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"Most of you steal your software"

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Re: "Most of you steal your software"

#101

Post by tjr »

IgorPartola wrote: post #99
tjr wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you set the market value of a physical copy of a digital good? Music CDs are sold for roughly $10-$20 USD. The actual cost of making the physical CD is around $1. People seem much more agreeable to accept a $9-$19 markup on a physical CD than on a digital album, which costs $0 to copy but ostensibly has the same cost to produce otherwise.

Well, if there is scarcity (i.e.: supply is somehow limited), then the market value is where supply and demand curves cross. In other words, I'd throw a bunch of CD's into the market and let the price stabilize. That has nothing to do with how much it cost me to make it (the same way that the salary a doctor makes has nothing to do with how expensive the education was), but everything to do with opportunity cost: wou…

Are CDs really priced based on supply of the CD?

In my experience, the market appears to have established an approximate range of fair prices for CDs in general, that does not appear to be based on how many copies have been pressed.

Obviously there are some major variations if too few copies were made and the publisher refuses to make more to meet demand (putting the CD "out of print"), or if many more were made than people want to buy and retailers need to clear out inventory.

But in general, if an artist produces a new CD, they could press 5 copies or 50,000 copies, and I would expect the selling price to be somewhere in that $10-$20 range or so, not because of the number of copies of that particular CD, but because of what the market expects CDs to cost.

Re: "Most of you steal your software"

#102

Post by summerdown2 »

jscheel wrote: post #87
decode wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sorry guys, regardless of what utopian ideals of OSS you have, and I have them too, you must respect the creator's wishes. If they ask you to pay for the software, then you MUST pay for the software. Anything else is theft. In a legal sense, this is patently false in every country I know of. Even ignoring the point others have made that theft is not copyright infringement under the law, the assertion is false. Ever…

Good thing I'm not a complete idiot, or I wouldn't know or understand fair use. People tend to forget that fair use is limited in its scope. Unfortunately, a lot of people's idea of fair use is, "I want it, so I'm gonna take it." It IS a moral imperative. It IS stealing. I don't care how you sugarcoat it. In high-school and the first part of my college life, I pirated music and applications with impunity. I justified…

> It IS stealing. I don't care how you sugarcoat it.

Surely you understand that it’s possible for people who aren’t you to look at the same facts, and come to a different conclusion? Not because they’re fooling themselves, but simply because people of good heart are allowed to have differences of opinion.

Try this video, particularly the bit that starts at 10:00 http://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong.html

Re: "Most of you steal your software"

#103

Post by wglb »

ghjm wrote: post #38
alan_cx wrote: post #37

... and as a result poor Bill has lived in total poverty, only to die of scurvy in a slum. His business died with out trace and he never been heard of since. A tragic story. Yes, bad hobbyists. Point being, despite all the piracy, there is still some money to be made. The complaint is that such folk are not making enough money. See, Bill should be twice or 3 times as rich. Man, he's really losing out. Of course then…

But he wasn't, or anything close to it, when he wrote this letter.

He came from a quite well off family. And used that to his advantage at the beginning of his business career.

Re: "Most of you steal your software"

#104

Post by kbolino »

gfodor wrote: post #100
IgorPartola wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not advocate piracy, and do believe that people should be paid for their work. However, you are wrong. Theft means that the original owner no longer has the item stolen from them. Copying something from them most definitely leaves them with the original. That is one way in which piracy is not like theft. I would much rather someone download a copy of my code, than grab all my drives, make a copy, erase them, the…

Having read threads on this subject for 20 years, the same old tired points get brought up as if they matter whatsoever. Nobody cares about the semantic arguments. People are arguing that you should not pirate software and that if you do you should be viewed by your peers as someone on par with a thief since you have the same moral code as a thief does, you just choose to perform immoral acts in a medium that is most…

Except that it's not purely semantics. The fact that the physical analogy breaks down pretty severely should lend intuition to the fact that our judgments about pirates should differ from those about thieves. Are all of the following equivalent moral wrongs?

1. Copying software, changing attribution, and selling it as your own.

2. Acquiring software you would otherwise have to pay for, and being able to afford it (or using it for economic gain).

3. Acquiring software you would otherwise have to pay for, and being unable to afford it.

4. Using a cracked copy of software that you have paid for, in order to circumvent a restriction that impairs your use of it and which the vendor is unwilling to address.

I think few of us would consider #3 a heinous crime if it was done by someone in order to train himself on industry-standard software (e.g. Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc.), which he would then be able to apply at a job where the software was paid for.

That's not to deny there are plenty of people who pirate just because they want free stuff without paying for it. But that doesn't mean we should all take our lessons from Inspector Javert.

Re: "Most of you steal your software"

#105

Post by renanbirck »

nextparadigms wrote: post #45

Imagine if there would've been a way to force 100% of people who got Windows in China, India, and other poor countries all over the world to pay up $100 or more for their copy. If that would've been at all possible, I think Linux would've had higher than 50% market share in the PC market today. For that kind of poor countries, Windows licenses were and still are prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of their…

This is the major problem I have while trying to tell people about Linux (and other open-source software). It's hard to argue against "my [proprietary software] copy was free" - when effectively, it was, since nothing will happen to them.

Re: "Most of you steal your software"

#106

Post by Zigurd »

tjr wrote: post #89
Zigurd wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright infringement is very different from theft. First, if you copy one of my books, say from someone who bought it in pdf format from the O'Reilly site, you have not denied the owner access to his paid copy. You have not robbed anyone of a physical artifact with a measurable cost. Second, such as act doesn't even rise to the status of "theft of service." It isn't like sneaking into another movie theater after wa…

How insignificant are they? So insignificant that simply by telling me you will write a review, I would give you a copy for free. I would agree with that. But if someone tells me, "I want a copy, but even though you are asking $5 per copy, I don't think it's worth anything at all. Give one to me for free." ... I would not be so quick to hand over a copy in that case, and, based on anecdotal conversations with others,…

Where shall I send it? I'll even inscribe a hard copy for you. That's a $44.99 retail value.

More seriously, there is a lot of evidence that promotional copies sell books. You could buy, or ask for a promotional copy of Guy Kawasaki's book about making books. It's about self-publishing, but his experiences with promoting and marketing books apply to any book where the publisher's marketing budget is very limited.

There are some other effects I can count on: That readers of HN are fairly likely to not bother to take something they won't use, because they value their own time. You are only a hypothetical pirate, and your question is hypothetical, too. In the real world, piracy behaves much like promotion.

But, you may be thinking, what about entertainment products?

It's been shown over and over that "pirates" are also top-ranked among paying customers. Is there a real-world case that piracy reduces revenue? If you get past the hypothetical cases, it's much harder to say so.

Re: "Most of you steal your software"

#107

Post by Gormo »

jscheel wrote: post #87
decode wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sorry guys, regardless of what utopian ideals of OSS you have, and I have them too, you must respect the creator's wishes. If they ask you to pay for the software, then you MUST pay for the software. Anything else is theft. In a legal sense, this is patently false in every country I know of. Even ignoring the point others have made that theft is not copyright infringement under the law, the assertion is false. Ever…

Good thing I'm not a complete idiot, or I wouldn't know or understand fair use. People tend to forget that fair use is limited in its scope. Unfortunately, a lot of people's idea of fair use is, "I want it, so I'm gonna take it." It IS a moral imperative. It IS stealing. I don't care how you sugarcoat it. In high-school and the first part of my college life, I pirated music and applications with impunity. I justified…

> It IS stealing. I don't care how you sugarcoat it.

If you're going to alter the definition of "stealing" to cover things that aren't stealing, then why stop there? Why not call copyright infringement "arson" or "murder" too?

Making an unlicensed replica of another person's non-rival good is not the same thing as depriving another person of a rival good in their possession. You can even hold both to be worthy of legal censure without having to advance this disingenuous prevarication.

If you're in favor of strict IP law, do you not see how playing these semantic games actually undermines your credibility and therefore your argument?

Re: "Most of you steal your software"

#108

Post by jscheel »

Gormo wrote: post #107
jscheel wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing I'm not a complete idiot, or I wouldn't know or understand fair use. People tend to forget that fair use is limited in its scope. Unfortunately, a lot of people's idea of fair use is, "I want it, so I'm gonna take it." It IS a moral imperative. It IS stealing. I don't care how you sugarcoat it. In high-school and the first part of my college life, I pirated music and applications with impunity. I justified…

> It IS stealing. I don't care how you sugarcoat it. If you're going to alter the definition of "stealing" to cover things that aren't stealing, then why stop there? Why not call copyright infringement "arson" or "murder" too? Making an unlicensed replica of another person's non-rival good is not the same thing as depriving another person of a rival good in their possession. You can even hold both to be worthy of leg…

The thing is, law is nothing more than codified morality. I do believe, in a court of law, that we should make a distinction between theft and copyright. Several Supreme Court justices agree that this is the case. However, when looking and the very core of the issue, absent legal codification, I'm still taking something that isn't mine, regardless of whether or not it was merely a copy. That is where I am coming from. Responsible adults shouldn't need to split legal hairs, we should recognize that we are, at its core, taking what is not ours to take. There is a legal distinction, but not a moral one.

Re: "Most of you steal your software"

#109

Post by carlob »

jacoblyles wrote: post #93
carlob wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! Next time you visit the Frick collection in New York City (you really should) think about the bloody repression of the Homestead strike [0]. I really think that the likes of Gates, Frick, Carnegie, Rockefeller or the more recent Jim Simons. Should have been taxed at a much much steeper rate, just like Buffett proposed [1], instead of waiting for their kindness of heart. By replacing philanthropy with taxation we…

So we should tax away Thiel's money so instead of Space X we get... more ethanol subsidies? Or we should tax away Cameron's money so instead of asteroid mining we get higher pensions for government union workers? What kind of world do you live in that allows you this kind of democratic idealism? As our population gets older, the priorities of our democracies will reflect that. More and more government spending will g…

Well first of all Thiel's venture is a company not philantropy…

But hell yeah, more pensions, universal healthcare, maybe more spending on education (talking about public school not 40k$/year colleges) are definitely a better way to spend money than radical innovation of eccentric billionaires.

Moreover what we're talking about here is not turning billionaires into mere millionaires, but taxing people who can afford to donate 95% of their fortune 30% instead of 15%. That still leaves ample room for eccentric innovation. Yours is a false dichotomy.

Re: "Most of you steal your software"

#110

Post by tjr »

Zigurd wrote: post #106
tjr wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How insignificant are they? So insignificant that simply by telling me you will write a review, I would give you a copy for free. I would agree with that. But if someone tells me, "I want a copy, but even though you are asking $5 per copy, I don't think it's worth anything at all. Give one to me for free." ... I would not be so quick to hand over a copy in that case, and, based on anecdotal conversations with others,…

Where shall I send it? I'll even inscribe a hard copy for you. That's a $44.99 retail value. More seriously, there is a lot of evidence that promotional copies sell books. You could buy, or ask for a promotional copy of Guy Kawasaki's book about making books. It's about self-publishing, but his experiences with promoting and marketing books apply to any book where the publisher's marketing budget is very limited. The…

I don't disagree at all. I've given away copies of my own work, both in digital and physical formats.

I guess my question is, where do you draw the line? You said, there is a lot of evidence that promotional copies sell books. Sure. But if you give them all away, what do you sell? (Assuming that you want to sell any at all.)

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