7 ms·

A better conspiracy theorist than me might claim that this is why there has been such a strong anti-piracy push: gotta keep the poors in their place.

hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
It makes little sense as there is already a good, reasonable and convincing explanation: software companies want to maximize income. In any case, software piracy seems to be a thing of the past, except a few notable pieces of desktop software (Windows, Office, some Adobe software). Everything else moved to the web, for better or worse, where piracy is practically non-existent.
- thatguy0900 4y ago
  Video game piracy is very much alive and well, with some triple a title exceptions. Not that that is effecting poverty at all. And, anyway, you don't really need new software. You can do fine with ten year old video editors and word 2007 if you just want to get something done.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    For that matter, there are open source options for most of the relevant productivity software categories. ADDED: Not sure the objections to this statement. If I needed to work on Word files, I'd almost certainly use LibreOffice rather than a 2007 vintage copy of Word. Certainly the open source software isn't always as good as the proprietary software but it's often a better choice than doing without or using versions long out of support.
  - xzjis 4y ago
    That's interesting that you talk about videogames because, in Brazil, a good wage is about $400 per month, but videogames cost about $40. So if you're a child, you can't really buy them as they're too expensive. And I don't even talk about the price of a computer or worse, a game console.
- whoisburbansky 4y ago
  The older, non-web versions of most of those things are still available to pirate. I’d find it hard to believe that the marginal improvements found in the online versions would have any significant impact on the poverty reduction effects of even having a decade-old version of things like the Office Suite or Photoshop.
uoaei 4y ago
I mean that's kind of the case, but zoomed out to a systems-level view we see that intellectual property rights definitely contribute to the domination and monopoly-like behavior of corporations in the global market.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Bad old days: go to a poor country, plant your flag on their property, demand tribute and export it back home Bad new days: go to a poor country, plant your flag on their intellectual property, demand tribute and export it back home
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    > Bad new days: go to a poor country, plant your flag on their intellectual property, demand tribute and export it back home Wait, aren't the content companies offering things they made outside the new market? Or are they somehow locking up the poor country's content producers?
- jerojero 4y ago
  Yes I agree. I think there might have been a case for intellectual property many years ago when the cost of entry was extremely high. To write a book and get it published required a big amount of effort to get it to the finish line. It would therefore make sense to have extra protections. But now a days? Anything that can be digitalized can be distributed instantly and massively at an extremely marginal cost. But whereas in the past it was relatively easy to catch and punish someone that had broken intellectual property laws and was making any kind of real money with that... Now a days it becomes a much more difficult task, because obviously to track down everyone that is committing piracy is incredibly difficult and expensive. Yet companies are using our legal systems to do exactly that. The amount of money and time that is spent in court every year in patent related issues is astounding. We also have to consider who the owners of intellectual property are and therefore who is benefiting the most out of the system. And curiously (well, not really) most patents are owned by big transnational businesses. Why is this the case? Well, because when a patent is useful and is owned by a small company it is very much posible for a big corporation to acquire this patent either through directly buying it or through buying the smaller company. This is common practice. Not only that but these big corporations have the resources (legal and monetary) to release similar enough products that will overflow the market anyway. An example of this is Amazon through their Amazon basics line. In terms of creative effort, I think it is worth to look at tiktok and how people will make use of copyrighted material to produce thousands, if not millions, of these small videos that bring entertainment to so many people. This is possible through the fair use act which in reality is a form of intellectual property waiver. But this can easily be turned to its head when the ride of virality ends. Just look at YouTube and how most small creators are being sued for using copyrighted material in ways that in many cases are unfair. But what can they do about it? It's not possible for a small YouTuber to go head to head against a company the size of Nintendo (known to be "patent trolls"). I think in many ways the intellectual property system has stopped serving small creators and innovators and instead is used as a legal recourse to precisely uphold oligopolies and slow down innovation.
BenoitP 4y ago
The conspiracist in me tells me big software groups actually like piracy quite a lot. Sure they want to extract as much as possible from the ones who can pay, but they'd be pretty pissed that the others go to the competition. Piracy is actually a hell of a moat. It provides mindshare, ecosystem, network effects. Let's hear it from the horse's mouth: Speaking at University of Washington in 1998, Bill Gates said: "Although 3 million computers get sold each year in China, people don't pay for our software. Someday they will, though, and as long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours." And I'm currently writing this from a windows 10 OS that I never bothered to pay for and activate. It's been 2 years. I can't change the wallpaper, though. This is how much Microsoft cares.
- calibas 4y ago
  So long as everyone's using Windows, pirated or otherwise, it means that Microsoft dominates the market. The best thing that could ever happen to Ubuntu would be for MS to start cracking down on piracy, but they don't because they know better.
  - cercatrova 4y ago
    Indeed, Microsoft now bundles Linux into Windows with WSL, creating an even bigger moat. I don't bother installing Linux on my computers anymore, just Windows with WSL.
    - blooalien 4y ago
      I'm exactly opposite. I don't bother installing Windows on my computers anymore; Just Linux with WINE/Proton for the occasional game.
      - cercatrova 4y ago
        Sadly I just don't want to deal with Linux desktop setup anymore, I only use it for development so dealing with drivers is not a good use of my time.
makotech221 4y ago
this is literally just marxist analysis of capitalist economies, but expand the anti-piracy to "pro-private property"
- skinnymuch 4y ago
  I can’t tell. What point is your comment trying to make?
  - krallja 4y ago
    I believe they just called me a communist.
    - skinnymuch 4y ago
      Haha. Cheers!
ajuc 4y ago
This was the reason for IP laws - to keep industrial revolution in Great Britain. And Germany as well as USA industrialized by pirating the shit out of these books and ignoring patents. Same as China and India now. There's no other way to catch up.
csallen 4y ago
Why do people believe there's a conspiracy to keep poor people poor? From an economic standpoint, rich business owners want there to be more wealthy consumers in the world, because that means more customers. You don't see Whole Foods expanding to as many poor neighborhoods as rich ones, because there isn't enough money there to buy. From a social and cultural standpoint, rich people with expensive tastes prefer to spend their time in upscale environments. They aren't happy that so many places are impoverished. Source: I know a lot of rich people.
- jerojero 4y ago
  If everyone is a software developer then who will be cleaning the toilets? There isn't a conspiracy to keep people poor, it's simply a reality derived from market mechanics applied to labour. If people in South East Asian countries were paid the same wages people in Europe are paid to do the same tasks (though, to be fair, few people in Europe do these tasks precisely because of it) then everything would be outrageously expensive. From a social and economic stand point, rich people like to spend their time in upscale environments where the most onerous jobs are done by underpaid workers. Let's be honest, how much money would you charge to be cleaning toilets? You might think this is a job anyone can do, but in reality, it is a job most people really, really don't want to do. They don't want to do it so badly they will spend their wholes lives using every ounce of privilege they have to avoid being put in such a situation. Our whole economic system is built on top of this idea that some people are so poor they will do anything for a little bit of money. Source: I live in the real world.
  - csallen 4y ago
    That's not how markets work. People will still clean the toilets, but the supply of toilet cleaners will fall, while demand stays the same or even increases, meaning that prices will increase. The result is not that nobody will clean toilets. It's that those who do will be paid more. (And other effects: There will be increased demand for technological alternatives to hiring toilet cleaners and innovation in that area, for example. Or alternatives to toilets might become more popular. Etc.) You are correct, things will become more expensive. But so what? It doesn't really matter, because everyone in this hypothetical society is wealthier. For example, the price of hiring a janitor in San Francisco is outrageously expensive compared to hiring someone to clean in, say, a poor township in South Africa. But the people in SF are wealthier, so it doesn't matter. And the janitors are wealthier, too: They make $40k/year in SF, $4.5k/year in Cape Town. Similarly, the average janitor in SF possesses much more wealth not only than their counterpart in South Africa, but also more than almost anyone living 100 years ago. Because society has created more wealth. Your model of how things work is subtly based on the fixed pie fallacy, which assumes that total wealth cannot increase, and that if there are gains in one area, there must be tradeoffs elsewhere. Which is not true. Rich people don't have strong incentives to keep poor people poor.

hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago

It makes little sense as there is already a good, reasonable and convincing explanation: software companies want to maximize income. In any case, software piracy seems to be a thing of the past, except a few notable pieces of desktop software (Windows, Office, some Adobe software). Everything else moved to the web, for better or worse, where piracy is practically non-existent.

thatguy0900 4y ago
Video game piracy is very much alive and well, with some triple a title exceptions. Not that that is effecting poverty at all. And, anyway, you don't really need new software. You can do fine with ten year old video editors and word 2007 if you just want to get something done.
- ghaff 4y ago
  For that matter, there are open source options for most of the relevant productivity software categories. ADDED: Not sure the objections to this statement. If I needed to work on Word files, I'd almost certainly use LibreOffice rather than a 2007 vintage copy of Word. Certainly the open source software isn't always as good as the proprietary software but it's often a better choice than doing without or using versions long out of support.
- xzjis 4y ago
  That's interesting that you talk about videogames because, in Brazil, a good wage is about $400 per month, but videogames cost about $40. So if you're a child, you can't really buy them as they're too expensive. And I don't even talk about the price of a computer or worse, a game console.
whoisburbansky 4y ago
The older, non-web versions of most of those things are still available to pirate. I’d find it hard to believe that the marginal improvements found in the online versions would have any significant impact on the poverty reduction effects of even having a decade-old version of things like the Office Suite or Photoshop.

uoaei 4y ago

I mean that's kind of the case, but zoomed out to a systems-level view we see that intellectual property rights definitely contribute to the domination and monopoly-like behavior of corporations in the global market.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Bad old days: go to a poor country, plant your flag on their property, demand tribute and export it back home Bad new days: go to a poor country, plant your flag on their intellectual property, demand tribute and export it back home
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  > Bad new days: go to a poor country, plant your flag on their intellectual property, demand tribute and export it back home Wait, aren't the content companies offering things they made outside the new market? Or are they somehow locking up the poor country's content producers?
jerojero 4y ago
Yes I agree. I think there might have been a case for intellectual property many years ago when the cost of entry was extremely high. To write a book and get it published required a big amount of effort to get it to the finish line. It would therefore make sense to have extra protections. But now a days? Anything that can be digitalized can be distributed instantly and massively at an extremely marginal cost. But whereas in the past it was relatively easy to catch and punish someone that had broken intellectual property laws and was making any kind of real money with that... Now a days it becomes a much more difficult task, because obviously to track down everyone that is committing piracy is incredibly difficult and expensive. Yet companies are using our legal systems to do exactly that. The amount of money and time that is spent in court every year in patent related issues is astounding. We also have to consider who the owners of intellectual property are and therefore who is benefiting the most out of the system. And curiously (well, not really) most patents are owned by big transnational businesses. Why is this the case? Well, because when a patent is useful and is owned by a small company it is very much posible for a big corporation to acquire this patent either through directly buying it or through buying the smaller company. This is common practice. Not only that but these big corporations have the resources (legal and monetary) to release similar enough products that will overflow the market anyway. An example of this is Amazon through their Amazon basics line. In terms of creative effort, I think it is worth to look at tiktok and how people will make use of copyrighted material to produce thousands, if not millions, of these small videos that bring entertainment to so many people. This is possible through the fair use act which in reality is a form of intellectual property waiver. But this can easily be turned to its head when the ride of virality ends. Just look at YouTube and how most small creators are being sued for using copyrighted material in ways that in many cases are unfair. But what can they do about it? It's not possible for a small YouTuber to go head to head against a company the size of Nintendo (known to be "patent trolls"). I think in many ways the intellectual property system has stopped serving small creators and innovators and instead is used as a legal recourse to precisely uphold oligopolies and slow down innovation.

BenoitP 4y ago

The conspiracist in me tells me big software groups actually like piracy quite a lot. Sure they want to extract as much as possible from the ones who can pay, but they'd be pretty pissed that the others go to the competition. Piracy is actually a hell of a moat. It provides mindshare, ecosystem, network effects. Let's hear it from the horse's mouth: Speaking at University of Washington in 1998, Bill Gates said: "Although 3 million computers get sold each year in China, people don't pay for our software. Someday they will, though, and as long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours." And I'm currently writing this from a windows 10 OS that I never bothered to pay for and activate. It's been 2 years. I can't change the wallpaper, though. This is how much Microsoft cares.

calibas 4y ago
So long as everyone's using Windows, pirated or otherwise, it means that Microsoft dominates the market. The best thing that could ever happen to Ubuntu would be for MS to start cracking down on piracy, but they don't because they know better.
- cercatrova 4y ago
  Indeed, Microsoft now bundles Linux into Windows with WSL, creating an even bigger moat. I don't bother installing Linux on my computers anymore, just Windows with WSL.
  - blooalien 4y ago
    I'm exactly opposite. I don't bother installing Windows on my computers anymore; Just Linux with WINE/Proton for the occasional game.
    - cercatrova 4y ago
      Sadly I just don't want to deal with Linux desktop setup anymore, I only use it for development so dealing with drivers is not a good use of my time.

makotech221 4y ago

this is literally just marxist analysis of capitalist economies, but expand the anti-piracy to "pro-private property"

skinnymuch 4y ago
I can’t tell. What point is your comment trying to make?
- krallja 4y ago
  I believe they just called me a communist.
  - skinnymuch 4y ago
    Haha. Cheers!

ajuc 4y ago

This was the reason for IP laws - to keep industrial revolution in Great Britain. And Germany as well as USA industrialized by pirating the shit out of these books and ignoring patents. Same as China and India now. There's no other way to catch up.

csallen 4y ago

Why do people believe there's a conspiracy to keep poor people poor? From an economic standpoint, rich business owners want there to be more wealthy consumers in the world, because that means more customers. You don't see Whole Foods expanding to as many poor neighborhoods as rich ones, because there isn't enough money there to buy. From a social and cultural standpoint, rich people with expensive tastes prefer to spend their time in upscale environments. They aren't happy that so many places are impoverished. Source: I know a lot of rich people.

jerojero 4y ago
If everyone is a software developer then who will be cleaning the toilets? There isn't a conspiracy to keep people poor, it's simply a reality derived from market mechanics applied to labour. If people in South East Asian countries were paid the same wages people in Europe are paid to do the same tasks (though, to be fair, few people in Europe do these tasks precisely because of it) then everything would be outrageously expensive. From a social and economic stand point, rich people like to spend their time in upscale environments where the most onerous jobs are done by underpaid workers. Let's be honest, how much money would you charge to be cleaning toilets? You might think this is a job anyone can do, but in reality, it is a job most people really, really don't want to do. They don't want to do it so badly they will spend their wholes lives using every ounce of privilege they have to avoid being put in such a situation. Our whole economic system is built on top of this idea that some people are so poor they will do anything for a little bit of money. Source: I live in the real world.
- csallen 4y ago
  That's not how markets work. People will still clean the toilets, but the supply of toilet cleaners will fall, while demand stays the same or even increases, meaning that prices will increase. The result is not that nobody will clean toilets. It's that those who do will be paid more. (And other effects: There will be increased demand for technological alternatives to hiring toilet cleaners and innovation in that area, for example. Or alternatives to toilets might become more popular. Etc.) You are correct, things will become more expensive. But so what? It doesn't really matter, because everyone in this hypothetical society is wealthier. For example, the price of hiring a janitor in San Francisco is outrageously expensive compared to hiring someone to clean in, say, a poor township in South Africa. But the people in SF are wealthier, so it doesn't matter. And the janitors are wealthier, too: They make $40k/year in SF, $4.5k/year in Cape Town. Similarly, the average janitor in SF possesses much more wealth not only than their counterpart in South Africa, but also more than almost anyone living 100 years ago. Because society has created more wealth. Your model of how things work is subtly based on the fixed pie fallacy, which assumes that total wealth cannot increase, and that if there are gains in one area, there must be tradeoffs elsewhere. Which is not true. Rich people don't have strong incentives to keep poor people poor.