Hey folks, just a wee question that I was brooding over tonight at work:
Does piracy increase or decrease price?
From a supply/demand point of view, I would expect price to rise if demand decreases, if the company is supplying the same number of units.
From a more general economic view, combatting piracy by lowering prices, in order to make the product seem more affordable could also work.
Thoughts?
I believe the corporations are too greedy what with DVDs STILL retailing at over £10 for a single DVD in some cases although there ARE some VERY tempting boxset and three for one offers going on as well the fact is, cinema ticket prices are the main thing encouraging people to piracy.
Its mainly films that have just come out in the cinema that are affected by piracy for example, Hot Fuzz should be available for around £2 off your local pirates.
People seem more content with paying for films that have just come out on DVD just as people are more likely to buy Hot Fuzz on pirate for example.
So the cinema industry is hardest hit by piracy although I've only scratched the surface of the issue.
(I am aware that cinemas are part of the film industry, I was merely pointing out that the film industry lose out to piracy when it comes to cinemas but more than claw back some revenue when the film comes out on DVD officially)
I think the issue of piracy is largely down to the big company’s and a bad attitude from the public, because lets be honest, Piracy is acceptable in today’s society. People don’t think twice about copying something for a mate.
While I don’t think they will ever stop that (to a degree), there are several places they *can* solve, or atleast massively reduce piracy.
Most piracy revolves around one fact: The price of the original is too much. Fixing this is fairly simple – lower the price.
Granted, this isn’t always feasible (software can cost a LOT of R&D), but they at least need to section the market and provide alternatives.
A prime example of this is the education field. We use a high profile 3D modelling package which shall remain nameless. If we had to buy it, we are looking at 1000’s of dollars. The company who has made this software has made it clear on several occasions that they will not pursue students for using ‘cracked’ copies.
Now what kind of an attitude is that? – Why not provide students with a legal version, for say £20 or so and no support other than major bugs which stop the program working? Almost everyone I know would be willing to pay that for original, high profile software. Even with clauses that don’t allow it to be used for anything commercial.
If company’s cant take their own products seriously, its no wonder piracy is rife.
Microsoft has started to do this with their home & student office edition – and about time. Apple has been doing this for a while with their OS. It’s a shame MS have only extended it to their office suite. One copy of office home and student edition can now be used on 3 computers in the same household IIRC.
Then again, on the flip side, Piracy has made some organisations such as Microsoft huge. Without piracy it’s almost certain that other company’s would have a much bigger share of the market.
Now they have a monopoly on the market, they can kick up their anti-piracy campaign without too much fear of people switching to alternatives.
Originally Posted by Saracen
Software is designed for a specific task - and for a given task, there's usually a wide array of software to accomplish it. However, with software piracy as easy as it is today, an alarming number of people go for the "best" software, regardless of whether a cheaper (or free) version will accomplish the task for them just as well. For example, I was once trying to help someone on this very forum with a firewall issue, and suggested they download Sygate Personal Firewall, as a well-featured product to do the job they needed, and do it well. A day later, they come back, and they've pirated the Pro edition. Why? Because. Just because. The ease with which people can pirate software has lead to a culture of entitlement amongst the teenage demographic that haunt this forum. Even if something like Microsoft Office 2007 Home & Student were free of charge, a scary number of people would STILL pirate the highest-end version. Not because they need it - but because they feel entitled to it.
Consider for a moment if software piracy were not possible, end of story. If people wanted to accomplish a task, they'd need legally licensed software in order to do so. With the "software costs too much" argument, what do you think would be the top choice - £20 software, or competing £200 software? Even if it had a better feature set, the £200 software would be hard-pressed to compete against people who simply won't pay that amount - driving down prices using something we call "competition". Consider, conversely, if there's a task with only one product that can accomplish it. What incentive is there to price that low? After all, people either pay up or miss out. You can hike the price as much as you feel like! You could sell a bunch of different versions, maybe even a crappy useless one that's cheaper than the previous version by a little bit, but overall hike the price. Business genius.
And how would you end up with a situation where only a single company controls a given task? Well, consider this: Task A can be accomplished by software B (£20), software C (£200), or pirated software C (£0). Which product gains traction? The cheapest one - the pirated product. People know and learn it, and areas where legal software is mandatory (e.g. businesses) pay the legit price for C since all potential employees are trained with it. What happens to the competing product? It dies out, plain & simple.
Hands up if you think Microsoft's £90-for-3 home license on Office 2007 is done out of compassion for their fellow man. Okay, hands up if you think they were getting ****ed (or were worried about getting ****ed) by OpenOffice.org in the home market. OOo is a fascinating example, because it's free by nature. Given the option between free and £300 (retail boxed Office 2003 Standard), what's the home user going to pick? Regardless of the feature set, no bugger is willingly going to pay that much for the Microsoft solution when the competing solution is so much cheaper. £300 is a huge chunk of change. How about free and £90 for 3? That makes it £30 a legit copy in peoples' minds, and that's a MUCH easier figure to swallow.
Does piracy increase prices? Undoubtedly. But not because the company needs to make up for lost profits - it's not as direct as that. The prices increase because piracy kills competition - and without competition, there's no barrier to price hikes.
Last edited by directhex; 05-03-2007 at 11:01 AM.
As good as both of your points are, there isn't really the same arguement with the film industry as the companies that own the film industry aren't as many as with software companies.
The competition isn't as direct its almost like a giant umbrella company so there isn't much in the way of competition in the first place.
The piracy should in many senses encourage innovation and a higher quality level of products to entice more, instead we get remake or sequal after remake / sequel.
On the otherhand just because films are crap doesn't give pirates the excuse to watch it for free as even rubbish films cost vast sums of money to make; Waterworld anyone?
Actually I don't think that's true. My personal opinion is that people want a free lunch, and it doesn't matter how reasonable the prices are, it's the ease of getting something that's pirated that's the real draw. Free is always better value than not free.
Piracy hasn't really had too much effect on pricing though. I think where it has done anything it's raised prices. It certainly doesn't lower them.
I think it's a curve.
Some people would buy if prices were low enough, and where that point is varies. Others pirate becuase they can - the 'free lunch' you mention.
I bought Adobe Premiere Elements. Sure, Premiere Pro has more features, but I'd bet my trousers that at least 95% of people would never, ever use the features that Pro has over Elements. Plus it gets the balance just right for beginners and people with reasonable experience
Same almost goes for Photoshop really, apart from the issue with font spacing that no one I've encountered has been able to fix properly :-/
That's a good idea. I'm on an 3D animation course so basically everyone has max maya or xsi copied...but i'm sure most of them would be willing to pay say £20 or even up to £100 (personally) for the software if it was legal.
So why do such high numbers* of students pirate MS products, when you can often get them with an academic discount?
It would seem to me that it's partly their mindset, and partly the ease of getting hold of it in the first place (uni connection etc.)
*no proof, just personal anecdotes.
People always want something for nothing. Period.
Maybe they just don't know. That's seriously the first I've heard about students being able to get discounts. Not that I've ever researched it, but still maybe if it was more well known. (For the record my XP is official)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Of...3090699&sr=8-2
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Windows-Prof...3090699&sr=8-1
As just an example, but yeah, maybe it's not well known. Which is poor from the uni's point.
One of my work mates hasn't bought any software in years!! He gets all his online! He just doesn't care. He hates paying for it. It is his choice i suppose but people do work hard to produce the software in the first place so deserve to be rewarded by having the sofware bought legally. I suppose the prices can be rather high for some software though.
Is there a student version of Vista available then? I can't seem to find anything..maybe I'm just useless at searching.
MSDNAA is only available for students on Computing courses, i dont think anyone else bothers.
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