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Comment by sph | Hacker News Reader

> The user who is willing to stomach the time and risks associated with cracked software is NOT your target market anyway.

I vehemently disagree. Cracked users of commercial software ARE your target market that, for any reason, can't afford to pay you. They would if they could.

When I was a broke teenager, I pirated a lot of software, games and music I later paid for when I had enough money to do so.

Piracy can be annoying, but it is also an underrated indicator that some people really like or need your product so much they'd rather put up with the discomfort of piracy instead of going to the competition. I wonder if this is also an indicator to very expensive software that they might increase their paying user base by lowering their price. You might be leaving money on the table, maybe it's time for a flash sale.

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>I vehemently disagree. Cracked users of commercial software ARE your target market that, for any reason, can't afford to pay you. They would if they could.

I think we actually agree. You said “They would if they could”, that’s exactly what I’m saying.

Especially in business software, the risks associated with piracy always outweigh the benefit of free software for those that can actually pay.

The person who is trying to learn, or uses the cracked software while climbing up the pay-scale will eventually turn in to a paying user.

As others have said, getting cheeky and letting folks know that you know the software is pirated is also a good approach.

Price-testing as you mentioned can also be valuable. Spending energy on DRM or anti-piracy schemes beyond a little Easter-egg/joke/warning is a waste of energy better spent on improving your product for your actual paying customers.

> Cracked users of commercial software ARE your target market that, for any reason, can't afford to pay you.

I've gotta disagree here. SOME pirates are your target market that can't afford to pay you. I can't tell you how many times a friend has bragged to me about pirating a movie over drinks at an overpriced bar. If you can afford four cocktails at $15 a pop then you certainly can afford the $20 or less it costs to license a movie. Some people just like to feel like they're getting away with something.

I think you're actually in agreement with GP, just in different words. You weren't the target market... until you had enough money to become part of it.

> When I was a broke teenager, I pirated a lot of software, games and music I later paid for when I had enough money to do so.

I don't know, I feel like it depends on the culture as well, not just the amount of money someone has.

For example, I am at a point in my life where I can afford JetBrains licenses (actually their Ultimate pack with tools for all languages), so I buy them. Some people that I've talked with, while also apparently able to afford such tools, simply don't bother paying and prefer the pirated versions instead. They might look at the ~350 euro yearly price tag, consider that it's X% of their current month's salary and prefer free instead, even though it means putting themselves at risk (sometimes). In other words, they just don't care.

I can pretty much say the same about Windows installs that many are running on their computers. Given that buying Windows might be a non-insignificant part of their income, they just won't and instead might pay 20 euros or something to someone who can give them an install that just works. They don't care about copyright, or the ethical aspects, they just want the shiny thing.

My income has gone up in the past few years to a point where I'm comfortable, but I definitely can understand their point of view, even if it's unethical, at least given how life can be in my country (Latvia, though the same applies to many other economies around the world). Heck, in regards to entertainment I never buy those new AAA "full priced" games and just not play them if I can't find them on discount/sale until a few years pass and they're cheaper then, though I've heard that shady game key reseller sites are also popular here.

Here, the average annual disposable income per capita per year was around 11 thousand euros in 2020: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1267688/latvia-average-i...

Edit: actually, my country might be a bit of a negative example in particular, not sure why: https://eng.lsm.lv/article/society/society/latvia-leading-in...

> According to the MUSO anti-piracy analytics website, 46.3% of Latvians use the web to access illegal content, followed by Bulgaria (27.4%) and Lithuania (24.5%).

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