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Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

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Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#91

Post by huggah »

ciniglio wrote: post #77
ChuckMcM wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly that didn't stop them from claiming that piracy was a $1.5B$ problem because the retail price of Office was $495. Even though even a child would tell you that no sane individual would spend more than 1/2 their annual salary to buy a copy of a buggy, but ubiquitous, set of tools. In fact they were willing to pay $2 for a pirated CD on the streets so the actual "loss to piracy" was $6M ($2 per each of those 3M ma…

So, by this logic, BitTorrent piracy is a $0 problem? Doesn't sound right to me. Not that I'm really pushing the $495 figure either, mind you.

If people were selling copies on the street for $2, that suggests that $2 was roughly the right price point (in that area) to maximize profit, and Microsoft couldn't have made more money by selling it for more.

That argument ceases to hold in the case of BitTorrent, where the distributors aren't trying to maximize their profit (or make any at all).

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#92

Post by kybernetikos »

eshvk wrote: post #39
chasing wrote: post #5

I'm glad things worked out for Vlad -- when I was younger, I pirated a fair amount of software and games, and, like him, I think it enabled me to get inspired to learn more about computers in general and, indeed, now I stare at them all day for work. But. I'm not sure what the bigger point is, here. Should we be okay with piracy as long as the pirate is using it for self-betterment? Do games count for that? What abou…

Since the car analogy isn't working: Let me try another one, equally with flaws no doubts. :-) Piracy as we known it is rampant of the coasts of Somalia (Yes, I am talking about real world pirates). One of the reasons why that is happening is the systematic breakdown of the livelihoods of fisherman in the region due to dumping of toxic wastes of those coasts and the free flow of arms. Now, it is arguable that those f…

> e-piracy is not a victimless crime, as long as you have at least one data point of a person who would have paid for the game/movie/software but didn't do so because he/she had easy access to a torrent.

Well.... If the easy availability of the torrent led to more sales than it diminished, then the crime is still victimless regardless of your datapoint, since the supposed victim actually received a benefit.

This may seem far fetched, but I understand that for all but the largest block busters, there is some evidence that this is true for films: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2176246

If you're a film maker, making non-blockbuster films, you should probably be supporting piracy from a purely financial point of view. I fully expect that the same is true in music as well. http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/48001/pirates-more-music-onl...

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#93

Post by sneak »

majorlazer wrote: post #79
agumonkey wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my very limited knowledge, the most difficult software to crack was Steinberg Cubase. Such a PITA the hackers decided not to do it ever again. They quoted a ridiculously large figure for the amount code devoted to detect cracking (~30%), and having a significant impact on performance. I had links about about bypassing anti-debugging techniques, I'll see if I can get my hands on them again.

Cubase was, by far, the hardest program to find a crack for. I remember a buddy of mine hooked me up with a cracked version that actually worked, but then I reinstalled and lost the files. Never found it again and stopped using Cubase. A year later I just purchased Ableton Live. I know so many people that use Live now because Cubase was too difficult to crack.

The current version of Live on the Macintosh itself took quite some time to crack.

Those guys at Ableton are serious business.

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#94

Post by cremnob »

kybernetikos wrote: post #83
cremnob wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a builder wants to take a payment every time you enter the building he is free to do so, thinking otherwise is highly presumptuous. Whether that business model will be viable in the market will be left for him to see (hotel managers operate exactly like this except they don't get paid for entering their building but for getting a room for the night). What's dishonest about it? The mental gymnastics to rationalize…

You seem to think it's impossible for people to genuinely believe that copying is not theft. You're wrong. There are a lot of people who genuinely believe that sharing is not theft, and far from being something that we should persecute, is something that makes humanity richer and the world a better place, and many of those people do not believe it simply in order to feel better about copying stuff, since they don't a…

I don't think you've read my posts because I KNOW people think pirating isn't wrong. And they go through a variety of mental hoops to rationalize why it isn't. They're wrong. And nothing you've said defends their position, all you've said is that they have it.

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#95

Post by ChuckMcM »

ciniglio wrote: post #77
ChuckMcM wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly that didn't stop them from claiming that piracy was a $1.5B$ problem because the retail price of Office was $495. Even though even a child would tell you that no sane individual would spend more than 1/2 their annual salary to buy a copy of a buggy, but ubiquitous, set of tools. In fact they were willing to pay $2 for a pirated CD on the streets so the actual "loss to piracy" was $6M ($2 per each of those 3M ma…

So, by this logic, BitTorrent piracy is a $0 problem? Doesn't sound right to me. Not that I'm really pushing the $495 figure either, mind you.

Actually yes, well actually approaching zero, and I realize it doesn't sound right. The cognitive dissonance comes from the economics of information, they work differently than the economics of goods.

Imagine this thought experiment. Imagine there was a 100% fool proof copy protection scheme in China, and the only way to acquire Microsoft Office would be to buy it. Try to imagine how many people, who make $1000 in a year would then cough up the $495 to buy it?

Its not hard to imagine because there is no manufactured good in China that commands a 'half annual salary' value proposition that is not critical to a person's survival. And Microsoft Office isn't that item.

There is an exemplar that there is a $6M value for Word based on the $2 CDs that sell, so its not 'valueless.' And there are benefits to owning a legitimate copy over a pirated copy. Further, the cost of producing a pirated product (box, CD, getting started guide, etc) is less than $2 so there actually a real-goods sort of economic value analysis possible as well.

So all we really know is that the number is >= $2 and significantly less expensive than it was for the US and European markets [1]. That increased the value they extracted for office out of those markets tremendously. It was more than 10x that $1.50 price at $29/CD. And they captured a lot of value for it, millions and millions of dollars. But not billions of dollars.

Many have argued that much of NetFlix's streaming revenue has come from previous BitTorrent users [2]. Prior to NetFlix you could say BitTorrent was a "$xB" problem where $x is the money that has been re-captured by offering an alternative with an acceptable price.

But to understand how that works you have to think about what gives information value, its much more market driven that fiat driven. Sony can say "Its worth $X to own this movie" but if nobody buys it and it is heavily pirated they guessed wrong. Since the replication cost is nearly $0 they really are guessing at consumer value. Lots of DVDs sell for $9.99 or $4.99. At that price I won't even bother looking for a torrent, I'll just get the DVD. Its a market, it has different mechanisms that drive it.

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/09/23/microsoft-china-di...

[2] http://gigaom.com/2011/05/17/netflix-p2p-traffic/

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#96

Post by hannibalhorn »

TheAmazingIdiot wrote: post #32
eli wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard that too, but I have no idea if it's true. (Surely, Photoshop would be pirated regardless of how much DRM is added). But it's definitely not only the goodness of their heart that leads many companies to offer free or cheap software to students. Microsoft BizSpark is all about giving startups free Microsoft software in the hope that they'll build on the MS stack.

For the longest time, cracking Photoshop was a 1 byte change. In effect, there was a conditional JMP. You patch the address of the good JMP to the bad conditional side. Voila: enter a good or bad serial, and it works. A bunch of us under +Fravia came to an agreement that this simplicity was intentional. I think we all can come to the conclusion to why that is... As to your supposition that no amount of 'junk' would s…

The CD burning product must have been CDRWIN, I remember the frustration of searching for a working crack for that one (as a poor student, of course!)

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#97

Post by Kliment »

angersock wrote: post #44
Tyrant505 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is HARD to pirate? edit: More specifically, Crack. I remember x-force having sources in all the major places ready to dump it to their cracker division.

Skype for a very long time had some absurd protection against things like attaching debuggers, adding code, and whatnot (as I recall). There was a great presentation about it, but I cannot for the life of me find it.

It's at http://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-europe-06/bh-eu-06-...

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#98

Post by ChuckMcM »

huggah wrote: post #91
ciniglio wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, by this logic, BitTorrent piracy is a $0 problem? Doesn't sound right to me. Not that I'm really pushing the $495 figure either, mind you.

If people were selling copies on the street for $2, that suggests that $2 was roughly the right price point (in that area) to maximize profit, and Microsoft couldn't have made more money by selling it for more. That argument ceases to hold in the case of BitTorrent, where the distributors aren't trying to maximize their profit (or make any at all).

See previous response, Microsoft actually did change their pricing and captured a huge chunk of value. It was significantly higher than $2/CD. When selling information there is a tail, a few people will pay whatever you ask, a few more will pay less than that, Etc, until you get to all of the people who would obtain a copy if it were zero cost. That defines the "value curve" of the information. It is not a straight line. Because it is "hard" to justify large differences in price for the same product, one of two strategies are used a "steadily decreasing price" or a "fixed but relatively low price". Depending on the product different things make more sense. Games for example benefit from the 'expensive at first but cheaper later' model, reference works benefit by capturing as much market as possible quickly.

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#99

Post by drivebyacct2 »

cremnob wrote: post #52
angersock wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they need to say it is immoral--a position which may arguably be correct--and not say that it is stealing--a position which is intellectually dishonest and trivially shown to be incorrect. Choice of words here is very, very important. If you want to start staking out a moral claim on information, you damned well had better choose your message carefully.

It's semantics and is irrelevant every time this topic comes up because no one is actually talking about legal definitions. Pirates always seem to miss that it's a moral argument when they trot out these familiar lines (the irony isn't lost on me). Whether or not you're guilty of petty theft, shoplifting, larceny, or burglary is for your lawyers and the courts to determine. For me and others from my position it is mu…

Why don't you try to stop preemptively dismissing other people. Calling it "immoral" doesn't mean anything unless you define morality and that's a loaded gun. The point is that legally, there is a distinction between depriving others of property and infringing on a copyright.

If they're different crimes, they're treated differently, addressed differently, etc... how on Earth is it not relevant to discuss?

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#100

Post by [deleted] »

meritt wrote: post #9

It's always been rumored that Adobe software, especially Photoshop, has been easy to pirate to encourage adoption with a user base that might otherwise seek alternatives. As those people hone their skills and eventually find jobs, Photoshop is the norm and what their employers purchase licensing for.

[deleted]
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