[Light]

I don't want to get into this software piracy arguement as it is pointless argument and very boring.

But, I would like to mention what I mentioned before. That point was that provided a person spends all of their money and does not buy pirated software then statements like this found on Adobe's website are completely baseless and wrong:

"In 2001, according to the Business Software Alliance, piracy cost the global economy over US$13 billion dollars in lost tax revenues that would benefit local communities."

We know that most pirates do not buy their software and I don't know many people who have tons of money sitting at home.

So what would really happen if people didn't pirate? There is only a finite amount of money. And this means that people are buying something they can't pirate with their money instead of something they can pirate.

This means that if people stopped pirating then some jobs in some sectors of the economy would be lost.

This is something to think about when people lay down blanket statements about how much piracy hurts the economy.

*I do not support or condone software piracy. I'm just pointing out something obvious. I suspect that we would see a decline in hardware sells, car sells, food item sells, internet usage, and many other sectors of economy would decline.

If I'm wrong about this and any software piracy advocate or better economics wiz wants to argue this point then please do. Keep in mind I am refering to non purchased software piracy based on the very likely assumption that people who pirate do spend their money on regular purchase items for the most part.

Yet, also it clear that piracy must be checked to some degree but we know that it is a multi-billion dollar industry so apparently it is checked enough.

... I'm just curious what would really happen.

[eyewoo]

Well... one of the flaws in your logic is that you seem to be referring mostly to individual people, but I suspect there is a huge amount of piracy practiced by companies and corporations... That doesn't necessarily change the thrust of your argument that piracy is good for jobs... ??? Yeah, that's cool... let's all forget about the rule of law and see how much we can get away with.
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[Light]

Eyewoo: No my point is not that piracy is good for jobs. My point is that refering to the global economy that piracy within the stipulations and checked within measurement is neither good nor bad for the economy. Albiet a change in piracy levels either way could "cost jobs" for certain select sectors of the economy.

My point is if a person makes $100 a week and spends all of it and pirates software within my stipulations. Again, the point is how can this hurt the economy? It just transfers money over to the fittest. See it is survival of the fittest. A car is more fit for survival as far as being purchased then a piece of software at this time a least.

I am not at all saying piracy is good for jobs. I am just stating that it is probably not very bad for jobs or the economy as a whole. Even the argument that piracy affects people down to the retailers, the truck drivers, etc seems baseless according to my arguments. Only software only retail shops would be affected and this would most likely not have ripple serious ripple up effects in the economy.

Furthemore, we live in a democracy or we are suppose to live in a democracy which states the majority rule. The majority pirate software. If we could vote on this one issue don't you think the majority would vote to continue to pirate software and music as much as possible without severely affecting the software/music industry? I.e pirate as much as possible while quality software is still produced.

This might mean that it is a tryranny when software companies target individuals with undue punishment or single them out. It seems to me they are the ones implementing the aggressive non democractic policies.

Also, we must really seriously question the arguments about how much software piracy is hurting the industry when the richest man in the world is there because of software (or was until recently). In addition, one of the strongest monopolies ever created was created by means of software.

I should point out that I plan on making my living from software related industry. But, I think what I say is very true.

It is also true that the current commercial software model is not a viable model for most people who desire to achieve any use out of there computers. But, I want to keep the issue on the first point I made.

I think everyone knows this who knows anything. This is why Microsoft wants to go to a subscriber policy, and become an even greater monopoly.

I was also saying it is not easy to predict what would happen in an open-ended chaotic system if people were to suddenly stop pirating. If taken to the extreme this could hypothetically even hurt the computer industry by slowing down hardware sells and forcing software manufacters to work on lower spec machines.

The situation is just very complex and I will not believe the software companies worthless spool. It would be interesting to see some figures on how much software sells have grown in the last few years too.

[Ragnarok]

Well, I just want to state something first.
In my opinion, piracying software and selling it is really wrong and hurts the economy. And I think that's the kind of piracy companies talk about mostly, as it is the one that hurts them. Because someone is taking benefit from their work.

Also, is interesting to point that private piracy (not selling the pirate product) is a good publicity. I prefer to have an original copy than a pirate one. But I prefer to know the product before having it. And there are many cases of people that buy something they already have just to have the original.

If I'm not wrong, Microsoft made very weak protections to their products, often any, and yet they managed to sell enough to become the giant they are now. Why? Because people liked the products.
And an interesting net-fact (maybe is not true, but I think it is), the pirate WinXP copy is actually a copy of the last beta of WinXP wich was "easily" cracked. And that beta runs around 20% slower than the retail version. To me, it looks like a marketing use of the piracy ambients.
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[DrunkenMoNk]

Well that spiraled off into absurdity quick now didn't it.

Piracy in certain instances isn't bad, for instance a student who obtains pirated software isn't hurting the economy in the slightest. The company isn't losing a potential customer, since in no way would that student be able to afford the application in the first place. What it does do though is create more potential users and a larger pool of potential workers that are affluent in the application.

Corporate piracy though is the problem, corporations are in the position to pay for what they use, yet some don't. This hurts the economy because they are a viable customer for these wares yet they choose not to pay. To me that is wrong, like most instances of piracy.

The problem that many people have is that stealing software isn't really stealing, it's copyright infringement. If a person steals a loaf of bread, they are taking from someone elses supply... a tangible object if you will. Pirated software isn't reducing say for instance Adobe's supply of applications, it's a duplication much like what most people do with VCR's or PVR's. The problem lies in the redistribution of those duplications which is definately illegal, but not stealing.

Off to Light:

The problem with a person that "makes $100 a week and spends all of it and pirates software" is if that becomes the majority it destroys the incentive to creating new software. Pirates are parasites, they can't drive the economy on their own, which you seem to argue that they can.

Your arguement seems to get a bit weird after a bit...

"Only software only retail shops would be affected and this would most likely not have ripple serious ripple up effects in the economy."

How can that be true? If software only retail shops get hit economically through piracy they in turn spend less money on goods and services, which then reverberates into the companies that provide services to them spending less and so fourth on so on. Corporations drive this economy my friend, whether we want them to or not.

Lastly I really want you to think about one of your closing statements...

"Furthemore, we live in a democracy or we are suppose to live in a democracy which states the majority rule. The majority pirate software."

We live in a representative democracy first of all, if it was majority rule Al Gore would have been president (not that it would be A Good Thing (TM) or not, just stating an example). We don't apply majority rule in any form of legislation in this land. If someone goes to trial, their either guilty unanimously or not. Majority rule leads to a sort of mob mentality, just because most people say one thing doens't make it right... we've all heard the "if your friends all jumped off a bridge, would you?" arguement before.

I also refuse to believe that a majority of people pirate software, that couldn't be further from the truth. A large percentage of almost all software is purchased, even the recording industry which is supposedly getting hit by piracy extremely hard is in no way shape or form being pirated more than their selling of legitimate copies of music.

In certain situations piracy may not be that much of a problem, but it is indeed a problem and for some reason you seem to make it look like it's not.

[Light]

First, I said within limits. Note I said so long as software industry is maintable ie profitable (and it clearly is).

Second, if a person is spend all of their money or investing it then they are clearly "driving" the economy as much as possible. What happens if software company goes out of business? According to my model then these people are buying more of something else so the truck drivers that worked for the software company still have ample opportunity to get another job driving trucks. Note this is a global scale issue.. an individual could be hurt obviously.

My entire point is something like there is finite money and provided it is not SPENT on some type of black market goods (i.e. buying something without taxation) then the entire argument of this piracy hurting enconomy on a global scale can not be true.

Think about this.. we can run off virtually unlimited copies of software but not unlimited amounts of cars. So.. you see that we can't think about these things the same way. We can't make unlimited cars either because eventually the resources will burn up. Technically it might not be possible to "run off unlimited software" but this would soon become unlimited.

You are saying the majority don't rule? I agree only the informed majority should have a stake or those that care. But it sounds to me like you are saying the average person can not choose what they want. This sounds like lcommunism where the state believes a few select people should run the country. then again I agree we don't live in a true democracy.

I say if you ever pirated anything* then you are voting that you agree with software piracy in some respect.

*Unless you quit using that software and/or payed for it AND agreed that the original pirating of it before buying it was wrong.


Furthermore it is even possible upon reflection on this that software piracy has actually benefited the computer industry as a whole. It is possible hypothesis if you attribute that many people bought computers which made them easier to mass produce and gave incentive to increase them in speed which lowered the effect software prices due to language improvements.

Basically, if people couldn't pirate at least something then I'm not sure they would buy new computers, and this would mean that software could be stifled without piracy and locked into making software at higher prices on slow machines.

I am not saying this has happened. I just pretty much already stated my opinions that this ia very complex problem and not nearly as simple as the software companies make out.

[Ragnarok]

I think you part from a wrong basis. There isn't a finite number of money, because money just represents the work we do.

About the majority. It's pointless. The proportion of people that actually do piracy isn't a big percentage of the people who have computers. And not everybody has computers. So they aren't a majority.

[DrunkenMoNk]

The problem is, more often than not they represent corporations and kind of ignore us... but that's for another day .

Think it's time to stop replying to this thread before it turns into Porn & Art .

[Tommy Patterson]

95% of all piracy is coperate not home use

[dr . bang]

i thought u said u left this forum.
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[Raji]

hi... uhm yeah... is this where i sign up for yoga?... i'm looking to sign up for some yoga classes...

[balistic]

Raji: down the hall and to the left. Look for this guy .

[glody]

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