06-19-2007, 04:00 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Oct 2005
Posts: 716
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Piracy - It's Just Plain Wrong!
"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.
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iPhone
Tmo Dash
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