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That's actually not always true. Check out the reddit thread on this topic, and you'll see plenty of people who pirated first and then actually bought it. I kno

That's actually not always true. Check out the reddit thread on this topic, and you'll see plenty of people who pirated first and then actually bought it. I know plenty of pirates use the "I try before I buy" line, but some of them actually do. You're right on your second sentence, but do you have anything whatsoever to back up your first?

gyardley 16y ago
Back when my company was using our analytics to track piracy for iPhone applications, we found that 1 out of 243 people who stole an application later installed a legitimate copy. We stopped tracking piracy when we realized that we were getting into a cat-and-mouse game with application pirates and the feature wasn't worth the resources, but I can't imagine these stats have changed much since.
- jokermatt999 16y ago
  And how many of those people would have bought the application if it wasn't available to pirate? I'm guessing it would still be a much smaller number. There's a massive gap between being able to get something for completely free and having to pay for it.
- scott_s 16y ago
  Thank you for bringing data into the discussion.
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    While I agree with you that data is nice, this data in particular doesn't say a whole lot. It's like saying "1mm pay Google for the enterprise version of Google apps, and 100mm don't. They're leaving so much revenue on the table!" When discussing freemium, nobody talks about those who choose the free plan as 'pirates', even though they are doing the exact same thing that 'pirates' do.
    - scott_s 16y ago
      It brings more to the table than the hand-waving that I see all over piracy discussions. And I don't see how you connect the parent's post with your freemium discussion - he made no such conclusions from his data.
      - steveklabnik 16y ago
        It's true, he didn't. But I've seen others draw the same conclusion from similar data before, so just pointing out that fallacy ahead of time.

gyardley 16y ago

Back when my company was using our analytics to track piracy for iPhone applications, we found that 1 out of 243 people who stole an application later installed a legitimate copy. We stopped tracking piracy when we realized that we were getting into a cat-and-mouse game with application pirates and the feature wasn't worth the resources, but I can't imagine these stats have changed much since.

jokermatt999 16y ago
And how many of those people would have bought the application if it wasn't available to pirate? I'm guessing it would still be a much smaller number. There's a massive gap between being able to get something for completely free and having to pay for it.
scott_s 16y ago
Thank you for bringing data into the discussion.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  While I agree with you that data is nice, this data in particular doesn't say a whole lot. It's like saying "1mm pay Google for the enterprise version of Google apps, and 100mm don't. They're leaving so much revenue on the table!" When discussing freemium, nobody talks about those who choose the free plan as 'pirates', even though they are doing the exact same thing that 'pirates' do.
  - scott_s 16y ago
    It brings more to the table than the hand-waving that I see all over piracy discussions. And I don't see how you connect the parent's post with your freemium discussion - he made no such conclusions from his data.
    - steveklabnik 16y ago
      It's true, he didn't. But I've seen others draw the same conclusion from similar data before, so just pointing out that fallacy ahead of time.