🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <15885@pollux.UUCP> merlin@smu.UUCP (David Hayes) writes:
>	Well, *some* software is sold.  The last estimate I heard, from
>ADAPSO, I believe, is that the small-computer world has 9 copies made
>from every legally sold copy.  By those stats, it seems the market will
>bear about 10% of what software companies are currently charging.

Oh boy.  I'm too easy to draw into a discussion like this.

Years ago, I was a pretty heavy software pirate.  I had literally thousands
of copyrighted programs, most of which I never used except for trading
purposes.  OK, you think.  So I was costing the software industry megabucks.
Wrong.  Out of the programs I had, I would have bought maybe twenty (most
of my programs were games, and most of those were really lousy...)  The
rest, I would never have even glanced at in a store or mail-order catalog.
If I wouldn't have bought a program, I can't see how I'm costing anyone
anything by copying it illegally.

(I know, if I hadn't been pirating, I would have had more motivation to
buy software.  But I certainly wouldn't have bought more than a tiny
percentage of what I pirated, in any case.)

In my experience, software piracy works like this:

Model 1 (small-time)
	Person A shows the nifty game he just bought to person B.
	Person B thinks it's neat, and takes a copy of it.

Model 2 (most of the pirates I dealt with worked this way)
	Person A gives a list of his software to person B, and vice versa.
	The two cross out what they already have, and get the remainder.
		If the difference is too great, the one with more software
		probably won't trade all his "wares," in pirate parlance.
	Person B adds the new software to his list, and probably never uses
		any of it more than once, to see if his copy is good.

Model 3
	Person A calls up person B's BBS, sees a neat program that hasn't
		been released yet (this is VERY common -- I often had
		programs two or three months before they hit the stores)
		and downloads it, and maybe a few other things.
	Optionally, he uploads something he doesn't see on B's list.

Model 3 is an interesting one, as it is a tangible advantage of piracy
over legitimate software acquisition.

In models 2 and 3, which I'd say account for 95% of piracy (it only
takes a few big collectors to equal lots of model-1s), the software is
used primarily to trade for more software, and not for its own merits.
The idea is that if you have 50 programs that Joe doesn't, but he has
something you really want, you can trade -- even if your 50 are just
worthless little one-week-hack games.  Then, once you have Joe's
program, you can give it to someone else for 50 you don't have, and so
on.  In very little time, you've amassed a closetful of disks.

Often, "Joe" is the program's author.  He KNOWS you don't have a copy
of his new program, since he hasn't given it to anyone else.  That's
one way the prereleases get out.

Without piracy, the participants in models 2 and 3 don't have any
incentive to get all the programs they would otherwise have, so the
industry makes very little money from them.  To these people, the
software itself is a sort of money: worthless except that it can be
traded for other things (such as more money...)

So lowering prices won't help against these people, either.  They are
almost no more likely to buy a program for $10 than for $2000.

Note that I'm not condoning piracy here; I'm just relating my
experiences.  (Though I must say that the few programs I *did* buy
during that time, I always pirated first to see if they were any good.)

Copy protection only stops the model 1 people.  If it's really good, it
might hold 2 and 3 up for a week or two, but that's about it.  I have
seen more "unbreakable" copy protection schemes come and go than I care
to count.  However, since the model 1 people are the ones who would
mostly buy the programs anyway, I suppose it does do its job.
Elaborate schemes are just a waste of time, because they never take
even a tenth as long to break as to create, and all that's needed to
stop the model 1 people is a bad sector on the disk or somesuch.

What I'd like to see is a survey of the model 1 people, something like
"How many pieces of software did you copy illegally to avoid paying
for them?"

Comments?

---
This message is a figment of your imagination.  Any opinions are yours.
Steven Grimm		Moderator, comp.{sources,binaries}.atari.st
sgrimm@sun.com		...!sun!sgrimm