Software piracy...from this developer's perspective
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Just a quick post today. The upcoming release of
MacJournal 4 next week has us running around
like chickens with our heads cut off (what a nasty
visual!).
Here are some interesting facts...
-Software piracy is around 35% in North America.
-Vietnam and China have the highest rate at 95%.
-91% of software auctioned online was actually
pirated.
Let’s make one thing clear right off the bat...
software piracy is illegal and I do not condone it.
That said, I probably have a more ‘realistic“
viewpoint than most in my position as one who runs a
software company and exclusively relies on revenue
generated by it. I’ve talked to CEO’s that will
spend tens of thousands in anti-piracy measures to
protect their software. These aren’t products with
hundred or thousand dollar price points. They are
less than $100 price points. For them, it has turned
into a very expensive and weirdly-psychological
”game“ to stop users from stealing software.
But let’s face facts, if someone wants to
steal software, ours, or any other companies,
it’s not that tough to do and there is not one
thing that I or anyone else could say or do to
prevent a person from doing so. I could very easily
get up on my soap box and spout off a dozen
different reasons why it’s wrong but why would
I waste my time?
This is about ethics. And you either have them or you
don’t.
Mike
MacJournal 4 next week has us running around
like chickens with our heads cut off (what a nasty
visual!).
Here are some interesting facts...
-Software piracy is around 35% in North America.
-Vietnam and China have the highest rate at 95%.
-91% of software auctioned online was actually
pirated.
Let’s make one thing clear right off the bat...
software piracy is illegal and I do not condone it.
That said, I probably have a more ‘realistic“
viewpoint than most in my position as one who runs a
software company and exclusively relies on revenue
generated by it. I’ve talked to CEO’s that will
spend tens of thousands in anti-piracy measures to
protect their software. These aren’t products with
hundred or thousand dollar price points. They are
less than $100 price points. For them, it has turned
into a very expensive and weirdly-psychological
”game“ to stop users from stealing software.
But let’s face facts, if someone wants to
steal software, ours, or any other companies,
it’s not that tough to do and there is not one
thing that I or anyone else could say or do to
prevent a person from doing so. I could very easily
get up on my soap box and spout off a dozen
different reasons why it’s wrong but why would
I waste my time?
This is about ethics. And you either have them or you
don’t.
Mike
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posted by
Michael Wray
at
7:39 AM
8 Comments:
Ethics are a luxury item. If I have to feed my children, I will break into your house and steal your cereal and milk (or maybe some fruit as well).
These days there are so much more possibilities to segment benefits of your software to legal users, e.g. any support service that you might wish to add could be restricted to legal users, low-cost upgrades might also be restricted to registered users (=key+registration name). That could help you keep the circle of illegal users relatively acceptable while at the same time saving money on security.
Hmmm, interesting perspective, Paul. Respectfully, however, I disagree. Don't get me wrong, I can certainly understand how a person's ethics could be skewed in a life or death scenario, as you describe in your example. However, software ownership is not a life or death scenario. It's purely for personal gain. Why do people steal software? A.) because they can. B.) because the risk of being caught is almost non-existent. That said, software developers are put in a pickle. Do we trust that all users will "do the right thing" and pay for the software they are using, just like in any transaction of goods or services? Or do we create a registration process that is so obnoxiously stringent that it will sour, or worse yet, alienate the majority of the legitimate software owners? For our product line,
I will not do that to our customers.
Whoa, whoa, whoa....whoa. You mean that software piracy is illegal? As in stealing? Huh. This is news to me. So when I pick up one of those copies of Adobe Creative Suite in a plastic box and leave the store and they yell "Thief", they aren't just advertising a computer game?
I am, of course, joking.
When I was a kid, it was easy to copy some floppy disks and trade computer games amongst each other, because we just didn't always have the $35-$50 to spend on a new game. [Years later, I did go out and buy those games and more]. For a few years in the early 90's, it appeared that distributing games on CD-ROMs would curb some of this piracy, since most people didn't have access to an $80,000 CD-burner. Fast forward several years, and CD burners were becoming increasingly cheaper and more available. I bought an external Lacie CD/DVD burner for around $140 a few weeks ago. How times quickly change.
I think that there is a large influence with the wide spread of piracy, and the simplicity of sharing software and other files which is causing many game publishers to turn more towards game consoles, since those ROMs are not quite as easy to duplicate.
Since I also develop software, I understand the time and effort that goes into such projects, so I hope that paying for it will help the developers afford deluxe Raman, at least. In my Dock, I have five apps I've paid for (plus several others which I just don't have in my Dock at the moment), so I do pay the fees, as long as I feel that the price is fair and I'm receiving the quality of merchandise that I deserve for the given price. However, if the price is too high, or the benefits are not large enough, then I'll either wait a version or few, or look for an alternative. Several examples I've seen are Adobe products. I don't see enough of a jump in useful features in say, Photoshop, to warrant me to upgrade with each version. I'm still on Photoshop 7 and Illustrator 10, and they suit my needs just fine. However, if I get a new Mac, I might look into getting Photoshop CS 3. I've also skipped several versions of Virtual PC (I have versions 2, 3, 5, and 7), only upgrading when I felt that there might be enough new features to make it useful.
While I can understand Microsoft's and Adobe's stances on product activation, it can also be a huge pain to businesses. What happens if I have 100 copies of Microsoft Office, and they weren't labeled to which ones have been used and which ones are free licenses? I could spend all day trying different product keys until one of them worked, which is a huge waste of time. And for another "interesting" way of licensing software, check out Vicomsoft's method of licensing their software by requiring a license file, in addition to the product key. And what happens if you lose the license file? Too bad, you pretty much have to pay Vicomsoft again to get another copy of the file.
ethics went out the window the day someone invented business. If you are running a business then you have no ethics period. If you are running a business and are foolish to think you have ethics your full of crap.
I can think of 100 reasons why to promote software piracy. None of the software is worth the price they charge for it.
People should stop supporting commercial enterprises because they have no ethics, they are stealing the consumers money via manipulative marketing tactics. There will never be an end to priacy but there will one day be an end to commercialism as we know it thanks to people who take a bite out of these commercial scamsters.
Then we hear from some who say we are not big like corporate we are small business, yea my ass, small business owners are same as big busines owners just with less resources. They both have one purpose only to steal the consumers $$ anyway they can.
So before you start with the ethics you should have some first and since you are running a business, you have none.
Chad - I think you summed it up perfectly..."how times quickly change."
Anonymous - I opted to publish your interesting post because you took the time to write and I respect anyone who has a passion that they are willing to express. While I can safely say that I don't agree with your theory, I do believe in freedom of speech.
Mike
My Grandfather used to always say "Locks just keep the honest people out."
I own, that is I paid for, MacJournal 3 and now I have paid for the upgrade to MJ4. I also own Final Draft and MS OFFICE and so on. However, I have also had on my computer, at times, software which was given me by a friend, and software that was "cracked" with stolen or otherwise hacked serial numbers. More and more I lean toward owning software, and even the stuff I had once had for free, I am now buying the new versions. It's not like I've made any more money. But I do get to contact the developers with problems, and more than that, I have come around to an ethical viewpoint that the developers should be paid for what they've created. That said, there is software out there which has what I think is a ridiculously high price on it, whether its a small word processing app that charges sixty bucks, when others are available for twenty, or one of the big boys apps, worth several hundred dollars. Now with those, what I have done is use another person's student ID to get a student price, so in effect I own the right since that student didn't actually want the software himself, but let me use his ID to get the student discount. Right or wrong? It's a very grey area.
Basically, I'm just testing your software.
I'm also a software developer, and I appreciate your work.
Users don't realize how it feels to work so hard and then have your work stolen. On the other hand, it's also a labour of love, so we can't stop working.
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