IP? Is that a Kind of Cheese?
Having ranted on and on about IP issues lately I was amused to read an article at the bbc, which broadly discussed the software industry’s claims that piracy costs it jobs and billions upon billions of dollars every second etc. So I wrote a reply. I felt I have some knowledge in this area now, or at the very least, an intelligent opinion. However, since they probably won’t publish my comment (it is the BBC afterall), I copied it here so that in years to come, I can look back and smile at my radical and communist ideals:
Pirating software or music is not theft - it is copyright violation. Theft would mean that the owner would lose money. Copyright violation only means that the owner has lost a potential sale - they have merely not gained any money. The distinction should not be blurred.
Admitedly, for some companies, losing potential sales can be just as damaging. However, who’s to say how popular Windows would have been if there wasn’t any piracy in its early days. Piracy which acted to spread the word of the software and allow people to try it before they paid money for it. It is a “net” myth that piracy helps smaller companies to get marketing for their products. It is a believable myth is it not?
In fact often it seems to me that the only companies who actively pursue violations of their software copyrights are the ones who already own 60% of that market. The smaller players would be happy that their product was spreading at no aditional cost to themselves, after all, some of these “pirates” might decide to later hand over some money.
Comments welcome, although I’m sure I’ll get none : (
Hi Max,
first of all, you’re right concerning theft vs. copyright violation. But to be honest - even that can’t count always, at least for me ;-).
Yes, I do copy some software or media for myself. But whenever I really like it, I buy it afterwards! That counts for great films which I like to see some times more (and even more for such really great work as Babylon5
) and of course for software too.
It’s no problem to get a copy of f.ex. a new game and play it without purchasing it. And I think that’s just fair. I just can’t afford another 50 Euro for a program which I will use two or three times and then never have another look on it because it’s not so great as it looked on the cover. Take Counter-Strike as a very popular example. It was no problem to get it run without a commercial CD and in the beginnings you could even create IDs for the net. But after playing a while, I (and also some friends) decided we like Half-Life / Coutner-Strike and bought it afterwards (but almost never played it on the internet - perhaps even never used our new cds and numbers
)
OK, I’m so realitic to see that not all users are willing to do that (f.ex. those that switch mainly to linux & Co because it is free [as beer]). Therefore I can partly(!) understand the industrty. But I’m also quite sure, you could find many other ways than just crying around and create more and more copyprotection techniques. Look at transgaming & Co. They CAN survive even with opensource and offering their product for free download.
Marcel July 11th, 2003 at 12:46cheers
I can think of 2 pieces of software I have pirated, both games, both at an age when I couldn’t afford them. I don’t recall feeling guilty about it. I wouldn’t do the same now - if I enjoyed it, I’d buy it. It’s not that I feel a moral obligation, or that I’m scared of violating copyright or being branded "a criminal" by my aunt Jan. I spose I just like to buy things that I like.
Most people are honest, I totally resent being treated like a criminal with copy-protection, or warnings of the consequences of violating copyright plastered everywhere. I admit that sometimes it’s probably necessary, or maybe the product wouldn’t even be there. But hell! I’m a stubborn consumer who is always right, so there!
Thinking about it, every version of Windows, every MS product, every commercial tool was purchased. I don’t bother looking for pirated copies, I just hunt for an open source or free solution. I usually find the OSS version far superior anyway..
Max Howell July 11th, 2003 at 15:02BTW thanks for the comment! Lightened up my day
Max Howell July 11th, 2003 at 15:03Hi! You make a minor mistake, arguing that piracy might have benefited Windows popularity. This is not the point at all. We do not need an excuse like this to pirate it (I mean we as in "we, the people").
The most important thing is that no company has the right to a certain amount of sales (profits). The society sets the rules that determine the mechanisms for functioning of the economy and no guarantee is made that these mechanisms will provide a certain level of sales.
So there are two questions:
- what are the current rules - it appears that current rules (broadly taken - laws + customs + everything else) permit filesharing and personal piracy.
- what should be the rules - it should be obvious that the optimal level of piracy (to maximise the economic output) should be non-zero. Payment for software does not add value to the economy in a deep sense. Only using the software adds the value. That’s why the more we use software, the better off the economy is. Ergo the more piracy we have, the better. There is only one caveat. With piracy growing from 0% to 100% we will see that many companies will go bankcrupt and produce less new software. That would be bad and have a negative impact. But we must understand that if our goal is maximising the total output, not the sales of software companies, we must find the point when marginal benefits from piracy equal marginal losses from it. I believe that this point corresponds to significantly more piracy than the current level in Europe and the US.
YT, Danila October 9th, 2003 at 20:36