piracy and oss

[Marcel Kunath]

>
> "Marcel Kunath" <kunathma@pilot.msu.edu> writes:
>
> > Not trying to start a flame war but I been thinking about
> > piracy lately
>
> First of all let's get our terms correct.  The word "piracy" is
> propaganda intended to liken sharing copyrighted materials
> against the wishes of its owners, a relatively harmless thing to
> do, to killing, raping, looting, pillaging on the high seas.
> Using this word kind of Godwinizes a discussion from the very
> beginning.

I agree on this one but my discussion wasn't generally about "is piracy bad and
on what level?" but rather "piracy is bad. is oss affected more than the
proprietor?"

 > > > and I am coming to the conclusion that proprietory software
> > piracy is hurting open source software more than the
> > proprietors. I wondered what other people thought on this.
> >
> > I just feel like using others people's keys and cracks it makes
> > it easy for users to break the licenses on software they have
> > not paid for. People therefore get a false sense of the
> > software economy. People may have bought win95 and think they
> > should be allowed for an upgrade to Win98 via a friend's CD
> > Rom. It eventually cheapens the cost of prorietory software to
> > a level far below the actual retail price. After doing this for
> > a while and to tens of software programs one basically has no
> > cost in gaining access to proprietory software. This gives the
> > false picture of software being cheap. It also makes open
> > source software look comparably expensive or at least less
> > cheap.
>
> I don't understand this argument at all.  Free software (I prefer
> this term to "open source") can often be obtained at no cost at
> all, not even the trouble of going out and finding a crack for
> it.  How does this make it seem more expensive than proprietary
> software?

Ok lets stay with free software. I am trying to see this through the economical
point. Every good has a price tag. Every consumer has a price. If a person is
willing to spend 50 dollars on a program which gives him access to PDF files.
Company A sells a program which does so and charges 51.00 dollars. Organization
B created a free software program which does the same thing but with less bells
and whistles but gives it away for free. A key code is readily available to
crack company A's product therefore reducing company A's product price to 0
dollars just like the free software product. To the consumer there is no
difference in economical terms and the consumer will always chose the bells and
whistle product. Therefore I believe piracy creates a misrepresentation of
software costs which causes the free software to be adapted less often than if
piracy was not happening. This makes me think if we fought piracy we would
straighten out the picture and bring the cost scheme into line and people would
adapt to free software. Piracy is a clear supply and demand issue and it seems
to work against free software.

>
> > Shouldn't the open source community therefore actually work on
> > eliminating pirates of our competitors' products and everytime
> > we see a pirate report them to the corporations so that they
> > get fined or forced to pay the license and the economic picture
> > put into balance again?
>
> I don't see any point in stooging for the BSA.  They have a lot
> of money, let them go out and hunt down copyright violators.
> It's not *our* problem.

As my economical example shows it maybe is our problem.

>
> > Reading about how organizations that donate old pcs get busted
> > for invalid win95 licenses I don't feel sorry for them and I
> > wonder if I be so heartless and rat out a friend who got tens
> > of unlicensed programs on his/her PC.
>
> Okay, suppose you do "rat out" this friend.  What's going to
> happen?  Do you expect the FBI to come in and grab his PC to find
> out?  Do you expect the BSA to do this?  Do you expect them to
> send him a nasty letter?  I can't even see the last of these
> happening.  The software publishers are not concerned about
> individuals so much as companies; they cannot do much about
> individuals.

This was all made up but I believe reporting larger entities like school
districts and corporations or even your government would help. I don't want to
see the FBI or BSA take action anyhow. It should be the lawyers for the
offended corporation which tracks pirates and brings them to court. Therefore I
think Microsoft's "Report Piracy" page is a pretty good thing.

> Are you sure that unlicensed software is so common?

I am not sure but if each single person had just one single unlicensed program
that would be billions of dollars for the entire software industry. And we
know products get updated and you need to upgrade your license and stuff. I
think the problem is big.

mk