4 ms·

Sure, SaaS is a good model for some things. It certainly does have that nice feature of being unpiratable. That makes sense of course... in SaaS you aren't sell

Sure, SaaS is a good model for some things. It certainly does have that nice feature of being unpiratable. That makes sense of course... in SaaS you aren't selling a digital copy that is fundamentally worthless. You are selling computing power, updates, support... stuff you don't need bunch of arcane laws to protect! As copyright laws ease, some will turn to SaaS, but others will embrace the model of letting a lot of people have something for free, and charging those that can afford it. Heck, people like to give books as an example of media that must be protected and that will never be free. But guess what... the most popular Kindle authors these days give many books away for free. Moreover, the biggest companies have been turning a blind eye to piracy because they believe it helps them sell more software, for ages. Microsoft is the biggest example... as Bill Gates once said (and I paraphrase) - I'd rather you steal my software than buy my competitor's.

alttab 17y ago
Every single person on this comment thread that has agreed with the topic has been downvoted. Is it because the argument is fundamentally flawed, or are we seeing a little groupthink here?
- jacoblyles 17y ago
  Well, the original post is poorly reasoned and fails to preempt all the objections from Econ 101 that can be raised against his point.
  - alttab 17y ago
    Possibly revisit supply and demand shifts in the first semester.
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
    - jacoblyles 17y ago
      The author is postulating that the price of a good is determined by its cost of production, which is essentially the Marxist theory of value that has been discredited for over a century. Else, he is proposing that the demand curve is completely parameterized by cost of production, which is a radically new idea that I sadly don't see much promise in.
      - alttab 17y ago
        I agree with you that demand isn't dependent on costs always - and I don't think the author is either. He's saying that demand is still high, as is supply. But because the marginal cost of each unit is so low (on the postulation of infinite copies), that piracy is how the price is "fixed" economically speaking. This isn't a pro-piracy position, but if you see it as each copy of the game had to be physically manufactured piracy would drop to zero - otherwise it'd be called theft.
        jacoblyles 17y ago
        That the marginal cost of copying media is zero is a pretty mundane observation. The author goes beyond this to hypothesize that demand moves according to some abstract "fair price" (that happens to suit the author's semi-Marxist definition of fairness), and that piracy only occurs when the market price is set above this value. This second point is the only novel bit of the author's post, and it's just not very good.
    - richardw 17y ago
      Play the ball, not the man
- dkersten 17y ago
  I think its because a lot of people on HN run businesses themselves which could or are negatively affected by piracy, because software is easily pirated - so they (we?) are naturally hostile towards the idea that we're doing business wrong and that our hard work should be free. Honestly, I don't know what I think of it. On the one hand the pro-piracy people do make some sense, but on the other hand, a world of free everything is impossible to sustain and messy to do business in. Unlike OSS people like to think, support is not enough to.. err.. support all businesses. It works in some cases, sure, but it doesn't scale very well and for some businesses simply doesn't make sense.
houseabsolute 17y ago
Bill also famously decried piracy: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/10/most-of-you-steal-your-software.html http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/10/most-of-you-steal-your-...

alttab 17y ago

Every single person on this comment thread that has agreed with the topic has been downvoted. Is it because the argument is fundamentally flawed, or are we seeing a little groupthink here?

jacoblyles 17y ago
Well, the original post is poorly reasoned and fails to preempt all the objections from Econ 101 that can be raised against his point.
- alttab 17y ago
  Possibly revisit supply and demand shifts in the first semester.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - jacoblyles 17y ago
    The author is postulating that the price of a good is determined by its cost of production, which is essentially the Marxist theory of value that has been discredited for over a century. Else, he is proposing that the demand curve is completely parameterized by cost of production, which is a radically new idea that I sadly don't see much promise in.
    - alttab 17y ago
      I agree with you that demand isn't dependent on costs always - and I don't think the author is either. He's saying that demand is still high, as is supply. But because the marginal cost of each unit is so low (on the postulation of infinite copies), that piracy is how the price is "fixed" economically speaking. This isn't a pro-piracy position, but if you see it as each copy of the game had to be physically manufactured piracy would drop to zero - otherwise it'd be called theft.
      - jacoblyles 17y ago
        That the marginal cost of copying media is zero is a pretty mundane observation. The author goes beyond this to hypothesize that demand moves according to some abstract "fair price" (that happens to suit the author's semi-Marxist definition of fairness), and that piracy only occurs when the market price is set above this value. This second point is the only novel bit of the author's post, and it's just not very good.
  - richardw 17y ago
    Play the ball, not the man
dkersten 17y ago
I think its because a lot of people on HN run businesses themselves which could or are negatively affected by piracy, because software is easily pirated - so they (we?) are naturally hostile towards the idea that we're doing business wrong and that our hard work should be free. Honestly, I don't know what I think of it. On the one hand the pro-piracy people do make some sense, but on the other hand, a world of free everything is impossible to sustain and messy to do business in. Unlike OSS people like to think, support is not enough to.. err.. support all businesses. It works in some cases, sure, but it doesn't scale very well and for some businesses simply doesn't make sense.

houseabsolute 17y ago

Bill also famously decried piracy: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/10/most-of-you-steal-your-software.html http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/10/most-of-you-steal-your-...