" Piracy "

[ZoraxDoom]

I'd hardly call Britney Spears' latest hit Knowledge...


If I could mention the essence of my earlier post, cracking software isn't difficult, and software companies should expect not to earn a lot in sales if they release free demos and previews. If they were really worried about their software stolen, don't release demos, and use some good security measures.

And, on a side note, expenses are probably high cause sales are low. And sales are low because of piracy. You could look at it as a vicious circle...

 

[mukund_nadkarni]

I'd hardly call Britney Spears' latest hit Knowledge...

Lol! And she is still a millionaire! Anyways I was talking about softwares. Music is another thing altogether.

mukund_nadkarni added 1 Minutes and 24 Seconds later...

And sales are low because of piracy. You could look at it as a vicious circle...

Is there any proof for this?

 

[ZoraxDoom]

It's a guess. If sales were as good as ever, why would firms care about Piracy in the first place?

 

[mukund_nadkarni]

It's a guess. If sales were as good as ever, why would firms care about Piracy in the first place?

Greed? They are capitalists aren't they. Will they ever stop looking for ways to maximise their profits?

Atleast as far as I know, firms that do business and have to do anything with the law generally do buy softwares. Even here in Goa, I know firms that can barely afford softwares such as 3DSMax, Maya etc, do buy licenses for their softwares. That the software makers lose any money due to piracy is really difficult to believe.

 

[Cricketdude]

I doubt many people here can say they have never pirated anything before.

I don't think its that bad that when you pirate something when you weren't going to buy anyways. If I really want something I buy it.

Here comes Sureshots arguement which is "would you go up to the music shop and ask for a game because you wouldn't buy it anywhere....".

I heard a couple of years ago that because of music piracy the music sales have gone from 7 million a year to 2,3,4 million can't totally remember(in aus).

 

[Yogy]

Can anyone tell me why a Bollywood movie's pirated print comes out the next day of its release????

 

[shravi]

Can anyone tell me why a Bollywood movie's pirated print comes out the next day of its release????

Camrips.

10characters

 

[Harrypotter_fan]

The softwares' prices are just too high in developing like India for common people to afford it. In 2008 the per capita income was just Rs. 3300 per month. Now consider the prices of necessary softwares:

Office 2007 Home and Student|Rs. 2,740|
Office 2007 Professional|Rs. 16,200|
Vista Home Premium|Rs. 6,200

It isn't easy for people to buy these software. Most of the people in India don't even have internet connectivity, so they don't know about OpenOffice and other stuff. People sometimes don't know whether they are using pirated or not, they just think that all the software they have come free with their PC (many people buy assembled PCs and pirated software is pre-loaded in such PCs). Even if people know they are using pirated stuff they don't bother to buy original because they just can't afford it.

On the other hand, I agree about the prices too. Big corporations have to pay loads to their employees. A lot of effort goes into making software. So they can't cut down prices drastically.

DreamSpark launched by MS will help students get their original products to a certain extent, but it doesn't include High School students. Maybe open source will take over in the next decade, who knows? Then that will be the end of piracy.

 

[sohum]

It's all about ownership. The shopkeeper owns the vodka as much as the software company owns the game/software.

It's not like that. The shopkeeper owns the vodka as much as a CD store owns a CD or iTunes owns an MP3 (although I'd argue less--since the shopkeeper cannot sell multiple "copies" of vodka from the single bottle). When it comes to ownership, the ownership should be of the code. For example, Absolut owns the recipe of it's vodka. If anyone steals that, then they should surely be punished. Similarly, if anyone steals Microsoft code for Office 2007, they should be accordingly punished. But, you can buy vodka and share it with your friends. However, you can't legally buy a music CD and share it with your friends... the vodka comparison fails, IMO.

Interestingly, there was a music website I saw that was giving music away for free, except they had adverts that you had to watch, etc to pay for it, I can see them being successful.

There's a service call Ruckus that is legal, DRM music that is available to anyone with a .edu email address.

You've brought up price, this is an issue I've never thought could vindicate piracy. If you can't afford something then you don't get it, simple. Most people pirate because they can and because it's free, not to do with price.

It has got a lot to do with price, in my opinion. The reason that black markets exist is because there is not a proper equilibrium of the supply and demand curves. The demand for software is such that most people would buy it if it was cheaper. Supply does not properly provide for that, and you end up with a lot of people who want the software, but not for the given price. If you look at old-school piracy (before the internet downloading era) you would note that people PAID for pirated copies. That in itself shows that they are willing to pay a certain price for the goods purchased, and that the suppliers are not estimating that price properly.

sohum added 1 Minutes and 11 Seconds later...

And, on a side note, expenses are probably high cause sales are low. And sales are low because of piracy. You could look at it as a vicious circle...

Actually, no. Expenses are completely independent because of sales. You can say net income is less because sales are low. Sales are low because prices are high. Expenses don't have anything to do with sales, for the most part, since they are two completely different parts of the production process.

 

[Precambrian]

Get Ubuntu.

Get openoffice.

Get GIMP

No worries, no hassles.

 

[sohum]

Get Ubuntu.

Get openoffice.

Get GIMP

No worries, no hassles.

Except that OSS is far harder to use. The reason that Microsoft, Adobe, etc. can price their software so high is because they expend a lot of effort in user interface and interaction. In fact, these companies have whole departments dedicated to HCI.

 

[mukund_nadkarni]

Get Ubuntu.

Get openoffice.

Get GIMP

No worries, no hassles.

If only I could do my stuff in GIMP, I'd be using Linux right now. But GIMP, however good is nowhere near Photoshop. But it's getting there.

mukund_nadkarni added 6 Minutes and 19 Seconds later...

Except that OSS is far harder to use. The reason that Microsoft, Adobe, etc. can price their software so high is because they expend a lot of effort in user interface and interaction. In fact, these companies have whole departments dedicated to HCI.

Dead right. Interface is the biggest stumbling block of OSS. And that's really sad. Ease of use has never been a priority in the OSS development spheres. But they are starting to pay more attention to it now.

 

[Kshitiz_Indian]

Moreover, even though I think Linux is usable enough for me, compatibility is where it fails. I can't game on my 9600GT using Linux.

I think Shreyas's post sums up the pricing situation quite well in India.

 

[Kev]

You know the reason Office Pro, Photoshop CS3 etc etc are priced so high? It's because they are aimed at the business market. There are plenty of cheaper alternatives suitable for home use. The fact that you want the business software and you can't afford it is your problem not the software companies. Take Photoshop, there is a cheap product from Adobe called photoshop elements, you can do pretty much everything with elements that you can do with full photoshop (ok some things are more long winded) but people want CS3, for no real reason there is no benefit and no reason if you can't afford the ?600 for photoshop that you should ignore Elements at around ?50.

With Music and Film I can see new ways of selling these products becoming more popular. There are a few sites where you can hear ad supported music for free (we7.com) is one off the top of my head. I have heard and read articles about ISP's doing deals with Music companies to allow unlimited downloads included within the monthly price you pay for your internet. Youtube has done deals with some companies (although others are unwilling to do deals at this time). Bands have made their latest albums free to download, come have done deals with newspapers to give away their latest cd....

At the moment the technology is at odds with the old ways of doing things. For example take Movies. They are made by the studios and distributed by another company. These days there is no real need for a film distributor, the studios could provide the movies to cinemas direct via the internet but this isn't done. There is obviously great reluctance to change the status quo because companies are making money from them and obviously they don't want to give up making that money, but I don't think it'll be too long before alternative methods become more the norm.

 

[mukund_nadkarni]

You know the reason Office Pro, Photoshop CS3 etc etc are priced so high? It's because they are aimed at the business market. There are plenty of cheaper alternatives suitable for home use. The fact that you want the business software and you can't afford it is your problem not the software companies. Take Photoshop, there is a cheap product from Adobe called photoshop elements, you can do pretty much everything with elements that you can do with full photoshop (ok some things are more long winded) but people want CS3, for no real reason there is no benefit and no reason if you can't afford the ?600 for photoshop that you should ignore Elements at around ?50.

Can't agree with that. Recreational use is as good as home use, no? Haven't used Elements, but I guess it's basically a photo touch up tool. Not sure it can be used to create serious artworks. A look at the graphics thread will help to understand what I mean. Also by "The fact that you want the business software and you can't afford it is your problem not the software companies.", do you mean to say that anyone who doesn't have enough money shouldn't indulge their passion, that it is the preserve of the rich? Note, it's a question. In fact isn't this exactly why softwares are not vodkas? You can let someone use a software who can't afford it, yet you wouldn't loose anything.

With Music and Film I can see new ways of selling these products becoming more popular. There are a few sites where you can hear ad supported music for free (we7.com) is one off the top of my head. I have heard and read articles about ISP's doing deals with Music companies to allow unlimited downloads included within the monthly price you pay for your internet. Youtube has done deals with some companies (although others are unwilling to do deals at this time). Bands have made their latest albums free to download, come have done deals with newspapers to give away their latest cd....


At the moment the technology is at odds with the old ways of doing things. For example take Movies. They are made by the studios and distributed by another company. These days there is no real need for a film distributor, the studios could provide the movies to cinemas direct via the internet but this isn't done. There is obviously great reluctance to change the status quo because companies are making money from them and obviously they don't want to give up making that money, but I don't think it'll be too long before alternative methods become more the norm.

Agree with this. Basically what technology has done is render the middle men redundant. But these guys obviously don't want to loose their share of the pie. So they are fighting change. Actually even the ad based revenue system is despicable. The users are, or will have to eventually put up with a lot of crap to be able to get the songs they want. Considering the no. of people who listen to music, (almost everyone I think), I don't see why we can't evolve a tax based system that rewards the artists directly, while also saving the people a lot of trouble. As for the actual tax, I'd think that would be nothing compared to what one pays for legal music at the moment. Also we can get rid of the middle men altogether.