Quote:
Originally Posted by Sands
I may have a flawed logic, but I would ask "Would these individuals who pirate software actually purchase the software if they couldn't pirate it?" I'm leaning toward "no", and if this is the case, then how can you quantify the cost of piracy?
It doesn't cost the software distributor any money to distribute pirated copies, so there's no money lost there.
The software company doesn't spend any time or resources providing support to owners of pirated copies (I'm not 100% on this, though).
The software company may even derive benefits from these "pirates" in terms of brand loyalty.
With a digital product and digital distribution, it may not be so easy to conclude "we are losing such and such per year" to piracy.
A quick caveat -- I don't feel that this excuses software piracy, but I feel that considerations like these should provide the proper impetus for software distributors to research new ways in deriving benefits, financial or otherwise, from software pirates.
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I think the its than just people who wouldnt pay for it theory is flawed. I went to a photoshop class and the instructor asked a room of about 100 people what they current version of ps was. After he was done he said now who actually paid for it maybe a third of the hands only went up. What I dont understand these big companies are large campaign contributors why they havent pushed for much tougher laws.