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It's not theft. It's worse. Theft of something like a television means just that physical physical is stolen. It's the cost of doing business. Over time, if
by rick888 15y ago
It's not theft. It's worse. Theft of something like a television means just that physical physical is stolen. It's the cost of doing business.
Over time, if piracy is not stopped, users will get the idea that your software is free and will be unwilling to pay for it in the future. This has the potential to destroy the profits for your entire product. Big companies like Microsoft and Adobe can handle this, but it's devastating to a smaller company.
Companies also lose money through support calls from people that haven't purchased the product (this happens more than you think).
Think about the newspaper industry: It's dying because you can get news stories anywhere, for free. Why would it be any different for the software industry?
Torrentfreak is a pro-piracy site. They want to change the word "theft" to something positive so piracy is accepted as a positive thing. It's not positive.
Piracy is the equivalent of a big company farming their work out to China: they don't want to pay the big prices here (software that's expensive) or worry about restrictions (drm/copy protection), so they go somewhere else where it's cheaper (piracy sites/bittorrent).
- MichaelGG 15y agoYou realise that some of your arguments could be applied equally to open source software?
- rick888 15y agoI'm not sure why I got down voted. I made my points and wasn't a troll about it. I suppose down voting = difference of opinion on HN these days....... yes, and they stand for open source software too. Open source is devaluing developers in the long run. With all of the free open source software being released, many companies don't need software engineers because all of the hard work is already completed. Many only really need software mechanics, which tinker with the already existing code and add features. As more and more owners realize this, salaries for developers will slowly drop. I've already seen this at a few companies. Instead of hiring a team of developers to work on something, the company hired one developer and used an open source app. You don't really need a college education for this type of work.
- MichaelGG 15y agoJust quick: I downvoted because you made a silly argument. You dismissed physical theft because "it's the cost of doing business" (ignoring physical harm). Then you went on a generic complaint about the decline of industries.