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What happens if everybody eats mince pie on Christmas? Life goes on as usual. What happens if nobody pays for a copy of Windows 8? There won't be a Windows 9.
by VMG 15y ago
What happens if everybody eats mince pie on Christmas? Life goes on as usual.
What happens if nobody pays for a copy of Windows 8? There won't be a Windows 9.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem
- learc83 15y agoMost authors make far less than minimum wage after everything is said and done. Yet they keep producing books. There may not be a windows 9, but you can bet there will be 200 flavors of Linux.
- DrHankPym 15y agoYou say that like it's a problem. Look at it this way: Does Ubuntu or OS X suffer from being pirated? Not really. Windows needs to figure this out for themselves.
- VMG 15y agoIt likely is a problem for all those people who pirate Windows
- comicjk 15y agoWe certainly don't want all OSs confined to closed hardware like OS X. Ubuntu (and open source in general) works because of inverse-free-riders, "free helpers" we might call them. That seems to be a sustainable model, but it likely won't work for annoying grunt programming - note the poor driver support in many Linux distros. For some tasks, someone needs to be paid.
- treeform 15y agoA big couse in pour drivers support is that companies dont publish specs to their devices. If there was only one dominant free OS like linux, companies that make hardwire would want their devices to work with it and so will write drivers or at least publish full spec.
- aklofas 15y agoWindows doesn't write driver software either. It's up to the hardware companies to make their hardware compatible if they want to sell it. Windows just happens to have the largest market share. If Linux had even one tenth the share of windows, drivers wouldn't be an issue.
- pilom 15y agoI disagree that it is really sustainable on an industry wide scale. Who pays the salaries of the free helpers so that they have the free time to contribute?
- grantheaslip 15y agoSo you’re saying that because people are stealing their software, Microsoft should throw away their business model? If people were stealing iPads from Apple stores, would you suggest Apple should “figure [that] out for themselves”?
- tikhonj 15y agoFirst of all, copying is completely different from stealing, but we've been over that before. Secondly, stores actually do deal with shoplifting--they euphemistically call it "inventory shrinkage" and just chalk it up as an expense. "Unauthorized" copying isn't even an expense!
- grantheaslip 15y agoFair point — I was being a bit facetious — but the fact remains that if a critical enough mass of people steal/copy Windows, it’s no longer economically viable. Every user who hasn’t paid for it is being subsidized by those who have. Windows may not be the best example since it’s so massively profitable, and sells a lot to enterprise customers and OEMs who won’t pirate it. That said, I suspect the business case for producing high-budget, non-mass-market consumer content (say, HBO shows) is starting to tip. How many people pirate Game of Thrones for every one that pays for it? In the end, we live in a capitalist society — the people making software, movies, music, books, etc. have to get paid for the stuff be made.
- v0cab 15y agoThey don't have to make that stuff. They can try to find something else to do instead.
- grantheaslip 15y agoIf there was legitimately no demand for these products, then sure, they should move on and make something else instead. But there is a demand for them — it’s just that many of the people consuming it are stealing it. This is what laws are there for. Again, I know this analogy isn’t perfect, but what you’ve said is not all that different from telling a shop owner who was robbed that maybe he should do something else instead.
- dredmorbius 15y agoMicrosoft does benefit, greatly, from piracy of Windows. Gates has said so himself: http://www.itwire.com/it-industry-news/market/23137-how-piracy-benefits-microsoft http://www.itwire.com/it-industry-news/market/23137-how-pira... Gates has also, in the past, confirmed how important piracy is to Microsoft: "Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software... Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
- learc83 15y agoI'm convinced Photoshop is intentionally easy to pirate. They make money from business customers, and everyone willing to pay, and because it's essentially free for people unwilling to pay, there isn't much room for a competitor.
- dredmorbius 15y agoLook at Craigslist for another example. All listings are free. With the exception of job postings and agent housing ads in NYC. The exceptions provide enough revenue for the small (~40) staff of CL to keep things rolling. The free postings zero out revenues for anyone else looking to compete in the same space, establishing a large marketplace with strong network effects and an effective monopoly.
- comicjk 15y agoSince it seems to be impossible, from a technical standpoint, to prevent piracy, then maybe we have to accept the free rider problem and produce intellectual property on a public basis. One option would be a grant system, as is used in scientific research (solving the free rider "problem" that anyone can read your paper and use your research).
- timwiseman 15y agoThere are numerous other ways to approach it. For one, you can compete with free, and many do precisely that ( Cory Doctorow gives away digital copies of most of his work, but still makes his living mostly by and from his writing.) Another is to sell the associated scarcities rather than necessarily the copyright system itself (as Red Hat does). And trying to produce it on a public basis produces problems in deciding what to fund. You run into this in public funding of science to, but there often are at least some public goals which helps guide this decision. It would be much more difficult to do with other forms of intellectual property (though we do in fact already do it to a limited degree, look at the National Endowment for the Arts).
- comicjk 15y agoThe BBC is a better example. They make some truly great content and seem to have no problem staying close to what consumers want.
- ap22213 15y agoWas there ever a software company, or music artist, or movie studio that decided not to put out a product because of this so-called free rider problem? Just curious.
- VMG 15y agoimpossible to know
- jarek 15y agoWhat we do know is that many companies who do put out software are implicitly, and sometimes explicitly as in Gates quote elsewhere in this thread, okay with some users pirating as long as their main revenue streams are not threatened.
- robryan 15y agoYou would gave to think that reduced revenue from music has lead to less artists getting funding to produce an album. Of course they can still make it but it might make it harder. Book advance sizes and quantity gave gone down.
- gamble 15y agoSpeaking from experience, piracy has a very strong influence on how much money video game companies are willing to spend on development. Piracy is the reason that PC gamers have to put up with games that are primarily designed for consoles, with very little invested in adapting them to a PC interface. Few companies are willing to spend money on PC development when you can only expect a few hundred thousand sales.
- alextingle 15y agoYou are merely restating the problem, not putting forward a solution. That's not really adding to the debate. Copyright exists to solve a genuine problem. When it was conceived in the 18th Century, is was explicitly to encourage and reward the creation of new works (such as Windows 9) that would enrich the public domain. Few people would argue that the problem has gone away. The current debate is whether the copyright mechanism is still a viable solution.
- marknutter 15y ago> What happens if nobody pays for a copy of Windows 8? There won't be a Windows 9. LOL. Is that a threat?
- sjwright 15y agoI think you meant to say is that a promise? :-)
- pilom 15y agoI'm curious who your employer is and what your response would be if the parent said "What happens if nobody pays for a copy of <your company's most profitable product>?"
- learc83 15y agoYou stop working for that company and work for one better able to adapt to changing technology/society.
- sirclueless 15y agoYou mean 3rd most profitable product :-P http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/windows-drops-to-no-3-cash-cow-status-in-microsoft-latest-quarter/11696 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/windows-drops-to-no-3-ca...
- aklofas 15y ago> What happens if nobody pays for a copy of Linux 3.2? There won't be a Linux 3.4. I think the business model needs to change a bit. That's all.
- VMG 15y agoThat is not your decision to make. By the way, are GPL violations equally just anachronistic hippie pipe dreams or real crimes?
- roguecoder 15y agoGPL violations are hypocrisy. We can judge people on their proclaimed beliefs without sharing those beliefs ;-)
- tikhonj 15y agoSounds like win-win. Now, what happens if I don't pay for my copy of Fedora?
- its_so_on 15y agoyour suggestion is the status quo (nobody pays but oem's, the ridiculous "retail price" is just a tool the oem's use facing their customers, Look how much more it would cost to build it yourself!). pick a better example :) maybe adobe's creative suite.
- e40 15y agoWhat happens if nobody pays for a copy of Windows 8? There won't be a Windows 9. That would never happen unless MS charged an outrageous sum for it. If any company finds itself in the position where nearly all of the users are pirating, then there's something wrong. They're charging too much or the DRM is too onerous, or something. EDIT: if you charge a fair price and make something available, people will buy it rather than pirate it. Louis CK and lots of other people have shown this.
- jonnathanson 15y ago"EDIT: if you charge a fair price and make something available, people will buy it rather than pirate it. Louis CK and lots of other people have shown this." There are two problems with this assertion. The first is that people's current working definition of a "fair price" seems to be $0.00. Are we really to believe that paying $1.29 on iTunes, or $0.99 on Amazon, for a DRM-free music track is "unfair"? Or that the user experience on either of those services is horrendous and painful? Come on. People pirate, in large part, because they prefer not to have to pay for something if they can get it for free. Let's be honest about that fact. If there's an impulse to "stick it to the man," so be it. I'll be the first to admit that the targets of this mentality -- the entertainment and software industries -- could use a good sticking-to. But let's not pretend that the moral-crusade argument is the sole -- or even the primary -- motivation behind most people's piracy of content. The primary reason is the price, i.e., zero. Second, while I agree that Louis C.K.'s release shows promise, he seems to be an exception to the rule so far. Who are the "lots of other people" that have "shown" that charging a fair price leads to buying over pirating? Let's take the highly-touted example of Radiohead's pay-what-you-want release of their album "In Rainbows" in 2007. According to the post-release data, 62% of all downloaders of the album paid $0.00.[1] The next-largest segment, 17% of users, paid somewhere between $0.01 and $4.00. If Radiohead were not Radiohead -- i.e., not enormously successful prior to the release of the album -- then they'd not have been able to bear the razor-thin margin on the sale. Essentially, Radiohead gave the album away because they could afford to do so. When Trent Reznor and Saul Williams released an album online that same year, in the Radiohead model, they gave users the choice between paying $5 and paying nothing. Approximately 154,449 users downloaded the album, and 28,322 users (about 18%) paid for it. At $5 per unit, that's a grand total of $141,610 in revenue for the album, and more likely than not, the production costs met or exceeded that revenue. And those were hardly releases by big, onerous, anti-consumerist conglomerates, either. Those were pro-consumer, digital-friendly artists willing to put themselves out there to test precisely your proposition: that, if given the choice, people will pay. It seems that, by and large, they won't. [1]http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/study-free-beats-fee-for-radioheads-in.html http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/study-free-...
- InclinedPlane 15y agoWhat happens if everyone in the entire world only reads books from libraries? This is not a new problem, nor is it without solutions.
- VMG 15y agoYou can't compare libraries to copying because you keep your copy forever.
- InclinedPlane 15y agoThat explains why they are not identical, that does not explain why they are not comparable. In both cases a single bought copy is shared with an indefinite number of non-paying readers.
- VMG 15y agoThere are some very important differences that make it incomparable: * libraries have a limited amount of copies. So the amount of non-paying readers is not indefinate * the readers have to return the copies of books or DVDs they have rented These inconveniences makes buying a copy for personal use much more attractive for the consumer.
- scotty79 15y agoWhat happens if nobody pays for a copy of Linux? There is new constantly improving Linux in every software niche it can get into.