Piracy - It's Just Plain Wrong!

[Pete Paxton]

"Piracy is a huge issue for the software industry, but to be quite honest its nowhere near as huge as what the RIAA and MPAA and SBA make it out to be. 50% or more of the software pirated would never have been purchased in the first place. But lets talk a bit more personally here. Myself and a band of software devs here have found a *very* large pirate warez site which I will not link to. They have cracks for almost everything imaginable. They have our software on there with download ratios in the TENS of THOUSANDS. In many cases I find more downloads of our software on the warez site than I see on our own download servers. I've calculated that even if we only lost 10% of those downloads that could have been sales its a pretty major hit. The fact is that companies like ours and most other WinMobile devs operate on a shoestring budget. Most of our software sells at a break-even point, some at a loss until it breaks even 2-4 years after introduction. For the amount of money I've "lost" I could have *easily* created a Pocket Informant for Desktop or BlackBerry or heck other major applications or improvements. I could have hired an extremely high paid developer for a year or two averagely paid ones. For a company that has only 3 full time developers that's a fairly major loss."

Alex Kac, CEO and Founder of WebIS, has a great post regarding piracy. This reminds me of a few years ago when I had a Handspring ops: and I purchased the program "Jot" for $8.00. A woman I worked with (and who made twice as much money as I did) asked me to give her a copy. When I mentioned that it costs money and that it would be piracy to give her a copy, her comment was "Well, I purchase so much from them that I deserve it." So does that mean that If I'm a regular customer at Best Buy I can just walk in and start taking merchandise? What's the difference? There is no difference. In both cases it's stealing and it's wrong. Why do some people feel that if a song, movie, or software app (that costs money) can be downloaded, they can just take it. I think some know they are just plain stealing. I think others try and justify taking what doesn't belong to them. I find no "deserving rights" that justify taking anything (including media or software) that should otherwise be paid for. Ok, I'm done ranting. Please share your thoughts.

[Pete Paxton]

"Piracy is a huge issue for the software industry, but to be quite honest its nowhere near as huge as what the RIAA and MPAA and SBA make it out to be. 50% or more of the software pirated would never have been purchased in the first place. But lets talk a bit more personally here. Myself and a band of software devs here have found a *very* large pirate warez site which I will not link to. They have cracks for almost everything imaginable. They have our software on there with download ratios in the TENS of THOUSANDS. In many cases I find more downloads of our software on the warez site than I see on our own download servers. I've calculated that even if we only lost 10% of those downloads that could have been sales its a pretty major hit. The fact is that companies like ours and most other WinMobile devs operate on a shoestring budget. Most of our software sells at a break-even point, some at a loss until it breaks even 2-4 years after introduction. For the amount of money I've "lost" I could have *easily* created a Pocket Informant for Desktop or BlackBerry or heck other major applications or improvements. I could have hired an extremely high paid developer for a year or two averagely paid ones. For a company that has only 3 full time developers that's a fairly major loss."

Alex Kac, CEO and Founder of WebIS, has a great post regarding piracy. This reminds me of a few years ago when I had a Handspring ops: and I purchased the program "Jot" for $8.00. A woman I worked with (and who made twice as much money as I did) asked me to give her a copy. When I mentioned that it costs money and that it would be piracy to give her a copy, her comment was "Well, I purchase so much from them that I deserve it." So does that mean that If I'm a regular customer at Best Buy I can just walk in and start taking merchandise? What's the difference? There is no difference. In both cases it's stealing and it's wrong. Why do some people feel that if a song, movie, or software app (that costs money) can be downloaded, they can just take it. I think some know they are just plain stealing. I think others try and justify taking what doesn't belong to them. I find no "deserving rights" that justify taking anything (including media or software) that should otherwise be paid for. Ok, I'm done ranting. Please share your thoughts.

[whiteks81]

This isn't really an argument as much as it's a bunch of thoughts:



Stealing is wrong. Stealing is wrong when you're stealing music from a rock band that won't actually impact them (as much as the record label), stealing art is wrong, stealing movies is wrong, stealing is just wrong.

However, digital copying - which is actually all stealing is in this case - is also trivial. Never before in the history of man has stealing something been the matter of stealing 'something' involved so little.

Stealing software is stealing information. It's stealing information that, once 'cracked', is not something you can easily put back together again. Once someone sufficiently cracks some kind of DRM/ip protection, your 'one thing' (a piece of software that is licensed for use because every 'instance' of it is just a virtual copy) is suddenly an infinite number of things.

If I steal a thing from a store, I stole ONE THING. If i want to give that thing to someone else, I don't have it anymore. If I steal a song, I can give it to every human that lives.

I think that yes, there is a moral issue, but there's also a technical issue that no one's really getting around.

You can't plug the analog hole. You can't create end-to-end encryption when you still have to convert information for processing by a human brain.

Look at the HD-DVD AACS crack. Nothing can stop that. how could you stop someone from snooping around in a computer's memory? At some point, you're going to make it impossible for a computer to compute!

You can't stop copying in a computer world; computers copy. If computers stopped copying, you wouldn't have a computer.

[Jason Dunn]

If there's one thing that this digital age has shown me, it's that morally, most people are quite immature. They will avoid things if they think they'll get caught - meaning they won't steal from a retail store - but if there's no fear of repercussion, they're all too happy to take something. That's the level of morality that a child operates on - they won't disobey their parent by taking a cookie if the parent is in the room and they know they'll get caught, but if they can get that cookie later when no one is around, they'll take it.

We live a sad, sad world.

[dommasters]

The problem is:

1. Nobody cares. Okay maybe Alex and a few others.
2. That site will grow and grow.
3. It's soooooooo easy to get for free. Why pay?
4. There's almost nothing you can do. No real legal option.
5. The site is now so big it's like a snowball effect. Some posts have 500,000 views plus!
6. Most developers will decide to no longer support Windows Mobile (it is a WM site).

You could of course:
1. Create bogus apps that format a users hard drive and place at site or
2. Hire a hitman

but that's hardly an answer. Surely the issue is that when you find a site like this you have no way of shutting it down.

Maybe mobile developers need their own anti piracy organisation.

[applejosh]

What? Software costs money? :lol:

Just kidding. As someone who has spent hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on PDA software over the years, I still don't think I'm owed anything (and most of it sits unused now). I may choose not to upgrade without a discount, but I don't pirate the software in some juvenile attempt at "making a point."

[whydidnt]

First let me say I don't condone software piracy. It's wrong and I don't do it. I wish the world would stop too, so I can stop having to input 20 character random strings just to use software I legally paid for. (Love the PPC mag Best-of-deal!)

However, I think that the software industry does itself a HUGE disservice by overestimating the damage done by piracy. I have serious doubts that even 1-2% of the idiots downloading Warez would ever pay for the software downloaded. I also bet several download, but never use what they have stolen. By over-exaggerating the impact of this, it's too easy for people to consider the numbers as made up and completely tune out the issue.

Finally software piracy is NOT the same as stealing at Best Buy despite the propaganda spewed by intellectual property owners. If I steal a TV from Best Buy, they can no longer sell that TV to someone who is willing to pay for it. If I steal a downloaded software program, the developer can still sell the program to someone who is willing to pay for it. Best Buy is clearly damaged more by the theft than the developer in this instance. That's not to say the developer isn't damaged by the illegal download, just that developers/intellectual property owners need to understand the difference and not shout at congress that piracy is a bigger issue than Robbery, burgulary, etc.

I know my view won't be popular here, but I think everyone needs to look at this with a realistic eye. The sky is falling argument will not capture the interest of the public in whole. I can tell you that the continued use of more and more restrictive licensing and activation methods has made me reduce the number of titles I purchase and developers need to consider the impact on the end user when making these decisions.

[Pete Paxton]

My overall point isn't to say which company is going to be hurt the most. My point is to say that people will steal just because they can. Stealing is just plain wrong. It doesn't matter if it's a $3.00 software app or a $2000 plasma tv. If either is stolen - it's wrong.

[jverb]

Here's the bugger about music and video with Digital Rights Management. The music and movie industry has gone out of its way to make it difficult for me to move my legitimately purchased music from device A to to device B.

Most people are willing to purchase a track for 99 cents if it can be played on both the MP3 player and the computer. DRM thwarts that.

If I own it, I should be able to play it where I want. If I need to, I will strip DRM from my music, or get the music from a source that doesn't lock it up.

I think Apple understands that now, and here's hoping the rest of the music industry gets it soon.

[Jason Dunn]

Originally Posted by jverb

If I own it, I should be able to play it where I want. If I need to, I will strip DRM from my music, or get the music from a source that doesn't lock it up.

I agree completely, but we're talking about software here, and that's a different sort of thing. Although when I run across software that tries to pick and chose which of my computers to install it on, that ticks me off as well...I should be able to use the software at whatever computer I'm sitting in front of, not have a "special" computer with their "special" software on it.

[Birdsoft]

I have to agree with you, your opinion probably isnt a popular one.. As it contradicts itself on so many levels...

Originally Posted by whydidnt

First let me say I don't condone software piracy. It's wrong and I don't do it. I wish the world would stop too, so I can stop having to input 20 character random strings just to use software I legally paid for. (Love the PPC mag Best-of-deal!)

I know its probably not your intent, but that comes off like the only reason you want it to stop is so registering software is easier for YOU..

Originally Posted by whydidnt

However, I think that the software industry does itself a HUGE disservice by overestimating the damage done by piracy. I have serious doubts that even 1-2% of the idiots downloading Warez would ever pay for the software downloaded. I also bet several download, but never use what they have stolen. By over-exaggerating the impact of this, it's too easy for people to consider the numbers as made up and completely tune out the issue.

You are kidding right? 2%? C'mon... I have to agree with Alex that it is at least 10% and probably much higher.

Just consider all the college aged kids out there would still be buying CDs and/or would be buying downloadable content, if the file sharing hadn't run crazy. I know a ton of kids that just think because everyone is doing it, its ok. A relation of mine was until recently, and he actually said he wasnt sure it was even illegal if everyone on campus can do it over the schools network, and he is a smart dean's list level college student!! So that number is probably well over 25%....

Now look at the number of Windows Mobile Device sales, and how many of those are actually buying applications.....

And yes, they wouldnt always buy as much as they've amassed for 'free', but using that idea as justification to lower the numbers and 'soften the blow' in your own mind and others is silly.....

ITS A HUGE PROBLEM!

Finally software piracy is NOT the same as stealing at Best Buy despite the propaganda spewed by intellectual property owners. If I steal a TV from Best Buy, they can no longer sell that TV to someone who is willing to pay for it. If I steal a downloaded software program, the developer can still sell the program to someone who is willing to pay for it. Best Buy is clearly damaged more by the theft than the developer in this instance. That's not to say the developer isn't damaged by the illegal download, just that developers/intellectual property owners need to understand the difference and not shout at congress that piracy is a bigger issue than Robbery, burgulary, etc.

Propaganda? See there's the big clue as to your real opinion...

Stealing is stealing!! It is a much bigger issue, whether you justify it your way or not. If I am Best Buy I have a lot better chance of policing someone from stealing a TV, so while its a bigger ticket item and "cant be re-sold", you cant steal it 10,000 times in the matter of a day... Where as Im helpless sitting here while a bunch of dopes that think its fun, give my software away and EASILY siphen way more value off of me....

Really, the way you talk about it, it almost sounds like you used to pirate a large amount of content, whether it be software or otherwise, as Ive heard a lot of these same arguments before from people who still do...

I know my view won't be popular here, but I think everyone needs to look at this with a realistic eye. The sky is falling argument will not capture the interest of the public in whole. I can tell you that the continued use of more and more restrictive licensing and activation methods has made me reduce the number of titles I purchase and developers need to consider the impact on the end user when making these decisions.

Im sure that is true to a very small extent, and I do not try to make super security systems to combat the pirates with my software. But then that attitude also handcuffs us developers not only by the pirates but by the consumers as welll...

And as with Alex, if I could even have that 10%, you would see a lot more WAY cool things to advance the Windows Mobile application world.. But instead some idiot pirates get their kicks by giving it away and we don't get that chance.... So its not only our loss, its yours....
and not just because you have to type in longer codes....