Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
Why is so much software cracked?
mouser:
cpilot, i really don't understand why you are arguing with carol - she is proposing solutions that she is arguing could increase profits for the company at the same time as being better for customers (i listed these points above).
you should really be focusing the anger on people like me who are advocating for an approach to software that does not make profit the primary the primary justification and motivation for all decisions.
JavaJones:
I think "fair market value" means, in theory, "the amount of money that equates to the highest profits due to the ratio of license cost and number of licenses sold". "Fair" is not necessarily used in the traditional sense, or rather the sense most people take it, but it works.
In any case what I find amazing Cpilot is that you're refusing to even consider the proposed solutions that people are suggesting might make *more* money. You simply blindly assume that "companies know best" and that they *must* be pricing their software with good research and logic, so our suggestions must therefore be wrong. Well, history will tell you that is blatantly false. It is filled with companies charging too much (or not enough) for their product and failing because of it. There are also numerous studies done showing the apparent *illogic* of markets, which make pricing stategies very resistant to logical, researched conclusions. For example a study was done showing that a low regular rate for a service was preferable by customers to a seemingly high flat rate, even when the seemingly lower rate actually equated to a higher monthly bill. That seems counterintuitive yet there it is. The market is not always logical, or at least not on the surface, and most companies are really not spending millions on studies of their target market to determine pricing. Maybe MS is, but they're special. :D
Ultimately your approach sounds great in theory Cpilot, as long as you *could* make people do what's "right". Here's the thing: you *can't* make people stop piracy. As long as it is possible - and it will be as long as we are living in the land of the free and home of the brave (I hope you wouldn't suggest infringing our fundamental rights just to stop piracy?) - then people will be pirating. There is no such thing as unbreakable protection, period. The people doing the cracking are generally smarter *and* more numerous than those coming up with the protection schemes. They also have the luxury of time. So sooner or later all protection will fail, and once that happens piracy happens.
Thus what you are proposing is that companies operate with a blind eye toward reality. Create copy protection, even though it doesn't work. Price as if your copy protection worked, even though it doesn't. Essentially the success of your approach relies on the ludicrous concept that people will be more law abiding than they ever have been in history. And you insist on this apparently on the sole basis that companies have the "right" to charge what they want. Well no one is denying them that, so you can stop insisting that they are. What we are saying is that it just might be in a company's best interest to look at the *market reality* - that includes piracy as a *simple fact that cannot be eliminated* - and then price and react accordingly. Piracy exists and will continue to exist, so companies might as well figure out how to work *with* it, how to strike the best balance between minimizing it and not alienating their users. So far they're not doing a great job - see Sony, RIAA lawsuits, etc.
It's amusing to look at the great corporate blunders of history. Most recently I find great amusement in the fact that record companies were afraid of their profits being cut into by piracy, so they paid lots of money to copy protection specialists who created schemes that (surprise!) didn't work, and then they paid lots of money for litigation to stop people from pirating, and *then* they just pissed off their customers. Actually embracing the download of music seemed out of the question. I mean no one *really* wants to download all their music.. do they?
Well, Apple thought they did, and by god they were right. They're making all the record companies look foolish and taking money off the top of every transaction for music they never had anything to do with. They're merely providing a service, and one that the record companies *could* have been providing themselves if they'd had the ability to see beyond their rapidly antiquating business model. But they didn't, because they thought they had the "right" to profits, and that they could do whatever they wanted, whatever was necessary, to ensure that. The market responded and now iTunes is rapidly becoming the single most popular way to get music. Imagine having a single company, formerly unrelated to music at all, suddenly at the top, king of the toll plaza of digital distribution. And it all could have been avoided had music companies taken their heads out their arses and looked around a bit. This story will repeat itself...
- Oshyan
Cpilot:
Yeah,
Ya know what? I've said my piece, vented my spleen and made my position known.
Therefore my interest in this topic is over.
Have fun.
zridling:
[cpilot]:...the problem is the sense of entitlement that people have to own software that they can't afford.
--- End quote ---
Cpilot steered the discussion tangentially toward the evil of piracy. However, cracking is not piracy. It's only piracy when I download, install, and use the software illegally. As mouser stated, Adobe or AutoDesk can set the price their products to any amount, high, moderate, or low. But what others have argued is that companies must be aware that if they charge €700 for a program, then the likelihood of it being cracked increases exponentially.
Therefore, companies and developers can discourage piracy — though not necessarily cracking — by sensible product pricing. Microsoft has already done this by producing a lite version of Windows and Office and selling it for next to nothing in Asia and India. I could care less who uses what software. The fact is that OpenOffice wouldn't be so popular if Microsoft had listened to its customers, had sold Office cheaper over the last fifteen years, and opened its file formats. Microsoft made that choice and they made with their eyes wide open.
mouser:
this thread is getting way too combatitive and political.
i guess it's not so surprising given the mixture of people we have on this forum.
can i remind people that we have an explicit policy on this forum to avoid political talk? there are plenty of other places to argue politics on the web. i realize that when the issue of capitalism and business and illegal software comes up, it's hard to avoid talking politics.. and perhaps i am guilty as well of slipping into it.
but please let's try to keep the discussion civil and respectful of each others ideas, and avoid getting into arguments over political parties.
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