
My Software Is Being Pirated - lehmannro
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001201.html
======
patio11
"Charge a fair price for it." seems to be a meaningless platitude in this
instance, sort of a soup-bone to the "I'm only pirating because it is
overpriced" apologetics. Isn't the whole point of the anecdote that World of
Goo is, umm, more than fairly priced? (Seriously, people are pirating a $20
pass to pure gaming joy which requires a machine minimally ten times as
expensive to run. Probably a hundred times for many of the pirates, since they
are gaming enthusiasts.)

Want a recipe for being pirated less? Make something that people wouldn't want
to get for free. _crickets chirp_ Actually, that probably won't even help -- I
think a large portion of piracy is essentially pathological. Bingo Card
Creator -- an which assists primary school English teachers who are, on
average, not likely to be reading Chinese pirate forums -- got spikes of 10k+
downloads when the new cracks were released.

It even had a description translated into Chinese... which was hilarious. (My
brother translated for me: "Apparently it's like a gambling game for English
or some shit.")

Honestly its like putting a shiny object in front of that bird with the
unhealthy fascination for shiny objects whose name I am forgetting at the
moment. If your code compiles, it will be pirated. You could make a Windows
forms calculator with only a plus button, with an equals sign available with a
CD Key, and people would pirate _that_. (I've often thought of trying it.)

~~~
ajkirwin
I see this argument a lot, "Oh well, it's cheap, so people should just pay for
it!" and it seems to gloss over one important fact.

Money is not an unlimited resource.

If there are say.. $4,000 (purchase price) of fun and awesome things released
in a year, and the average person after things like bills, rent/mortgage,
etcetera only has say.. $500 left to actually spend on frivolity, then they
might decide the following:

"Well, I guess I will download the rest. It's not like they are losing a sale.
I don't HAVE any money, anyway!".

And, if this is the case, it's true. No-one actually LOSES anything. You can't
lose a sale you could never have made anyway.

So such numbers can be shockingly misleading.

~~~
gcheong
But is it OK for someone to benefit from something they aren't willing to pay
for? What is the difference between someone who decides to go without because
they don't or can't pay and someone who says I can't/won't pay so I'll just
copy it from someone else? Is it morals or economics?

~~~
jamesbritt
"But is it OK for someone to benefit from something they aren't willing to pay
for? "

It happens all the time. For example, I benefited from your comment, but I
wouldn't have paid to read it.

~~~
gcheong
The currency on HN is karma points. I can only hope you will do the right
thing ;^).

------
jd
Quote:

    
    
       In fact, the most effective anti-piracy software development strategy is the simplest one of all:
    
       1. Have a great freaking product.
       2. Charge a fair price for it. 
    

Is he joking? The World of Goo _is_ a great freaking product. And The World of
Goo _is_ fairly priced at $20. And yet the piracy rate is still at 82% or so.
So where does Jeff base his "in fact" anti-piracy claim on?

~~~
quantumhobbit
"So where does Jeff base his "in fact" anti-piracy claim on?"

I would attribute it to wishful thinking based on an assumption of human
morality. The truth is that people are lazy and don't consider the morality of
their actions. How else can the rampant piracy of tv shows freely available on
hulu.com be explained? The commercials are very short and the quality is good.
Pirates are in the habit of getting their software from bittorrent and don't
even look for a legal method of obtaining the software they use.

~~~
kaens
Meh, in the case of music and games, I know a lot of people who pirate as a
"try before you buy" type of thing, and then shell out the cash for the
product if they think it's worth it.

I do this with music (I recently dropped illegal art a sum of money equal to
what I've downloaded due to Girl Talk and a few other awesome artists on that
label).

~~~
jimbokun
I suspect this is bullshit. My guess is that this is what they tell themselves
their philosophy is, but tend to "forget" or "not get around to" paying for
most of the stuff they actually liked.

Do you disagree?

~~~
kaens
Yes, I do. Because I _know_ these people, and I _know_ that they do these
things because I have _watched_ them do them, repeatedly.

Edit: It may be bullshit in the general case (applying to people who make the
claim of "try before I buy"), but it is not bullshit in the case of myself or
the people that I actually know who claim that.

------
electromagnetic
If piracy rates haven't changed in 32 years and are still at 90% doesn't that
mean piracy doesn't hurt technology?

Developers have a perverted view, they think 90% of people are stealing their
product. When really 90% of people wouldn't pay to use your product to begin
with.

This is when DRM comes in and the developer tries to force this 90% to pay.
However, people either hack the DRM or simply don't use the product. I imagine
Linux got a lot more users when Microsoft started implementing DRM and some
people didn't want to fight with it.

Adobe and Microsoft prices are ridiculous, why? Because they make money off
the 10%, not off hunting the 90%. Microsoft doesn't even actively target
pirates, it doesn't check every time you go to send an error report, it
doesn't check every time you log in. Why? Because the 90% of people are an
amazing resource to hunt down problems that will make the 10% pay even more,
specifically big business.

~~~
tptacek
Adobe doesn't "hunt the 90%" because doing so would impose conditions so
onerous on the remaining 10% that they would lose business. So instead, they
jack the price of Illustrator and Photoshop up to the limit of what the 10%
will pay.

~~~
likpok
Also because it increases adoption of their product. Then, when those people
go to work, they say "I know and need Photoshop/Illustrator/whatever".
Businesses are easier to enforce piracy with, and will pay more.

------
ambition
I'm bothered by Jeff's attitude that a game made by a bigger company is
somehow more deserving of piracy.

~~~
derefr
An interesting psychological effect: Diffusion of responsibility, in reverse.
If, in a situation where individual contribution to an act is miniscule, no
one is to "blame" for making something negative, then no one is also to reward
if the result is positive. If a big company creates value, no one
_individually_ created that value in any meaningful way, so the value is
psychologically "ownerless."

Is this an actual effect? I feel like doing an experiment.

~~~
froo
I wouldn't say its necessarily so, take Microsoft - its a corporation with
thousands of employees that work on its products, but how many people hold
Gates personally responsible for the failings of Windows?

This example is a fairly mainstream idea... it made an appearance in the South
Park movie.

------
matthew-wegner
The article lacks any real point--the only solid point he's making is, "if you
write software and charge money for it, your software _will_ be pirated."

He then implies some software "deserves" to be pirated, by claiming World of
Goo falls outside that category (because it isn't from the "bowels" of a
"faceless EA-Activision franchise sweatshop").

Many independent game developers don't view piracy as black and white. I would
be interested in reading an article where someone makes a hypothesis one way
or the other, _and_ backs it up. This article isn't that.

And, for the record, the amended World of Goo piracy rate is 82%. 2D Boy
mentions that in an update on the very same blog post Jeff links to, but I
guess that would mean he would've had to read beyond the title to notice:
<http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/>

------
JabavuAdams
I work with folks who are genuinely shocked when I tell them that I bought a
game. They come from a culture where pretty much everybody pirates, all the
time, regardless of cost or income.

It's pretty funny, since they're game developers, and some of them dream of
becoming indies.

------
bm98
I'm surprised that with all the talk of ethics, no one has mentioned the
GNU/Stallman philosophy: those who are unethical are the ones making software
but not making it free.

~~~
brl
Probably because the whole world is tired of listening to RMS blather on about
what he thinks is ethical (the rhetoric on his website) and what he thinks is
not ethical (every other opinion).

~~~
JabavuAdams
This is a strange objection. Why would an advocate for a cause promote the
opposing viewpoint, except possibly to rebut it?

I'm not saying I agree with RMS. However, if he is rational I would expect him
to agree with his own (current) writings. I would also expect that on an issue
where he disagrees with others, he would disagree with their writings.

------
DenisM
My software got pirated too:
[http://appulo.us/appdb/?page=viewapp&id=2732](http://appulo.us/appdb/?page=viewapp&id=2732)

I'm wearing this as badge of honor. :-) Of course I treat this lightly because
I think that less then a quarter of iPhones are jailbroken, so I know there is
a fairly low upper limit to this, uhm, "free promotion" so to speak.

~~~
acangiano
Pirated copies should automatically call you. :)

~~~
1gor
Even better - pirated copies should automatically call his pay-per-call 800
number.

------
hexis
What's the piracy rate for iPhone apps?

~~~
tptacek
Low, like the piracy rate for X360 titles.

------
olefoo
Some ideas for increasing revenue in this case:

1\. increase the unique value of the physical game package; include a T-shirt,
stickers, something that makes possession of the package worthwhile to someone
who's played the game long enough to identify with it; mention this addition
in the intro or scores screen.

2\. Run a contest on the scores server; if you are one of the high-scoring
players this week and you can send in the code printed on the bottom of the
box, then you get the reward. For greater psychological investment make the
reward personalised with the players nick/score/rank on it.

------
gcv
What about abandonware? Consider two different scenarios. In the first, the
manufacturer or distributor no longer makes the product (game) available, but
it runs well enough under emulation. In the second, the manufacturer and
distributor have both gone out of business. In both cases, the term of
copyright has not expired. In both cases, the game is timeless enough to be
worth playing even if it looks a bit dated.

------
rms
You need to develop with mind to differentiate between the pay version of your
software and the cracked version that the pirates will inevitably get. In
gaming, the traditional differentiator is multiplayer, or access to a
community forum where people exchange levels made with the level designer.

This is one thing that makes SaaS so attractive to developers -- generally
it's impossible to pirate.

------
edw519
I love threads like this because they show who's who.

One of the many reasons I joined hacker news was to meet like minded people
for possible future collaboration. Sometimes you really get to know each other
here.

AFAIC, there is no gray area in ethical matters. Right is right and wrong is
wrong. If you use situational ethics to justify what is clearly wrong, you may
have made an interesting argument, but you have also done one other thing: you
have automatically disqualified yourself from ever doing business with me (and
probably many others here, I suspect.)

A little background:

I once wrote some software that a partner installed in a remote client site
for which our company got paid. Unbeknowst to me, he also installed that
software at another site and kept all the money.

I bought the used car from one of my partners at an agreed upon price and
found out later that he had disconnected the speedometer for as many as 50,000
miles.

Another partner of mine had a side business selling hardware and negotiated a
backroom deal with our customer that jeapordized our major project.

One IT director where I worked had software salesmen leave their documentation
for "project review", photocopied it, and used it for our own functional
specs, with no intention of ever buying anything.

Starting to get the idea of how "you wouldn't have made any money anyway"
easily morphs into "fuck you"?

And as far as software pirating goes, I have only this to say:

If you steal from me, I will seek recourse any way I can. Period.

And for those of you who want to debate ethical considerations here at hacker
news, you may want to think twice about the persona you end up revealing in
this public forum.

~~~
DenisM
Somehow you managed to pick up more than your fair share of unethical people.
Maybe you are doing something wrong.

~~~
tptacek
Or maybe he's just unlucky, or maybe he's just decided that by paying
attention to how people treat other people, he can get a good readout on how
they'll treat him when the chips are down. There's a classic sales interview
trick that has to do with taking the candidate out and seeing how he treats
the waitstaff and how well he tips. Same idea.

It's also possible that he just has a lot more life experience than you.

~~~
DenisM
Had you abvoided the ad-hom we could have had a conversation.

~~~
tptacek
About whether edw519 is "doing something wrong" because he's had bad partners?
Oh well. Another missed opportunity for me.

------
bootload
_"... Software piracy is a fact of life, and there's very little you can do
about it ..."_

To those who see only what is, not what can be.

------
sanj
apropos: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=411985>

------
qqq
It says you can prevent piracy by:

> writing a completely server-side application like World of Warcraft or Mint

But that is not true! World of Warcraft has lots of "private servers" where
people play for free.

~~~
silencio
I don't get why he mentions Mint as well, since Mint is a free product (right
now, that is). Can't pirate something that's free..

~~~
wmf
I guess if you block ads you're "pirating" Web apps. And unlike with software,
the marginal cost of serving a user is nonzero.

~~~
silencio
However, mint has no ads, doesn't charge for the iPhone app I use all the
time, has never spammed my account in any way... the only thing mint probably
does make money from is commission from banks for referring new customers, but
if mint can provide unbiased information about why switching from one bank
account type to another can give me some sort of benefit (and in my limited
experience, it has), it's a mutually beneficial relationship.

I am aware there are costs to providing a service, but when you provide them
at no cost to your customers, that is not piracy.

