This is why people pirate software | Hacker News Reader

This is why people pirate software

marcgayle.com

19 pointsmarcamillion42 comments

To summarize (correctly) for this situation: because one-license-per-machine only makes sense for operating systems. What about the more normal situation where person A has computers X, Y, and Z? (and phone Q and iPad M and iPod V and PDA W and PocketPC T)

This use of piracy honestly makes perfect sense to me. One license per user is perfectly understandable, if impossible to accurately enforce, and expands to future developments in hardware. One license per device does not: define "device" in a world which has emulation / virtualization / clusters.

Don't know that it's that simple. You could look at this as a server farm for encoding. If I bought a rendering engine, would the company allow me to use one license for all seats in the farm? No, I'd be buying bundles.

It's not an exact analogy I know, but it's the world that Sorenson live in. They're almost certainly unused to selling $800 software to consumers, and they are used to the world where you buy seats for production farms. It makes sense in that world. Is it worth their while to try and cater for a tiny number of potential customers who don't fit it? I doubt it.

In that situation, you'd probably be buying concurrent-users/-seats. As many server-farm software does (haven't seen any CPU-limited ones for a while, as what's a CPU? A core? Hyperthreaded?).

"Oh, and Sorenson, I know that when I bought your software I ‘agreed’ to these terms in the EULA. No need to throw it in my face when I am inquiring about them with your customer support."

He kind of has a point there.

To summarize: because they don't want to pay what the vendor says it costs.

It's not the financial cost, it's the non-financial cost.

It's not just the price. It's the lock-in and the rules after you pay for it.

I can't tell you the amount of times I have advocated the purchase of software, at companies I have worked for in the past, just to get it and be restricted and severely regretting recommending the purchase in the first place.

In other words: you don't want to pay for extra licenses.

Are there software packages which, in addition to wanting per-machine licenses, also make it an unbelievable pain to manage those licenses? Yes. But that's not what happened in this story.

You are missing the point.

List one other 'real world' item - aside from software - where you can buy it, but it restricts you from either sharing it with someone else or lending to them, or giving to them after you are done.

If you buy a bike, bicycle, kitchen utensils, TV, ps3, cellphone, etc. All of the above you can do as you please with how you want - while you own it - and dispose of it as you please.

Software is the only thing, I can think of, that you can't do that.

I know there are technical issues with that, but when you put into that context, it really raises an interesting question about the evolution of software and the licensing model - for consumers.

No, you're missing the point. For the second time now, you've changed the terms of the discussion. First, it was to say that some of the vendors you've worked with have made their licensing enforcement so painful that it embarassed you. That's not what happened in this post. Now, it's to say that some vendors won't let sell or pass on software when you're done with it. But this person is doing literally the opposite of that.

I don't concede the validity of your argument to begin with (people should be able to charge whatever they want for things they build, and you have no intrinsic right to assign any other cost to it), but I don't have to hash it out with you, because it's irrelevant.

How about your insurance policy, your rental apartment , your gun (in many countries) , your airline ticket , tickets bought from ticketmaster.com ...

Your insurance policy is not a good. It's a service. Rental apartment - from what perspective? The renter or owner?

Government regulations don't count. I meant from the vendor's perspective.

A gun, you definitely can do anything you want with a gun. Hence the problem of violent crimes in many countries and the thriving 'arms trafficking' trade.

Your airline ticket, again...this is a service. If you a buy a plane, you can fly wherever you want (within reason) and the plane can fly.

An event, hence a ticket to an event, is a service.

There's plenty of software you can buy and treat like a "good" and not a "service". But your point is that vendors should not be allowed to sell software as a service. Presumably, people shouldn't be allowed to rent cars either?

I don't see how you ever get around the fact that people should be able to charge whatever they want for what they build. Yes, they should be transparent about it. But who are you to say "since your bits are running on my computer, and my computer can save them and replay them over and over again, you have no right to restrict how I use them"?

This is where I think many entrepreneurs get their stuff mixed up.

I am he who giveth thee the ability to earneth a living whilst doeth what thee doeth. I am a paying customer.

A migration of all people like me, and you will have to find a job doing something else.

That being said, I don't think you should be listen to EVERYTHING every customer has ever said...but blatant disregard to my opinions with the statement:

"But who are you to say 'since your bits are running on my computer, and my computer can save them and replay them over and over again, you have no right to restrict how I use them?'"

Suppose, when you bought your computer wit Windows and wanted to install your favorite version of Linux on it, you were restricted from doing so. Many people would cry foul. It's the same thing, it's just that we have been cultured into believing that when we 'buy' something, we should be told how to use it.

Enough is enough!

The renter - you rented the apartment, it would not cost the landlord anything extra if you sublet it, yet many places have restrictions on subletting. I am targetting your notion that if it doesnt cost the vendor anything extra you can do whatever you want. Both in case of the airline ticket and a concert ticket I think the situation is very similar to running software on multiple machine. There is a fixed cost to production, yet there are terms outlining how the user can use the product.

When you buy software, you are not just buying code. You are asking another person to make a single computer do a particular task. You are buying an add-on for your computer. That computer now has an increased benefit for your business but it is only performed by that one computer. If you feel that you need more computers to do a particular task, then you buy more software.

If you think that the situation should change, ask the provider how much it would cost to provide your business with the service and not a single computer.

You're the one missing the point - you're not being restricted. You can run your program on any (single) computer that you want, and "dispose of it how you please". If you wanted to ride 3 bikes at once, you'd have to buy 3 bikes - the bike company won't give you an extra two for free.

You can have all the hissy fits you want, and it is (sort of) an artifical limit, but these are the restrictions that you accepted when you chose to buy the software. If you don't like it, go open source.

You also can't buy a bike and have 3 people ride it once.

But you can buy a bike and use it to get somewhere and back, and not need to buy a second one for the return journey just because you started at a different location.

A cellphone might be a bad example - Apple iPhone is great (once jailbroken). Point taken nonetheless though.

And what the vendor says it costs seems rather ridiculous...

If everything cost what people on Hacker News thought it should cost, we would all make a lot less money, and there would be a lot less cool stuff in the world for us to play with.

I couldn't disagree with you more. I can't tell you the amount of times I have seen 'Show HN' posts where people are showing off their new web app, or new downloadable app, and the vast majority of the recommendations are to raise prices.

I am sure those hackers would disagree with your sentiment.

The fact that every time someone on HN builds something they clearly underprice it tells you we're good at valuing things?

The article, which you claimed to summarize, took the position that software shouldn't cost 3x as much for one person running it on three machines. If by odd wrinkle, software houses were forced to accept that, I don't think the software business would shut down.

Huge volumes of money are made on software licensed per-seat and per-CPU. This article is very, very simple: if this person pays 3x what a single license for the software costs, he can rip video faster. But he doesn't want to pay 3x or (presumably) 2x or 1.5x more. He paid 1x, now he has the bits, and he should be able to run it wherever he wants.

Except that the world doesn't work like that. He doesn't have to pay 3x, but the vendor doesn't have to let him run it on 3x as many machines.

Unless we get a chance to peek into how much money it took for research and development for the said compressor and codec, any notion of its price seeming ridiculous is just tire kicking imo .

The free x264 codec didn't have enough settings? Handbrake isn't simple enough? So you paid $600? Really? Why?

The output from Handbrake was either not small enough (in file size) or too pixelated for my tastes.

I spent a few days messing with Handbrake, and it just didn't work out for me.

Then you've done it wrong because Handbrake uses x264 which seriously outclasses anything Sorenson could produce.

Perhaps I did do it wrong. All I know is, I tried for a few days and couldn't get good output in all the formats I needed (.flv, xvid avi, wmv, etc.) and Sorenson allowed me to do so in a few hours (this includes trying a few different options and tweaking it to my liking.

As a matter of fact, I am now resizing my entire library and I am able to reduce some of my file sizes by as much as 90% in some cases.

I had some HD files with bitrate of 97,000 kbps (ridiculous, I know), with some ridiculous 'time to MB' ratio. E.g. a 13second file was 1.4GB. I re-encoded that down to 8000kbps, for a whopping file size of 100MB. Still 'ginormous', I know, but nothing on the same scale.

> All I know is, I tried for a few days and couldn't get good output in all the formats I needed (.flv, xvid avi, wmv, etc.)

Well, there's your problem right there... You're using obsolete formats.

I've never done it personally, buy did you ever consider outsourcing this task? Odesk etc? Not only would you avoid the hassle of doing this task yourself, you would probably save a fortune because of the cost saving of outsourcing over buying an expensive piece of software. You could get one or two videos converted, see if it were to your taste, and then ask the person to continue once the output was satisfactory. You might have to mail the videos though. Sounds like a massive amount of data. I'd stil guess this would be cheaper.

The modern dilemna of digital goods - customers think that cost of replication solely determines what a good should be worth.

I agree, actually, that this sort of thing is a silly restriction. Or, rather, single machine licenses are counter-productive and silly (I'd be happy to see 2-5 machine licenses etc. but I can understand limiting above that).

But is this why people pirate?

Generally speaking I would suggest not.

I think the point he is trying to make is a bit more general than the number of licenses. I read it more as "People pirate because of poorly implemented DRM that negatively impacts the legitimate user."

Less 'poorly implemented' DRM, rather any 'feature' that restricts natural use cases by legitimate users.

The equivalent in the real world would be, buying a fork and being told you can only eat rice with it. Suppose you wanted to eat ice cream, or soup ? It would not be a good use case, but it's your fork. If you want to eat ice cream or soup with it, then you should be able to do whatever you want with it.

That's the point.

If I want to install the software on all of my computers to improve my workflow, I should be able to do that.

Except that that's likely to cannibalise sales, ie. in the case where people or businesses would have bought multiple licences.

I want to toast three slices of bread simultaneously, but this absurd toaster vendor sold me a 2-slice model! So I think it's perfectly within my right to steal as many toasters as I'd like.

Because it's too easy without risk.

Oh my, I'm happy you can't get less than -4!

Sent from m'y new iPad.

>Oh my, I'm happy you can't get less than -4!

You can, it just doesn't display past that.

I still think it's true. Why my little cousin download mp3s of his favorite artists?

Is it because the 1$ song is too much?

It might be because it's hard to buy something without credit card and when you're wrong you don't necessary have one. However, his parents will happily buy him any songs he wants.

So, what is it? It's because it's easy to do (my little cousin does it) and there are no risk for him.. I mean, who could accuse a little boy to download a few mp3s?

I feel it's the same for software. Why would my girlfriend pay for Windows when she can easily gets it without any risks of being caught?

And, you guys think whatever you want, I know you've downloaded illegal software, mp3s and movies. And, it's not because they cost too much. It's just easy and without risks.

Imagine all download were tracked (forget the technical details) and it would cost you 500k if you're caugh downloading winzip illegaly. Would you have done it?

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