think there may be some validity to the idea that there are software publishers that actually facilitate or encourage piracy.
I remember the time of Windows 95.
When you installed that operating system
there was no activation.
There was also no
serial number verification
since you could just enter
an empty number and the system would install.
That was still not corrected with Windows 98.
When it is so easy to install
an operating system,
it helps to get of market shares.
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
So let's rationalize that forcible rape is illegal, but "illegal != bad".
1) "Victims" of rape (like Lawrence Lessig) are not really "victims" at all. They were lucky to be seduced. The rape perpetrators were doing a favor for somebody otherwise too shy to ask for the favor. Hell, a lot of people are willing to PAY for sex, and the perpetrators did it for free.
2) The reality is that most people on this planet were not intending to be virgins for the rest of their life. Sex was going to occur for the "victims" anyways. Why wait until you are old, and shriveled, and unattractive?
3) Sex is a pleasurable experience, so the rape perpetrators were only trying to good deeds by imparting pleasurable experiences. On your birthday, would you want an unpleasurable gift or a pleasurable gift? Most people would honestly choose a pleasureable gift, so what's so bad about rape perpetrators giving out free pleasureable gifts trying to make other people happy?
4) You Americans are so arrogant in thinking that your view of "morality" is universal. In the Muslim world, there is the practice of tournantes, which is an enforcment of Islamic traditions through gang rape.
Thing that worries me about piracy is that people get used to it. Maybe MS can get market share through piracy. Maybe the RIAA can get viral marketing through piracy...
...but I know a guy who makes a living by creating drum and other sounds that people use to make electronic music. It's not a big operation, just him and one other guy. When you order a DVD he burns one by hand and mails it to you. Anyway, someone just uploaded ALL their products to Bittorrent, and he can see all these people posting about how cool they are and how they can't wait to download them. Needless to say he's pretty despondent.
And before people start with the 'information wants to be free' and 'find a new business model' - why should he? This is what he's good at, people want his stuff, why shouldn't they pay him for it? I mean, I have written free software... while earning a fat salary working on other stuff at a hitech corp. It's not so easy in other areas though.
</RANT>ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
I got your piracy economics right here, pal!
What?
I would hope that argument would be laid to rest by now. It just doesn't hold water. And yet it is repeated ad nauseam in some vain attempt to force us to believe it. I can safely say that I never will.
Where does this argument about copyrights not holding water, come from? Do you really think so many books, magazines, and movies would be created if there was no copyright? Can you offer proof Steven King would of written books if he couldn't get a copyright? Or George Lucas still would have made "Star Wars"? A long tyme ago I used to write. I was in the process of writing a book and some articles a magazine editor was interested in printing when an accident ended it, seeing as I was in a coma I couldn't write. However I never would of tried to write anything for publication if I knew I couldn't copyright it. Why would I spend so much tyme writing something if someone else could take what I wrote and make some money off it without me seeing a dime?
I've heard or read a number of tymes copyrights don't hold water, yet not once has anyone proven it to me.
FalconShould there be a Law?
is that giving away samples with limited lifetime will introduce your product while maintain the potential customer because the trial product will eventually have to be replaced. But digital copies do not have such limited lifetime. And since any number of copies can be made, you loose not only the client that got a trial copy, but potentially the entire customer base. And those who offer complete trial versions soon find them to be cracked.
The solution seems to be to offer limited versions that will show the client how great the product is, and how much greater it would be if they buy the official release. Say music in 96kbps mp3, it's ok on your iPod in the subway, but put it on your stereo and it sounds awful. Or the word processor with reduced dictionary, limited fonts and doesn't support large fonts - say above 18pt, or doesn't contain the print facility.
Crackers won't add missing data to a trial version of a song, and they won't add missing functionalities to a program.
i know how your friend feels. i'm a filmmaker, and am well aware of these types of problems. i'm not defending or condoning piracy, but one way you might cheer your friend up is to point out that the BT upload actually could help him-- if this helps him get exposure with REAL musicians (well, arrangers/composers/whatever the term for people who make electronica is).. that will benefit him. those downloading and using the samples off BT would never buy anyway-- they are 14 year old kids in their moms' basements, or in college dorms, whatever, just messing around. anyone making music and selling it and becoming profitable will likely be very concerned about legality (secured licensing rights to all their samples) and the trivial cost of buying his samples will be well worth it. so, even though he may see 28439293 people downloading it, tell him not to fear, he hasn't list 28433892 sales.. but rather he may GAIN some sales as those people bring exposure to his product.
They once claimed infringement as part of their market share figures. They were paying attention. If anyone would notice, it was only after OS/2 was finally and completely gone did they start cracking down on infringement and clamping down their OS products. I don't think it's a coincidence.
Microsoft has been playing this game since its inception, back when everyone else was introducing copy protection (in the 80's), MS didn't because they were well aware of the positive marketing impact of piracy.
This is a strategy that works well in growing markets.
The problem is that now that they have a 95+ lock on many markets and a truly stupdendously large revenue stream from them. The only way to grow revenue in those markets is by increasing the proportion of legal copies.
That this runs counter to the best strategy in their many growing markets is clear to everyone, but is simply one of those internal battles/contractions that every large company must live with.
They should have been broken up, then things would be clearer for the pieces.
I'm fairly sure I've seen keygenerators for some very niche bits of software. The kind you only end up with a couple of copies of per company, that kind of thing. I always wondered if that was a deliberate thing - the kind of customer who'd be using specialist bits of software is going to want the support for it, and so is going to buy licenses. However there's a major advantage to getting contractors and jobhunters 'experienced'. And they'll not pay for a 'legit' copy, but they might just grab a warez one and bodge it onto a home system.
You're quite right stating "not all piracy is good".
But people saying "information wants to be free" (and ought to) have a point, too.
On one hand, we surely won't get a world of legally "free information", unless society changes quite dramatically, into a state where the economic powers cannot successfully demand the restrictive legislation we're seeing these days.
On the other hand I always wonder why fighters for "free information" don't see the that your guy's mains of subsistence would need to be separated from his success in selling himself and his products, in order to make "free information" socially feasible. Why not let society pay him for his good work, which he then would distribute freely through the various channels? Which would be
The "free information" culture is not communism, as some already like to think, but it would indeed require a more communism-like society in order to not become actually harmful to more and more people earning their living from "information".
I am absolutely sick and tired of hearing people justify their *ILLEGAL* copying activities which achieve *ABSOLUTELY NOTHING* for me as an honest consumer of music and movies.
For starters, the movie and music companies are nasty and greedy multi-national conglomerates who would like nothing more than to force every consumer into a rental model for their media so that they have a nice, regular revenue stream for basically doing nothing. All that piracy does here is to give those same companies the justification they need to do what they were going to do anyway - it just makes it easier for them to do it because piracy turns it into a political agenda meaning that governments can get involved in pushing DRM and the like through.
Secondly, there is the issue of the poor quality of movies and music in general today. Far too much of the populace believes the hype and marketing lies surrounding the release of new albums and movies which invariably leads to them being duped and paying out good money for rubbish. Consequently, people are wary of paying money for CDs, DVDs and cinema tickets so they justify piracy as a defence against not being ripped off. This, of course, leads the media companies to churn out the same rubbish but with tighter restrictions for all users, whether they are honest or not.
The idea that CDs and DVDs are overpriced is utter drivel, quite frankly. If you spend time looking for good music and movies at good prices, you become a discerning consumer who rapidly becomes pretty satisified with the quality of the albums and films that you buy. If an album has just one or two good songs on it then you don't buy it, it's that simple - and you never buy a CD or DVD until you are sure that it is worth the money.
Unfortunately, too many consumers have become far too liberal with their "disposable income". They're constantly buying new stuff, maybe to impress peers, without thinking about it, they end up getting ripped off and to ofset their anger at being ripped off, they go off again and treat themselves to more overhyped rubbish...
The solution is simple - if it's not worth the money, don't buy it. If it has DRM on it, don't buy it.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Give away your product and more people will buy it. Hmmm, yeah. Lower taxes and you'll get more revenue. Right. Lower your price and you'll make more profit. Sure! Ask for a pay cut and your paycheck will be bigger. Soooh, get laid off, and your paycheck will rise to infinity! Naaahhhhh. Somebody's full-o-shit here. If you can't figure this one out, here's a hint. It's not Economics 101, its Economics 102. All the smart people switched majors already, only the idiots are left.
Dude - was that a poem?!
I'm just a wee little guy with a software business I run in my spare time (it makes bingo cards for teachers: http://www.bingocardcreator.com/ ). Can you run by, exactly, how I am stealing my income from writing (and marketing/supporting) that?
Its not like people were happily playing bingo for free one day and then, in Carmen Sandiego-like fashion, I just grabbed the entire concept and absconded with it, then hid clues to my location while confounding the player with a series of inept accomplices. There are at least 12 people/companies who sell or offer for free similar software. There is even an OSS bingo card maker. (Its buggy, unsupported, has a GUI which can induce heart attacks, can't actually print the cards it creates, bluescreens some windows systems on an install, and hasn't had a patch in years... but its Free!)
It wasn't like there was a copy of the 2,500 lines of source code sitting online for free since the 1980s until I sent my squads of lawyers to DMCA anybody who looked at them. No. I saw a hole in the market, because the existing software which creates bingo cards for teachers was a) too hard to use, b) too expensive, c) poorly marketed and d) in general, sucked, and the non-software ways to get bingo cards are overpriced (educational publisher) or time-consuming (making them by hand).
So I spent a week of my own time and fixed that. Had I not spent a week, that problem would remain unfixed, and the circa five thousand people who played a game of bingo this year that was printed from my software would be bingo-less. Two hundred teachers would be wasting their time writing bingo cards by hand when they could be educating kids. Little kiddies would be missing their Friday sight words fun activities (See aye tee CAT! I win bingoes!). For making the world just a wee bit better than it was before I sat down, yes, I think I deserve to get compensated. Or to take all the moral freighting out of that word "deserve": had there been no compensation in the offing, I would not have written this, and the world would be just a wee bit poorer than it is today.
So, again, how am I stealing from anyone?
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
There are a few companies that don't get pirated: The ones with good support. There are actually a few content product (read: software) that rarely if ever get pirated because what people seek in it is the support and the updates. And I'm not talking about the usual bananaware, but rather software that ships finished but gets more goodies as it matures. This may even cost a monthly fee, and still people come back and will pay, especially companies gladly do.
This is harder for music or movies, granted. But given that the "pirates" are usually relying on the 'net, here's an idea. It's even free this time: Give the legal customer additional value through the 'net.
What would come to mind is that with every CD you hand out login info for your site, where the legal user can download wallpapers, autographs or other knickknack from his star. Maybe give meet&greet sessions every few months, but of course only to those that legally bought the CD.
The cost for such additional value is minimal. What's the price of some hypestar, hmm? But the true fans of him will first of all love you for it, and (and that's maybe more interesting for you), they will buy his stuff to get access to the page, just to be "close" to their star.
You bet this would curb piracy.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Taking code from an OSS application and using it in your own closed-source application and selling it is definitely wrong, you're in breach of copyright unless you open source your code and comply with the GPL.
...wasn't there some sort of memo that was leaked from Microsoft that basically said the only reason why Windows 3.1 became popular was because it was the most pirated software ever? That doesn't make any sense. Apple, Commodore, and Amiga software were highly pirated as well. Piracy certainly didn't help them. Apple limped through the '90s. Commodore and Amiga both died.No, Microsoft became dominant because they were the operating system for the IBM PC, the computer used by business. Businesses back then were the same as today in that they tend to not pirate software. Microsoft became dominant because they were pirated less than the rest. Basically I agree with you but since this is
Feel free to add more
Oracle has been actively embracing this kind of viral marketing for a long time. They send you free developer's CDs, offer downloads of fully functional latest database and application server products without any restrictions. This is probably a major reason why they are so popular among developers. Their strategy works like this:
1. Offer database and development tools to developers free of charge
2. Wait until applications built by these developers get into production
3. Call and remind that database and development tools are not free
4. Profit!
Are you sure you wouldn't have just written it anyways, because you had nothing better to do?
So, again, how am I stealing from anyone? Simple. You have a piece of software, information wants to be free, and therefore you have a moral obligation to give that piece of software to me. How you obtained it is irrelevant. The same goes for all the software you keep in that big programmer brain of yours, too. Get to writing it, slave. I grow impatient.In Soviet Russia, Ron Paul is for Software patents!
Wait.
That made no sense.
And this isn't an article about Ron Paul for President..
But, hey.. This comment is likely just about as relevant to the article, as the rest of them.
Maybe more so.
I'm not Ron Paul, and I don't approve this message.
Layout explanation :
"Scientists Offer New Way to Read Online Text"
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
Free Software Has No Pirates Mod me up, Scotty.
I mean, it works like gcc, but it still has no GUI resource editor built in, which limits it to nothing more than a glorified
text editor / compiler. Eclispe can out do it.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Why does it need to be perjorative? That only helps if you mean to lean toward keeping it illegal.
You seem to be under the impression that I used the bingo-cards (OSS project) codebase. I didn't (wrote my program in Java from scratch with two legitimately licensed pieces of code in it, bingo-cards is in C). When I said "fixed the hole" I meant the hole in the market, not the holes in bingo-cards... somebody else can fix those. I suspect they're too boring to actually motivate anyone to do it without a profit incentive, which is why they've existed for years.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Microsoft is giving away their latest dev tools because THEY DO NOT MAKE REAL EXECUTABLES!
Everything MS compilers make now is P-code. You have very little control over how your program actually runs. Dot-NET handles it all for you.
For most of my apps, this is okay. I still have Cygwin-C compiler and Linux when I need a big hammer. I even still have VC++ 6.0 and can code in assembly.
Granted, 98% the P-code that runs on Dot-NET is just fine, so I use the free stuff too.
But be aware, MS is giving away these new compilers for a REASON. They do not want programmers to be able to create fast, non-MS managed code.
That is just wrong.
you have all the rights you need. You can say what license you want to use.
Of course, if you didn't develop the code, then you have only the rights that the developer of that code allowed you.
The GPL tries to ensure that the other developers (ALL OF THEM, not just you) gain the largest ammount of freedom possible. If one developer could take your code and hide improvements from you, that has taken your right to the code and derivatives (since copyright is also about derivative products: if you don't like control of derivative products, change copyright law). It has also taken that right from ALL OTHER DEVELOPERS. So one person gained a lot of freedom, the rest of the planet lost some. Isn't it "more freedom" when that one developer has not the right to remove downstream rights to derivatives and let the rest of the world access it?
So, in short, the developer (of the code: funny how you and your type never add that bit in, just let someone assume it is there) has all the rights they want to their code. If they coose GPL licensing that may not be 100% what they want, but then again, they may not want to pay a lawyer to make up a watertight license that is 100% what they want.
NOTE: it may not be possible to have a license 100% what the developer wants. If they want indentured serviture, that cannot be in the license. If they want rights to unrelated development, they cannot craft such a license. If they want to ban the code becoming public domain, they cannot do so. So they are already "not free" by your requirements as stated, so 100% compatability to the author wishes cannot be a mandatory requirement.
Not only can you pirate a Civic, you can pirate a whole company:r ate.html?ex=1304136000&en=d01abb1690a4e540&ei=5088 &partner=rssnyt&emc=rss/
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/01/technology/01pi
The basic copyright system is just, regardless of whether or not it's "anti-freedom" or "anti-free market". It's just because it is so uncontroversial that it was written into the constitution. You don't like it? Go pass an amendment. Until then, abide by it.
Having said that, it's not hard to build a case against the extensions that have been passed in the recent past. Content producers, if their stuff is any good at all, don't need 70+ years to receive a fair compensation for their efforts.
The problem is that pirates lose their moral high ground by pirating brand new content. Some people paid hundreds of millions of dollars to produce that new movie (even if its plot sucks) and we agreed 200+ years ago that those people had the right control its distribution for a limited period of time.
PS: This even applies to labor markets. In that case we call the piracy 'slavery', and the low end versions 'volunteers'.
Dude, your homepage says you're in San Diego! How can you possibly say this with a straight face?
Everybody knows who the pirates are in the labor market...
... how many of us old farts actually 'bought' a copy of MS DOS?
"Cogito Eggo Sum, I think therefore I am a waffle" -- Anonymous
Hard to believe the summariser is not aware of the thoughts of Chairman Gates:
(article).
This has been accurately compared to "drug dealer tactics" by an astute Brazilian (another market at great risk of Microslop exploitation).
Ya know what? Fuck you Gates and the demon you rode in on.
you had me at #!
Laws exist to serve people, not the other way around. When a law is unjust, it is the system that has the obligation to change for the people, not the people whom have an obligation to take a beating till the system gets around to working. People are the ends in themselves, not systems.
It is the Movie industry that looses the moral high-ground because they allocate millions of dollars worth of capital on the assumption that they have a God given right to control how people copy and distribute. This mis-allocation of capital would never happen in a free market that centered around information services rather than information controls. With out distribution monopolies, the movie industry would likely be much more independent with more variety.
And that agreement is invalid because they had no right to negotiate away my right to copy to begin with. That's my right to negotiate, not the mobs, not the Congresses. They agreed that slavery was a property right too, that should teach you a lot about the nature of unjust rights and the appropriate ways to deal with them.
Ah, the "free advertising" bullshit. Pirates use arguments like this to justify stealing EVERYBODY'S stuff, not just the ones who have turned a blind eye on purpose (essentially giving permission).
This is just another excuse people use to make sure someone doesn't get paid today by downloading their work. Along with scapegoating the RIAA and other tactics ("obsolete market," "cultural revolution," "other people will pay them by going to their concerts," etc.).
"Sufferin' succotash."
"and you're not hurting anyone"
Words can be very subjective. "Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me." That's not true. One of the core liberties many people shout about is free speech. Is calling someone a paedophile in public exercising free speech or is it slander?
I believe endemic copying would cause a tangible hardship to people: it would remove their ability to choose to earn a living through the production of creative works. OK, so we're not talking about endemic copying here, but copying will slowly but surely become endemic. People are slowly rationalising away each and every form of copying. For example in the video world:
First people taped things off the TV and kept them forever.
Justification: "I paid for it with my TV subscription"
No, you paid to see it once with your TV subscription. If I buy a cinema ticket, do I get to go back in as many times as I like?
Then people copied taped material:
No, seriously, you paid to see it once! And even more: you paid to see it at a particular time. If I buy a budget cinema ticket for a Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon, do I get to watch it on Saturday night during peak time? No! I've paid less precisely because the restrictions mean it has less utility -- and less utility means less value! And as for the better quality... what you paid for was a TV broadcast of TV broadcast quality!
With a single copy, it can only be played in one location at any time, with two, you could be watching it simultaneously in two opposite corners of the world -- you just can't do that with borrowing. Again it's a question of value and utility. Copying increases the utility, so increases the value. John paid a price based on lower utility.
Urr... you mean you're copying it because you don't want to see it? Thought not.
"It's not worth as much as they're asking."
Well wait for it to end up in the special offers section -- or come on TV.
"But that'll take ages!"
You get what you pay for.
More critically, if you copy every film that you "kind of" want to watch, but think is over-priced, you;re breaking the nearest mechanism we have to a buyer-determined price: full-price at first release with clearance/sale discounts increasing in magnitude and frequency with the life of the film; TV releases starting on pay-per-view, moving to premium "movies" channels then moving to the cheaper mainstream channels.
Ok, it's not very nice that they bring the film out in Country X six months before it comes out in Country Y (where X and Y speak the same language), but it's their work, so it's their choice!
And will there be any demand to release it if everyone copies it?
It just snowballs. One exception, one special case, one justication just leads to another and another and another. These exceptions act as proof to an individual that music/video/software has no value and slowly but surely copying becomes the norm, not the exception.
Furthermore, the extreme notion of the outright removal of copyright could cause real emotional hurt. Imagine you wrote a protest song about some weapons your government had bought: We don't want them. Send them back! We don't need them. Send them back! . Now imagine your local white supremacist organisation took your chorus on as a racist chant. You become involuntarily associated with someone else's abhorrent agenda. Not fair.
There is no decision that you, me or anyone else can make that is entirely ind
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Apps like Cubase and Photoshop gained their dominance through piracy. It really doesn't matter what your moral stance is, when you're talking marketing history. It is completely irrelevant. It's a social and market fact, anyone who was around and aware during this growth era saw it, and if the companies themselves are/were smart enough to know/detect it, then it is up to them to craft their piracy policies. As someone said above, several companies had a pragmatic "two-faced" stance on piracy, and with good reason. Companies who ignore unconventional forms of viral marketing on the basis of morality, when the only thing that morality governs is their own leniency, are not very smart or open-minded companies. Again, morals are quite dandy, your mother is surely proud of you. But the issue of piracy as a marketing tactic should not be blurred by self-applied morality, if the goal is purely market share.
The fact that piracy might be "good" for a business is irrelevant in terms of patents and copyrights. In a free society and economy, every business has the right to decide how to function, even including making bad decisions. The same goes for property, whether material or intellectual.
I'm a libertarian, so I certainly sympathize with your ideals, but it sounds your an anarcho-capitalist, so I disagree with some of your more extreme positions. You talk about how "the system has an obligation to change for the people", well how do you expect that to happen? Whether you like it or not, you're not founding a new nation, so you don't get to start with a clean slate. Our predecessors have passed many, many laws. Luckily, they also gave us procedures for changing laws that we don't like. No one is talking about a "God-given right" to control copies and distributions. It is a right that was granted by society to content producers under the assumption that it would ultimately be beneficial to society in the long run. If we ever decide that our predecessors were wrong, we can pass an amendment and take it back. And I'm sorry, but the slavery analogy is not valid. Your right to basic liberty is inalienable; that's why slavery was unjust. Your right to copy and distribute any particular item is alienable. Your pissed that a super-majority already transferred your rights under certain conditions and I understand your frustration, because I also disagree with many decisions our predecessors have made, but that doesn't make those decisions unjust. There is an important difference between a law being "detrimental" and "unjust".
Does anyone else find the idea of a wikipedia article about the tyranny of the majority somewhat ironic?
Yeap, it is ironic.
FalconShould there be a Law?
When we need to perform specific functions at work and need a piece of software to perform that function (rather than internally developed)I will often just grab a ton of similar pieces of software at home and fully test the abilities of all of them (often trial versions are too crippled to test- when I can I use trial software). When one hits what we need I make a recommendation and we can end up outfitting our entire department with legal licenses. So granted- the software company pirated loses the cost of one license to me, but because I have done this I end up generating 20-150 license sales in one pop (sometimes this goes into the $10-100k in sales). Seems like a good trade off for the software manufacurer if you ask me.
More likely than not, amazon will want to be on in this gig - if I remember correctly, they have already remarked that a significant portion of their sales is from small-volume titles that normal book stores wouldn't dream of carrying because they're mainly limited by physical restrictions such as shelf space and storage space.
Yea, that's The Long Tail. I believe Apple's iTunes store is the same.
If the book is actually a good one, then the free PDF is probably the best marketing tool you could hope for.
Of course to create the pdf you still need a computer, then to offer it for downloading you need net access, and hosting if the isp doesn't offer space. Many people still don't have that. And some don't want it. I've known some who only use a computer if they have to, my mom uses them at work but she hates them. I realize that if she were to sit down and try a PC or Mac at home she may change though.
Falcon
ps. I wanted to thank you for your comments, ideas, and feedback. Unlike others in this thread you've given me something to think about and how copyrights may not be needed.Should there be a Law?
First of all, Photoshop is definitely worth every penny it costs. At a minimum, it replaces several hundred dollars worth of lens filters, and that is only about 2% of its functionality. It is an amazing suite, and Adobe has zero difficulty selling licenses.
Secondly, Adobe realizes that a home user is unlikely to spend whatever CS3 costs on software, which is why they have another product called Photoshop Elements. The OEM version can be had for about $30, and full retail is about $60.
Elements does about 90% of what a home user would ever want from Photoshop, but it is unsuitable for pros for a variety of reasons.
This is very clever on Adobe's part. If not for Elements, someone like me would either have to go with one of their competitors or pirate Photoshop. Instead, they made the choice easy for me. I picked up Elements OEM for $30, and now I'm sucked into the Photoshop way of doing things. If I ever "get serious" and start looking for an upgrade, do you think I'm ever going to consider anything other than Photoshop? Ha.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock