Software piracy: What do you think about it?

[Dell19]

Originally posted by GenghisK
I'm not and have never been involved in any form of piracy. I have never ever downloaded any illegal software. I'm as pure as cristal.

We know...

 

[ainwood]

Originally posted by PaleHorse76
Extras costs incurred by people using wazez that they wouldn't have paid for if they couldn't have gotten it for free:
1) can't think of one.....

Your argument seems to be based entirely on the premise that if people can't pirate software, then they wouldn't ever buy it either. I'm not so sure that this is true. I think there are a lot of warez users that CAN afford to buy software (games in particular), but make a choice not to.

You are right in saying that piracy does not "cost" the software developers anything, however it does reduce the revenue that they receive.

 

[Richard III]

Originally posted by ainwood
Your argument seems to be based entirely on the premise that if people can't pirate software, then they wouldn't ever buy it either. I'm not so sure that this is true. I think there are a lot of warez users that CAN afford to buy software (games in particular), but make a choice not to.

You are right in saying that piracy does not "cost" the software developers anything, however it does reduce the revenue that they receive.

...and therefore, reduces their return on the money invested to create the software in the first place, which in turn, reduces the available income to reward investors for their risk, create new software or improve/support the old. Someone a few posts back said that a ski hill analogy didn't work, and then noted that a ski hill has up front costs for land to pay for.

Well, what, do you think software just appears from nowhere? Even open-source programmers "invest" thousands of hours of labor into their work; for proprietary, someone paid for those hours up front.

 

[IceBlaZe]

About every poll out there shows that pirating only caused a raise in income for record companies songs-wise.
I don't really know about games-wise, games are really expensive for the average teen in Israel.
I think that is the reason pirating of games is highly popular in Israel - Unlike Europe or the US everything comes late and expensive, and the families here are not as wealthy as in most western countries (Lots of immigration in small amount of time, war, unemployment, small country, etc...).

 

[ainwood]

Originally posted by Richard III


...and therefore, reduces their return on the money invested to create the software in the first place, which in turn, reduces the available income to reward investors for their risk, create new software or improve/support the old. Someone a few posts back said that a ski hill analogy didn't work, and then noted that a ski hill has up front costs for land to pay for.

Well, what, do you think software just appears from nowhere? Even open-source programmers "invest" thousands of hours of labor into their work; for proprietary, someone paid for those hours up front.

No, I think you've taken me completely out of context.

PH was arguing that software piracy was different to, say, stealing a car, because each individual car has a manufacturing cost in actual resources. Software on the other hand, has a (largely) fixed cost to produce, and then they can make as many extra copies as they like at minimal charge. He was arguing that if people are not going to buy the software, then the developer wouldn't have got any revenue anyway. I was trying to refute this, because I don't believe the point that people who download the software would otherwise have not bought it.

I think you need to focus on more in my post than just You are right in saying that piracy does not "cost" the software developers anything. And anyway, "Cost" in this case is incremental cost, not development cost.

 

[Beam]

I know from experience that the cost model for software generally is a bit more complex. Development is quite a chunck, but the marketing portion is that as well and both are more or less independant from the incremental unit cost. Physical distribution is another important cost component, so software distributed over the internet should be cheaper because of that. Also, the distribution chain makes profit that we, endusers, have to pay for as well.

Support costs are a portion as well and are mostly influenced by sw quality and patches on one hand and the number of users on the other hand if personal support is provided.

I like the concept of free trial versions with a limited duration very much because you can testdrive first before money is spend!

 

[damunzy]

@ainwood and Richard III:
I believe I pointed it out in two posts and thought I made it clear...but since I was the only one reading it at the time maybe it was only clear to me. I said these are only people that would not have purchased the software anyways. People that would have purchased the software but didn't are just as bad as the companies that need the software but don't pay.

 

[damunzy]

And no I am not crazy...Niko Mak did change their name!
http://www.techadvice.com/help/company/w/winzip.htm