Slashdot Mirror
Companies Coming Around To Piracy's Upside?
traycerb writes "The Economist has an article detailing how numerous companies are finding piracy's silver lining: 'Statistics about the traffic on file-sharing networks can be useful. They can reveal, for example, the countries where a new singer is most popular, even before his album has been released there. Having initially been reluctant to be seen exploiting this information, record companies are now making use of it. This month BigChampagne, the main music-data analyser, is extending its monitoring service to pirated video, too.' The kicker is Microsoft's tacit endorsement of Windows piracy in developing markets, namely China. The big man himself, Bill Gates, says it best in an interview with Fortune last year: 'It's easier for our software to compete with Linux when there's piracy than when there's not.'"
...if such a mindset would only dispell the myth that a every pirated copy equates to one lost sale.
I keep telling people that when they pirate Windows or Office they're not taking a poke at Microsoft, they're taking a poke at potential competitors for Microsoft. This isn't news, this is not something Bill Gates just realized, Microsoft USED this when Office was getting established, in all kinds of ways, even allowing business users to use the same licensed software at home, rather than using something else because they couldn't get a second license through their office.
This is the reason that Slashdotters who support Linux shouldn't be fixing every Windows PC around and giving others pirated software. So many people think they're sticking it to the man by using pirated proprietary software, but it only increases the user base of it.
Microsoft is happy to let the Chinese pirate everything, because it locks them in and increases their user base. Without it, alternatives like Red Flag Linux might actually have a few users.
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
The writer of TFA still has head up his butt, qualifying the presented "silver linings" stories with lots of good old-fashioned "unauthorized copying is theft" crap and "imaginary property is a god-given right" style assumptions.
Caveat Utilitor
If 1 million people use your product legally, good for you.
If 100 million people use your product illegally, good for you.
Market share is POWER.
Its that simple.
How people get their power is a technicality.
But people like power. They always have.
The government will allow you to do
"bad" things, as long as the gov't gets their
cut. Smoking, casinos, private healthcare which
only "healthy" people can get coverage, etc.
Popularity has a downside. Everyone wants it,
and they don't care about the laws of man.
Music, video, drugs, etc. Its all the same.
People want it. People get it.
...and I'll help people with whatever they have and want to run. Linux, Windows, whatever, so long as they are willing to pay the service rate.
The one thing I will NOT do is install or provide any assistance or other service with pirated software or any illegal activities. Non-negotiable, it ain't happening.
Not just MS Office.
Back when it was WinNT vs NetWare, Microsoft was happy to allow "piracy" because Novell servers automatically checked licensing and would shut down if you tried to use the same license twice.
"first one is always free" sounds like good marketing to me.
This is the reason that Slashdotters who support Linux shouldn't be fixing every Windows PC around and giving others pirated software. So many people think they're sticking it to the man by using pirated proprietary software, but it only increases the user base of it. Microsoft is happy to let the Chinese pirate everything, because it locks them in and increases their user base. Without it, alternatives like Red Flag Linux might actually have a few users.
The majority of people donâ(TM)t care whether a program is proprietary or open source because the majority of people will never modify their operating system. A free launch is a free launch regardless of packaging and I have no doubt that most of the people who have Linux computers use it because it is free, just as most of the people who use Windows use it because it came with their system. The only difference between the two people is that one person knew how to install an operating system and/or build a computer and the other guy didnâ(TM)t.
That article reads like a young adult suddenly realizing how the world really works, but still stuck in the idea that everything they learned before must still be true.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Larger software companies like Microsoft and Adobe have always known the benefits of piracy, the most prominent of which is the market dominance they achieve when people become dependent on the "Microsoft Way" or the "Adobe Way" after using their pirated software all their lives. They just can't come out and explicitly endorse the practice because it is a) actually illegal, despite what certain people may say, and b) it would obstruct theirs and the BSA's efforts against the "big offenders" like large companies, who they can milk for cash later on through licensing/settlements.
That said, Gates didn't make an endorsement of piracy, he merely stated a fact: nobody in a developing country is going to spend the equivalent of a month's pay on a piece of software, so if MS isn't going to get money from the deal anyway they can at least get market share for the time being before it's gobbled up by, say, Linux. Then, once those developing countries eventually move over to the "developed" column they'll not only be dependent on the Microsoft Way but actually able to afford paying for legit licenses and services from Microsoft.
For example MS, note that it was only with XP that they even tried to introduce some anti-piracy, and it is decidedly half-assed and low priority.
Good software companies have managed to have it both ways since the 80's and benefit from piracy and cracks spreading their best efforts, while making lots of noises about how bad it is so that those with money will be inclined to purchase it rather than take the risk. To my knowledge they only prosecute big black market dealers who are probably interfering with their attempts to set up profitable distribution channels.
I am sure they have numerical models in Redmond telling them exactly how much piracy vs. prosecution will maximize their profit in the various markets.
Only idiots like the RIAA are stupid enough to actually sue and thus alienate their basis directly and for all time.
Nice to see this modded up.
You have a great idea. Let's all tell our friends they are idiots for using Windows and refuse to help them recover their $800 appliance from problems incurred by what their kids downloaded or from an email from their boss. Instead of just performing a simple action of making the computer like it was yesterday and leaving the user with THEIR opinion of windows we'll do this instead.
Then we'll fawn over them and solve every one of their problems when we leave them with they switch to linux because the only other option is to go to geek squad and spend $200 in software and labor getting it fixed.
You actually think they'll be thanking you or something?
...that every single time they use the argument that a pirated* copy does not equate a lost sale because they wouldn't have purchased it anyway - that they are primarily defending cheap fuck douchebags who simply want the game without having to pay for it**.
* piss off with your definition of 'pirates' being yo-ho-ho bottle of rum-on-a-ship -only. If you don't like that definition, timetravel to the past and prevent it from being added to the dictionaries. http://www.answers.com/pirates&r=67
** unless they're pirating the game for purposes of:
- not having to go through insane-o copy protection BS
- wanting to try the game before buying it***, seeing as the developer/distributor decided against releasing a demo
If you are one of the above: congratulations, you are officially part of a minority.
*** 'try before you buy' does not mean 'play the entire game through, play multiplayer online for several months, then decide you didn't like it that much and therefore won't be buying it, not even from the bargain bin where it's available for $9.99 now.'
If you already know you would never pay for the game anyway, then don't be an ass in downloading it anyway. Go find a game that you do like enough to pay for. Or, you know, pick up a free**** game. TAGAP is pretty good fun for a platformer, and it's free!
**** as in beer. Though what beer is free?
"It's easier for our software to compete with Linux when there's piracy than when there's not."
It wont's save you from losing though. Da phuture iz open source!
When it comes to individuals pirating their software (their OS, Office, Visual Studio), Microsoft actually would prefer those people pirate their software instead of using alternatives. This is also the same reason they offer Windows, Office and Visual Studio at student discounts for well, students.
Microsoft would rather have young programmers pirate their Visual Studio and get used to developing in that environment rather than let's say Ubuntu + gvim + gcc. Also there is a chance that the average Joe who's on a pirated WxP copy will go out to BestBuy and buy Vista before calling in the slashdot cousin to upgrade his OS - which the average Joe wouldn't do if he was running Fedora. (This paragraph is directly from a Manager at Microsoft's Active Directory Services team - everything except for the /. cousin).
As someone else here has noted, MS only cares about piracy when businesses do it or large scale piracy happens (someone's making money from it). I get my genuine copies of Microsoft Software from their employee store (buddies of mine work at MS) at really cheap prices (35$ for XP Pro, Windows games at 10-20$, Xbox 360 games at 15-25$) but I know it costs next to nothing for MS to print out those copies - even 25$ == profit.
Most people won't care if their car uses gasoline or solar energy because most people won't be fixing their engines when they break. Heh. Lots of people *do* care. If its Free Software, then many painful headaches go away in terms of licenses paid for but whose activation is problematic. (Wolfram, Microsoft, and Paradigm, you three should be listening.) The straw man fallacy that one needs to be a programmer to care about Free Software is getting old.
"You actually think they'll be thanking you or something?" Yes, the ones who learn do voice thanks in time. And they are way more appreciative than if you'd merely helped them limp along. Giving a fish vs. a fishing pole...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
i bet many of those who were p2ping for the last 5-10 years have thought that. its SO evident that you'd be stupid not to see. the popularity of a game gives out how well it is doing for example. direct correlation. release a game one day, and if you monitor how widely game is pirated you'll know that how well your game is going to sell. and this happens half a day after release, even before, and doesnt cost a dime. to get such sales forecast reports in real life you have to spend huge money. with piracy, its free.
you can see how well a game/software/movie/series is doing long time after release, and therefore understand that what kind of product approach is being successful on the market too.
Read radical news here
Piracy been around for ages and some ways it helped the software company to be widely known by everybody. Cheap advertising so to speak.
Once the user base reaches critical mass they can roll out the "security fix" to start validating the licenses. This is what happened with Windows XP awhile back when they released SP1. Alot of people gotten away with it using leaked enterprise license keys until they apply the SP1 which disabled their pirated copy.
Now Microsoft changed it again with SP3 for WinXP to allow installs without license keys for 30 days. This is a blessing for me as I do alot of software testing and hate using keys over and over again when the PC is going to be reformatted. Only gripe is if I try to perform software updates manually it'll ask for the license key.
Realistically Microsoft should make their desktop OS free and charge for their apps such as Office. If that happens it'll effectively kill off Linux desktops for good.
Isn't that illegal?
If relationships with family and friends are more important to you than Linux you should really take a look at your priorities. Everyone you know will eventually die, but free software lives forever.
Nine Inch Nails gave out their new album (The Slip) for free and used the geographic data from the torrent downloads to plan their tour schedule.
I don't install Windows products and especially not pirated software because of how much of a pain it is to support, not because I want to push a certain agenda.
For pirated software you would have to make sure any update mechanism is shut off, and that causes security headaches if the updates patch holes. The user will also want to install a new version if they come across it and notice they have an older version, which will probably not work with the crack used to cause the program to activate/validate/whatever. Who knows if the program will expire at a later date and maybe the crack doesn't know about it. Windows/Office activation is another annoyance. Maybe not for a Windows user, but primarily as a Linux user I don't need to keep up with that because I'm not bothered by the issues caused by activation. I don't really need the hassle of keeping up with the latest news on cracks.
As for just Windows support in general, that too is a headache. It's easier to figure out how to lock down a desktop on Linux, just my opinion. You have to look in many different places and do a lot of theorizing and testing to set up a good scheme in Windows. It's easier to get a usable desktop in Linux, you just apt-get a bunch of stuff. You can make a script to grab and configure a good usable desktop. In Windows, you have to hunt down driver packages, various codec packages, and find out what programs you need to replace and which ones you have to add to fill in the functionality holes.
Also I don't know if this has changed, but in Windows if you stick a hard drive image on some computer, it's not guaranteed to work well. If you ever replaced a motherboard and you used Windows, you know just how badly Windows is at detecting hardware from scratch on an old install like that. Even silly things like oh, this computer has more hard drives so now the DVD-RW is on F: and now I have to change a bunch of program defaults to reflect that. With Linux, you can configure a great usable image and then slap it on any computer.
If someone has Windows for a good reason, I leave it. But if someone ever asks me to "get software" for them, I will just give them a great open source version suited for them. Since OSS parts can be re-used and since there are multiple programs for any given use, I can find one that's advanced enough or dumbed down enough depending on the target user.
I think not only is the original post a little off topic, but also is a little off target.
Twinstiq, game news
... when someone asked:
"Did you correct for how the varying standards of each country's anti-piracy measures affected the numbers?"
"That correction... was redundant"
Pre-2000, most MS software could be activated with the universal 1234 1234567 key - I mean, did they have President Skroob on the board or something?
They weren't alone either, Macromedia's entire business model was predicated on piracy. Dreamweaver became the de facto HTML editor, Flash become popular quickly and Fireworks bit out a chunk of Photoshops then-market all because the majority of candidates for web jobs had experience in them, because they were easily to get your mitts on.
Just as home taping never killed music, mass copied Blob CDs filled with software didn't kill software companies, neither will pirating ever kill software companies or music labels. The sooner everyone got around to figuring that out, the quicker everyone can act like adults about it.
..not that anyone will read it. :D
Record companies will be replaced by advertising agencies, to whom piracy is a benefit through and through.
When you hear enya, think tampax. Once this association has been made, it's powerful.
As old record companies die, advertising agencies can step in to fill the vacuum in the media space, and the machine currently working to sell music itself will be reborn, to sell detergent and cereal.
Look at the past 10 years of the music industry, and the trend is clear.
Some will bemoan the seeming death of the art, but really the musicians who were in it for the art never had much help from the big record companies anyway.
They will live and die by the fans as they always have.
At first I wondered why people would buy an album they've downloaded from the Internet, then I thought about all of the songs I used to hear on the radio before the album was in stores & it made more sense.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
nope, the mindset of the posters is seriously broken. Apparently its wrong for people who work hard to create popular content to expect people who use it to pay for it, but its just fine to sit on your ass and consume the entire worlds output of creative works for fuck all.
Something to do with 'sticking it to the man'.
Exactly who the man is, is never mentioned, but presumably its 'everyone else'.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
So true. I'm not a programmer. I use free software everyday.
Why? For years, I was able to keep up with the security issues in Windows. Then one day, when Service 3 for XP came out, I saw the advisories saying to wait until certain bugs had been cleared up.
So on the one hand, I needed to install a new update, but on the other hand, I couldn't until the rebooting issues had been clarified. During the time I waited, we got hit by a virus and the computer froze up.
Luckily, I had a Linux workstation running already and I was not stopped in what I was doing. But when I got around to re-installing Windows, it took me 4 hours to just do the base. Then the applications, and then the updates for the applications.
Never again. Now when I help people to fix their computers, I offer Linux for free and charge market rates for Windows for a re-install.
And when I see that they have pirated software installed, I never offer support for it unless they pay the license for it.
I've read enough about the bsuiness practices of MS to know that I don't want to support their products. Unfortunately, they're everywhere I want to work. So I have to find open minded employers who want to make a change and are willing to work with me to do it.
Arrrrghhhh!
Scott
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
Yeah there may be an opportunity for someone to establish a tech news/forum site for people who haven't bought into the Slashdot line (virulently pro file-sharing/anti-copyright except when it comes to the GPL, or any copyright that Microsoft might be in danger of violating).
In other words, a discussion site for grownups.
never buy again!! pirate is good for company "selling"!! don't buy!! ever again!! not good for company if buy!! yaya!! make perfect sense!! drink about it!!
For example MS, note that it was only with XP that they even tried to introduce some anti-piracy, and it is decidedly half-assed and low priority.
I don't know about 3.1, but 98 at least did include anti-piracy. It was called a Product Key.
In fact, the new anti-piracy features in XP caused a bit of a shitstorm (read: storm in a teacup), wherein many people refused to upgrade. Things like having to call Microsoft just because you bought a new hard drive -- that's ludicrous, when you really think about it. It's just that copy protection has gotten so bad that we accept these things as a matter of course, now.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
with the internet, piracy is as easy as logging on. No "user group" floppy swaps (and boatloads of xerox copies of manuals), just a few mouse clicks from the comfort of your basement stool. Anyone who thinks this is good is loose a whole lot of marbles, but then like a crack addict and "her rocks", that's the norm.
Exactly who the man is, is never mentioned, but presumably its 'everyone else'.
So true :(
I'm in a country where the general attitude is that everything should be had for free. I know people well into adulthood who think pirating everything they use and play is the way it should be, and laugh when it's pointed out who they're really stealing from.
I don't care if they're using a cracked Photoshop (I actually *prefer* cheaper or free, simpler tools myself) for home use, but I've seen more than a fair share of companies (beyond the startup phase, too) where there isn't one valid license for any product they use, except MAYBE their computers. If the computers are old enough, they've pirated a version of Vista.
People download games from the usual places "just to try", and say they're going to buy it if they like it. Then they play them all the way through and never spend a penny.
I like the low prices of typical indie games and software, and have lots of impulse purchases as a result. I guess Stardock picked the right name for their new downloader :)
I have a product in mind, which is targetted at groups of people, and I'm thinking I should just give away the core product with its basic features, and leave a lot of functionality on a server with a small monthly fee. It's certainly working for MMO companies, and they even charge for the client software.
I'd make it so that to use even the minimal features, they'd have to go through my server, thereby needing to buy it through me. The entry fee would be low. Pirates would get absolutely no functionality. The online features would be fairly simplistic without a subscription, and buying one basically rents space and other goodies.
It's possible to beat them if you add something extra that can't be stolen or copied. Not DRM, but actual services.
I tend not to copy or pirate movies or music, but today I was in a local shop and saw a PC copy of "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" in the bargain basement. It was 25 Polish Zloty - or about $12.99 USD. I used to love that game ages ago on the PS/2 and I thought: hey, buy it! Nostalgia (is it that old already????)
Well, here's the snag - like a lot of geeks I am a Linux user... and I wondered, does it work with wine? (I have no Windows). So, I'll have to get a pirate copy, try it out. If it works, I'll get myself a copy and rekindle my stoned student days. If it doesn't work, where's the loss? OK, not that many people trying to get windows games to run in Wine... or are there? But either way, their sale depends on that pirate software. I am not going to shell out 25zl on a coaster.
Just a question for any software developers out there - does your pay go down when people use the software you develop without paying for it? Are your developer friends forced out of work? Do the companies you work for go out of business? Can you say for certain that the people "stealing" your software would have bought it anyway? If you answered NO to these four questions, then where is the problem? You get paid, your company does, everyone stays in work, and many people who couldn't afford the software (and sometimes it is well out of the price range of people who earn $200-$300 a week - ableton live for instance costs about $650)get to try it out. As those people get richer, they are 0.25% more likely to buy the software for every 1% increase in wealth, so by letting people - who would normally just overlook the software as a luxury - use it, you have more probability they will buy yours in the future. oh... and a study has found no correlation between music piracy and a drop in sales. This is one of several to do so. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070212-8813.html
'Statistics about the traffic on file-sharing networks can be useful. They can reveal, for example, the countries where a new singer is most popular, even before his album has been released there.
This misses the fundamental point of the whole thing - the statistics don't reveal the countries where a new singer is most popular, they reveal the countries where people have heard of a new singer. Just because I've downloaded something doesn't mean it's any good, it means I was curious about it, and I'm more likely to take the chance with a download because it isn't costing me anything - if I don't like it, I can delete it or, more likely with the kind of storage space I've got on my computer, just won't listen to it again. Media penetration != popularity.
--Triv
Yes, but the mindset of many copyright advocates is broken too. Copyright laws create a business model for the creation of intellectual works. The "social contract" of copyright isn't "We deliver you a business model, you deliver us products to buy" it is "We deliver you a business model, you deliver works to the public domain".
Copyright is artificial, but that isn't an argument against it. Clothes, houses, medicine etc are all artificial and we like having those. It seems to me that the problem is that copyright advocates are arguing copyright as a natural right rather than a social contract and many people (1) don't believe that (2) don't care much about other peoples rights anyway. But to argue effectively for copyright as a social contract (which it is) will require that people see a benefit to themselves of that contract. "If you provide copyright protection, I will produce a movie which will pass into the public domain in time for your great great great grandchildren" doesn't cut it. "If you provide copyright protection, I will produce a movie which will pass into the public domain for you in 14 years" is much more likely to get people to cooperate.
I'm definitely in favour of copyright protection, but there needs to be reform so that people can see a practical benefit to themselves of supporting the system.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
You're not very bright, are you. When you can't make a case for your side, you just flame out.
Who says you are entitled to the creative output of Shakespeare? The Wheel inventors got NOTHING. Dr Johnson still owns copyright (if it had been extended) on the dictionary you use.
BT had a patent on hyperlinks that you in the US decided didn't actually apply (despite you wanting to get paid for it).
You stole the works of Charles Dickens.
You stole the land you live on.
Thief.
When it comes to music and movies, living in South Africa, we can wait month and up to a year for some things to land in our country.
Why must i wait for 7 months for heros sesson 2, for exaple, to arrive if every ones talking about straight after it comes out. If they were keen on selling it to me be fore it was old news, i would pay...
I refuse to help my friends with their computers. They're going to let it be trashed, they can clean up the mess. I also won't go over my friends house on a regular basis to clean their shower and toilet. I'm a friend, not their personal slave.
I switched from FreeBSD to Mac on my desktop... at the cost of a significant cut in performance (and several hundred dollars in cash). I didn't need a new computer, my Mac mini was less powerful than the Wintel box I already had, and I already had legal Windows 2000.
The main cost of free UNIX (and it doesn't matter whether we're talking about Linux, FreeBSD, or Solaris here) is that when you want to get software you can almost always get what you need on Windows (not always, there are some areas where Windows falls short, but 99% of the time you can just google it and it's there), and you can do the same thing for Mac nearly as often (heck, I tend to have better luck finding good Mac versions than Windows versions of what I want, buy I'm not a gamer). Finding the Mac or Windows software you want isn't rocket science. But for Linux... well, even for me it can be tough. And I'm supposed to BE a "rocket scientist" in this area.
Like I said, I switched from FreeBSD to Mac on the desktop because I was tired of dual booting. Oh, I didn't have to all THAT often, not even every day, but now and then I was still having to reboot to Windows... maybe a couple of times a week, never as often as daily but never less than three or four times a month. Servers? UNIX has Windows totally beat. But on the desktop? It's like a persistent hangnail.
So when my daughter trashed her Wintel box for the third time in 18 months, I reinstalled Windows for her... and bought her a Mac. She insisted on keeping the Windows box and I got her a KVM switch... but after a month she hadn't switched back to Windows even once. I'm sure she couldn't have managed that if I'd installed Linux for her. I know from my own experience that I couldn't.
That's where the big deal is.
That's why "free" Windows is cheaper than free Linux. Because you need Windows as well.
That's why expensive Mac OS X is cheaper than free Linux. Because you don't need Windows as well.
It's nothing to do with drivers. It's all about applications. Because applications, after all, are why people buy computers, and Linux doesn't have 'em. If you want to be able to give everyone a Linux CD you need to find a way over that hump. I don't know what it is. I am pretty sure that cloning the windows environment on Linux so that you can run Windows software isn't it... if Windows wasn't "free" it would be, but without that I reckon the lesson of OS/2 is still sound.
So I don't have answers. I know that distro repositories are part of the solution, but they won't get the commercial[1] software developers to release software for Linux. Getting more libraries on Linux to use LGPL instead of GPL would help. Maybe there's an argument here that switching to Linux is a sign that you're less likely to be a pirate... because you didn't take the soft route of pirating "free" Windows?
[1] Don't give me a hard time about the terminology, you know what I mean, and I know you know what I mean, and you know that just because I'm not using a politically correct derogatory term doesn't change that.
in this context, word piracy means more like distribution, and promotion and statistics through distribution.
Read radical news here
So that means its okay for me and everyone else to pirate?
No, it means that the people who justify their piracy by claiming they're "sticking it" to Microsoft and Adobe are wrong.
It means the people who piracy hurts most aren't the market leaders, it's the competitors of those market leaders.
Piracy is not just illegal, it undermines the market forces that would otherwise work against the monopolists.
Yeah, but what about all those ALIENS in OUTER SPACE???
Since we're broadcasting all this crap to every blessed quadrant of the universe, how come the fucktard RIAA & MPAA aren't going after THEM !?!?!
Filing anonymous John Doe suits might actually work then.... ... and where are they going to find a lawyer anyway?