I don't buy the price thing. People charge what the market will bear and that means as much as possible
That's only true if there is a monopoly. Again, the priates are part of the reason that there are software monopolies (because they do not provide an incentive to lower prices)
Was a little tired for the last statement. What I mean is that in order for piracy (using their definition not mine) to be prevented, we must all live with a lot of restrictions on what our hardware can do and that is just not ok with me.
I agree. Piracy isn't a good thing, but enforcement measures are usually intrusive and annoying. Of course, less piracy means less intrusive enforcement measures, which is another reason that piracy is a bad thing.
Part of what I defend here also is sort of unique to this industry. The way things are structured right now, it is possible for someone to have very little, get connected to the net and learn their way into something that they enjoy and that does them some good. This feature of the net and the computing industry in general is a good thing and should be continued.
Well, it's a good feature, but I'm not sure what you mean by "should be continued".
I have no clue what to do about the warez kiddies who make things a mess.
I don't think a whole lot can or should be done about "warez kiddies". They aren't going to buy anything anyway. A lot of these people are genuinely short of money, and would pay for it if they could. Adolescent males usually enter a phase where they have various criminal tendencies (eg shoplifting, getting into fist-fights, etc) and for the most part, they grow out of it.
As far as students are concerned, software companies typically address the problem by making cheaper student editions available. These do tend to fall within a student budget.
I do know however that putting out pieces like the one that started this discussion is an insult and not part of any real solution to the problem.
I think peoples attitudes are the real problem, so propoganda addresses this, and it's a relatively unintrusive measure. As far as anti-piracy measures are concerned, I find propoganda to be among the least irritating and intrusive.
If a programmer doesn't want to use some
over-rated paradigm being pushed by the supposed intellientsia,
he should be considered bad. Is that what you mean?
Design patterns is a very general term. To say you "don't use patterns" is like saying you "don't use algorithms". Programmers use algorithms, and design patterns, whether they know it or not. A programmer who lacks the discipline to study basic programming concepts is indeed lazy, ignorant, and a bad programmer.
Perhaps you
meant: if a programmer finds his current methodology satisfactory
... then he's basically implementing his own version of various design patterns. However, to refuse to study the way others solve similar problems is just laziness, and there's no excuse for it.
No, these are legimate users using a product they purchased in a way that you consider unacceptable.
This is a common myth. It doesn't make sense to say that they "purchased a product", because there is only one instance of the product, namely the piece of software. When you buy a visual C++ boxed set, you are buying the right to use that product, not the program itself.
As for restrictions on copyrighted work, most copyrighted work does not allow the owner to make several copies for other people to use. Software licenses for the most part allow someone to install onto more than one computer if there is only one user, or install it on one computer for several users. For what it's worth, I can agree that one should be able to install software on more than one computer for their own use.
I am not defending piracy because there has been nothing stolen. Running a copy of a program somewhere to learn harms nobody. You have not demonstrated harm except in the case of blatent abuse, so I have little to defend.
The people who are harmed for the most part are those honest enough to pay, because fewer paying customers always means higher prices. The other harm caused is that it distorts the market -- companies who offer software at reasonable prices lose mindshare, because pirates will pirate the most expensive software they can. A secondary result is that these companies may be driven out of business. Ultimately, it's honest buyers who are hurt by piracy.
The unfortunate thing here is that solutions to this that would actually work would impose many unreasonable solutions that place a harsh burden on everyone for little or no gain on the software companies side.
I can't parse the above. As for using software for the sole purpose of learning, most companies make software available for free (eg Oracle) or cheap (eg Microsoft) for people who just want to learn how to use the software. For example, Microsoft sold VC++ with NT for $100 (Student version). I picked up visual studio for less than $200. I don't think these are unreasonable prices for what you are getting. Oracle of course can be downloaded.
I think if a company wants to shoot themselves in the foot by preventing or making difficult learning their software, let them do it. Let the buyers vote with their feet.
I have spent a large portion of my life learning to understand and apply technology. This involves software as well as hardware and other things.
So have I. And I did so without resorting to criminal behaviour.
ou could say that I did not pay for that knowledge and you would be right in the strict sense, but the more important question is did I steal. I don't think so. Nothing is missing!
As I've said in other threads, I consider it to be more analogous to riding a train without paying than it is to stealing. I use the word "freeloading" and not "theft", I think this is more correct. The fact that it is not stealing does not make it right. There are a lot of things that are wrong, but are not stealing.
One thing I notice about your post is that you do
little to defend piracy, instead you attack the software industry, and it's supposed to follow from the fact that the software industry is "bad" that piracy is "OK". That's not a logical argument, so while I could refute the premise, I don't need to -- because your conclusion does not follow from it.
You yourself just refered to software as a product. You are right, it is a product, not a service as some people claim.
Software blurs the distinction between "product" and "service". If your argument relies heavily upon the fact that you think software is a product, that in itself should tell you that your argument is pure sophistry.
You are calling it a product, and using this to construct an argument based on flawed analogies with other "products". The big difference between a software product, and most other products, is that there's only one instance of a given software product. So most analogies you make about other products are not valid.
My dad used to make custom cabinets. That requires planning, designing, building, etc. Kind of like........... SOFTWARE
That's a bogus analogy. The problem with the analogy is that actually making the cabinet takes a lot of time and expertise.
If I make a copy for someone of a program I bought, the company who made the product can suck my nuts because I am paying for the PRODUCT,
Wrong, wrong, wrong! This is precisely what is wrong with you calling it a "product" -- you draw flawed analogies between the software (of which there is one instance) and other products (of which there are several) The problem is that you are not "paying for the product", the "product" is the software. You are not "paying for it", you are paying to use it. If your friend wishes to use it, he needs to pay to use it too. If he doesn't pay, he's freeloading -- what he's doing is analogous to riding a train and not paying for it, and you are acting as his accomplice.
In many cases the cheaper alternatives are lacking essential features or quality or simply do not exist. Example: Windows 2000 Server. If I'm a college student who wants to learn Windows server administration skills, there is no cheaper alternative that will work me. I have to get my hands on the real deal, and I'll do so any way possible short of theft.
But here you presume that you "need" Windows server administration skills. That's like me saying that I "need" a Porsche 911. Perhaps you should review your assumptions about what you "need".
In many cases the cheaper alternatives are lacking essential features or quality or simply do not exist.
But there are many cases where the cheaper alternatives exist and have the required features, and yet piracy results. Conclusion: the absence of cheaper alternatives is not the reason why people priate software
The fact that piracy is not theft is an important one to understand.
I agree that it's technically not "theft". However, that it's not theft does not make it right. I prefer to call it "freeloading", and consider it morally analogous to using a train without buying a ticket.
The problem is that around 90% of the money you spend on a retail box of software pays for intellectual development, not manufacturing costs. That's not the fault of pirates--that's the fault of someone attempting to build a business over top of an unworkable model.
Not true. That's not a bug, it's a feature! The user wants to buy intellectual development, they don't want to pay for packaging and distribution (see the slashdot rants on how the "middle man" is taking all the money on music sales)
But invention isn't a natural business model at all: it only pays off if someone constructs artificial controls over its manufacturing and distribution.
Invention is without a doubt a very valuable thing. Societies that value invention do well, societies that do not value it do poorly.
My argument for piracy is the same argument I have against beggars: it's not my duty to support someone else's bad choices.
No, it's not. If you don't like a piece of software, you don't have to use it. If someone has a vastly superior business model, buy it from them instead.
And to those who fear invention and innovation would dry up without financial incentive, just remember that invention is the natural response to an itch called need.
Again, there is a lot of historical evidence that
says that rewarding productive citizens works, and punishing them does not. You can spout your neo-marxism all you like, and it won't alter the fact that communism collapsed and capitalism is still here. Funny thing isn't it, that countries that value invention tend to be more prone to it.
No person I know feels that games are worth the money.
Your freeloading buddies are not a representative sample of the population.
Of course pirates go after market leading products! Who wants to spend hours cracking or downloading a given program when a better one is available?
They don't go after "the better one". They go after "the one everyone else is using". And they perpetuate a situation where (a) the market leader has a monopoly on mindshare, and (b) overprices their product.
OK, the oldest canard in the "copyright is property" playbook is the "car canard".
Your entire post is based on this straw-man argument. What it boils down to is a concession that these are not legitimate users, but people practicing a form of infringement you consider to be acceptable.
I'm amazed by Photoshop's price.
At 500 dollars (?) it's selling enough to make Adobe a lot of money, but everyone I know who has a computer has an illegal copy of Photoshop!
Now, cut the price to 10% of what it is now, and you're SURE to sell over 100 times more copies!
I'm amazed by these clueless slashdot zombies who are full of great advice for companies, usually along the lines of "give everything away free (or cheap) and you'll make more money". The problem is that you're assuming that all the pirates will start buying if the software is cheaper, to a great enough extent to offset the money lost by giving it away cheaper to the paying customers. If the pirates really were willing to buy cheap software, they'd all be using PSP or similar instead of priating Adobe. Adobe don't stand to gain by pandering to freeloaders.
What the Windows XP authorization scheme attacks is legimate users putting the same copy on multiple machines in the same household
"Legitimate users" do not use a single user license for several installs.
And now their honesty is being punished by this scheme to force them to buy multiple copies of the same operating system.
You don't have to buy "multiple copies of the same operating system". You can copy it onto CD several times and put the CDs in a closet if you like. What they're paying for are multiple licenses. It costs more to install it on 100 computers than it does to install it on one computer. It's quite simple really.
So, I hear these arguments from the BSA saying that piracy increases software costs. I think that it's a lie. Simple economics says that they will charge what the market will bear. The market bears this price, and they will not decrease the cost just because all the software in russia suddenly becomes legit.
That's assuming that there's a monopoly in every part of the software market. Without that assumption, a competitor could come along and eat the market leaders lunch, provided that they were able to put better software on the market at a lower price.
for not being able to follow his simple point. If "depriving" somebody of "potential revenue" is theft
I wouldn't call it "theft", I prefer the term "freeloading". Basically, the software is available on a model where users share costs, so someone who doesn't pay their share is a freeloader.
It's got nothing to do with "depriving" someone of "potential revenue", and a lot to do with the fact that they are undermining the market by what amounts to a theft of services.
On the other hand, I did NOT call up Metallica and ask them to make a new record for me. If I hired them to come play at my birthday party and didn't pay them, only _then_ have I "stolen" their time.
Do you believe that people should pay for their train rides ?
and that words like ``piracy'' and ``intellectual property'' are nothing but propaganda terms used by people who hold a particular point of view about copying.
But the anti-piracy people do not have a monopoly
on emotionally charged language. We also hear things like software and music being referred to as information, large scale copyright infringement called fair use, or even sharing. I believe the latter (which makes me feel nauseous) is an offshoot from the technically correct "file-sharing" term, though it seems to be used to suggest that the "sharer" is being generous, when in fact they're being a parasite.
If they are stealing your time, then how much time do you equate to your PRODUCT? If you equate more than 0 time to each one then at some point the sales of your PRODUCT will total the time you put into it.
That simply does not follow. His product is more valuable if more people use it. The time does not change as a function of the number of users, the going price of that time does.
Your argument is flawed, you can't steal time from something that has been done in the past. Once that moment has passed it is gone.
No, it's not flawed. He's offered a service. If someone uses the service without paying for it, then they are a cheat. The fact that he's done the necessary work up-front does not change the fact that freeloading is freeloading.
Again flawed argument, so in this model if one person pays for your PRODUCT then you have been paid for services rendered and don't require payment from anyone else.
But this is not how software works. The problem is that none of the users by themselves can afford to buy several hours of a developers time. So the price of the service is shared (now there's a word the napster guys love... ) by the users. A user that wants to "share" the software but doesn't want to "share" the cost of development is a cheat.
The reason I bolded PRODUCT was because that is what you are supplying, not a service.
Your argument is pure sophistry. A common tactic
the pro-freeloaders use is to confuse the media with the software itself. They are not the same thing. You don't have "sales of a product", you have several people shareing payment for the product, which is the software itself. This is a less tangible thing than the actual media on which
it is distributed. But the fact that it is less tangible doesn't make it less valuable, which is why people are prepared to pay for it (as opposed to the slashdot herd, who just chant "free free free").
Slashdotters talk about how people don't "understand the information age". Actually, it's the slashdotters who don't understand that high tech economy doesn't mean "free free free".
Of course that's what students believe! What student--what consumer--believes it's "right" to ask $600.00 for Adobe Photoshop, $400.00 for Office, or $1000.00 for Windows 2000 Server?
If the consumer does not believe it's right, then they should use a cheaper competing product (they do exist) instead. Otherwise, they are simoultaneously destroying the competitors mindshare, and keeping the market leaders prices high (less paying users means higher prices)
If Photoshop were only $20.00, then nearly everyone would purchase a legitimate copy
But would they ? People tend to feel that games are "worth it" and they can "afford it", but games are still pirated. I don't buy your argument, and no sensible business person buys it either.
It would be more enlightening to see validated statistics regarding the least pirated software.
Pirates tend to exclusively go after the market leader. This is one of the more damning aspects of their conduct -- they are re-enforcing the status quo. They are not on some moral crusade at all -- they are simply ruthless amoralists, who have about the same moral stature as Microsoft.
A BMW is a tangible thing. When one is stolen it is gone. Software can be copied infinatly with no extra cost.
We've already heard this argument several times. The problem is that the current system uses a model whereby users of software share the costs of production. If more people cheat the system, either the honest users pay more, the software author goes out of business, or both. No matter how you slice it, someone is trying to get a free ride.
Toying around with some software to learn something about it, or the field of interest it is written for is not stealing.
Maybe not, but I don't think it's for you to decide that you should be allowed to use commercial software for free. If the author wants to make it available on a try-before-you-buy basis, good for them. If they don't want to do this, you should vote with your feet and spend your money elsewhere.
Paying for lame software is what started this whole thing anyway so in the end that does not hold much water either.
This argument of yours does not hold water. Most software is either available on a try-before-you-buy basis, or is so ubiquitous that the author doesn't feel that it's necessary to
have a try before you buy deal.
All of us who learn about software recommend it to employers...
The structure of this is obvious. If things are slanted toward the established corporations it is much harder for new upstarts to have a chance at the top.
Actually, it's the pirates who slant things "against the little guy", because they "learn about software" writted by the market leader, which they pirate because they can't afford it, instead of buying much more reasonably priced software from a competitor. Far from standing in the little guys corner, the pirates by and large simply preserve the status quo. Pirates help keep Microsoft on top. They are not decent honorable people, they are basically parasites.
How come nobody writes articles about these sort of things.
Because most of the "pro-piracy" arguments are written by slashdot whiners who can't even put together well-formed sentences.
You have X bandwidth and L users. You determine that > X/L bandwidth is excessive. If you keep increasing L without increasing X, eventually even 1kb/sec will be "excessive". The problem is that you're greedy plain in simple. You want thousands of users and don't want to support them.
Arbitrary claims about "greed" and "costing too much" are common on slashdot, but rarely substantiated. If "being greedy" makes the difference between going out of business, and making a small profit, then what you call "greed", I call "good business sense".
I agree there is some level of "excessive" but really anything under 150 kbit/sec is not excessive.
Depends on how much the service costs. 150 kbit/sec is 1/10 of a T1 line. Last I checked, a T1 goes for $1000/month. Most slashdot whiners would not be willing to pay $100-/month or more for their broadband.
On your remedies, (1) prevents some kinds of abuses, but is no defence against bandwidth hogs.
(2) does not really address the scenario where someone is running napster (or any other bandwidth intensive server, eg ftp server for ISO images) 24/7. On (3), when you say 100% of your bandwidth, the problem is that there is no "your" with a cable modem service. Giving all users 128kbit/sec constant bandwidth is not feasible at the price that most cable services offer.
We're back to the same point -- the slashdot crowd simply want to use more bandwidth than they're prepared to pay for.
No it isn't. Constant means "all the time", sporadic implies that the usage is not constant.
What do you deem sporadic? Is a 128kbit audio stream excessive?
If you're constantly using that stream, it's constant. What is an excessive quantity of bandwidth depends on the number of users sharing the pool.
I think you'd find that if you do the numbers,
constant use of a 128kbit audio streams bandwidth is excessive.
Broadband is simply not intended for dedicated high bandwidth services. It's for users who want the convenience high speed data transfers, and a 24/7 connection.
No matter how you slice it, if
you want dedicated bandwidth, you've got to pay for it. (Get a T1. Yeah, it's expensive -- you get what you pay for.)
When you're sharing a limited amount of bandwidth with other users, excessive use is abuse. If you want your own dedicated T1, pay for it.
Again it gets downto the sole fact that ISPs want to be known to give out "100 Mbps connection!" but completely deny you from using that speed.
That's misleading. What the ISPs want to do is offer a shared pool of bandwidth, because for home users whose bandwidth usage is sporadic, that model makes a lot of sense. You can use that speed, you cannot use that speed all the time
I'd much rather my ISP told me... you're getting 1Mbps or 1.5Mbps [etc] and just keep it at that.
Then you should just get yourself a T1 line. Obviously, constant bandwidth availability is less dependable when you're sharing a pool of bandwidth with several other users.
People just have to get realistic about the bandwidth they want.
Exactly. If you need constant bandwidth, as opposed to sproadic bursts of it, that costs money, and you have to pay for it. It's really quite simple.
512kbyte/sec is not better if you can only download between the hours of 3am and 4am on every third wednesdays [etc] in the name of "being affordable" and "economical"
That's a straw-man. No-one's asking anyone to do that. The point is that if you want constant use of high bandwidth, that's a different (and more expensive) proposition to sporadic usage of high bandwidth, and hence costs more money.
And that is the only good thing they did, personally I would rather have a proper Internet connection and reasonable service charges than save a few dollars every month.
The problem is that the resource hogs aren't for the most part willing to pay for their bandwidth. They want home user prices, and want to use bandwidth like a medium sized business.
The ISP can do what they want, their customers will vote with their feet.
Yes, and losing the "votes" of the resource hogs
is a good business strategy.
I am not whining, I am merely pointing out that the glib assumption that ISPs can push their customers around will soon be tested as customers become better educated.
There is no "pushing" customers around. There is only "you get what you pay for". If someone wants T1 bandwidth, they need to pay for it. If someone wants a decent price to share in a pool of bandwidth, they need to play nice and not hog all the available resources.
The only reason to throttle anything is because you're trying to host too many users. If ISPs were not greedy this would work out.
Nonsense. The ISPs are simply trying to offer a reasonable service for an affordable price. They want to avoid placing limits on users where possible, but unfortunately, when there is widespread abuse of the service, it is not possible.
Oh, people talk about having a studio founded by the artists, for the artists. But such a studio will have all
of the same incentives as the existing ones, and in the end will turn out the same.
In fact it's awfully naive and disingenious to think
that no-ones ever thought of this. It's already been done, and doing it again will not revolutionise the industry.
Sound card don't work. drivers don't work. Can't find files, don't understand file system. Like I'm REALLY gonna read the FM or the code or whatever to find what I need.
Never had this experience. Then again, I buy machines with Linux preloaded. And for exactly the reasons you mention -- it's not that I can't fix it (I get paid to fix things) It's that I'd rather things worked to begin with. And using Linux has not in my experience proven to be an obstruction to things "just working".
Slashdot Mirror
That's only true if there is a monopoly. Again, the priates are part of the reason that there are software monopolies (because they do not provide an incentive to lower prices)
Was a little tired for the last statement. What I mean is that in order for piracy (using their definition not mine) to be prevented, we must all live with a lot of restrictions on what our hardware can do and that is just not ok with me.
I agree. Piracy isn't a good thing, but enforcement measures are usually intrusive and annoying. Of course, less piracy means less intrusive enforcement measures, which is another reason that piracy is a bad thing.
Part of what I defend here also is sort of unique to this industry. The way things are structured right now, it is possible for someone to have very little, get connected to the net and learn their way into something that they enjoy and that does them some good. This feature of the net and the computing industry in general is a good thing and should be continued.
Well, it's a good feature, but I'm not sure what you mean by "should be continued".
I have no clue what to do about the warez kiddies who make things a mess.
I don't think a whole lot can or should be done about "warez kiddies". They aren't going to buy anything anyway. A lot of these people are genuinely short of money, and would pay for it if they could. Adolescent males usually enter a phase where they have various criminal tendencies (eg shoplifting, getting into fist-fights, etc) and for the most part, they grow out of it.
As far as students are concerned, software companies typically address the problem by making cheaper student editions available. These do tend to fall within a student budget.
I do know however that putting out pieces like the one that started this discussion is an insult and not part of any real solution to the problem.
I think peoples attitudes are the real problem, so propoganda addresses this, and it's a relatively unintrusive measure. As far as anti-piracy measures are concerned, I find propoganda to be among the least irritating and intrusive.
Design patterns is a very general term. To say you "don't use patterns" is like saying you "don't use algorithms". Programmers use algorithms, and design patterns, whether they know it or not. A programmer who lacks the discipline to study basic programming concepts is indeed lazy, ignorant, and a bad programmer.
Perhaps you meant: if a programmer finds his current methodology satisfactory
This is a common myth. It doesn't make sense to say that they "purchased a product", because there is only one instance of the product, namely the piece of software. When you buy a visual C++ boxed set, you are buying the right to use that product, not the program itself.
As for restrictions on copyrighted work, most copyrighted work does not allow the owner to make several copies for other people to use. Software licenses for the most part allow someone to install onto more than one computer if there is only one user, or install it on one computer for several users. For what it's worth, I can agree that one should be able to install software on more than one computer for their own use.
The people who are harmed for the most part are those honest enough to pay, because fewer paying customers always means higher prices. The other harm caused is that it distorts the market -- companies who offer software at reasonable prices lose mindshare, because pirates will pirate the most expensive software they can. A secondary result is that these companies may be driven out of business. Ultimately, it's honest buyers who are hurt by piracy.
The unfortunate thing here is that solutions to this that would actually work would impose many unreasonable solutions that place a harsh burden on everyone for little or no gain on the software companies side.
I can't parse the above. As for using software for the sole purpose of learning, most companies make software available for free (eg Oracle) or cheap (eg Microsoft) for people who just want to learn how to use the software. For example, Microsoft sold VC++ with NT for $100 (Student version). I picked up visual studio for less than $200. I don't think these are unreasonable prices for what you are getting. Oracle of course can be downloaded.
I think if a company wants to shoot themselves in the foot by preventing or making difficult learning their software, let them do it. Let the buyers vote with their feet.
So have I. And I did so without resorting to criminal behaviour.
ou could say that I did not pay for that knowledge and you would be right in the strict sense, but the more important question is did I steal. I don't think so. Nothing is missing!
As I've said in other threads, I consider it to be more analogous to riding a train without paying than it is to stealing. I use the word "freeloading" and not "theft", I think this is more correct. The fact that it is not stealing does not make it right. There are a lot of things that are wrong, but are not stealing.
One thing I notice about your post is that you do little to defend piracy, instead you attack the software industry, and it's supposed to follow from the fact that the software industry is "bad" that piracy is "OK". That's not a logical argument, so while I could refute the premise, I don't need to -- because your conclusion does not follow from it.
Software blurs the distinction between "product" and "service". If your argument relies heavily upon the fact that you think software is a product, that in itself should tell you that your argument is pure sophistry. You are calling it a product, and using this to construct an argument based on flawed analogies with other "products". The big difference between a software product, and most other products, is that there's only one instance of a given software product. So most analogies you make about other products are not valid.
My dad used to make custom cabinets. That requires planning, designing, building, etc. Kind of like ........... SOFTWARE
That's a bogus analogy. The problem with the analogy is that actually making the cabinet takes a lot of time and expertise.
If I make a copy for someone of a program I bought, the company who made the product can suck my nuts because I am paying for the PRODUCT,
Wrong, wrong, wrong! This is precisely what is wrong with you calling it a "product" -- you draw flawed analogies between the software (of which there is one instance) and other products (of which there are several) The problem is that you are not "paying for the product", the "product" is the software. You are not "paying for it", you are paying to use it. If your friend wishes to use it, he needs to pay to use it too. If he doesn't pay, he's freeloading -- what he's doing is analogous to riding a train and not paying for it, and you are acting as his accomplice.
In many cases the cheaper alternatives are lacking essential features or quality or simply do not exist. Example: Windows 2000 Server. If I'm a college student who wants to learn Windows server administration skills, there is no cheaper alternative that will work me. I have to get my hands on the real deal, and I'll do so any way possible short of theft.
But here you presume that you "need" Windows server administration skills. That's like me saying that I "need" a Porsche 911. Perhaps you should review your assumptions about what you "need".
In many cases the cheaper alternatives are lacking essential features or quality or simply do not exist.
But there are many cases where the cheaper alternatives exist and have the required features, and yet piracy results. Conclusion: the absence of cheaper alternatives is not the reason why people priate software
The fact that piracy is not theft is an important one to understand.
I agree that it's technically not "theft". However, that it's not theft does not make it right. I prefer to call it "freeloading", and consider it morally analogous to using a train without buying a ticket.
The problem is that around 90% of the money you spend on a retail box of software pays for intellectual development, not manufacturing costs. That's not the fault of pirates--that's the fault of someone attempting to build a business over top of an unworkable model.
Not true. That's not a bug, it's a feature! The user wants to buy intellectual development, they don't want to pay for packaging and distribution (see the slashdot rants on how the "middle man" is taking all the money on music sales)
But invention isn't a natural business model at all: it only pays off if someone constructs artificial controls over its manufacturing and distribution.
Invention is without a doubt a very valuable thing. Societies that value invention do well, societies that do not value it do poorly.
My argument for piracy is the same argument I have against beggars: it's not my duty to support someone else's bad choices.
No, it's not. If you don't like a piece of software, you don't have to use it. If someone has a vastly superior business model, buy it from them instead.
And to those who fear invention and innovation would dry up without financial incentive, just remember that invention is the natural response to an itch called need.
Again, there is a lot of historical evidence that says that rewarding productive citizens works, and punishing them does not. You can spout your neo-marxism all you like, and it won't alter the fact that communism collapsed and capitalism is still here. Funny thing isn't it, that countries that value invention tend to be more prone to it.
No person I know feels that games are worth the money.
Your freeloading buddies are not a representative sample of the population.
Of course pirates go after market leading products! Who wants to spend hours cracking or downloading a given program when a better one is available?
They don't go after "the better one". They go after "the one everyone else is using". And they perpetuate a situation where (a) the market leader has a monopoly on mindshare, and (b) overprices their product.
Your entire post is based on this straw-man argument. What it boils down to is a concession that these are not legitimate users, but people practicing a form of infringement you consider to be acceptable.
I'm amazed by these clueless slashdot zombies who are full of great advice for companies, usually along the lines of "give everything away free (or cheap) and you'll make more money". The problem is that you're assuming that all the pirates will start buying if the software is cheaper, to a great enough extent to offset the money lost by giving it away cheaper to the paying customers. If the pirates really were willing to buy cheap software, they'd all be using PSP or similar instead of priating Adobe. Adobe don't stand to gain by pandering to freeloaders.
"Legitimate users" do not use a single user license for several installs.
And now their honesty is being punished by this scheme to force them to buy multiple copies of the same operating system.
You don't have to buy "multiple copies of the same operating system". You can copy it onto CD several times and put the CDs in a closet if you like. What they're paying for are multiple licenses. It costs more to install it on 100 computers than it does to install it on one computer. It's quite simple really.
That's assuming that there's a monopoly in every part of the software market. Without that assumption, a competitor could come along and eat the market leaders lunch, provided that they were able to put better software on the market at a lower price.
I wouldn't call it "theft", I prefer the term "freeloading". Basically, the software is available on a model where users share costs, so someone who doesn't pay their share is a freeloader. It's got nothing to do with "depriving" someone of "potential revenue", and a lot to do with the fact that they are undermining the market by what amounts to a theft of services.
Do you believe that people should pay for their train rides ?
But the anti-piracy people do not have a monopoly on emotionally charged language. We also hear things like software and music being referred to as information, large scale copyright infringement called fair use, or even sharing. I believe the latter (which makes me feel nauseous) is an offshoot from the technically correct "file-sharing" term, though it seems to be used to suggest that the "sharer" is being generous, when in fact they're being a parasite.
That simply does not follow. His product is more valuable if more people use it. The time does not change as a function of the number of users, the going price of that time does.
Your argument is flawed, you can't steal time from something that has been done in the past. Once that moment has passed it is gone.
No, it's not flawed. He's offered a service. If someone uses the service without paying for it, then they are a cheat. The fact that he's done the necessary work up-front does not change the fact that freeloading is freeloading.
Again flawed argument, so in this model if one person pays for your PRODUCT then you have been paid for services rendered and don't require payment from anyone else.
But this is not how software works. The problem is that none of the users by themselves can afford to buy several hours of a developers time. So the price of the service is shared (now there's a word the napster guys love ... ) by the users. A user that wants to "share" the software but doesn't want to "share" the cost of development is a cheat.
The reason I bolded PRODUCT was because that is what you are supplying, not a service.
Your argument is pure sophistry. A common tactic the pro-freeloaders use is to confuse the media with the software itself. They are not the same thing. You don't have "sales of a product", you have several people shareing payment for the product, which is the software itself. This is a less tangible thing than the actual media on which it is distributed. But the fact that it is less tangible doesn't make it less valuable, which is why people are prepared to pay for it (as opposed to the slashdot herd, who just chant "free free free"). Slashdotters talk about how people don't "understand the information age". Actually, it's the slashdotters who don't understand that high tech economy doesn't mean "free free free".
If the consumer does not believe it's right, then they should use a cheaper competing product (they do exist) instead. Otherwise, they are simoultaneously destroying the competitors mindshare, and keeping the market leaders prices high (less paying users means higher prices)
If Photoshop were only $20.00, then nearly everyone would purchase a legitimate copy
But would they ? People tend to feel that games are "worth it" and they can "afford it", but games are still pirated. I don't buy your argument, and no sensible business person buys it either.
It would be more enlightening to see validated statistics regarding the least pirated software.
Pirates tend to exclusively go after the market leader. This is one of the more damning aspects of their conduct -- they are re-enforcing the status quo. They are not on some moral crusade at all -- they are simply ruthless amoralists, who have about the same moral stature as Microsoft.
We've already heard this argument several times. The problem is that the current system uses a model whereby users of software share the costs of production. If more people cheat the system, either the honest users pay more, the software author goes out of business, or both. No matter how you slice it, someone is trying to get a free ride.
Maybe not, but I don't think it's for you to decide that you should be allowed to use commercial software for free. If the author wants to make it available on a try-before-you-buy basis, good for them. If they don't want to do this, you should vote with your feet and spend your money elsewhere.
Paying for lame software is what started this whole thing anyway so in the end that does not hold much water either.
This argument of yours does not hold water. Most software is either available on a try-before-you-buy basis, or is so ubiquitous that the author doesn't feel that it's necessary to have a try before you buy deal.
All of us who learn about software recommend it to employers ...
The structure of this is obvious. If things are slanted toward the established corporations it is much harder for new upstarts to have a chance at the top.
Actually, it's the pirates who slant things "against the little guy", because they "learn about software" writted by the market leader, which they pirate because they can't afford it, instead of buying much more reasonably priced software from a competitor. Far from standing in the little guys corner, the pirates by and large simply preserve the status quo. Pirates help keep Microsoft on top. They are not decent honorable people, they are basically parasites.
How come nobody writes articles about these sort of things.
Because most of the "pro-piracy" arguments are written by slashdot whiners who can't even put together well-formed sentences.
Arbitrary claims about "greed" and "costing too much" are common on slashdot, but rarely substantiated. If "being greedy" makes the difference between going out of business, and making a small profit, then what you call "greed", I call "good business sense".
I agree there is some level of "excessive" but really anything under 150 kbit/sec is not excessive.
Depends on how much the service costs. 150 kbit/sec is 1/10 of a T1 line. Last I checked, a T1 goes for $1000/month. Most slashdot whiners would not be willing to pay $100-/month or more for their broadband.
On your remedies, (1) prevents some kinds of abuses, but is no defence against bandwidth hogs. (2) does not really address the scenario where someone is running napster (or any other bandwidth intensive server, eg ftp server for ISO images) 24/7. On (3), when you say 100% of your bandwidth, the problem is that there is no "your" with a cable modem service. Giving all users 128kbit/sec constant bandwidth is not feasible at the price that most cable services offer.
We're back to the same point -- the slashdot crowd simply want to use more bandwidth than they're prepared to pay for.
No it isn't. Constant means "all the time", sporadic implies that the usage is not constant.
What do you deem sporadic? Is a 128kbit audio stream excessive?
If you're constantly using that stream, it's constant. What is an excessive quantity of bandwidth depends on the number of users sharing the pool.
I think you'd find that if you do the numbers, constant use of a 128kbit audio streams bandwidth is excessive. Broadband is simply not intended for dedicated high bandwidth services. It's for users who want the convenience high speed data transfers, and a 24/7 connection.
No matter how you slice it, if you want dedicated bandwidth, you've got to pay for it. (Get a T1. Yeah, it's expensive -- you get what you pay for.)
When you're sharing a limited amount of bandwidth with other users, excessive use is abuse. If you want your own dedicated T1, pay for it.
Again it gets downto the sole fact that ISPs want to be known to give out "100 Mbps connection!" but completely deny you from using that speed.
That's misleading. What the ISPs want to do is offer a shared pool of bandwidth, because for home users whose bandwidth usage is sporadic, that model makes a lot of sense. You can use that speed, you cannot use that speed all the time
I'd much rather my ISP told me... you're getting 1Mbps or 1.5Mbps [etc] and just keep it at that.
Then you should just get yourself a T1 line. Obviously, constant bandwidth availability is less dependable when you're sharing a pool of bandwidth with several other users.
People just have to get realistic about the bandwidth they want.
Exactly. If you need constant bandwidth, as opposed to sproadic bursts of it, that costs money, and you have to pay for it. It's really quite simple.
512kbyte/sec is not better if you can only download between the hours of 3am and 4am on every third wednesdays [etc] in the name of "being affordable" and "economical"
That's a straw-man. No-one's asking anyone to do that. The point is that if you want constant use of high bandwidth, that's a different (and more expensive) proposition to sporadic usage of high bandwidth, and hence costs more money.
The problem is that the resource hogs aren't for the most part willing to pay for their bandwidth. They want home user prices, and want to use bandwidth like a medium sized business.
The ISP can do what they want, their customers will vote with their feet.
Yes, and losing the "votes" of the resource hogs is a good business strategy.
I am not whining, I am merely pointing out that the glib assumption that ISPs can push their customers around will soon be tested as customers become better educated.
There is no "pushing" customers around. There is only "you get what you pay for". If someone wants T1 bandwidth, they need to pay for it. If someone wants a decent price to share in a pool of bandwidth, they need to play nice and not hog all the available resources.
Nonsense. The ISPs are simply trying to offer a reasonable service for an affordable price. They want to avoid placing limits on users where possible, but unfortunately, when there is widespread abuse of the service, it is not possible.
In fact it's awfully naive and disingenious to think that no-ones ever thought of this. It's already been done, and doing it again will not revolutionise the industry.
Never had this experience. Then again, I buy machines with Linux preloaded. And for exactly the reasons you mention -- it's not that I can't fix it (I get paid to fix things) It's that I'd rather things worked to begin with. And using Linux has not in my experience proven to be an obstruction to things "just working".