What is "piracy" and is it ever justified - Page 17 - maemo.org

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fatalsaint	2010-03-03 , 15:54
Posts: 3,428 \| Thanked: 2,856 times \| Joined on Jul 2008	#161

Originally Posted by Fargus

So becuase you have bought some then you feel you are entitled to all, even though you may not have contributed anything to the people whi's work you are using? Rather selfish really.

Entitled? No. Nobody's entitled to anything in life.. except maybe life itself.

A lot of publishers will replace the media for you, so this is not an excuse.

Not once.. ever have I had a scratched or broken disc replaced. Never. If you try returning a broken disc to a store they will laugh at you if you tell them you bought it in fine condition.. this is just wear and tear from use. You're being a little ridiculous here. When you buy a DVD you aren't buying a life-long commitment from Hollywood to make sure you can always watch that movie.. otherwise Blu-ray would be a free upgrade.

But by taking a copy without paying for it you are saying exactly that! If you can't afford something then either find an alternative or save up for it! Everything in life has a cost associated with it, maybe it is about time you started paying for your costs too. I can't afford some of the items in life that I would like to own too but I dn't just take them and then decide not to pay for them. Just because someone else removed the barrier to obtaining this it made it ok? So if someone looted a store and offered you the items at a knock down price would you think that acceptable too? (I suspect you would).

This difference has been beaten so badly it's not even worth repeating. I personally don't feel I hurt anybody by doing because the original was not removed from anybody. If someone knocks off a jewelry store then store is out the money of that jewelry. If someone went into a jewelry store and cloned all the diamonds and offered me a free one. I could skirt by on that. I wasn't going to be buying the software in either case. I didn't "take" any money from them.

Excellent - at last you aren't ripping anyone off I hope! Shame it isn't becuase you have improved your morals!

Love you too honey... Kisses

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azorni	2010-03-03 , 15:55
Posts: 16 \| Thanked: 1 time \| Joined on Dec 2009 @ Paris, France	#162

Originally Posted by attila77

You also pay for goods or services 'only' because it is required by the seller, not because you like it But seriously, software is tricky business, it's very difficult to measure the 'added value', or justification as you put it. I know we established analogies suck, but think about this way.

Imagine public transportation. You have the option of buying a ticket or walk. Instead, you just jump over guardrails, claiming you only want to 'test' the system and that you will buy a ticket at the end destination if you like it, or claim that if could not get in without a ticket, you would have not used the system anyway. The transport company has the same costs regardless if they have 1 or 100 passengers per carriage, so you might think it doesn't matter.

Now, for those that DO buy a ticket, what you are asking is, why is it bad if you buy a ticket and then let in 99 of your buddies in for free ? Because at 1 customer per ride, the system is not profitable. If none of your buddies would have paid anyway, the system is doomed as it's not sustainable at that ticket price. If some would have paid, but didn't, the system is also doomed, as they lost revenue. Only paying customers make THIS particular business model viable. Alternatively, they could turn to subscription, or, the easy way, just tax everybody (not really a win, eh ?).

That's why many systems have complex admission systems and/or people checking passenger tickets occasionally - they are the transport company's equivalent DRM. Does the guy who checks your ticket bother you ? He could penalize you - you might have bought a proper ticket and misplaced it. Paranoid companies might employ hidden X-Ray machines to check on you. Your actions while using the system might be supervised via camers. But the bottom line is the same - whether you are bothered by tickets or not, your choice is to USE or NOT USE the transport system. You can protest in front of the company about terms, prices, but you DO NOT GET TO RIDE WITHOUT A TICKET WHATEVER THE 'REASON'. This also applies to copying - I hope I don't have to explain why copying tickets for your buddies is a problem ?

My suggestion is to get a bicycle. Clean, free and keeps you in shape

Well this is another example of product with very low marginal cost (well, more or less). This is also why public transport is so often a public service (not free, but owned by the state).

But although I don't deny the utility of public transportation, I very much doubt about the utility of commercial software.

And I would follow your suggestion, and use a bicycle, which equivalent in software industry would be open source software, I guess.

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	Fargus	2010-03-03 , 15:55
	Posts: 1,217 \| Thanked: 446 times \| Joined on Oct 2009 @ Bedfordshire, UK	#163

Originally Posted by Bratag

I tried the donation route Fatal on an app that had 300,000 downloads. I ended up with about 50 donations. But I received THOUSANDS of emails telling me exactly what they thought was wrong/new features/general *****ing. I tried to support them as best I could but when I started getting death threats against myself and my family when I didn't give them the answer they wanted (no I am not making this up) I made the app paid (still leaving a cut down version for free). At least that way If I was going to have to deal with *******s I would be making a small amount from it.
The whole experience of that and a number of the responses here have left me with very much a feeling of FARK USERS, and an urge to write software purely for myself only.

This is exactly the point I was trying to make earlier. I bet that the people moaning the most and requiring most of your time too were the ones that hadn't paid for it.

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	Flandry	2010-03-03 , 16:01
	Posts: 1,559 \| Thanked: 1,786 times \| Joined on Oct 2009 @ Boston	#164

Originally Posted by azorni

I doubt it would be the end of the world.

Also, since you mention Nokia, please notice that this firm has made a huge step towards open source.

As far as i'm concerned, I had no smartphone but as soon as I heard about the N900 with a version of debian inside, I immediately went to a store and bought it cash.

So my guess is that Nokia has made quite some money with this open source software.

I'm not saying it would end the world; i was (too subtly, i guess) pointing out that in your make-believe world where there is no mechanism to protect, nor respect for, intellectual property, we simply wouldn't be having this conversation because Nokia wouldn't exist, Arm wouldn't exist, and so forth.

It's all fine and dandy to say every idea should be free, but the creation of the ideas is not free, and the implementation isn't, either. The creators have to eat and their machines have to be bought and their resources have to be obtained. This is the philosophical basis for copyright and patent law: permit intangible products to be given a value by their creators. In the absence of that, there would be very very little technological innovation.

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Last edited by Flandry; 2010-03-03 at 16:05. Reason: Sigh. So many typos, so little time.

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	Fargus	2010-03-03 , 16:02
	Posts: 1,217 \| Thanked: 446 times \| Joined on Oct 2009 @ Bedfordshire, UK	#165

Originally Posted by fatalsaint

And yet WoW for Blizzard and Eve Online are available to install via a free download.. and you just pay a monthly subscription for services rendered. Which you can cancel at any time.. and in the case of WoW play on a free WoW Server if you want.

Savage II and Planeshift are less well-known MMORPG's because they don't spend as much into advertising but are both free.

*shrug*

So in that case what happens when someone wants to use software but has no connection to the net? This is the cloud model of computing which works fine for some models and I suspect games is a good example. The problem then becomes when you have sensitive information going to an from the cloud repository.

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attila77	2010-03-03 , 16:02
Posts: 3,319 \| Thanked: 5,610 times \| Joined on Aug 2008 @ Finland	#166

Originally Posted by azorni

But although I don't deny the utility of public transportation, I very much doubt about the utility of commercial software.

And I would follow your suggestion, and use a bicycle, which equivalent in software industry would be open source software, I guess.

Now we're getting somewhere ! Not every business model fits every type of software equally ! That's why, for example, Free software is so successful in the server market (which is practically 100% company/profit driven), but has abysmal reputation in some other areas (say, games), as they require a very different approach in development, marketing, distribution, etc.

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	Fargus	2010-03-03 , 16:05
	Posts: 1,217 \| Thanked: 446 times \| Joined on Oct 2009 @ Bedfordshire, UK	#167

Originally Posted by Bratag

So all paid software should be pay by month based - hell thats fine with me.

The problem then shifts to one of ensuring that the services used are paid for. All the big online gaming communities that charge have had problems with counterfeited id's.

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azorni	2010-03-03 , 16:06
Posts: 16 \| Thanked: 1 time \| Joined on Dec 2009 @ Paris, France	#168

Originally Posted by Flandry

I'm not saying it would end the world; i was (too subtly, i guess) pointing out that in your make-believe world where there is no mechanism to protect, nor respect for, intellectual property, we simply wouldn't be having this conversation because Nokia wouldn't exist, Arm wouldn't exist, and so forth.

It's all fine and dandy to say every idea should be free, but the creation of the ideas is not free, and the implementation isn't, either. Your creators have to eat and their machines have to be bought and their resources have to be obtained. This is the philosophical basis for copyright and patent law: permit intangible products to be given a value by their creators. In the absence of that, there would be very very little technological innovation.

Then how do you explain that so many technological innovations came from open source branch ?

As for intellectual property, I don't deny it, but to me it is first of all an intellectual paternity. Commercial aspects should not be involved. I'm quite a liberal person and therefore i consider that law should not interfere with market determination of price. And for a zero marginal cost product, market forces tend to lower the price close to zero.

Last edited by azorni; 2010-03-03 at 16:11.

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	HumanPenguin	2010-03-03 , 16:08
	Posts: 270 \| Thanked: 170 times \| Joined on Jul 2007 @ Atlanta, GA + Oxford UK	#169

Originally Posted by ysss

@HumanPenguin: I guess I'm an optimist :P
It also pose the question of how many open source users are here becauses they're 'misguided' or they misunderstood things...

Nods. Most open source users forget the Free as in speech not free as in beer bit.

But as a huge open source fan. I have to admit there is a huge element of comunism style idealism from some open source advacates.

I seem to remember a Richard stallman article abut the fact that charging for software should be illeagal and the government should fund all software development.

I can understand (although not agree with) some of the piracy of DVDs and music. Due to the DRM and the fact that the money dose not often go to the artist.

But software engineers do not hold concerts.

EDIT: That said copyright law has gotten out of hand. We should be returning to the 14 year terms not increasing it to life plus 70.

The idea of the law was to give creaters the chance to make a profit before moving the information etc into the public domain.

Last edited by HumanPenguin; 2010-03-03 at 16:10.

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	Fargus	2010-03-03 , 16:11
	Posts: 1,217 \| Thanked: 446 times \| Joined on Oct 2009 @ Bedfordshire, UK	#170

Originally Posted by ColdFusion

...
It's not about making profits! Never was!

Actually the point was to allow the original person credit for their own work and allow them to recoup their costs and investments! Also duplication of products in the mass market with little or no skill was not a problem when these mechanisms were introduced.

Originally Posted by ColdFusion

...
The problem until recently was that the only way to ensure innovation was to ensure profits. Nowadays that's no longer true, as one can see the vast amount of FOSS and CreativeCommons stuff being produced.
...

This works for some revenue streams but not all. The right to choose free versions is fine, but not respecting the originators work and copying it when not allowed is not acceptable.

Originally Posted by ColdFusion