I Think Your App Should Be Free • Hacker News Board

Re: I Think Your App Should Be Free

#101

Post by earbitscom » Tue, Oct 04, 2011, 10:00 AM UTC

FxChiP wrote: post #77

glimcat wrote: post #18

I really don't care if teenagers with no money run a free copy of my stuff. They weren't going to buy it anyway - and now they're out there increasing its penetration. From a business perspective, it's often a win if you stop fallaciously calculating every illegitimate copy as a loss of the sticker price. From a strictly personal standpoint, I take it as a compliment that they like it enough to go to the trouble.

"it's often a win if you stop fallaciously calculating every illegitimate copy as a loss of the sticker price." This really depends on how you define loss. In a standard legitimate sale of a product, there is a bidirectional exchange of value -- the customer submits currency whose total value is equivalent to the value requested for the product being purchased. Simultaneously, for submitting the currency of that valu…

> and you regard your time as totally worthless

I could hardly love this whole comment, but particularly that, any more. Rock on.

Re: I Think Your App Should Be Free

#102

Post by wazoox » Tue, Oct 04, 2011, 10:01 AM UTC

earbitscom wrote: post #83

babebridou wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author said in the comments: "The point of the article is that making that choice for someone else is wrong." It's my feeling that in this article at least, the author does not really care about the rights and wrong of copying, piracy, intellectual property, etc. He is scared by relatively few people on the internet being both lawmaker, judge, party and executioner when it comes to the monetization of a digital p…

Actually, I'm scared that we live in a world where people think they're entitled to anything they can take without consequence. The fact that they aren't taking the original means nothing. They have broken a social contract with the creator of content that, ironically, they really enjoy and would like to see more of in the future. The problem of someone taking copyrighted content and making it available for others is…

> The problem of someone taking copyrighted content and making it available for others is a small one. The big problem is the many millions of people who take advantage of it.

Precisely. Many millions of people take advantage of it, and the overall good is greater than if they didn't. If the cost of distributing some good falls down to zero, you can't make a living by distributing these. Find another way; for instance provide a web service through your app, that unregistered copies can't access.

> It's just sad to think that everybody enjoys music, just like they enjoy software, and so many other things that can be easily taken, and yet don't care if the people who create it see enough benefit to keep making it for them.

For the tremendous majority of professional musicians recorded music never represented a significant source of revenue at all, if ever. Most musicians get paid for playing, and nothing else. That people swap mp3 around have absolutely no influence on their life -- except when it helps them getting known.

Re: I Think Your App Should Be Free

#103

Post by sid0 » Tue, Oct 04, 2011, 10:02 AM UTC

earbitscom wrote: post #80

toyg wrote: post #75

If you look at the history of smartphone development, you'll find a better analogy. You see, back in the '00s, it used to be common knowledge that "nobody pays for third-party smartphone apps". It was scientifically proved over and over again, on platforms like Symbian and Palm, by research after research. You see, back then getting hold of a mobile app was relatively hard; you had to go hunting for it online, find i…

"Digital Slavery"? We're talking about owning, or not owning an MP3. Going without it is hardly slavery. It is really very simple. If someone feels the price an artists asks for their songs is too much, or feels that obtaining a copy legally is too much "work", then they don't need to have a copy. They're not entitled to it for any reason whatsoever.

I can't buy most music digitally (except via places like Bandcamp) where I live. I could buy or import CDs, but I don't like waiting and my computer doesn't have an optical drive. Pardon my French, but if you think I shouldn't listen to music at all because of that, you can fuck right off.

It's not as if I'm not willing to spend either. I buy plenty of games from Steam and other places. I buy them because they actually sell stuff in my country and offer me convenience at prices I'm willing to pay. If the music business did the same I'd start buying music instantly.

Let's stop guilt-tripping people into buying music through thinly-veiled and largely inaccurate allegories and start treating piracy as an economic problem.

Re: I Think Your App Should Be Free

#104

Post by toyg » Tue, Oct 04, 2011, 10:05 AM UTC

earbitscom wrote: post #98

toyg wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look around you. Entertainment cartels are pushing draconian legislation across the world, making copyright infringement a criminal felony, with harsher penalties than manslaughter; they are threatening to disconnect people from the internet, which in many cases would compromise their livelihood; they are pushing DRM into software and hardware, so that you don't own your device, they do; they support Chinese-style fi…

They don't care if you want to buy their products. They simply care that, if you do not, you do not also take those products without paying for them. If people were not taking for free things that cost significant money to produce, and did not keep ignoring the light-handed laws that already exist, there would be no need for more draconian measures. But most importantly, what does any of this have to do with whether…

I don't "take" anything from anyone; I copy my Bieber, and you still have it. People who care about Bieber are still supporting him financially; people who don't, they wouldn't have bothered anyway. Since production and distribution costs have basically disappeared, supply is now virtually unlimited; economic theory tells us that the market price is now zero. Harsh reality, but that's the truth. Any law implemented to alter this state of things is simply trying to make the water flow upwards.

(besides, you cannot "steal" digital content, it's just a bunch of bits; I flip mine to look like yours, and I have a copy. Which is why SaaS is so popular, of course: what is sold is now the actual service, rather than a bunch of bits.)

Re: I Think Your App Should Be Free

#105

Post by dools » Tue, Oct 04, 2011, 10:06 AM UTC

Is there not a way of giving your app away for free, and then encouraging users to setup some sort of subscription or purchase from within the app if they like it? People regularly provide voluntary financial support (tips, street performers)when it's easy and they see benefit.

Unless the ev1l pirat0rs actually compiled a different version of your app in order to give it away for free without those messages (which seems unlikely given there's absolutely no incentive for them to do so) you'd make a pretty penny through the sheer volume of users.

Imagin busking to an audience of 1 million people, all equidistant from your guitar case with one dollar in their hand?

The scale at which digital distribution allows piracy is the same thing that will make you money: you have free distribution to millions of people, just figure out a way for them to voluntarily give you money and you'll be sorted.

Re: I Think Your App Should Be Free

#106

Post by earbitscom » Tue, Oct 04, 2011, 10:11 AM UTC

dools wrote: post #105

Is there not a way of giving your app away for free, and then encouraging users to setup some sort of subscription or purchase from within the app if they like it? People regularly provide voluntary financial support (tips, street performers)when it's easy and they see benefit. Unless the ev1l pirat0rs actually compiled a different version of your app in order to give it away for free without those messages (which se…

That's a perfectly fine choice for an artist to make.

If they do not want to do that, and instead would like each person who takes a copy of their work to pay for it, is that not also a choice they should have? Your choice as a consumer should then be to either pay that person for a copy, or not take a copy and move on.

Nobody is arguing that giving away music isn't a viable model for success - simply that it's not ethical to make that choice on behalf of content creators.

Re: I Think Your App Should Be Free

#107

Post by sid0 » Tue, Oct 04, 2011, 10:11 AM UTC

earbitscom wrote: post #98

toyg wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look around you. Entertainment cartels are pushing draconian legislation across the world, making copyright infringement a criminal felony, with harsher penalties than manslaughter; they are threatening to disconnect people from the internet, which in many cases would compromise their livelihood; they are pushing DRM into software and hardware, so that you don't own your device, they do; they support Chinese-style fi…

They don't care if you want to buy their products. They simply care that, if you do not, you do not also take those products without paying for them. If people were not taking for free things that cost significant money to produce, and did not keep ignoring the light-handed laws that already exist, there would be no need for more draconian measures. But most importantly, what does any of this have to do with whether…

Since you're speaking in terms of entitlements, let's make this clear: the natural state of any idea (including large numbers such as the sequence of bits that make up an mp3) is to be free. Every human is naturally entitled through his consciousness to be able to copy and reproduce any idea he comes across.

Any restrictions imposed on them through legal or technical means are artificial and have to be justified when weighed against the costs of imposing them. For instance, protection against plagiarism has a very large benefit for not much cost so it's easily justified. For music it definitely isn't as clear-cut.

Re: I Think Your App Should Be Free

#108

Post by sid0 » Tue, Oct 04, 2011, 10:13 AM UTC

shabble wrote: post #21

For all the potential parallels with the music industry, I think there are quite a few significant differences. Firstly, what are the current equivalents of a mobile App Store for (pirated) music? There are definitely a bunch of places you can find it if you look, but few of them are as "one-stop-shop" as current app stores. Secondly, does pirated music often outrank the artists/album name/track titles in general int…

Firstly, what are the current equivalents of a mobile App Store for (pirated) music?

What.cd.

Re: I Think Your App Should Be Free

#109

Post by toyg » Tue, Oct 04, 2011, 10:17 AM UTC

michaelpinto wrote: post #5

From day one my gut has always told me that Android users are pretty much like Amiga users were back in the day -- the idea of paying for software (any software!) seems like a bad idea. That may be good news if you're Google or a carrier, but it's bad news if you're a developer. To me fair if Android is part of the "Google way" and maybe the solution is to have advertising bring in revenue (which goes back to AdSense…

Exactly. Android is similar to the traditional PC market, so for non-critical software SaaS or advertising are more profitable than shrinkwrap -- unless you stumble on the Android equivalent of MS Office (i.e. something so critical that people will just consider it a natural cost of doing business).

Re: I Think Your App Should Be Free

#110

Post by lwhi » Tue, Oct 04, 2011, 10:20 AM UTC

The ideas inherent in selling any form of IP are not sustainable. Our economics are traditionally based on finite resources - and economics involving sale of intellectual property allows an infinite number of transactions.

In my opinion, we can not expect to make money from the straightforward sale of any form of IP for much longer. New models are being developed and services industries are adapting to offer the value that's traditionally been disseminated through IP sale .. this is where the future is heading.

The bleating, repetitive carrion-call of the old guard is becoming increasingly annoying. While their incentive seems obvious; the fact that these organisations are unable to innovate is even more blatant.