Again, I am against pirating, but don't agree fully with the text in that popup dialog.
Again, I am against pirating, but don't agree fully with the text in that popup dialog.
I always think its odd - the one thing, really the only one thing that computers do really really well, flawlessly, better then any other tech in history is copy information without error. And yet the primary business model of successful software is (or was) charging people for the copying of those bits (allowing, rightly so, the creators of those bits to get paid for the content creation).
I am not saying its wrong, not at all, it just feels like a kind of arbitrage, and can't last. Well I guess that's one business reason why software is increasingly moving online.
I guess the same is true of any content creator. I am happy to pay for content and software, and do, but kids these days....
Well said. Software is moving from "making computers do something" to "making computers do something together". This changes the economics of software completely.
In economic theory, the demand curve is (basically) constructed from the willingness-to-pay (WTP) of people. It is assumed that people with a WTP > Price (P) buy the good, and those with a WTP < P don't.
Your statement would be true if we could determine that only people in the WTP < P group use illegal copies. They would not affect a supplier's sales when they use illegal copies.
But there's no causal relation between one's WTP and one's ability to use an illegal copy. Thus, people in the WTP > P group are just as likely to do so as people in the WTP < P group.
Well, this is not quite right, for we may ask: Who's more likely to be motivated to make or search for illegal copies? Who's gaining the most profit by investing time and effort to search file sharing networks? Those with a rather high WTP or those with a rather low WTP?
If this sounds uncommon to you, ask yourself: What software is more likely to be found in any file sharing network: The popular ones -- that is: those with many people having a high WTP -- or the unpopular ones? According to my observations, the popular ones are more likely to be found. The same holds true for other products such as movies and music.
Whether these losses are compensated by advertising effects, is a matter of the circumstances: To make this reasonable, a supplier needs to sell (more) copies. People with illegal copies may advertise a product, but they are also likely to distribute illegal copies: What good is advertising if it does not increase sales?
Even if we assume that -- in the beginning -- only people in the WTP < P group distribute illegal copies and advertise them, it should be clear that it will also spread to people in the WTP > P group. The longer illegal copies are around, the more likely it will affect the sales of the suppliers.
Overall: Yes, it's possible that illegal copies do no harm to suppliers and may even help them to sell more legal copies. But these are likely to be exceptions to the rule. In general, using illegal copies decreases the wealth of suppliers.
In the long run, it also decrease the wealth of users who want or need software, for it decreases the incentive of suppliers to improve their products or invest money to make new ones.
No, you are correct that software largely gets pirated because it's popular rather than the other way around. Pirates who think they are doing software authors a favor through "advertising" are fooling themselves -- and ignoring the systemic damage done by piracy. (Where are all the big Chinese consumer software companies?)
Having a thief (sorry, 'copyright infringer') take your software rather than pay for it may eventually provide some word-of-mouth advertising, but they're likely to tell other pirates and repeat the cycle of revenue loss rather than become vocal advocates for a purchase.
Outside of edge-cases like Microsoft (whose Windows dominance was arguably helped by piracy) it seems that 'piracy is good advertising' is a fallacy used by pirates to make themselves feel better about denying income to people they otherwise like.
Can you name three small software producers whose revenue grew stronger as a result of piracy?
Or done without. Or done with something different. But it's false to assume that anyone glomming a copy of some software would pay for it were it not free.
If the pirated option was not available, they would have made a purchase (yours or a competitors) or made do with freeware. That they've not chosen the free option indicates that they prefer your product -- one which they would have paid for.
Given my infrequency of usage, I'd be willing to pay some amount for Photoshop: $30 or $49.99 or whatever, but I simply don't use it $699 worth.
I do pay for all the apps I use daily, and thankfully they're all "reasonably" priced: MyEclipse, Transmit, Parallels, OmniFocus, OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, TextMate, and so on.
That is a fallacy. If it were not of some value to them, why would they even want it? It's more a case that they simply feel entitled to it.
If copying is the same is taking, then telling a story is the same as burning a book.
Are you really saying that if you profit without paying for something, then you must be stealing? What if you have some wood, and you make a table out of it. You've profited by the difference in price of a table and a pile of wood, but you've not paid anyone for anything. Who have you stolen from?
Thinking of it in terms of morals is rather unproductive. It's just one of the ways markets fail.
While the current IP laws may not be so good, it'd sound less like rationalization of people would make good arguments.