
I Think Your App Should Be Free - earbitscom
http://blog.earbits.com/online_radio/i-think-your-app-should-be-free/
======
kylec
This is nothing more than a thinly-disguised allegory about piracy in the
music industry. There are several big differences between the music and the
software industry which I won't go into, except to say that: even taking this
story at face value, for the developers to then start suing everyone
downloading the fake copies of the app would still be a huge dick move.

~~~
socratic
Further, what is the message of the allegory supposed to be?

The analogy between music and tech suggests that the two hits-based industries
selling digital goods are not so different after all. But why would our
morality in one case be so different from the other case?

If anything, this allegory seems to suggest to me that the recording industry
has committed one of the biggest public relations bungles of our lifetimes.
People who wouldn't think to pirate a mobile app would pirate music without a
second thought thanks to widespread lawsuits, pay-for-play, price fixing, and
of course, ease.

~~~
sliverstorm
_what is the message of the allegory supposed to be?_

It sounded to me like the message was supposed to be "it doesn't sound so
awesome when you see it from the other side of the looking glass, now does
it". (It felt like it was targeted at people who can identify with developing
mobile apps)

~~~
babebridou
The author said in the comments:

"The point of the article is that making that choice for someone else is
wrong."

It's my feeling that in this article at least, the author does not really care
about the rights and wrong of copying, piracy, intellectual property, etc. He
is scared by relatively few people on the internet being both lawmaker, judge,
party and executioner when it comes to the monetization of a digital product,
and the reason why he is scared is that these few people are not even
potential customers.

~~~
earbitscom
Actually, I'm scared that we live in a world where people think they're
entitled to anything they can take without consequence. The fact that they
aren't taking the original means nothing. They have broken a social contract
with the creator of content that, ironically, they really enjoy and would like
to see more of in the future.

The problem of someone taking copyrighted content and making it available for
others is a small one. The big problem is the many millions of people who take
advantage of it. If everyone recognized that they're not entitled to anything
except their basic human rights, none of which have anything to do with access
to MP3s, then others posting that content online wouldn't matter.

The hope with this article was a little empathy from a community that often
leans toward not caring about copyright law as it pertains to music. While
many chose to go the route of poking tiny holes in parts of the analogy,
plenty didn't realize it was an allegory and talked about how messed up it
was. Many of them the same people who fight music copyright tooth and nail.

It's just sad to think that everybody enjoys music, just like they enjoy
software, and so many other things that can be easily taken, and yet don't
care if the people who create it see enough benefit to keep making it for
them. It's short sighted and will result in fewer people having the time to
become experts in these crafts, which is a loss for everyone. Sure, quantity
is at an all time high, but in art that hardly matters.

~~~
wazoox
> _The problem of someone taking copyrighted content and making it available
> for others is a small one. The big problem is the many millions of people
> who take advantage of it._

Precisely. Many millions of people take advantage of it, and the overall good
is greater than if they didn't. If the cost of distributing some good falls
down to zero, you can't make a living by distributing these. Find another way;
for instance provide a web service through your app, that unregistered copies
can't access.

> _It's just sad to think that everybody enjoys music, just like they enjoy
> software, and so many other things that can be easily taken, and yet don't
> care if the people who create it see enough benefit to keep making it for
> them._

For the tremendous majority of professional musicians recorded music never
represented a significant source of revenue at all, if ever. Most musicians
get paid for playing, and nothing else. That people swap mp3 around have
absolutely no influence on their life -- except when it helps them getting
known.

~~~
earbitscom
The overall good? The overall good of what? Your right to listen to music for
free? That's not good overall for the artists who created that music. Why
should they have to make 2nd and 3rd products that you "approve of" in order
to be compensated?

People already use lack of easy access as their excuse for piracy. Now you
want them to make some hard to crack app just for people to be able to listen
to it? How about people just stop taking what's not theirs and treat artists
with respect?

And in regard to your last statement, it's not your right to determine whether
exposure alone should be the reward of their hard work.

~~~
wazoox
> _The overall good? The overall good of what?_

If you swallow a cost of 10, but that 11 people gets 1 from your contribution,
the society as a whole wins.

> _How about people just stop taking what's not theirs and treat artists with
> respect?_

When something that used to be hard becomes totally simple, obvious and
costless, there is absolutely no sense trying to stick to the previous state
of the matter. When Gutenberg invented the printing press, what used to be a
complex, tough and expensive endeavour (copying books by hand) instantly
became worthless. Too bad, but the net gain for the society as a whole was
immense.

Similarly, the net gain we could enjoy from being able to copy, transfer,
duplicate, mix, rehash, transform existing digital goods is world-changing.
Some will lose at some point, but they'll have to get over it. Nowadays large
parts of the copyright laws are only manacles impending progress, defending
soon to be dead practices and business models.

> _And in regard to your last statement, it's not your right to determine
> whether exposure alone should be the reward of their hard work._

Did you read me? As a musician composer and arranger, I've earned a living by
teaching and live performance, but a net loss on recordings; and it was back
in the 90s, when CD-R was unheard of.

The hard true fact : only artists aired on radio and TV make money on recorded
music. They are a minuscule minority of musicians. Same goes for actors,
painters, etc.

~~~
sliverstorm
_If you swallow a cost of 10, but that 11 people gets 1 from your
contribution, the society as a whole wins._

It sounds to me like you're saying "so long as society sees a net gain, it's
ok to exploit other people"

~~~
wazoox
Yes, that's the justification for taxes, for instance.

~~~
earbitscom
Everybody pays taxes that are invested in products and services for all to
share, not one person.

~~~
orangecat
A large proportion of taxes are for the purpose of wealth redistribution. We
do it because giving $900 to a poor person (arguably) results in more of a
benefit than the harm caused by taxing a rich person $1000 and spending $100
in overhead.

------
baddox
From the tone, it seems that this is sarcasm and the author's point is against
music piracy. Despite the seething tone of a few sentences, the points he make
sarcastically are actually decent points. From sentence to sentence, I go from
being convinced that he's trying to be against music piracy to being convinced
of the opposite. When he says

> _They tell you your business model is broken. You should make money some
> other way. Maybe you should sell t-shirts with your company’s name on them,
> or put on events of some kind and charge for tickets. That’s where the real
> money is. Paid apps are a thing of the past, they say._

I can't help but think, Yeah, I actually do think that. Like it or not,
distribution of quality media was a big part of the value provided by the
music industry before the digital age and the internet. I'm not making an
argument for or against the ethics of the piracy itself, but I think music
producers (both big studios and "little guys") are unwise to rely on
legislation and lawsuits to protect their business.

------
Triumvark
The only argument for getting paid in this article is that sweat deserves a
return.

That was Marx's labor theory of value. Marx was wrong.

You deserve a return only when you _efficiently meet someone else's needs._
The secret to economic success is not sweat, but creative sloth.

We measure value against the cost of substitutes, and other people already
entertain me for free (without piracy).

Maybe entertainment just isn't a hard problem. Maybe the bottom 99% of
entertainers are basically tagging cat pictures. Maybe we shouldn't encourage
them.

I guess if you're an app dev, and want to learn one thing from the music
industry, I'd find a way to connect with fans and give them a reason to buy:
<http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/12695>

Then look for ways to be creatively lazy, and make sure your app can't be
replaced by going for a walk on a spring day.

------
glimcat
I really don't care if teenagers with no money run a free copy of my stuff.
They weren't going to buy it anyway - and now they're out there increasing its
penetration. From a business perspective, it's often a win if you stop
fallaciously calculating every illegitimate copy as a loss of the sticker
price. From a strictly personal standpoint, I take it as a compliment that
they like it enough to go to the trouble.

~~~
FxChiP
"it's often a win if you stop fallaciously calculating every illegitimate copy
as a loss of the sticker price."

This _really_ depends on how you define loss.

In a standard legitimate sale of a product, there is a bidirectional exchange
of value -- the customer submits currency whose total value is equivalent to
the value requested for the product being purchased. Simultaneously, for
submitting the currency of that value, the customer receives a product of that
value. (We'll assume the price is totally fair and equivalent to value at this
point, but even if it's not the price presumably still includes the true value
of the product, if not more)

In an illegitimate transaction -- literal theft, in this case -- the criminal
customer forcibly receives the product, exchanging nothing of value in return
to the merchant or the producer of the product. In this case, there is no
question of loss; the customer has received something with inherent value and
given no value.

In the illegitimate transaction of piracy, the end result is the same as theft
with the sole exception that the original product has not been "lost" in the
traditional sense of the word -- however, the criminal customer has still
received a product of value and exchanged nothing at all, much less the value
of the product.

Now, regardless of which of these three transactions has taken place for your
product, I am presuming that your product had a significant cost to develop --
unless, of course, all of your tools were free, you had no expenses at all and
you regard your time as totally worthless, in which case all income from the
product is profit. I submit to you, then, that if your costs in developing
your product surpass the value you received for it, yet the value you received
for it is, itself, surpassed by the value of the product "in the wild" -- e.g.
you have sold $450 worth of software, yet there are $750 worth of copies of it
total being enjoyed by people (purchased & pirated combined) (100% arbitrary
numbers), and the cost to develop the product was around $1500 -- then you
have certainly incurred a loss on the sole basis that you have not received
enough value to cover your costs.

The standard rebuttal to this is the tried-and-true "but they would not have
purchased my product anyway." Perhaps this is true -- however, I would
consider this irrelevant. Under normal, legitimate economic circumstances, the
purchase of a product is the only way to attain it; therefore, if they would
not have purchased the product anyway, _they wouldn't have the product_. In
this case, they have not purchased the product, but they do have it and enjoy
its use, and you have received no value in return for it despite having put
value into it.

However, assuming the value received for the product exceeds the costs of
producing it, but the value of the product "in the wild" as mentioned above
still exceeds the value received... perhaps "loss" is less correct in this
instance, but you are still lacking the total value that under normal
circumstances you should have received. What would you call that?

In any case, I am not sure how it is fallacious to call a product of value
obtained illegitimately (one way or another) for free a loss to the product's
producer.

~~~
ericd
Most people define loss as the difference in assumed outcomes between scenario
#1 and the illegal scenario #2 - a business has never been entitled to the
full value of a person's enjoyment of a product. That's why most people scoff
at the amounts cited by the record labels.

~~~
rick888
"a business has never been entitled to the full value of a person's enjoyment
of a product"

..and a user has never been entitled to the full enjoyment of a business's
product. But it doesn't seem to stop articles like this from being written or
large amounts of users to just steal it anyway.

------
jrockway
What is the moral of this story? "I'm an App Developer, therefore I shouldn't
pirate music"?

Ultimately, piracy breaks down to "people want your stuff, but you've priced
it too highly". In the case of apps, that's all it is. In the case of music,
it's a little different. Music is cheap, but it's rare that you can get it in
a good format: everything is lossy, and for people with good audio kit and
good hearing, that makes the music unusable. Therefore, people that both Want
It Now and want full quality are going to download the FLAC torrent rather
than buy lossy MP3s. (They won't buy the CD because it takes too long for the
mailman to deliver it.)

The same goes for movies and TV. Nobody will sell you those things without
DRM, so if you use Linux exclusively, you have no option but to pirate the
content. Make every TV show a standard non-DRM'd HTTP download for a buck, and
piracy (among people with money) evaporates instantly. But the content
producers want a bogeyman to blame for all their problems, so they
intentionally keep piracy alive.

(If there were no such thing as the ability to pirate movies, people still
wouldn't have bought the 88th redo of Star Wars. We liked it the first time.
But it's easier for Lucas to blame the evil greedy pirates than his evil
greedy self.)

~~~
briandear
I would be willing to be 100 downloads of my app that price isn't really the
issue on music piracy. If you charged $0.10 per song, it wouldn't result in a
massive sales increase. The barrier to paid downloads is that people have to
use a credit/debit card, usually register somehow and other things that form a
barrier to entry. I think $0.99 isn't much to pay for a song or an app, but
there are people (a fairly sizable number) who just want to download without
going through the presumed hassle of the payment process. I bet if you were
giving away CDs outside of the mall and charged $0.25, people wouldn't think
twice about tossing a quarter into the can. Take that same song and put it
online and the same people happy to toss you the quarter would rather steal
the song than process a payment of 25 cents.

The problem isn't price -- it's the barrier of payment.

~~~
5hoom
Now that is probably the most sensible thing that's been written in this
entire thread.

Figure out a way to make the transaction as seamless & low-risk as "tossing a
quarter into the can" and you've gone a long way to solving the piracy
problem.

How you do this, I have no idea. I would look at iTunes & Steam as examples of
services that have been successful at smoothing the friction & establishing
trust. People spook easily when asked for CC info…

------
toyg
If you look at the history of smartphone development, you'll find a better
analogy.

You see, back in the '00s, it used to be common knowledge that "nobody pays
for third-party smartphone apps". It was scientifically proved over and over
again, on platforms like Symbian and Palm, by research after research. You
see, back then getting hold of a mobile app was relatively hard; you had to go
hunting for it online, find it in some sort of online directory, pay _tens or
hundreds_ to the directory (which was also trying to sell you some other crap
like proprietary downloaders etc or spamming you or generally treating you --
and developers! --- like shit). The market was tiny and tech-savvy, and
resented having to pay so much for small add-ons, often of dubious quality.

Then came the Apple AppStore, and lo, all of a sudden people were _paying_ for
apps! Why? Because the ease of purchase and lower prices dramatically enlarged
the market to people who simply couldn't be bothered to jailbreak and pirate
just to save a few quid, or wanted to support authors. The pirate market
didn't disappear, but mobile developers flourished nonetheless.

Now replace apps for music, and good streaming services for the AppStore, and
I think you can see where things are going: consumers wants a _simple_ and
_immediate_ buying experience where they don't _feel_ like they're being
ripped off by third parties (even though he still is, by Apple) and with _low_
prices. Give them that, and they're quite happy to pay; try to force them into
digital slavery, and they'll resort to the black market.

Now, guess what the music industry tried to do for the last 15 years.

~~~
earbitscom
"Digital Slavery"? We're talking about owning, or not owning an MP3. Going
without it is hardly slavery.

It is really very simple. If someone feels the price an artists asks for their
songs is too much, or feels that obtaining a copy legally is too much "work",
then they don't need to have a copy. They're not entitled to it for any reason
whatsoever.

~~~
toyg
Look around you. Entertainment cartels are pushing draconian legislation
across the world, making copyright infringement a criminal felony, with
harsher penalties than manslaughter; they are threatening to disconnect people
from the internet, which in many cases would compromise their livelihood; they
are pushing DRM into software and hardware, so that you don't own your device,
they do; they support Chinese-style firewalls to blacklist "pirate" websites.
All this regardless of whether I actually want to buy their crappy products.

If that's not digital slavery...

~~~
earbitscom
They don't care if you want to buy their products. They simply care that, if
you do not, you do not also take those products without paying for them. If
people were not taking for free things that cost significant money to produce,
and did not keep ignoring the light-handed laws that already exist, there
would be no need for more draconian measures. But most importantly, what does
any of this have to do with whether or not you are entitled to a free copy of
the new Bieber album? Don't take things that don't belong to you, and you
don't need to worry about having your internet taken away. It's pretty much
the same as drunk driving and everything else.

~~~
toyg
I don't "take" anything from anyone; I copy my Bieber, and you still have it.
People who care about Bieber are still supporting him financially; people who
don't, they wouldn't have bothered anyway. Since production and distribution
costs have basically disappeared, supply is now virtually unlimited; economic
theory tells us that the market price is now zero. Harsh reality, but that's
the truth. Any law implemented to alter this state of things is simply trying
to make the water flow upwards.

(besides, you cannot "steal" digital content, it's just a bunch of bits; I
flip mine to look like yours, and I have a copy. Which is why SaaS is so
popular, of course: what is sold is now the actual service, rather than a
bunch of bits.)

~~~
earbitscom
Economic theory ought to have taught you that there is more to bringing a
product to market than how much is costs to duplicate that product after it's
been invented.

The scarcity of good music is real, and it’s not found in its distribution
model. You’re neglecting to acknowledge the complexity of the process that
goes into the creation of that product in the first place. Sure, you can
duplicate an MP3 with next to no cost. But duplicating a digital file that
nobody enjoys is not the point. We’re talking about duplicating something that
hundreds of thousands or millions of people want.

To even have that file to duplicate, we have to go back to the 5 year old kid
who first picked up the guitar. Let’s account for the thousands of hours they
practiced their craft until they were good enough to even begin to be capable
of making something people will enjoy. The number of people who will enjoy a
recording of just one guitar playing is very few, so they work with group
after group of other musicians, failing to create a product that a lot of
people like.

One day, at around 25 years old, this person stumbles into a room with 3 other
people who have spent thousands of hours practicing their own instruments,
and, for the first time ever, they start creating music that will have mass
appeal. They spend months writing music together. Sometimes those people don’t
get along, but they fight through it because the product they’re making is
that difficult to create with other people. After months writing, and more
months practicing, they finally have the blueprints for a product that people
will enjoy and want their own copy of. But it’s just in their heads.

Now, these people either invest their own money, or they go through
painstaking lengths to attract an investor by way of a record label. That
record label, in exchange for an investment in them and for lending them
connections and years of expertise, takes a significant percentage of the
returns from their sales. Or, they go it alone, keeping the lion’s share of
their sales, but having to invest all of their own money and their own time
managing the business side of what they bring to market.

After weeks or months in the studio, working with a producer, several
professionally trained production engineers, a mixing engineer, a mastering
engineer, and other highly specialized experts in their field, they finally
have a high quality recording.

Now, they take that recording, the sum total of 4 peoples’ years of practice,
their creativity, talent, dedication and hard work, and they make a CD of it.
They pay for duplication of CDs and make digital downloads available online.
All the while this was happening, they were building up fans by touring,
engaing in social marketing, fliering clubs, and doing anything else they can
think of or get their friends to help with to spread the word about their
upcoming album. When the album is ready, they hit the road, touring endlessly,
stuck in a van with people who they may or may not even like that much, living
on pennies as they try to make people aware of their music.

This, my friend, is the “assembly line”. It is not the duplication that
happens in the computer. The product is assembled over 15-20 years of intense
work, combined with a dozen strokes of luck culminating in the right people
meeting, creating that product, and getting the necessary financing to roll it
out to the public.

Now, you think it’s not worth $0.99 because it doesn’t cost anything to make
extra copies? Even if that were remotely true, if you want this magical
process to happen again, you might want to make sure these people can eat.

~~~
toyg
And how exactly is this different from any other trade out there?

Plumbers are not born as such, they invest money and time to become skilled
professionals; but when they fix your boiler, they don't ask for royalties
every time you turn the boiler on, do they? They perform a service, you pay
for the service, and everyone's happy. For example, there is no reason why the
entire process shouldn't be monetized. A lot of people would pay good money to
see those recording sessions, turning a risky long-term investment into
immediate profit; the musician would sell a service, like any tradesman.

But no, an "artist" should be able to struggle a couple of years, then watch
the money flow in for the rest of his life (plus 70, exactly like a plumber's
son... not). Why, it sounds a lot like rent-seeking, that most laudable of
economic forces; should we really promote it with such draconian laws?

Btw, to go back about your point about good music being scarce: music that
fits the mainstream canon developed by a certain industry in the last 50 years
is indeed scarce, probably because it was developed around a model based on
scarce distribution resources -- so you over-design one item and make it as
marketable as possible to a wide demographic, because your distribution costs
are high so you want to make them as repeatable as possible (i.e. you want to
make one album and sell a million copies, not ten albums selling a hundred
thousand, because you have to modify the physical production line for each
album and re-do the whole marketing push through centrally-broadcasted mass-
media).

In a world where such limitations are gone, music tastes will develop in
different ways. The over-produced album has already been done with -- people
buy single items now. Over-production of those single items will probably
change as well, as people want faster and faster "updates". Changes in
broadcasting are fragmenting tastes, making it very difficult to appeal to
everyone, so the "waterfall model" of music production is producing
increasingly diminishing returns. The industry will have to move to different
models, like quick iterations (you write a song while you tour, and modify it
depending on public reaction).

What's so "wrong", so unbearable about all that ? The fact that the Rolling
Stones might get a reduced pension? Yeah, they really should be rewarded for
ransacking the blues tradition...

~~~
earbitscom
There is nothing different about the plumber and the artist. The plumber comes
to your house and leaves you with a working toilet. The artist goes to the
studio and leaves you with a copy of a song. In both cases, you now have
something of value created by another person. Both would like to be paid for
their work. Last I checked, no artists are selling MP3s to consumers on a per
stream royalty basis. They're asking for the same one time payment you pay
your plumber, based on you having something of value that they took time to
create. You want multiple songs from them? You pay for each, just like you pay
your plumber to fix a sink when he's done with the toilet.

There is a perfectly good reason why "the entire process shouldn't be
monetized". It's a super big fucking distraction to have people at your
recording studio when you're trying to do something that is already extremely
difficult. The entire process _IS_ monetized, because you're supposed to pay
for the copy of the work you take when it's over.

And for the record, many artists do take songs on the road, try them out, and
change them based on public reaction. Then, they come home, spend money and
record it. You want a copy? Pay for it.

~~~
toyg
The difference is that the plumber fixes hundreds of sinks, the artist fixes
one and then extracts rent from users.

"Last I checked, no artists are selling MP3s to consumers on a per stream
royalty basis. "

Still, every time the record is aired in public (bars etc), royalties are
paid. And even when selling to consumers, they'll sell a vinyl disk, then a
cassette, then a cd, then an .mp3, then a .wtf... and every time, it's the
same damn recording, and if you try doing the format shifting yourself, they'd
like nothing more than throwing you in jail.

And let's be honest: most record companies and artists ALREADY make more money
from merchandise than they make on recordings, the same way comic book
publishers make more money from toys than from actual comic books. This myth
of the starving artist being robbed of revenue by downloaders is just that, a
myth.

Now, where's that cassette that killed music back in the 80s...

~~~
randomdata
What if said plumber, instead of fixing each problem individually, develops a
robot that will fix the problems on his behalf. Let's say, for argument's
sake, that it costs $0.05 to operate the robot during the repair.

Should the plumber charge $0.05 + a small profit or should the plumber charge
$0.05 + a large profit to offset the cost of developing the robot? Once the
robot is available, it costs the plumber basically nothing to fix your
problem, but it took the plumber a sizeable investment to create the robot in
the first place.

~~~
jholman
Without replying to what should happen, what will happen is that I'll be able
to get my sink fixed for under $1. It's gonna happen. And it sounds awesome!

And I've already wrapped my head around the fact that I'm going to have to be
agile to keep figuring out new ways to earn my own paycheque, so that I can
afford that $1 repair.

------
Tichy
They should have done some research before creating the app and changed their
business model accordingly (yes I know it is supposed to be a parody).

I think the way to approach the issue is to think what does the population
want, because the population elects the government which then makes the law.

Since people are copying music, obviously they want free music. But they also
want music. The question is, if copying was legal, would music go away (or
decline)? I think for a lot of art forms it is obviously not so. People will
create art no matter what, as has been shown over the centuries. Even today,
getting rich probably should not be your first motivation when forming a band.

It becomes a problem with art that is very expensive to produce, like movies
and computer games. I think part of the solution will be to move those things
into Kickstarter mode, that is, make people pay in advance for their creation.
In the same vein of course it should be easy to pay people after the creation.
Already a lot of people seem to be willing to do so.

This I think also has some precedence in history, when artists typically had
some sponsor.

Also of course technology will make those things cheaper to produce too - in
the future it will be possible to simply add actors to your movie with a mouse
click. Computers could simulate Tom Hanks, Marylin Monroe or whomever you
desire them to simulate. Already today it is probably quite cheap to create
the scenery in movies.

------
kalvin
I didn't recognize it as an allegory until halfway through, because jailbroken
iPhones already have a very comprehensive free-cracked-app store, and I can
only assume Android users have way more options.

Is this one of the reasons games are all going free+in-app downloads? What's
the actual state of mobile app piracy today? It seems like many mobile
developers are already moving to alternative models not involving direct
sales, whether that's a subscription, virtual goods, or pay-for-
addons/upgrades.

~~~
shabble
I'd have thought that it wouldn't be significantly different to crack the in-
app content and provide that for free as well, or even repackaged into the
original app.

About the only thing that I can think that will defend against this is a
streaming/always online service that actively requires cooperation from a
server as part of its implementation. Any offline licensing system can and
most likely will be cracked eventually, until you end up with the equivalent
of CD-keys and server-side detection of duplicates or invalid ones. Even then,
if you're only using the remote end for license validation, that code can just
be removed - the most viable models are either streaming content (in a way
that can't be batched and rehosted/provided locally), or offering compelling
multi-player / shared online features that require a valid auth token.

~~~
lacker
It's harder to crack in-app content because authentication of the purchase
happens server-side, and because the task of cracking in-app content is
different for each app.

------
goodside
I must be missing something really obvious here. I haven't used Earbits, but
as a streaming service, why not enforce things like this server-side, rather
than trying to suppress pirates from distributing the cracked client app?

(No victim-blaming or other moral subtext intended. Just curious.)

~~~
william42
You're missing the fact that it's about music piracy.

~~~
epicureanideal
I don't see how it has to be about music piracy. Software piracy is just as
real.

------
lwhi
The ideas inherent in selling any form of IP are not sustainable. Our
economics are traditionally based on finite resources - and economics
involving sale of intellectual property allows an infinite number of
transactions.

In my opinion, we can not expect to make money from the straightforward sale
of any form of IP for much longer. New models are being developed and services
industries are adapting to offer the value that's traditionally been
disseminated through IP sale .. this is where the future is heading.

The bleating, repetitive carrion-call of the old guard is becoming
increasingly annoying. While their incentive seems obvious; the fact that
these organisations are unable to innovate is even more blatant.

~~~
rick888
"Our economics are traditionally based on finite resources"

The finite resources aren't the final product, but the work that goes into it.
Create Adobe Photoshop for me (not copy, but build from scratch).

"this is where the future is heading"

I no longer write applications. Everything I release is a service. In the
past, there would have only been a one-time fee for my work, but now everyone
needs to pay a monthly fee for it.

This is the result of piracy: monthly fees for everything.

~~~
lwhi
I completely agree.

Ultimately the most precious resource we have available is time - so I think
that our economy should develop to a point where time is seen as the most
valued currency.

\--

" _I no longer write applications. Everything I release is a service. In the
past, there would have only been a one-time fee for my work, but now everyone
needs to pay a monthly fee for it.

This is the result of piracy: monthly fees for everything._"

I think that a service based model is fair - because there are ongoing costs
associated with keeping software available. Maybe the only time this model
falls down is when a service stagnates and isn't developed past it's initial
release.

------
decklin
I pirated some music today[0]. I went to my usual shops to try to buy it, and
for some reason the label had explicitly decided not to offer downloads of any
sort. Just vinyl and CD. I wanted it now, and I couldn't really be arsed with
those choices, so I stole it.

What would an honest Android-app allegory for this be? Perhaps a consumer is
faced with these options:

1\. An official shop, which accepts money (yay!), gives only some (boo!) of it
to the artist, and offers:

a. The source code to build the app (i.e. a plastic disc that you have to rip
yourself)

b. maybe, sometimes, a version of the app compiled for a 320x480 screen
(acceptable lossy compressed files)

c. maybe, even fewer times, a version of the app compiled to use any screen
size (lossless files, or high-quality lossy or whatever you like)

2\. A dodgy (boo!) pirate site, which doesn't accept money (boo!), and offers
all of the compiled versions.

Of course this is not even close to reality. No Android apps are compiled by
normal end users. All paid Android apps offer 1c. Music piracy does not exist
because of religious "information must be free" nuts like this article is
talking about -- it exists because people's moral feeling about getting some
money to the artist is not strong enough to overcome the inconvenience of 1a
(or even 1b). Maybe we should conclude that the analogy has broken down.

Society does not "accept" this sort of piracy like it's a binary switch. The
"morals" curve slides down, the "inconvenience" curve slides up, and at some
point they pass each other. I see no reason why they can't trade places again
-- if we actually try to do something about it instead of spinning clever
allegories.

I suspect we need to look elsewhere to understand the motivations of app
pirates (yes, I know this was not the point, but if you're going to be
facetious...). The real thing is right there, for a few dollars. I've already
given Google Checkout my credit card information. I cannot fathom what would
make someone deal with sketchy sites (sketchy sites whose entire purpose is to
_install executable code on your device_ ) to get the same thing they can just
pay for. Maybe they are in fact just religious nuts.

[0] Honestly, I can't even be bothered to pirate most things these days. I'm
culturally behind because filling in the gaps in what I can actually buy in
FLAC would be a part-time job. If a record shop so much as rejects spaces in
my credit card number I get bored and go listen to something I've already
bought. This is a problem that could use some, as they say, disruptive
innovation.

~~~
snippyhollow
You didn't steal anything (nobody no longer has it because of you), you
pirated it.

~~~
jamesaguilar
I think nearly everyone here is aware of the distinction. Speaking only for
myself, I will continue to say "steal" since both words describe the same
action (assuming you're not a prescriptive linguist), and steal better
connotes what I believe to be the economic impact.

~~~
lurker19
The phone company steals from me every time my DSL fails and I spend an hour
on the phone with a tech or by another replacement modem.

HTC steals from me every time the USB cable doesn't dock securely in the port.

Microsoft steals from me every time Windows crashes.

------
shabble
For all the potential parallels with the music industry, I think there are
quite a few significant differences.

Firstly, what are the current equivalents of a mobile App Store for (pirated)
music? There are definitely a bunch of places you can find it if you look, but
few of them are as "one-stop-shop" as current app stores.

Secondly, does pirated music often outrank the artists/album name/track titles
in general internet searches? Most of the time you'll get the artist, maybe
some unofficial fan sites, and some dodgy-SEO lyrics/"free if you pay for our
questionable rapidshare style hosting" that probably doesn't even have the
content.

If you consider piracy-specific search engines, like TPB or whatever
napster/gnutella mutated into, then you're more likely to find real content,
but that requires knowing where to look in the first place.

If you consider 'your VC' as an artists music label, then they've probably
already got some kind of enforcement system going on. You probably won't have
to do all the 'policing' yourself - it's their loss just as much as yours (if
not more, due to some of the interesting accounting) if copies aren't getting
paid for.

All in all, it seems like a fairly weak metaphor, although I can see how it
could become more of a problem in the future.

Edit: I forgot to mention " _They’re doing the best they can, they say. Most
of all, they’re complying with the law, they say._ " - I can't imagine many
people who download pirated music do so without realising that it's illegal
and/or immoral. Legitimate looking services like streaming sites are harder to
judge - they might have a license for the content, or they might not. Compare
this to an official platform App Store, where consumers can reasonably expect
some level of dilligence in ensuring ownership. And if it becomes necessary,
there's some sort of accountability back to the person who uploaded the
pirated content.

I imagine the author here chose android because it has a less tightly
controlled app store, and it may be possible to create anonymous accounts if
you're only dealing with free apps (compared to iOS where you need to have
bought a dev license to get any signing keys, even for free apps, as I
understand it).

~~~
recoiledsnake
>I forgot to mention "They’re doing the best they can, they say. Most of all,
they’re complying with the law, they say." - I can't imagine many people who
download pirated music do so without realising that it's illegal and/or
immoral. Legitimate looking services like streaming sites are harder to judge
- they might have a license for the content, or they might not.

The reference there is to the filesharing sites, not to pirates.

~~~
shabble
Ooops, that's a good point. I suspect that the whole DMCA safe harbour "we
honour all correctly submitted takedown requests" is a bit of a get-out for a
lot of these sites. Especially the ones that are pretty much basing their
entire business model on access to pirated content.

At the same time, there are legitimate indexing & hosting services who
probably are genuinely displeased with the abuse of their systems. The same
problem as the homebrew console hackers often enabling subsequent game piracy.

The tricky part is how to tell them apart, and what the legitimate concerns
can do to prevent abuse, and the content rights-holders can do to deal with
the bad-faith lot.

Providing the value/product that consumers are looking for as well is another
big deal - from what little I know of mobile app-stores, the low-friction
discovery/payment/install process, along with low-cost high volume business
models is reducing piracy to some extent. Contrast with music, where DRM,
onerous formats, and unavailability of a lot of content is encouraging or even
forcing people to go the illegitimate route.

------
6ren
Music or software, it's an interesting point. SaaS is one fix.

Bill Gates had problems with copying way back in 1976. It seems to have worked
out OK for him. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists>

~~~
libria
> _Many felt the software should be bundled with the machine and the current
> distribution method was Gates' problem. Others questioned the cost of
> developing software._

So the rebuttals were "it's hard to get" and "it shouldn't cost that much."
Man, I heard that somewhere recently...

------
michaelpinto
From day one my gut has always told me that Android users are pretty much like
Amiga users were back in the day -- the idea of paying for software (any
software!) seems like a bad idea. That may be good news if you're Google or a
carrier, but it's bad news if you're a developer.

To me fair if Android is part of the "Google way" and maybe the solution is to
have advertising bring in revenue (which goes back to AdSense). On the other
hand iOS reminds of the Mac back in the day: The users seem to be willing to
pay for software -- however that software better be damn good.

So perhaps the solution is to really think of both platforms as being a very
different play from each other. Most developers think of their program as
something to port between platforms, but maybe that's not what this ecosystem
is about? In the same way the games that you would build for Nintendo DS
wouldn't even be aimed at the same audience as the Xbox.

~~~
toyg
Exactly. Android is similar to the traditional PC market, so for non-critical
software SaaS or advertising are more profitable than shrinkwrap -- unless you
stumble on the Android equivalent of MS Office (i.e. something so critical
that people will just consider it a natural cost of doing business).

------
Volpe
Reading this, I sympathise completely with the developers (being a developer
myself). And I also see the uncomfortable parallel with arguments I've
seen/made about the music industry.

Poignant.

------
ericflo
Hint for everyone who has commented so far: this post is not really about
apps.

------
davesims
If musicians had nearly as much stake in their distributed product, from a
percent standpoint, as a startup founder has in his/her business, or if the
music industry were remotely as equitable, all things considered, as the
software industry, then the essay's apparent allegory might ring a little more
true to me. But the practical reality is musicians don't have a similar stake,
or a similar chance at making a sustainable living, as software founders.

If I were to reverse The essay's tactic, by way of, for instance, rewriting a
paragraph of another certain famous essay about the music industry (which is
admittedly dated but still mostly relevant even in the age of iTunes), you
could see the contrast pretty quickly. I doubt that anybody would agree that
the software industry is this bad. Let's call this hypothetical essay "The
Problem with Software" and see if you agree (with apologies to Steve Albini):

"Whenever I talk founders who are about to sign with a major startup
incubator, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine
a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long,
filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good
friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also
imagine a faceless Angel Investor at demo day holding a fountain pen and a
contract waiting to be signed."

Let's say my hypothetical essay goes on to itemize point-by-point in a
detailed and authoritative way how startup incubators and VCs virtually always
end up screwing over founders and developers every time...well it couldn't
because there are no such numbers, no similar data, because in general
software startups don't operate that way. The dynamics in the two industries
are entirely different and the analogy doesn't work, for various reasons not
the least of which is that the average founder has a far higher chance of
making money, according to the known risks, than the average musician relying
on sales and downloads. VCs, in general are far more equitable (big assumption
there but I'll stand by it anecdotely) than the average label, which operates
on long-standing numbers-manipulation that rarely if ever compensate artists
fairly or transparently. This doesn't make piracy right, it just makes
attacking it relatively inconsequential to the artist.

The essay is right, albeit ironically so, about one thing. The music industry
has indeed moved on. The future is much more than live events, though, it's
innovative business models (like, say, for instance Earbits', which I'm
intrigued by and really hope works) and creative manipulation of new media, as
bands like Pomplamoose and OK Go have done. The music industry is a dinosaur,
and piracy is only a small part of the problem. The main issue is that the
music buying public is jaded, fragmented and far less easily manipulated into
buying than in the past. The available music is vast in number and the average
music fan can listen and partake in countless genres and acts, only a few of
which might be shared by friends.

The essay's principles are in the right place -- defending the incomes of
musicians, but the allegory ignores a chasm of differences between the two
industries, the massive inequity of the music industry towards artists, and
the simple truth that there's nothing anyone can do about it, certainly not
through the old RIAA/ASCAP/etc. model.

~~~
earbitscom
The simple fact is that most startup founders not only create the products
that define their success, but drive that success almost entirely on their
own, with modest help from their investors. As much as everyone likes to hate
on record labels, the good ones do almost everything involved in the
_business_ of making your music successful. The artist _is_ the product, but
very rarely does the artist drive the business. Most are terrible business
people. The amount of money a record label puts into a deal might look like a
small VC deal. But the amount of _work_ they put in is something else
entirely. _That_ is why they take a larger share, and as long as they're fair
and do a good job, they deserve a significant amount of the returns.

Their behavior for the past 20 years can be cited as a reason not to want to
contribute to them as businesses, but the reality is that, while most artists
who have a label make very little, most who don't never make it at all.

~~~
davesims
I'd say this is only partially true. These days labels are not, and I would
argue should not be the artists' primary target for income. Touring and new
media are things artists have control over to a much larger extent and that's
where artists should be focused.

If a good independent label wants to pick you up, like say Bella Union or
Merge or Sub Pop (still) or the like then go for it, it might help. Or it
might not. For some it's a big deal, but mostly in terms of promotion and
profile, better tours. The good labels, like Bella Union, get very involved in
that side of it, others not so much. Even then those lucky acts that are on
good labels are still primarily touring bands, and downloads and sales and
royalties are a small percentage of their income, unless something really
breaks on radio, and that my friend is _whole other ballgame_ and extremely
rare from the average artists' perspective. Better to hope to get on a TV show
or film, raise your profile some and get better tours.

Also, most of the time those higher-profile independent labels came along and
were interested because those acts already had something going, some sales,
regional numbers or whatnot that made the label relationship more like a
partnership.

It helps to go into it from a position of strength, where you know you can
walk away. And if you can walk away, you might not even need the Independent
label. Mostly you need good management and good promotion to get better tour
numbers going, build into a position of strength and really think about what
means of income are available to you in an age where access to distribution
channels (the primary former attraction of labels) are now available to
virtually everyone.

~~~
earbitscom
That's the same as startup getting investment because they have "traction",
and most won't if they don't. And the benefit of having a label is that, while
you don't _need_ one to tour and focus on new media, it sure as hell helps to
have professional help from people who have done this countless times. There
are thousands of independent labels. Some will do nothing for you. Those that
do their job can do things that a fraction of 1% of artists can do on their
own. Nobody should sit around waiting for a label, but nobody who knows what a
good label can do would say they're not extremely valuable and worth signing
over some of your "equity" to.

~~~
davesims
This is all true, and it's important to distinguish between "The Industry" and
the good indie labels. Bella Union is one I have first-hand knowledge of and
they are incredibly fair, and involved in the artists' tours and PR to a large
degree.

If you know that's the kind of label you're looking at signing with, great!
But the idea that labels are gatekeepers to distribution and royalties is a
thing of the past.

Labels work best now when they act more like YC and less like RCA.

------
vacri
Who are these people that go to 132 different android app markets to find a
free version of the software they see on google's market for $0.99? Are they
really the kind of demographic you need to worry about?

------
dools
Is there not a way of giving your app away for free, and then encouraging
users to setup some sort of subscription or purchase from within the app if
they like it? People regularly provide voluntary financial support (tips,
street performers)when it's easy and they see benefit.

Unless the ev1l pirat0rs actually compiled a different version of your app in
order to give it away for free without those messages (which seems unlikely
given there's absolutely no incentive for them to do so) you'd make a pretty
penny through the sheer volume of users.

Imagin busking to an audience of 1 million people, all equidistant from your
guitar case with one dollar in their hand?

The scale at which digital distribution allows piracy is the same thing that
will make you money: you have free distribution to millions of people, just
figure out a way for them to voluntarily give you money and you'll be sorted.

~~~
earbitscom
That's a perfectly fine choice for an artist to make.

If they do not want to do that, and instead would like each person who takes a
copy of their work to pay for it, is that not also a choice they should have?
Your choice as a consumer should then be to either pay that person for a copy,
or not take a copy and move on.

Nobody is arguing that giving away music isn't a viable model for success -
simply that it's not ethical to make that choice on behalf of content
creators.

~~~
dools
I find that to be sort of like saying I'm a shop owner. My life would be
shitloads easier if I didn't have to actually be there, and people could just
put the money on the counter and make their own change (like clerks :)

You're being an idealist - be more pragmatic and you'll live a life less
angry.

I may only be speaking for myself here, but I honestly think the law will take
a century to catch up here. We're on the frontier - with all the advantages
and disadvantages that come with it (one advantage being, for example, the
lack of any sort of regulation or licensing getting in the way of being a
developer).

~~~
earbitscom
You're comparing a shop owner who doesn't want to protect their investment
because they're lazy to an artist who cannot prevent their product from being
taken without being paid for, unless they want to make it unavailable in the
format that all of their customers want it in.

It's just sad that asking people to pay for things they take is being an
idealist. I'm not angry. I just prefer to speak out against it than act like
there's nothing wrong with it.

~~~
dools
It's not so much that wanting people to pay is being an idealist, but that
wanting things to be some way other than way they clearly are is being an
idealist.

In another, less sophisticated time, you would have found a reality not far
removed from the shop owner I described - and they would not have been
considered lazy.

But a shop owner who railed against the shifting sands of humanity, pining for
simpler times lost as he was pilfered blind, would clearly be sorrowful
idealist.

~~~
rick888
I'm good with this, if you and everyone else who believe this also agrees that
if I use your source code in my proprietary app (no matter the license), it's
just the "shifting sands of humanity".

------
incub8or
All content producers face the same problem: if their product gains traction,
it will be pirated; if it does not gain traction, there will be no revenue.

We just finished a no budget feature film and knew we had to come up with a
disruptive distribution strategy to get traction and avoid piracy. Our
solution:

everyone who registers to download the movie will get to display a picture,
logo or text of their choosing on a billboard in New York's Times Square.

Prices start from only $10 upwards. So for as little as $10 you can get any
message / image / logo (as long as it's not obscene and you own the rights) up
on a Times Square billboard.

Our strategy seems to be working.

I know this has been mentioned before but filmmakers, programmers, musicians,
artists etc all need to think about how to engage an audience as a hook to the
content. So by buying the content from the actual producers, they get much
more value than just pirating it.

More info on our strategy: <http://bit.ly/pgyGaR> and on the movie
<http://bit.ly/n4XQG0> and <http://on.fb.me/qcoACw>

------
sosuke
I must have missed the back story. Are people really able to just launch
cracked versions of apps back to the Google App Store?

~~~
samgro
Read the article again. If you still don't get it, take a look outside the
article at the rest of the page :)

~~~
someone13
And in case anyone _still_ doesn't get it, replace "app" with "music", or
"song" ;-)

------
crisedward
I think there should be a new way of control in the app, like only letting
people registered on a database use the app, and in that database there should
be only users that had paid for that service, but this is more trouble for the
user, and users hate this, also piracy sometimes is fault of the user and
sometimes is fault of the developer, i had to get some free apps because
getting the app is really hard because of the restrictions on my country, but
piracy is a problem every developer has so instead of complaining after the
app is done, we have to make a contingency plan so we can be ready for all.

------
TheCapn
I know this is only thinly related but I thought I'd post something that I
heard from an investor that I met with a few months ago that we decided not to
pursue a career with regarding app development for enterprise blackberry
stuff... Disclaimer: I'm just posting his point of view and don't necessarily
agree with it despite seeing his side of the argument.

My partner (at the time) and I met with him regarding an application we
developed during our last year of University that had seen a lot of industry
interest during our formal presentation. He wanted to meet with us and discuss
helping us market the app because he was close friends with my friend's family
and helped students like us previously.

His only real question to us regarding the app was our marketing plan. "Sell
it" is not a very good pitch despite us not knowing what-so-ever what we
wanted to do with it (or what we were capable of doing without shooing
investors away). He brought up the point that whether we want to or not we
should not be giving it away for free. Why?

His argument was that if we were to put a few months of effort into
development of an app to give away for free we were essentially robbing
ourselves. I myself am a strong avocate for OSS and had a hard time agreeing
with him, I gave him a perplexing glace in favor of a "wtf". He continued by
saying that if we were to dedicate that much time only to give it away we were
robbing ourselves of those hours of labour we invested as well as preventing
any other student/developer/whatever from being able to make a living from the
product line. By us giving away something for free that had a real-world value
we robbed others from entering the market to make a dollar.

His argument was that we _must_ charge something for our work and if we don't
want to make any money to give the proceeds away to charity. By doing that we
could allow others to enter the market and make a dollar to fuel future
efforts and development.

Its sort of a funny way to think of things and sometimes I find myself
agreeing with him but I'm never certain... I felt the idea of "free software"
preventing the developers from making their share of the effort is a good
example of how his side of things can be right in many cases.

Again, not saying this is my viewpoint so don't get all "up in my grill" :)

~~~
Czarnian
I think what's getting lost here is that it's your app. You can do whatever
you like with it. Sell it, give it away, flush it down the toilet, smash it
with a hammer and burn all your notes. As the people who arranged some bits
into a novel configuration, it's your right to choose how you want to
distribute it. Obviously, without some way to make a return on investment, it
would be difficult to find people to give you money to pay your bills while
working on the next thing. But it's your decision to make and no one else's.

When I write an app, it's my right to choose how it is distributed in the
world. If I want to sell it for 0.99, then it's my choice and I have to live
with the risk of it not selling.

It is just as wrong for someone to take my work without paying for it as it is
for me to take your work and sell it. In both cases, our right to choose for
ourselves is being taken away.

------
handelaar
The main problem here is that in the situation described you _would indeed_
pretty much be an idiot not to make your app free and get revenue from ads or
other avenues.

Not as a capitulation to piracy, but because you'd _make more money_.

~~~
FxChiP
Possibly, but it strikes me as unfortunate that someone would have to force
ads on their users just to be compensated for their work developing an
application.

~~~
william42
It strikes _me_ as unfortunate that someone would have to force _payment_ on
their users just to be compensated for their work developing an application.

------
alexwolfe
The reality is that you do pay for stolen music, it just happens over a much
longer period of time. The cost is the money you could have made in a society
that supports paying for digital content or software.

------
pagejim
I think Search engine services showed us the way, how one could provide an
essential service as free and make money using more subtle ways .. Apps
(developers) would have to go down that way eventually ..

------
Czarnian
If you have a right to my app, then I have a right to your paycheck.

Since you obviously don't value the effort that I put into creating my thing,
then you must not value the effort that you put into doing your thing.

------
redxaxder
At least two differences between software and music:

\- no malware

\- possible online updates or other interactions

As long as these differences persist, your distribution method can easily add
more value than the pirate copy.

~~~
toyg
Music can also provide "online updates or other interactions": think fanclubs,
exclusive gigs etc. Say that, when you buy a M.I.A. song, you also get access
to an exclusive website/forum for a month, where M.I.A. is going to blog or
discuss with fans -- there you go, SaaS. The artist is not forced to do more
than she used to, she's just reallocating time from "dealing with the
increasingly irrelevant mainstream press" to "dealing with online fans".

The malware point is about quality. You might get the same quality from
pirates, but then again you might get malware or simply a crappy rip. If you
"buy legit", you are guaranteed good quality: high bitrate / lossless formats,
no clicks etc.

The more I think about it, the more I see the two markets are fundamentally
identical... which makes the music industry look even more stupid: with all
their might and cash, they seem unable to be as profitable as some kid in
California with a couple of computers.

------
samgro
Before commenting about Android, read the article twice, look around the page,
and if you still want to talk about Android, read one of the related posts.

------
run4yourlives
If musicians spent half as much time paying attention in economics class as
they did strumming their guitars, they might understand the situation a little
better.

"Piracy" exists for one reason and one reason alone: the price is too high for
the consumer. There will always be a subset of the economy that will steal a
particular good (i.e. for whom the price is always too high), from CD's to
clothing to Ferrari's. This criminal element is simply a cost of doing
business, really. In a healthy market, their costs are easily absorbed by a
much larger subset that is prepared to pay the set price of the good. Match
demand for the product reasonably well with supply and everyone is happy.

When a product is priced at a level that is greater than the market values,
problems emerge. In open/free markets, you tend to get competition and
innovation, and individual business losses. In closed/highly regulated
markets, you tend to get black markets, bootlegging and all sorts of evasion
if demand is high enough to warrant. This is as true for music and software as
it is for gasoline, alcohol and copper wire. Music piracy is simply a black
market that is only sustained because enough of the market thinks the price is
too high.

The labels that have tightly controlled the market for music (commoditizing
something that 50% of the population can supply) have done so by closing all
distribution channels and limiting any real supply in order to exaggerate
demand. Consumers didn't really know that they were being ripped off, since
the supply chain was so tightly controlled. That changed with Napster.

Once the entire industry was exposed, and music began to revert back to a more
natural value that one would expect for such a large supply, the market's
opinion of the product began to change as well. (To be honest the shift
probably went too far to the other side, but it started to regulate as things
like itunes emerged)

What's evident is that there is clearly a value above zero that the market
will place on music. If this wasn't the case, iTunes wouldn't be around. The
problem that most labels - and sadly artists - fail realize is that the
particular dollar point could be a lot lower than they would like it to be.
Probably more like $.50 a song rather than the current $.99 cent price point.

The market will determine that price though, not the suppliers. Until then,
major piracy will continue. Find that price point though, and piracy will go
back to meaning peg legs and eye patches.

~~~
earbitscom
No other industry deals with people being able to copy their product
flawlessly and eliminate any scarcity of the final package like music does,
which you don't need an education in economics to understand the impact of.
There is almost no reason to assume that $0.50 will convert better among
people who pirate music now, since those peoples' current price is free. And
if you don't think a song is worth $0.99, maybe you should pay more attention
to what goes into creating one than just what goes into copying one when it's
finished. The scarcity is not in the distribution, it's in the 20+ year
process that goes into creating the original mold in the first place. The
supply is unlimited because people make it so illegally and without regard for
the rights' of content owners or the hard work they put into making products
that millions of people enjoy. It's not a practice that should be defended on
any level, let alone justified in a debate about free markets. Piracy is lazy
and cheap, and that is all.

~~~
v21
> No other industry deals with people being able to copy their product
> flawlessly and eliminate any scarcity of the final package like music does

That's just plain not true. Film, TV, videogames, books, comics and news all
fall under this. And I'm sure there's more industries I haven't thought of.

~~~
earbitscom
Not saying none of them deals with it, just none of them deals with it in the
magnitude or frequency that music does. Most of those things lose some of
their original qualities, are harder to find, or take too long to download for
the average person to steal them. MP3s get it the worst.

------
tomlin
> After ranting endlessly on Hacker News and the like, finally the person who
> keeps stealing your app posts a reply.

In the entire time I've visited HN, I don't think this has ever happened. This
is the equivalent to a politician visiting poor neighbourhoods dressed like 50
cent, hoping to "level" with the community. So contrived.

------
barumrho
Maybe app developers should now form a group like MPAA?

~~~
m0nastic
They already did, it's called the BSA‡

And they solicit informants to report piracy (with lucrative rewards).

‡ <http://www.bsa.org/country.aspx?sc_lang=en>

------
esutton
interesting read, though it wont change anyones mind on piracy one way or the
other

------
Triumvark
Can't wait for the sequel: "I Think My Patents Should Never Expire"

------
Iv
> They tell you your business model is broken

And they have a point.

------
alduler
Well I think you should work for free as well then.

------
alexqgb
People like Mr. Flores are a hazard. Seriously, they have no problem defining
piracy as wrong, but make no mention of what would actually be required in
terms of surveillance and policing for that moral convention to be reliably
maintained.

Beyond his insensitivity to reality, Mr. Flores appears to have no
understanding that copyrights are not rights at all. There's noting
inalienable about them. To the contrary, they are - very explicitly -
privileges. They are given to very limited numbers of people for
(theoretically) limited times. For a sovereign society to continue giving out
these privileges, it's going to expect something in return. If that includes
an obscenely invasive and overbearing police apparatus that has the power and
freedom to monitor every bit of data every person exchanges it's an easy deal
to reject.

In spite of all his rage (or perhaps because of it) Mr. Flores has never
stopped to consider that the crime of theft pertains chiefly to physical
property and tangible goods. This has been true for thousands of years,
meaning that there is now a very well established body of law relating to
misappropriation of physical goods - one that extends, in various forms,
worldwide. And there is no popular pressure to change this convention. Nor is
there any sense that the policing required to maintain this convention
constitutes a serious threat to human rights. Indeed, the creation of property
rights, and their attachment to tangible goods seems to be a fundamental
feature of societies that advance human rights, and a culture of autonomy.

Extending the concept of property rights and theft to intangible goods is a
different matter entirely. A relatively recent idea, it was an experiment that
worked reasonably well as long as intangible goods remained wedded to some
physical wrapper which could be safely governed by uncontroversial property
laws. Now that the wrappers have become obsolete, the ability to allow the
safe and ethical extension of property rights into the sphere of the
intangible has collapsed. Only reckless, short-sighted, or truly sinister
players (the Maximalists) continue to press in this direction.

Smarter - and yes, more ethical - people properly dismiss copyright as an
appropriate mechanism for governing the conduct of private individuals. That
means they don't get involved in business that can only work if the
Maximalists get their way. While copyright certainly retains substantial value
as a tool for regulating the conduct of incorporated entities (which are,
themselves, intangible entities), it is 100% incompatible with a culture of
individual autonomy in the present day.

The world probably doesn't need (yet another) shitty app. What it does need
are people who can imagine and build businesses that limit reliance on
copyright to engagements with incorporated entities, while treating individual
humans with healthy respect for their political freedom, privacy, and
autonomy. Indeed, entrepreneurs should focus on products and services that
INCREASE these qualities, not misguided attempts to undermine them for the
sake of a fast buck with no concern given to the consequences.

~~~
earbitscom
Why does someone need to propose an effective solution to policing immorality
in order to state that he believes something to be immoral? Simply conveying a
story intended to create empathy for hard working individuals making a
contribution to society is hazardous? Get off your high horse.

Saying that you believe people have rights that should not be infringed does
not mean you haphazardly support the enforcement of those rights in ways that
cause more harm than good. I did not recommend that anyone be sued, that
anyone be monitored, that anyone be spied upon or any other counter measure.
Speaking out against injustice does not always require that you have a well-
articulated plan for the foolproof solution to that injustice. The fact that
you believe these people have no rights and that defending them is harmful is
hazardous.

The simple fact is, for as long as there have been civilizations and law, most
have said it is illegal to take something of value from someone else. You say
it pertains only to physical goods, a cop out designed to suit your self
serving needs.

There are two important facts to remember. The first is that, while taking a
copy of something from someone is not theft according to Merriam Webster, if
their product is valued and people will pay for it, but you take a copy under
false pretenses and make it available for nothing at all, you dilute the value
of their property and have stolen _value_ from them. Imagine your investors
diluting you down to nothing. They haven't technically taken your shares, but
I suspect you don't like too much the results.

Further, while the flow of information and ideas should be free, nobody is
infringing on your right to remember a song, take thoughts of it with you,
tell other people about it, or even hum that song while you troll the forums.
But when you require a _physical_ copy of that song, bits stored on a device,
in order to actually _remember_ that "idea", your whole concept of the "flow
of information" goes out the window.

You want to spread the idea of a song? Tell someone what it's about. You want
a copy of a song for yourself, pay for it. It's as simple as that. I don't
need to be a policy maker to voice that this is a principle I value among
those people who have the integrity to honor it.

~~~
alexqgb
Kudos for identifying dilution as a way to take value from another while
leaving their actual holdings untouched. It's a subtle point that most anti-
copyright types miss.

And you're absolutely correct to observe that hard drives are material, and
that the atoms they contain constitute the 'fixed medium' that provides the
bright and shining line between ungovernable ideas, and the restricted world
of copyright protection. But you're mistaken if you think you have any
inviolable rights in your work. Copyright is a right in name only. In
absolutely every other regard it's a privilege.

If you lived in France, things would be different. French jurisprudence
includes "le droit d'auteur". That is to say, they recognize a moral right of
the author to control the dissemination and development of his work by others.
When the French say "I have a right" they're entirely correct.

Things are different in America, where lawmakers rejected that concept flatly.
Regardless of the way you feel about it, Le droit d'auteur has never been
recognized in this country, and at this point, it's safe to say it never will
be.

So it's not that I 'believe' you have no rights. I KNOW you have no rights.
Because you don't. What you have is a privilege that 's increasingly archaic,
based - as it is - on a rapidly fading ability to produce more development
than it retards in the "Useful Arts & Sciences". In case you didn't know,
that's the Constitutional language giving Congress the power to issue the
limited monopolies known as patents and copyrights in the first place.

In contrast with France, America (like England, which is the source of much
American civil law) views copyright not as an exalted moral right, but as a
necessary evil tolerable only to the extent that it clearly benefits society
as a whole.

That's a big difference.

Wrap your head around the idea that you're defending a privilege - not a right
- and I suspect that the whole tenor of your argument will change
dramatically.

------
hwf829
OMGWTFBBQ!

