21–30 of 30 posts
Sure they might try to break into your server, but less will do that and that is more illegal and punishable by law at least in the states.
Piracy made hollywood and music biz innovate we should be no different.
If you sell 10 and have 10 pirates, that's a 50% piracy rate. If you sell 1000 and have 10 pirates (same number of pirates) that's only 1% piracy rate. The ratio is less useful and more misleading than the raw numbers.
A nice sensible response, with some well-reasoned observations. The thing about piracy I've always found weird is how hysterical some people get about it for their medium and not others. For example, I am good friends with several software developers who get furious about people pirating their products, but have no qualms about having gigs of copied music personally.
Artists like Janis Ian ( http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html (be sure to read the follow up)) have made that point quite eloquently.
Still, the basic position is one of hypocrisy, no contest there.
"Piracy rate" doesn't seem like a useful metric; it's too dependent on your sales. I'd rather see sales numbers and piracy numbers. If you sell 10 and have 10 pirates, that's a 50% piracy rate. If you sell 1000 and have 10 pirates (same number of pirates) that's only 1% piracy rate. The ratio is less useful and more misleading than the raw numbers.
Of course, doesn't take away from how great it is for them to share this information at all.
The sad thing is that it is incredibly easy to catch pirates if only Apple allowed us to.
A nice sensible response, with some well-reasoned observations. The thing about piracy I've always found weird is how hysterical some people get about it for their medium and not others. For example, I am good friends with several software developers who get furious about people pirating their products, but have no qualms about having gigs of copied music personally.
I think the rationale people are using here is that it's the record companies they're pirating from not the artists. Artists like Janis Ian ( http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html (be sure to read the follow up)) have made that point quite eloquently. Still, the basic position is one of hypocrisy, no contest there.
The people that I know that pirate the most music do so off independents more than mainstream.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the rationale people are using here is that it's the record companies they're pirating from not the artists. Artists like Janis Ian ( http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html (be sure to read the follow up)) have made that point quite eloquently. Still, the basic position is one of hypocrisy, no contest there.
And EA and the other big game companies aren't just like them? The people that I know that pirate the most music do so off independents more than mainstream.
That's really bad.
Eh, this game is being pirated more than the average app. From what I heard at Greg Yardley (PinchMedia)'s talk at 360idev yesterday, the average piracy rate is 34%. My personal experience with Boxcar lines up with those numbers, along with a 0.056% conversion rate from pirated to paid. The "average" there, again according to PinchMedia, is 0.043% or 1 in 233. They're taking the right approach in that, well, the trut…
Also important to note is that calculated the piracy rate as the difference between iTunes sales and Pinch media uniques. I have found that Pinch Media's data is less conclusive than it used to be so I wasn't using their metrics for either cracked or jailbroken phones.
As for the pirates try before they buy excuse, I agree that this is probably not the case. I think it is a churn game (similar to music) for most pirates - they try hundreds of apps for very little time and stick with only the very few that they like.
As for your piracy block - I tried this once and decided better to let them have a lite version of the app over blocking them entirely. Not sure the point of angering the most vocal, early adopters on the web. Check out a post I wrote dealing with this: http://www.icombatgame.com/2009/05/22/on-the-web-every-users...
Why we are not that concerned that our app has been pirated: I think it takes a small dev studio or independent developer to have enough feel for these reasons why piracy isn't so bad. I feel the same way about my book - I like seeing people pirate it, even if the publisher doesn't! It doesn't seem to hurt sales and raises awareness, as these guys have found. That said, ripping off a PDF to boost print book sales is…
Off topic: What are the final costs of a book and what is the share? (i.e. printing, authors cut, publisher’s cut)? Buying books really hurts my back-pocket (the last book cost me $140+ dollars – and it is a lot more expensive if you do the currency conversation). What is sad is that when I move to another country I will not be able to move all my books. If there is a good e-book reader and books are well-priced (e.g…
According to my royalty documents, my publisher gets about $18 per copy and I get between 10% and 20% of that depending on how many copies I sell. The 20% rate only kicks in after about 25,000 copies or so and few programming books do that well (my first edition sold just under 10,000), so effectively I get around $1.80-$2.50 a copy.