Opinion on Piracy

[Kurupshin]

You can have your own beliefs on the ethics of piracy. But if the companies were smart, they would see that if they just lowered their prices for stuff, people would stop pirating.

I buy music cd's of all groups I like, but I've downloaded a ton of songs

However, if music cd's were only 4.99 then, I would buy just about any decent rap cd (hey i like rap)

I have tons of divx movies. The good ones I buy on DVD for the Home theater HDTV DTS effect.

However, for those decent ones, if they were only 7.99, I would buy them, just to have them and not go through hassle of DLing them. Especially for those comedies you get tired of a few times. Why pay 30 bucks for them when you'll only watch them once or twice and the quality doesn't matter.

For games, they should be 20-30 dollars tops.

I just bought SS2 cause it was 15 bucks.

The game is ok, but I felt good spending 15 dollars on a new game.

As for RTCW, I didn't buy that cause it really didn't deserve to pay 59.99 for only 15-20 hours of play. If that was 30 bucks I would have bought it the day it came out.

If these companies were smart, they would lower the price to the point where the consumer doesn't feel ripped off, and they would sell twice as many copies, there by making the same profit. They have to make stuff cheap enuff so it doesn't make sense to pirate things. People will end up buying twice as many everything. I guarantee it. I find it pretty hard to throw down 19.99 for a cd, whether there are mp3's or not. Just my .02

I think many will agree with me.

Oops wrong forum, plz move to off topic.

 

[Rallispec]

<< I would buy just about any decent rap cd (hey i like rap) >>



thats your problem right there


i agree with the fact that stuff is overpriced- but that doesnt make piracy right.

 

[gopunk]

piracy is wrong
the companies suck

 

[wyvrn]

Pretty much agree. I don't support piracy, but the prices do suck. I just don't buy many cds, games, or software unless I can get a good deal on it.

 

[tm37]

<< If these companies were smart, they would lower the price to the point where the consumer doesn't feel ripped off, and they would sell twice as many copies, there by making the same profit. They have to make stuff cheap enuff so it doesn't make sense to pirate things. People will end up buying twice as many everything. I guarantee it. I find it pretty hard to throw down 19.99 for a cd, whether there are mp3's or not. Just my .02 >>



How cheap is cheap enough for you? People Pirate because it's FREE!

No company is going to last long beating that price.

this arguement been gone over and over again.

Basically pirates Steal because they can and they don't care about thoose people that make the software.

Don't like paying 60 bucks for a game that you can only play for 15-20 hours don't! also don't play it! :Q The publisher has EVERY RIGHT to set the price as high or low as they see fit. You have the right to not spend the money on their product and spend it somewhere else. You do not have the right to STEAL because you feel the price is to high.

 

[AdamDuritz99]

I agree with ya man. The only way to end or slow piracy down dramaticaly is for the software companies to take the first step by lowering the prices to a more affordable and reasonable price. I mean come on, $29 for winzip. $40 for cuteFTP 4.x . $40-$50 for a sub-par game. That's a rippoff.

But even if it's a ripoff, piracy is wrong.

<-- a hypocrite


peace
sean

 

[tornadobox]

the following is copied and pasted from my original post in your other thread that got locked:

first, this belongs in off topic, not the general hardware forum.

second, i don't agree with you at all. even if prices did go down, the pirated versions and hacked versions etc. would still be floating around the internet. with the price drops, you'd still get complaints that the prices are all too high. you can't say that piracy would stop if prices were lower, because those who pirate don't care about prices, all they care about is getting their stuff for free.

i took several programming classes, and got a newfound respect for programmers and what they do, so that is why i buy legal software, to support the programmers and developers.

why do you think some kid who won't pay $50 for a game would pay $30? Furthermore, why do you say that people would buy MORE if the prices were lower? Aren't you saying that it costs too much anyway?

 

[Eli]

It's not really right.

But I don't care.

 

[Sir Fredrick]

It's easy to say "if it were just cheaper...", but let's face it, they made all CDs $5, you could still have the excuse "if they were $3 I'd buy them".

I don't think cost is a legitimate argument except in the case of an individual pirating expensive software targeted at companies with large budgets.

That said, I am not against pirating of software under certain circumstances. If you cannot afford the software (whatever the price it is), and have a legitimate need for it, then it's ok by me as long as you make sure that you DO buy it when you can afford it.

If it is a software title that you would honestly never purchase (i.e. if you were not able to pirate it, you wouldn't buy it anyway), then I suppose it's ok. For example, I'm not a big gamer...I like RTS games but rarely have time for them. I got a copy of C&C RA2 from a friend but was not entertained by it, I didn't play it much and had no real interest in it, so I didn't buy it. However, I really like Diablo II and Starcraft, and have spent considerable time playing them, so I actually paid for them.

For testing purposes: If you are really testing the software and you do in fact remove it from your system or purchase it after a short trial period.
I own an old copy of Partition Magic 4.0, which is not compatible with Win2k. Before going out and paying for 6.0, I wanted to make sure that it worked as well as they claimed it did. I tried it out and it proved useless, so I removed it.

Music: If a band has only one good song and the rest of the album is crap, I see no reason why anyone should buy the album.
If the band is independent or at least not with a major record label, I feel that priority should go towards supporting them. I bought two CDs for $15 each from Seth Bernard because he's really talented and independent, and I would like to see him make a few more CDs.

BTW: I'm a software engineer, and I nkow that software purchases pay my salary, but I don't feel that I'm being ripped off by pirates who would not purchase the software to begin with, especially if they're outside of our market. For example, one of our packages is designed for professors or business professionals, it's not very useful to anyone else. If some 13 year old kid gets a copy of it, that doesn't phase me at all.

 

[yoda291]

well, you could think of it this way tho... a 60 dollar game gets you 15-20 hours of entertainment, but how much do you pay for an hour of billiards? Bowling? Arcade games? Heck how much do guys pay for dates that don't work out in the end? It's all about how you want to spread your cash with games.

 

[crypticlogin]

<< How cheap is cheap enough for you? People Pirate because it's FREE! >>


...


<< Basically pirates Steal because they can and they don't care about thoose people that make the software. >>



This is exactly it. Just look at some of the hot dealers on this forum.. there are some things that just aren't worth unless they're paid to take it or are free (after rebate, price match, photoshopped receipt, etc.) even if the original price was $5 or so. The (software) pirate cares for nothing but themselves and the notoriety of being a pirate, having the latest warez, being able to provide the zero day things, is reason enough even if they never actually use the program

$10 is very reasonable for a CD of something I like and will play many, many times over until it gets old. Even if it's only one or two tracks, that's still $10 divided by the number of times I play them to figure a cost/play rate. Would I like a $5 CD? Sure, but that brings down the cost/play rate to some $0.05/play over $0.10/play...

 

[Sir Fredrick]

<< well, you could think of it this way tho... a 60 dollar game gets you 15-20 hours of entertainment, but how much do you pay for an hour of billiards? Bowling? Arcade games? Heck how much do guys pay for dates that don't work out in the end? It's all about how you want to spread your cash with games. >>



That's why I become friends with people before I date them. If we like eachother we'll become close and hang out a lot, and then finally comes the expensive date. It's like a software trial period.

 

[Jzero]

Cut the prices and people will still pirate. I think people get more fun from "beating the system."

As for the "exhorbitant" cost of Winzip, get outta here.....how much do you use Winzip? They oughtta put a counter on it like Snood: You've used Winzip 6 Million times! At that rate it's 8.3e-4 cents per use!

haha

 

Old worn topic. Yes if the prices went down people would buy more, and pirate less.



<< but let's face it, they made all CDs $5, you could still have the excuse "if they were $3 I'd buy them". >>


Go back to the beginning, eliminate piracy at the roots with low cost. Though that was not the thinking of corporations. Nor did they take in account the skills people have to copy their product.
They wanted to get paid, so they gouged, this is what they get.

Damned pirating thieves!

 

[jjones]

they couldn't price software low enough to stop piracy. the only way to compete is to give it away.

 

[simms]

close this thread...we all know where its going to go. that's MY .02

 

[swayinOtis]

i almost never buy brand new music or games. i buy many used CDs from half.com. i have bought used games from half.com and ebay.

broadband and cheap CD writers aren't really helping. my 62 year old step father has asked me a bunch of times to download and burn CDs for him. even old people know what's up with CD burners. lol

 

[tm37]

<< Go back to the beginning, eliminate piracy at the roots with low cost. Though that was not the thinking of corporations. Nor did they take in account the skills people have to copy their product.
They wanted to get paid, so they gouged, this is what they get.
>>



The cost to develop and produce the software has gone up and so has the price. Are these software companies seeing exponential profits in relation to revenues? No they aren't. The fact is People don't care. Unless you can go into best buy and pick it up free piracy will continue do to people having little consern for those who produce the products they use!

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

Arrgg,
I put on me eyoe patch and peg leg think this thread be about pirates of the sea.

Shiver me timbers, Arrgg

 

[tm37]

<< That said, I am not against pirating of software under certain circumstances. If you cannot afford the software (whatever the price it is), and have a legitimate need for it, then it's ok by me as long as you make sure that you DO buy it when you can afford it. >>



Define need and afford.

Piracy IS NEVER OK. If you have a need for a tool you should pay for it.

IF companies were truely making HUGE profits on Software you would would see many more titles availible. ALOT MORE.

 

[gopunk]

<< they couldn't price software low enough to stop piracy. the only way to compete is to give it away. >>



well they'll never get rid of it completely, but they can certainly price it to stop most people from pirating. there gets to be a point at which it's not worth the trouble to pirate... opportunity cost. for example, if i am faced with the decision of either a.) spending a half hour of my time to find, download, and burn songs, and b.) paying 4.99 for a cd, i'm picking b (i make 10 bucks an hour).

 

[Sir Fredrick]

<<

<< That said, I am not against pirating of software under certain circumstances. If you cannot afford the software (whatever the price it is), and have a legitimate need for it, then it's ok by me as long as you make sure that you DO buy it when you can afford it. >>



Define need and afford.

Piracy IS NEVER OK. If you have a need for a tool you should pay for it.

IF companies were truely making HUGE profits on Software you would would see many more titles availible. ALOT MORE. >>



"Necessity knows no law." - Benjamin Franklin

If a person needs to learn Adobe Photoshop, but does not have the several hundred dollars that it costs, I'm not going to persecute them for pirating it. If a person pirates some Novell software and puts it on their 3 computer home network in order to learn Novell, I don't think that's a big deal. If people become familliar with these tools in their home, they are more likely to encourage their company to purchase and use those tools, whereas if they were not familliar with them they would be just as likely to choose something else.

One of my former co workers (he left on good terms, BTW) knew about DotHLP because he had used it at home to create help files. When he started working here, they did not have a good help writing system, so my company purchased DotHLP on his reccomendation - a several hundred dollar piece of software purchased because of piracy.
Obviously that does not apply to games or software targeted at home users - that is a much more shady area. Also I do not believe that big companies should be able to get away with piracy, I think that's one case where it's clearly wrong.

 

[HappyPuppy]

What's piracy? I thought that was with swasbucklers and sailing ships. What does it have to do with computers?

 

[Sir Fredrick]

<<

<< they couldn't price software low enough to stop piracy. the only way to compete is to give it away. >>



well they'll never get rid of it completely, but they can certainly price it to stop most people from pirating. there gets to be a point at which it's not worth the trouble to pirate... opportunity cost. for example, if i am faced with the decision of either a.) spending a half hour of my time to find, download, and burn songs, and b.) paying 4.99 for a cd, i'm picking b (i make 10 bucks an hour). >>



True to a point, you also have to take demand into account though, if they cut the cost in half, they have to sell more than twice as many (because of cost of materials and such) to make the same amount of money. This is feasable for highly popular titles, but software that falls under specialized markets cannot be marketed this way. At $4.99 a CD, a software company is probably just breaking even before they have to pay their software developers. At $4.99 a download, things are looking a little better, but you still need a lot of downloads.

One piece of software that we sell has a hefty price tag of $500 because it is so highly specialized, there is very little demand for such a product (fortunately, we're about the only ones who have anything like it). We have made a few sales, but it still hasn't been enough to cover our development costs. If the demand were to increase significantly, we could really lower the price, but if we can sell 10 copies at $500/each vs. selling 25 copies at $50/each, you do the math and tell me what price we should charge.

 

[gopunk]

True to a point, you also have to take demand into account though, if they cut the cost in half, they have to sell more than twice as many (because of cost of materials and such) to make the same amount of money. This is feasable for highly popular titles, but software that falls under specialized markets cannot be marketed this way. At $4.99 a CD, a software company is probably just breaking even before they have to pay their software developers. At $4.99 a download, things are looking a little better, but you still need a lot of downloads.
One piece of software that we sell has a hefty price tag of $500 because it is so highly specialized, there is very little demand for such a product (fortunately, we're about the only ones who have anything like it). We have made a few sales, but it still hasn't been enough to cover our development costs. If the demand were to increase significantly, we could really lower the price, but if we can sell 10 copies at $500/each vs. selling 25 copies at $50/each, you do the math and tell me what price we should charge.



eh, well i was talking about music

as far as 500 dollar software goes, i don't think the companies are losing that much money, if at all by software pirates. if piracy didn't exist, the only people who would use the software would be the people who are purchasing it now anyways. those who are downloading cracks for photoshop are probably not the ones who have a great enough need to justify spending 500 bucks for it.

edit: i think this is basically what you said earlier

i pretty much agree with you on all major points.