The effect of piracy on price?

[Agent]

Because it's easier to download something than go to a store/register online/worry about CC fraud and wait for something to be delivered.

True. But that’s more of an issue of actually obtaining the product than it being available for a fair price.

IMO, if they made a lot more software downloadable online, dropped the DRM, and passed the savings onto the public, it would combat a lot of piracy.
As soon as it becomes easier for people to download a pirate copy over a legitimate one, regardless of if that person was willing to buy it in the first place, its putting the people who are willing to support you at a disadvantage, which only leads to annoy them and consider the ‘other side’.

A legitimate user who wants to buy software shouldn’t ever be in that position.

I can see the arguement that 'if it's cheap, people won't pirate it' but all the evidence I've seen has been contrary to that - you can buy PC games new for 18-25 quid. They used to cost up to 45 quid a decade ago - yet piracy is more prevelant than it ever was.

You can even buy add-ons for PC games from 50p - yet they were still pirated!!

But there are a lot more PC gamers than a decade ago. Heck, DirectX barely worked a decade ago

As for the 50p thing - we are back to the user who will steal everything scenario. You get this in every market, not just software.

[Stewart]

Something tells me you might have had a sneaky inkling what was likely to happen ...

Yeah. What a cheap shot. I mean, Piracy... everyone has an opinion about that! Any fool can start a Piracy thread and watch the replies come flooding in.

[Mike Fishcake]

Would companies not be better off saving that cash and either just keeping it to help off-set the losses from piracy or to reduce the retail price (to try and get the same effect?)

Can't remember which publisher/game it was, but about 15ish years ago when I had my Amiga, one software house stopped bothering with copy protection on their games because it would be cracked anyway. And this is back in the days of double density floppies and jiffy bags...

On a similar note - was it Ocean software around the same time that made the claim that Robocop 3 on the Amiga was virtually uncrackable? I don't need to mention the outcome really do I?

I've known people who impulsively collect downloaded movies, rarely watching any.

Lord knows why O_o

Bandwidth guilt.

"Hey, I've got 50GB transfer per month and I've only used 5GB of it! Quick! MUST... DOWNLOAD... MOVIES..."

[madad2005]

Is there a student version of Vista available then? I can't seem to find anything..maybe I'm just useless at searching.

If you are at university that is part of the MS academic scheme, you are entitled to a free copy of MS Vista Business, XP Pro, Xp Pro 64-bit, MS Visual Studio 2005, MS Visio, and other server software. Can't remember where I saw the link now. I'll repost if I do.

[madad2005]

Bandwidth guilt.

"Hey, I've got 50GB transfer per month and I've only used 5GB of it! Quick! MUST... DOWNLOAD... MOVIES..."

Been there. Done that. Stopped downloading.

[excalibur2]

***Sorry, but that's cobblers.

12 years ago = 1995.

In 1995, WordPerfect 6 was out, and was selling for around the £200 mark (£211, at Watford Electronics, for a start, for 6.0b).

Secondly, there were numerous alternatives, such as CA Textor, Borland Sprint, TopLevel Fine Words, and so on, all of which were under £50, so nobody needed to be using XTGold, fantastic utility though it was, in it's own right). So if you can't afford WordPerfect or don't like the price, use something else.***

Ok it might have been 1993 or 1994, but the ridiculous prices charged for software was the birth of a piracy attitude, I had no guilt in using WP3.1 for free.
Next I (we) bought Amipro and Norton utilities about £90 each, but shared the cost between 3 people....is this illegal or just joe public trying to get a good product which they can afford.

[Saracen]

Ok it might have been 1993 or 1994, but the ridiculous prices charged for software was the birth of a piracy attitude, I had no guilt in using WP3.1 for free.
Next I (we) bought Amipro and Norton utilities about £90 each, but shared the cost between 3 people....is this illegal or just joe public trying to get a good product which they can afford.

On what basis was it ridiculous?

I'll ask again ... do you know what it cost to produce?

Do you know what it cost to promote? To market?

Just because you either couldn't afford it or wouldn't afford it doesn't make the price ridiculous, and Joe Public don't have a right to rip off the software company just because you don't like the price. It doesn't make them rip-off merchants, it makes you a software pirate.

As I said, there were alternatives. You could have used them. Justifying piracy on the basis of "ridiculous price" is just self-serving self-justification because you don't have a right to the product in the first place, and because "ridiculous" amounts to "I didn't want to/couldn't afford to pay it". Well, there's lots of things I'd like and can't afford, and many more I could afford but won't spend what they cost on them. Life's full of these little disappointments, but I don't assume I've a right to rip them off just because I want them and can't afford them.

Directhex put it very well with "culture of entitlement". There seems to be a tendency to draw an equivalence between "I want ..." and "I'm entitled to ...", but you're not. Piracy occurs people people either can't or won't pay for what they want, and the technology means they know they can just take it and stand zero (or near zero) chance of getting caught. "Rip-off pricing" is just rationalising and self-justification because you have no idea of what development costs were, what unit margins were or what the basis for unit price was, what risks investors had taken to fund development were or what return they were getting. "Rip-off prices" means "I think it's a lot, but I have no basis on which to know what the profit margin was, and no right to decide if it's excessive or not".

[excalibur2]

On what basis was it ridiculous?

I'll ask again ... do you know what it cost to produce?

Do you know what it cost to promote? To market?

Just because you either couldn't afford it or wouldn't afford it doesn't make the price ridiculous, and Joe Public don't have a right to rip off the software company just because you don't like the price. It doesn't make them rip-off merchants, it makes you a software pirate.

As I said, there were alternatives. You could have used them. Justifying piracy on the basis of "ridiculous price" is just self-serving self-justification because you don't have a right to the product in the first place, and because "ridiculous" amounts to "I didn't want to/couldn't afford to pay it". Well, there's lots of things I'd like and can't afford, and many more I could afford but won't spend what they cost on them. Life's full of these little disappointments, but I don't assume I've a right to rip them off just because I want them and can't afford them.

Directhex put it very well with "culture of entitlement". There seems to be a tendency to draw an equivalence between "I want ..." and "I'm entitled to ...", but you're not. Piracy occurs people people either can't or won't pay for what they want, and the technology means they know they can just take it and stand zero (or near zero) chance of getting caught. "Rip-off pricing" is just rationalising and self-justification because you have no idea of what development costs were, what unit margins were or what the basis for unit price was, what risks investors had taken to fund development were or what return they were getting. "Rip-off prices" means "I think it's a lot, but I have no basis on which to know what the profit margin was, and no right to decide if it's excessive or not".

Well at the end of the day pirating WP3.1 didn't cost them a penny as I couldn't afford to buy it anyway (so they lost nothing)......now that's another way of looking at the issue of piracy.

[directhex]

Well at the end of the day pirating WP3.1 didn't cost them a penny as I couldn't afford to buy it anyway (so they lost nothing)......now that's another way of looking at the issue of piracy.

but it cost a competitor something, as in a piracy-free world, you'd have had to buy a cheaper product to do the same job

if the market tended towards buying the cheaper product, then that would have forced wordperfect to lower its prices

piracy eliminates competition; competition lowers prices

[excalibur2]

but it cost a competitor something, as in a piracy-free world, you'd have had to buy a cheaper product to do the same job

if the market tended towards buying the cheaper product, then that would have forced wordperfect to lower its prices

piracy eliminates competition; competition lowers prices

Well of course you have a point generally, but in the days of dos, the big sales of WP3.1 were to businesses who only wanted the best, and the small minority of ordinary people using computers in those days wouldn't sway the market for competitors.

Look at Quarkxpress and it's ridiculous pricing, I can't remember how ordinary joe public put out a newsletter now and again for his club etc in the old days. I know copies were going around so piracy was starting.

So today if the big guys are willing to pay high prices for excellent programs (and of course getting Vat and business tax reductions) what chance has ordinary joe public have of getting them.

[Saracen]

Well at the end of the day pirating WP3.1 didn't cost them a penny as I couldn't afford to buy it anyway (so they lost nothing)......now that's another way of looking at the issue of piracy.

That may well be the case, though I also agree with directhex's point.

But bring the mindset that pirated WP 3.1 forward to today. MS Office is a prime target for piracy. I don't know (or want to know) if you've a pirate copy of that, excalibur, but your earlier logic (it's expensive) still applies. Yet OpenOffice provides a highly competent and highly function alternative that has the vast bulk of the functionality of MS Office, and is both free and legit.

Yet people still pirate Office. Why? Funkstar said it .....

A lot of poeple seem to have a "because i can" atitude.

That about sums it up. Because they can, and because they'll get away with it.

[htid]

Well at the end of the day pirating WP3.1 didn't cost them a penny as I couldn't afford to buy it anyway (so they lost nothing)......now that's another way of looking at the issue of piracy.

I think that's a good point. I used to do the same with films and music. I wouldn't want to pay for the film and had no intention of ever seeing it if I couldn't get it free, but since I could, I did. I didn't like it enough to buy it but if it's free then where's the harm? There may be against that, I'm not saying I'm right, I could just never think of any.

Also with say my course. We use high end 3D software such as XSI. You know nobody will buy it because it's too expensive, yet our coursework has to be done on it so we download it for free. Of course there are computers with it installed on in the labs, but these labs aren't always open and very often have classes in, so what can you do.

but it cost a competitor something, as in a piracy-free world, you'd have had to buy a cheaper product to do the same job

if the market tended towards buying the cheaper product, then that would have forced wordperfect to lower its prices

piracy eliminates competition; competition lowers prices

..and I don't think this arguement stands for my above example, because we can't buy cheaper alternatives since the modules require us to use XSI.

[directhex]

..and I don't think this arguement stands for my above example, because we can't buy cheaper alternatives since the modules require us to use XSI.

vendor lock-in, courtesy of software monoculture

[htid]

vendor lock-in, courtesy of software monoculture

Well not quite. There's always Maya or Max but the teachers we have are experts in XSI, so we have to work in XSI.

[excalibur2]

***Yet OpenOffice provides a highly competent and highly function alternative that has the vast bulk of the functionality of MS Office, and is both free and legit.

Yet people still pirate Office. Why? Funkstar said it .....***

erm well does MS really care, as long as businesses and richer people pay up, the more people that use MS products, the more it knocks the competition out until MS rule the world and then they can screw the consumer esp if they can fit dongles on computers.
So in a way piracy is also bad if its going to give MS a monopoly.
Proof of the above thinking is MS operating system they have practically cornered the market, now they are attempting to make it pirate proof and also trying to get board manufacturers to put chips in to do this. So pay our price or use something else............ and would joe public switch to Apple?

[Saracen]

***Yet OpenOffice provides a highly competent and highly function alternative that has the vast bulk of the functionality of MS Office, and is both free and legit.

Yet people still pirate Office. Why? Funkstar said it .....***

erm well does MS really care, as long as businesses and richer people pay up, the more people that use MS products, the more it knocks the competition out until MS rule the world and then they can screw the consumer esp if they can fit dongles on computers.
So in a way piracy is also bad if its going to give MS a monopoly.
Proof of the above thinking is MS operating system they have practically cornered the market, now they are attempting to make it pirate proof and also trying to get board manufacturers to put chips in to do this. So pay our price or use something else............ and would joe public switch to Apple?

But none of that addresses my question, which was why people still pirate MS Office when a highly functional, completely free and totally legitimate alternative exists?

You did, after all, start the sub-debate you and I have had by referring to WP3.1 with the remark that there were no alternatives. I don't accept that there weren't, which is why I listed several of the alternatives, but in today's world with OpenOffice .... what's the excuse for pirating office?

For that matter, why do people need (and I stress need, rather than just want) Vista, when they probably already have XP, and Linux is available?

Also, in relation to your above point, can I point out the inherent contradiction. In one breath, you ask if MS cares if some people pirate Office, and in the next you claim out that they're attempting to make the OS pirate-proof. Does the latter not suggest the answer to the former? - that yes, they care.

As for the chips on motherboards, if you're referring to the TPM chips, then they're about system security and are a central part of fully locking down an encryption system, because the current EFS sure as hell has loopholes, and a thorough Bitlocker implementation requires hardware support.

You ask if Joe Public would switch to Apple? On the basis of that issue, I rather doubt it, since Apple has already been reported as having implemented the use of TPM to control OS system installs, to prevent Intel-configured Mac OSs being installed on non-Mac hardware.

See this

So can TPM be used to lock down OS installs? Yeah, I'd think so.

Will it be? Yeah, probably.

Is that what it's all about? At least, not entirely and I'd suggest it's not even the prime objective, but it's certainly possible MS (and, clearly, Apple) have that option in mind.

Are they entitled to do so? Hell, yes, if all it does is cause pirates headaches. All the pirates have to do to avoid the problem is either pay up like the rest of us, or use products (like Linux) that they're entitled to use.