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App Store Developer Speaks Out On Game Piracy
theguythatwrotethisthing sends in a write-up of his experience releasing an iPhone game on the App Store. By using a software flag to distinguish between high scores submitted by pirates and those submitted by users who purchased the game, the piracy rate is estimated at around 80% during the first week after release. Since a common excuse for piracy is "try before you buy," they also looked at the related iPhone DeviceIDs to see how many of the pirates went on to purchase the game. None of them did.
So here we have the argument that the developer isn't actually losing any sales. All of those pirated copies don't actually hurt him. And this might be nearly true, financially. Piracy in this scenario, is more a crime of insult. The pirate is telling the developer who put a good deal of who he is as a person and an engineer into a product that the developer and the product are worth nothing; and that the pirate can do as he pleases with the intellectual property of the developer.
I'm seeing a connection, if only by analogy, with the ferocity by which GPL advocates protect GPL'd software from being used for profit by closed source projects.
Let's say I used a GPL'd library in a closed sourced iPhone app. First, I would be unlikely to be caught, because I mean, who would notice? Second, I wouldn't actually be harming whomever wrote it. I'm not taking bread from their table; and unlike the case of the pirated iPhone app, the original author is very explicitly not wanting to profit from the code. But if informed of my treachery, I'm pretty sure that the author and the entire GPL community would be furious that I was using their property for commercial gain (without releasing the source). I have not done this, and would not do this, but it would be really convenient for me if the ATSC liba52 decoder was under BSD or MIT license.
In both cases, the major wrong would appear to be getting value from someone else's labor without respecting or acknowledging that person and his right to dispose of his work product as he sees fit. But I would think the case of the app piracy is worse because the enabling of piracy is causing non-zero harm to the developer in addition to the insult.
And I would think that anyone who thinks piracy is OK or a victimless crime should also promote the MIT licenses over the GPL.
If something's expensive, why do you feel the right to watch it/listen to it/use it, when others have to pay? Isn't it more ethical to just not pay?
What gives you the moral right to restrict him from listening to/using it. It isn't like there is some law of scarcity involved that makes it necessary to restrict access? No, in fact, the only reason to restrict access to him is so that you can feel superior. You own the lebensraum. Not him. And you just have to make that point.
As for convenience, that's no excuse at all, it's just laziness.
Laziness is the greatest virtue of all. It is mother of all inventions. Those who claim that it is a sin, are those who want to strive backwards into the middle ages.
As for pirating professional software for 'fun' or 'non-commercial' use, if you don't need all the features, then why not get a more limited program that does what you want and actually compensate a developer?
Why get a more limited program when the more advanced programs costs the exact same amount to copy. It is just wasting the resources of society to go with an inferior product. Of course, wasting resources is exactly what you are promoting. Efficiency is not in your vocabulary.
You don't have a right to use something for free just because you think it's too expensive.
You have the right to claim that, but it doesn't make it true.
I resent paying money for something that can be gotten for free...
I also resent paying money for something that can't be gotten for free, but i will shop around for the lowest price.
Everything else is coming down in price, hardware becomes cheaper and faster all the time, services keep getting cheaper because they are outsourced to asia... Yet there will be a floor to these things at which they can't get any cheaper... The floor for software is 0.
Also consider, software is basically a set of instructions for doing something with a piece of hardware... Such knowledge is often shared freely, people show their friends how to do things, software is just a more complicated set of instructions.
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So you argument is basically that development time costs nothing?
No it isn't. It is your argument that my argument is that.
Just because the process of copying the media is the same whether you're copying a game that's taken 2 years of paid development time to create and a load of CVs you've written yourself doesn't mean the value is the same.
And what does developer time has to do with copying a finished copy. Nothing, since a finished work can't be undone.
Now, if you want to claim that free market economy doesn't work well with an information economy, go ahead. I won't stop you, since you would be right. But claiming that forbidding copying is a good way to turn information into a well functioning free market economy is just plain bullshit.
The problem with your attitude is that without someone ultimately paying for the development time
Well, yes, if they want something new produced. But we are talking about stuff that already has been produced here. Don't confuse the issue.
what you steal wouldn't exist in the first place
Well, if it didn't exist I would copy it. So don't go talking about hypotheticals here. Oh, and your use of the word steal decreases my interest in any of your arguments by 90%, due to simple loss in credibility.
but if it weren't so easy to copy stuff what would you do? Go without?
I would consume far less. In fact, I did consume far less before the Internet became popular.
Piracy is so fashionable because it's so easy, intangible and apparently victimless
Piracy is fashionable because it is the right thing to do. It is easy and cheap and defines the progress that humanity has made in information technology. If it was easy and cheap to replicate physical material, I would be doing that also.
if your only option to get something was to pay for it or do without you'd either find a way to scrape together the cash if you needed it bad enough, or you wouldn't.
Of course. And that cash would represent the resources needed to produce what I wanted. Which is just another argument for piracy. The resources needed to produce a copy of an existing piece of information is near zero. I don't want new information, because that is costly.
Why do pro-piracy people always has to bring this "IT'S NOT STEALING, IT'S COPYING!!!" in to everything.
I wasn't talking about stealing, I was talking about offering demo or trial before you buy the full version. And the point was that you dont have demos in restaurants either, you only get to test it by purchasing.
The game is called "Read the Fucking Article, You Moron." It's more fun than it sounds, actually.