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> You are a fool if you're angry about piracy on your pet project. I'll tell my employees that as our company folds from lack of revenue. I'll tell my wife th

> You are a fool if you're angry about piracy on your pet project. I'll tell my employees that as our company folds from lack of revenue. I'll tell my wife that as we apply for food stamps. I'll tell the that to the next person interviewing me for a job because people didn't want to pay for the value I provided.

the8472 12y ago
> people didn't want to pay for the value I provided Well, that simply sounds like a failed product, no? Not everything is successful. Given finite resources (human labor in this case) not everything can be successful. Just because some people would take it for free does not mean they would take it at the cost it takes to make the product profitable.
- patzerhacker 12y ago
  The infuriating part is that the people that don't think the software is worth the value they would pay then also feel entitled enough to pay nothing and use it anyway. Don't want to use my software because you don't think it's worth the cost? That's fine, but you don't get to act high and mighty about using it without paying for it.
  - the8472 12y ago
    While I can understand the frustration it's not really lost sales, it's just purchases that never would have been made in the first place. It's the same with music piracy. Sure, one might buy 1 CD. Even 10 CDs. But very few people would buy those 20GB+ of worth of music they hoard on their harddrives. It's something they take for free but would never pay for. The difference with music is that you can make a partial purchase because the product is sliced into small enough pieces. I may have the whole discography of a band spanning decades, but I only buy one or two of their albums. At least they still get some money that way, so maybe they don't have to feel the same frustration that you do. In that sense piracy enables some sort of involuntary "set your own price" scheme. But that only works if the product can be sliced down into small enough units enabling the consumers to set their own price. For software this is more difficult, but not impossible. For example adobe products or microsoft office get pirated in private environments but paid for in commercial settings. The private copies serve to entrench the product in the market, even if they don't generate a direct profit by themselves. So even there is a difference between what people are willing to pay and the retail price of the products.
    - patzerhacker 12y ago
      >While I can understand the frustration it's not really lost sales, it's just purchases that never would have been made in the first place. This is really splitting hairs. Yes, I acknowledge that it wasn't _just_ piracy that caused the company to shut its doors. But to say that I can't be frustrated about people using the results of my work for free? In what other industry is it acceptable to say, "Yes, we like your product, but no, we're not going to pay, and if you try to make us pay we're going to throw our toys out of the pram about how evil the software developers are!" That's taking it to a whole new level, and that's really the point I was responding to.
psykovsky 12y ago
That job interview would be your epiphany. That nobody paid for it because you didn't really provide any value at all. Welcome to the real world, where your actions are most likely insignificant and valueless, except for you.
vezzy-fnord 12y ago
Has there ever really been a documented case of people being driven to poverty as a direct result of their content being put on file sharing networks? It's a very common piece of emotional demagoguery that I see, but I've never seen any sources that substantiate it.
0x5f3759df-i 12y ago
Because Hollywood is just barely scraping by from the lack of revenue....
scrollaway 12y ago
Let's forget for a moment that, as you tell all those people your sorrows, you will in fact figure out that your product failed not because of piracy but because the product was not giving adequate value for its price... This is about movies and music at large. Software piracy is a solved problem. In games, the majority of people now use Steam and nobody really cares about the few that look for it on random torrent websites or some such because: 1. They are a much more likely source of malware (you don't just play files, you run executables). 2. Games that care have adopted an online-only DRM model (which has its own problems but that's a story for another thread) 3. A lot of games have an audience comprised entirely of non-paying customers (children without credit cards). Parents are not expected to pirate, and if kids do then no harm done. In office software, Photoshop and MS Office are the two big names in piracy and both MS and Adobe silently encourage piracy on their products to enforce lock in. And while that sounds scummy when I put it like that, it is an excellent demonstration of what I was mentioning earlier: You have eyeballs/ears which you can easily turn into wallets. So please, give me a break, your company did not go under because of piracy. And Hollywood/the RIAA have more digits in their bank accounts than total employees.
- patzerhacker 12y ago
  >Let's forget for a moment that, as you tell all those people your sorrows, you will in fact figure out that your product failed not because of piracy but because the product was not giving adequate value for its price. That may be, but that doesn't mean that people have the right to unilaterally decide that the price should be zero against the wishes of the seller. They may have the technical ability to do so, but that does not make it moral or ethical to do so in the most general case. I'd like to have a lower electrical bill. Electricity is a non-tangible good, like bits. Does that mean that I should be able to tell the electric company to shove off just because I think they charge too much for electricity? Why is that any different? If my software fails because nobody wants it at the price it's at then that's a signal that I should lower prices. If my software fails because a large group decides to void the social contract and get my software for free because they disagree with their pricing then I have every right to get angry about it. The software I produce took time and money to produce. It's okay if you don't want to pay for it. Then don't use it. You don't get to have all of the benefit for none of the cost. That's the part that's the most infuriating. >Software piracy is a solved problem. How do you make that logical jump? >You have eyeballs/ears which you can easily turn into wallets. Not if people are used to and can continue to get the software for free. That relies upon the generosity of some other person down the line to actually pay for the software. Some companies may choose to make that decision. Good for them! But the assumption that all companies will or must or otherwise be ethically or morally bankrupt is a bad one. I'd love to spend all of my time building software for others and let them pay what they want for it, but I have to eat and have a family to support. Software piracy doesn't hurt big shops or new developers as much as it hurts the smaller guys. Big shops price it into their software costs, and as you said, industry standard software (Office, Photoshop) rely upon it to bring in new users because their target market is saturated. New developers are just happy to get their name out there in many cases - it's a cost of doing business that they can afford. The small shops in the middle get it the worst. Not enough name recognition to be an industry leader yet enough people that feel entitled to their software for free. The vast majority of them can't win and fold. Is that what meritocracy is? Subject to the whims of an entitled core of freeloaders?

the8472 12y ago

> people didn't want to pay for the value I provided Well, that simply sounds like a failed product, no? Not everything is successful. Given finite resources (human labor in this case) not everything can be successful. Just because some people would take it for free does not mean they would take it at the cost it takes to make the product profitable.

patzerhacker 12y ago
The infuriating part is that the people that don't think the software is worth the value they would pay then also feel entitled enough to pay nothing and use it anyway. Don't want to use my software because you don't think it's worth the cost? That's fine, but you don't get to act high and mighty about using it without paying for it.
- the8472 12y ago
  While I can understand the frustration it's not really lost sales, it's just purchases that never would have been made in the first place. It's the same with music piracy. Sure, one might buy 1 CD. Even 10 CDs. But very few people would buy those 20GB+ of worth of music they hoard on their harddrives. It's something they take for free but would never pay for. The difference with music is that you can make a partial purchase because the product is sliced into small enough pieces. I may have the whole discography of a band spanning decades, but I only buy one or two of their albums. At least they still get some money that way, so maybe they don't have to feel the same frustration that you do. In that sense piracy enables some sort of involuntary "set your own price" scheme. But that only works if the product can be sliced down into small enough units enabling the consumers to set their own price. For software this is more difficult, but not impossible. For example adobe products or microsoft office get pirated in private environments but paid for in commercial settings. The private copies serve to entrench the product in the market, even if they don't generate a direct profit by themselves. So even there is a difference between what people are willing to pay and the retail price of the products.
  - patzerhacker 12y ago
    >While I can understand the frustration it's not really lost sales, it's just purchases that never would have been made in the first place. This is really splitting hairs. Yes, I acknowledge that it wasn't _just_ piracy that caused the company to shut its doors. But to say that I can't be frustrated about people using the results of my work for free? In what other industry is it acceptable to say, "Yes, we like your product, but no, we're not going to pay, and if you try to make us pay we're going to throw our toys out of the pram about how evil the software developers are!" That's taking it to a whole new level, and that's really the point I was responding to.

psykovsky 12y ago

That job interview would be your epiphany. That nobody paid for it because you didn't really provide any value at all. Welcome to the real world, where your actions are most likely insignificant and valueless, except for you.

vezzy-fnord 12y ago

Has there ever really been a documented case of people being driven to poverty as a direct result of their content being put on file sharing networks? It's a very common piece of emotional demagoguery that I see, but I've never seen any sources that substantiate it.

0x5f3759df-i 12y ago

Because Hollywood is just barely scraping by from the lack of revenue....

scrollaway 12y ago

Let's forget for a moment that, as you tell all those people your sorrows, you will in fact figure out that your product failed not because of piracy but because the product was not giving adequate value for its price... This is about movies and music at large. Software piracy is a solved problem. In games, the majority of people now use Steam and nobody really cares about the few that look for it on random torrent websites or some such because: 1. They are a much more likely source of malware (you don't just play files, you run executables). 2. Games that care have adopted an online-only DRM model (which has its own problems but that's a story for another thread) 3. A lot of games have an audience comprised entirely of non-paying customers (children without credit cards). Parents are not expected to pirate, and if kids do then no harm done. In office software, Photoshop and MS Office are the two big names in piracy and both MS and Adobe silently encourage piracy on their products to enforce lock in. And while that sounds scummy when I put it like that, it is an excellent demonstration of what I was mentioning earlier: You have eyeballs/ears which you can easily turn into wallets. So please, give me a break, your company did not go under because of piracy. And Hollywood/the RIAA have more digits in their bank accounts than total employees.

patzerhacker 12y ago
>Let's forget for a moment that, as you tell all those people your sorrows, you will in fact figure out that your product failed not because of piracy but because the product was not giving adequate value for its price. That may be, but that doesn't mean that people have the right to unilaterally decide that the price should be zero against the wishes of the seller. They may have the technical ability to do so, but that does not make it moral or ethical to do so in the most general case. I'd like to have a lower electrical bill. Electricity is a non-tangible good, like bits. Does that mean that I should be able to tell the electric company to shove off just because I think they charge too much for electricity? Why is that any different? If my software fails because nobody wants it at the price it's at then that's a signal that I should lower prices. If my software fails because a large group decides to void the social contract and get my software for free because they disagree with their pricing then I have every right to get angry about it. The software I produce took time and money to produce. It's okay if you don't want to pay for it. Then don't use it. You don't get to have all of the benefit for none of the cost. That's the part that's the most infuriating. >Software piracy is a solved problem. How do you make that logical jump? >You have eyeballs/ears which you can easily turn into wallets. Not if people are used to and can continue to get the software for free. That relies upon the generosity of some other person down the line to actually pay for the software. Some companies may choose to make that decision. Good for them! But the assumption that all companies will or must or otherwise be ethically or morally bankrupt is a bad one. I'd love to spend all of my time building software for others and let them pay what they want for it, but I have to eat and have a family to support. Software piracy doesn't hurt big shops or new developers as much as it hurts the smaller guys. Big shops price it into their software costs, and as you said, industry standard software (Office, Photoshop) rely upon it to bring in new users because their target market is saturated. New developers are just happy to get their name out there in many cases - it's a cost of doing business that they can afford. The small shops in the middle get it the worst. Not enough name recognition to be an industry leader yet enough people that feel entitled to their software for free. The vast majority of them can't win and fold. Is that what meritocracy is? Subject to the whims of an entitled core of freeloaders?