Hacker News Reader

Comment by coolambi | Hacker News Reader

16 pointscoolambi11 comments

Seriously, people what's wrong with linking to the original?

This one was shortened to a frame containing blog gadgets.boingboing.net from 2008 linking to crunchgear, linking to this reddit discussion http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7jyua/awww_now_... linking to a screen cap

AMIGA game publisher "Thalion" once said "We're going to release this game without copy protection. If you pirate it, we'll go out of business, so please be honest."

They went out of business.

http://www.illusionware.it/commodore/lionheart.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalion_Software

btw: whats with this url.. original url: http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/12/18/how-to-guilt-trip-s...

Honestly, I don't think this approach would work at all. Taking for example myself (which is a bit of a debating faux pas, but whatever):

If I see some software that I think would be useful, but don't have €14.99 to spend on it, I'll download it and google for a cracked serial number. Easy-peasy. I then copy-paste the number. I hit return enough times to get to the main window of the software. I use the software. If I use the software an awful lot - say more than once a week - my own guilt will start to hit me, and I'll pay for it - perhaps more than they ask, if the option is available.

Notice the part where I said "hit return enough times to get to the main window of the software". Pirates don't give a shit about the developers. If they did, they'd pay for the software in the first place. Furthermore, by the time anyone reads that guilt-trip paragraph, the decision has already been made to pirate the app, and all it takes is for me to hit return, and hey presto, no more guilt-tripping. This is why very few pay for software like winzip (or is it winrar? You know the one, anyway). By the time you hit the "You should pay for this software!", you don't care anymore, and it takes no more than a keypress or mouseclick until it's gone.

Disclaimer: I'm a pillar of society who wouldn't pirate something if a gun was to my head, and all situations described above are purely hypothetical.

You're contradicting yourself. First, you're saying the approach wouldn't work at all. Then you make a good point why it'd work for you. Why do you think it wouldn't work for others in exactly the same way?

It's an interesting psychological experiment at least.

No, I mean that that particular method wouldn't work for me at all. Were I to pirate something, I wouldn't need the reminder. Sorry that that's unclear.

EDIT: And yes, it's definitely an interesting experiment. I'd like to see some sort of results from it - implicit A/B testing numbers, for example.

"Pirates don't give a shit about the developers."

I don't think that's necessarily true. Quite a few 'pirates' simply don't have the money. If they had it, they would have paid.

I'm not saying it's -right-. I'm saying it happens.

By "pirates", I mean an average /b/tard who downloads software just because it's there to steal. I didn't make the point clear at all. If I were to pirate a piece of software, I wouldn't consider myself a "pirate" - mostly because I'd pay for it if I found it extremely useful.

I guess I should work on making my points clear, eh?

Looks like we killed the server - mirror?

Legalizing all software copying across the board would be a type of socialism or communism. The programmer, designer, coder, etc is due just compensation.

As the majority of human effort goes into research and data aquisition, there must be a system in place to systematically reward effort and punish laziness.

That's false dichotomy.

Paying per copy is not the only possible way of compensating creators.

Why should they get "just compensation"? What does this even mean?

In a capitalist society, they will get whatever they can get on the open market, whether that is "just" or not.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com