Taking The Long View: App Developer Happy That Piracy Doubled His Sales
from the look-at-the-bottom-line dept
As pretty much everyone knows, focus and perspective make all the difference in how you view anything from politics to family, and in business too. Many times in discussions on the true impact of piracy, the comments are flooded with what seems to be two firmly entrenched sides. You have those that suggest that the focus should be on whether or not infringement is wrong. On the other side, you have those that want to look at the overall impact of what is occurring.
Now, I won't stake out a position on the validity of either argument, but one of the things I hear quite often from those making the moral argument is that it's important to consider the wishes of the creator when thinking about this stuff. I happen to agree. But I also happen to think that an important change that is occurring is that creators are beginning to push away from the easy reaction of getting upset at piracy and beginning to look at the vastly more important bottom line of their business.
Take, for example, a recent blog post by Daniel Amitay on the recent relative success of his Punch 'Em -- Fight People Through Your Camera iPhone app. He had noticed that his sales had increased around the end of December and he had the same thought when preparing to write about that you're all having right now:
"This post was going to be about Christmas and how it was responsible for the (relatively) long term increase in my app sales."
But then he noticed something strange. He found that the timing with folks receiving new phones or devices for Christmas didn't really match up with the sales. Also, even after what you would expect to be the Christmas rush, the increase in sales maintained. He supplied the graph below:
Note that, whatever the timing, as piracy of his app increased, so did sales, although certainly not to correlating scale. But who cares? He got more sales! As Daniel himself notes:
"It's pretty obvious why developers get upset about piracy: uh, it's stealing. Aside from that, I'm pretty straightforward about the fact that decisions should be profit-driven. Throughout Punch 'Em!'s paid lifetime, I couldn't raise its sales count in the long term. So if thousands of users end up pirating my app, but hundreds buy it as a result of hearing about it from their pirate buddies, why should I cry?"
Forgive Daniel for conflating infringement with stealing because, as I said, I understand the natural reaction to get upset at piracy. His conclusion is far more important: it's the bottom line that matters. And that brings me back to the premise I posed at the beginning of this piece, that focus and perspective make all the difference. The bottom line is that two things happened at the same time for Daniel's iPhone app. Infringement increased nearly 40x and sales increased by more than 2x. He could easily have focused on the infringers and the fact that clearly his sales should have gone up more than 40x (even if that's not strictly a factual way of looking at it). Instead, he focused on the fact that his sales doubled, and now he's happy. And he even tried to go the DRM route and found out why that path didn't work:
"Interesting thing, I had code in previous versions which did just this. It checked (through various means) if the IPA had been cracked, displayed a message asking that they purchase the app, and exited. My conversion rate was 0%. Beyond the conversion rate issue, my app was pirated very little--after all, my app quit almost immediately, so why share it at all?"
As Nina Paley said recently, sharing increases value. Focus on the value awarded by sharing and you'll find that "piracy" can make you happy (and money!). Isn't that bottom line the most important thing on which a business can focus?
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Pick me! Pick me!
No, silly, because the bottom line can include *both* now: an increase in sales *and* the cost of suing pirates.
Of course, I'm betting the latter isn't going to happen in this case because Daniel doesn't have $17 million to blow just to get $4 million back.
Congrats, Daniel. Welcome to my side of the fence. When you step over, can you flip the bird to those who bitch too much? It'd be a great help.
>:)
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O Boy....!
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I also notice the graph doesn't have a scale to it. Are we talking 10 sales and 40 pirates? The numbers aren't there, which makes it hard to judge if this is really anything at all.
The other question would be "how is he measuring piracy"?
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Jesus people are blind and stupid.
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Give is a short while, his sales will likely dry back up, and the piracy line will remain higher all the way out until the app is not longer interesting or has been downloaded for free by everyone who would want to play it.
His next app? Maybe the same thing, except the ratio between pirates and paid will get even higher, as more people realize they just don't have to pay.
Then he will be stuck having to offer to play special games with fans for $100 a round, just to make money.
See how it goes?
Short term gain, long term pain.
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You've just described capitalism.
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What's that, piracy has been around for a whole decade and every single content industry is bringing in record dollar figures?
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Now, if piracy results in doubling his sales, with him having to do *zero* extra work, then it would be wise to focus on the money you're getting for doing zero extra work instead of the money you aren't getting for doing zero extra work. Only a very bad businessman would complain that income has increased without extra work being done.
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Sadly, it isn't all that simple.
if piracy results in doubling his sales, with him having to do *zero* extra work, then it would be wise to focus on the money you're getting for doing zero extra work instead of the money you aren't getting for doing zero extra work.
This is a very good place to start. Piracy is generating lazy money for him. He gives up the potential of a great many sales, and replaces with with a few sales. Those few sales are twice as many as the few sales he made before, but to get there, he gave up a huge marketplace.
The same results (and maybe more) could have been generated by a limited time play demo, or a decent promotional campaign, or other. Since we haven't seen him go down this route, we don't know what the end result will be.
Further, we don't know what the end result is on this product outside of a very short period. It would be more interesting to see the numbers say 3 and 6 months from now.
It should be pointed out from his blog that the numbers he is talking about are "if thousands of users end up pirating my app, but hundreds buy it as a result" so I am suspecting that the chart lines are increments of about 100 or so.
What is equally important is that as more and more apps are pirated, the overall effect in the marketplace of this sort of marketing is lost. Instead of being something unique and special, it becomes something that everyone does. Once again, the noise level rises (because you are no longer in a unique marketing position) and the message is lost.
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We're all making assumptions and extrapolating to a point, but you're the one who appears to be ignoring alternative suggestions. Here, faced with some evidence of a correlation between raised "pirated" download and raised sales, your tactic is simply to dismiss any idea that it might be leveraged in the long term.
Once again, this is not an example of a sales method that's for everybody, nor necessary sustainable over the long term. What it does represent is yet another artist/developer who's noticing that "piracy" does not have to mean "lost" sales and that there's ways to leverage the downloads into sales. I don't believe that Amitay's quite there yet, but it's another acknowledgement of something we've been saying for years right here, while getting shouted down as "pirates" from those too blind to see what's in front of them.
"It would be more interesting to see the numbers say 3 and 6 months from now."
I agree, and I do hope he makes follow-up posts with those figures and those on his next app.
"Once again, the noise level rises (because you are no longer in a unique marketing position) and the message is lost."
OK, enlighten me. How exactly does "piracy" remove every other marketing avenue? Your argument only makes sense if you depend on a single marketing and distribution avenue - something that's usually argued against here. It's a useful tool, not a means to an end in and of itself. The only real point being raised here is how paid download went up following an increase in piracy, whereas all the industry shills say that the opposite will always happen.
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I'm not ignoring it, I just don't agree with it. It isn't a "fait accomplis", it isn't a given, far from it.
How exactly does "piracy" remove every other marketing avenue?
Pretty simple. Once the product is in the "infinite" market, it is free. There is no way to forecast future sales, no way to assign a budget for marketing, no way to work a limited demo version, because people will just bypass it all and go for the free pirated version.
Why would anyone throw good money after bad, when the market is being decimated by pirated copies?
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Not true, analysis of pass trends can give you a reasonable estimate of the outcome of any endeavor.
Even with free, that is why Red Hat can have financial projections.
Free or not doesn't chance the ability of people to plot data on a line.
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What does Red Hat sell? Is their specific product widely pirated? Are they in fact selling service?
Think about it.
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Yet, you refuse to consider it or actually refute what other people are saying with anything other than "you're wrong". You don't agree with something, so you ignore it as a possibility - as I said.
"Pretty simple. Once the product is in the "infinite" market, it is free. There is no way to forecast future sales, no way to assign a budget for marketing, no way to work a limited demo version, because people will just bypass it all and go for the free pirated version."
Yet again, we see the lack of imagination involved here. You claim that "piracy" destroys marketing, and yet the only example you can come up with that might be affected is the one that involves artificially limiting a product until people pay up. Yes, that particular tactic may not work as well now - there's hundreds of other tactics that won't be affected. Try one of those.
The level of "piracy" also does not affect the level of actual sales that can be forecast, unless you start assuming that lost sales are due to "piracy". Unless you think that no movie, game, album or book for the last 20 years has had a sales forecast.
"Why would anyone throw good money after bad, when the market is being decimated by pirated copies?"
Because if you have some imagination and don't try selling the infinite good on its own, there's a lot of money to be made. Refusing to look at a market because "piracy" exists - that's a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure, and you have nobody but yourself to blame once failure comes round.
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See, this is the whole problem in a nutshell. You are accepting the idea that piracy is inevitable, and that the product has no market price as a result. That is the Masnick line from the get go, accept the piracy, don't fight it, accept your fate.
That is exactly what I don't agree with.
See, a low level of piracy is understandable and acceptable. Piracy at a very low level (where the level of piracy is far below the sales levels) isn't going to really bother anyone.
But from the graphs as provided, piracy is 15 to 20 times higher than sales. It creates a horrible situation where the people who do pay are the exceptional cases, not the rule. Once again, a small few are paying the freight for the larger community to enjoy something for free. When the people actually paying realize that everyone has it and they are the only idiots who actually paid, they will be less likely to pay for something like it in the future.
Piracy trains an entire generation not to pay.
it isn't just that piracy "exists", it is that piracy is the huge majority of the market. 15 to 20 times in this example. The buyers are only 5-6% of the total users. It isn't hard to see how that can easily slip to near zero.
What would you suggest the guy ties to his phone app to make it more sellable? Miniputt games? T-shirts? It's this sort of logic that sucks, and shows why even when you try to find the positive of piracy (more exposure), you understand that much of a market it lost as a result.
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I would try:
- guaranteed quality download
- guaranteed no spyware, malware
- free updates
- leaderboard
- top score prizes for leaderboard winners (mail out a t-shirt, just so that we can be sure "T-shirt" is in here somewhere.)
- player community
- support and service
- next version suggestion box, with recognition for good ideas
- no hassle to get additional levels unlocked
You know, stuff like that. Cuz I have an imagination. Of course, this is the same kind of stuff that Red Hat offers on top of Linux. Because it works.
What the developer needs to do is INCREASE the value of the paid version over the pirate version. That way, you actually leverage the wide distribution of the pirate (or free) version, while offering a reason to upgrade to paid (to a now-much-wider audience). In so doing, you may, in fact, see the opposite trend to what you suggest, where you have an increasing ratio of paid/pirated copies.
Now, each pirate user is a promising addressable market, which is far better than the normal app problem of obscurity.
"When the people actually paying realize that everyone has it and they are the only idiots who actually paid, they will be less likely to pay for something like it in the future."
Not if they are getting something extra for the extra money.
Let's change that to "When the people NOT paying realize there are added features, support, and service that they could access if they paid, some will be more likely to pay in the future."
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It is, and some level has been inevitable for at least as long as I've been alive... and I'm 35 years old.
"and that the product has no market price as a result."
Price != value, and the product certainly has a price. I've never argued otherwise.
"But from the graphs as provided, piracy is 15 to 20 times higher than sales."
Here's an idea for you: maybe it always has been. One of the the things that's changed with the internet is that everything's visible. The dodgy street market sellers, the friends copying disks between each other, the people who lend install disks to friends and "forget" to ask for them back... they're now all online. Perhaps the actual level of "piracy" hasn't changed, it's just that you can see everything now.
You also concentrate on the negative ("every download is a lost sale") rather than the positive ("free exposure, more sales... how can we leverage that?").
"What would you suggest the guy ties to his phone app to make it more sellable?"
The same thing everybody here keep saying with the hope that it will make it through the thick skulls of you people: a reason to buy. That might be access to exclusive online services or community, a non-infinite good that people buy after trying the "free" app or just making the app good enough, available enough and cheap enough so that people don't bother with the "pirated" version.
But again, you're still too much of an idiot to think of anything other than T-shirts....
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Sigh, you are aware that Mike didn't write this article, no? It was actually written by one of the smartest and possibly best looking young men on the planet....
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Unless you only read the title and then skip right to the comments. But, no one does that, right? :)
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This premise seems entirely unfounded. On what evidence are you basing your claim that a great many people would have paid for his app if they couldn't have pirated it?
Secondly, are you proposing a solution to this situation? Do you have some idea that will finally stamp out piracy? Or are you just complaining?
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Weird friends you have there.
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They have a very short shelf life. Every leading developer needs to constantly be working on the next app.
This is not just jaw-flapping. I've seen it in sales charts and presentations by Rovio, and other developers.
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;)
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40x vs 2x and what that means to business, consumers
However, while he is making more money, and thus this is a just fine result for him, the effect on the Market is far from what the content/application industry wants to have happen.
Here is the problem. Suppose all those that pirate his app spend their time/mind share using his app. A number of other surveys have shown that people have limited attention span for apps on smart phones today, which means that these pirates are lost to the market as a whole; They are satisfied with the pirated app, use it, and don't need to buy it or a competing app.
Put it another way, if a person's needs are met by the supply of a product that is free or inexpensive, it makes it easier to pass on products that one has to pay for.
This is exactly the effect that Microsoft is worried about with open source software (OSS), piracy, and old legacy software (OLS). As time goes on, Microsoft is less and less able to produce features in its OS and Office product lines that are not available in Open Sourced versions of competing products, or in older versions of its own software (i.e. OLS).
Piracy also might reduce demand to some degree, and piracy becomes more and more attractive when the customer 1) knows they can get that functionality for free from OSS, and 2) knows they have almost all that functionality already in their OLS they have already spent money on, and 3) they know they CAN pirate the product and get almost all the benefits of a paid version of the product.
But what does this mean for the consumer? It means if software developers want to sell to us consumers, they can't set prices so different from the perfectly functional competition (OSS, OLS, and piracy). The price we pay must serve our needs as a consumer, i.e. provide better support, provide bug fixes we care about, and better security against viruses and malware. (i.e. provide those things in a paid version that no pirated version can provide.)
The bottom line is that Piracy is a significant but far from the most significant barrier to business as usual where we are gutted as consumers at the check out counter. As more individual developers realize that they can sacrifice a Large Chunk of the market for a significant increase in the market (but much much smaller than the fore mentioned Large Chunk), then we increasingly make it difficult for huge/vast corporations (Microsoft/IBM/Apple/etc.) to compete in that space. Hardware companies can sell lots more hardware, but it becomes increasing difficult to sell expensive applications.
Software presents a huge ongoing problem for huge software developers like Microsoft and the like. How can they maintain their ever increasing profit margins under such price pressures? The market isn't going to grow faster than their prices have to drop in response to these price pressures.
Do what the big corporations can do is try to outlaw the price pressures where possible, and spread FUD as widely and thickly where outlawing isn't possible.
Regardless, change is coming.
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Re: 40x vs 2x and what that means to business, consumers
grrrr... I fail as a proof reader... Kill the "Do", should be:
"What the big corporations can do is try to outlaw the price pressures where possible, and spread FUD as widely and thickly where outlawing isn't possible"
And I should add, Individual Developers will thrive. They can make money sacrificing 40x of the market for a 2X return in sales. It is the huge corporations that cannot afford to go that route.
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re: Anonymous Coward, Jan 24th, 2011 @ 12:39pm
Every encounter with the program is a potential sale, but not every potential sale becomes actual, even if the program isn't pirated. And it's easy to see every pirated sale as "lost" even if, in many if not most cases, the individual encountering the program is somebody who would not buy it in any case.
For example, I don't have time for games. I'm a software professional by day and proofreader by night. My eyeballs are committed 100%. I might examine a pirated copy of the game to test it, but I would not, under any circumstances I can imagine buy the game. NO sale would be lost to the pirated copy. So how is the developer hurt by a non-buyer trying and then deleting a fully-functional pirate copy?
And over the "long term," as Eric Flint once remarked, "obscurity is the Great Enemy." The game leaped from obscurity, and over time, the developer will be making a lot more money from it than he would if it languished in obscurity as "just one more damned app."
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Re: re: Anonymous Coward, Jan 24th, 2011 @ 12:39pm
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Re: Re: Re: Re: re: Anonymous Coward, Jan 24th, 2011 @ 12:39pm
Look at the difference between those terms as they are defined. If you can't distinguish between theft (the owner is deprived of his property and directly incurs costs) and infringement (the owner still has possession of his goods, but has potentially lost a sales opportunity and incurs no direct costs), then you have no place arguing about how these things should be enforced.
Especially when the "thieves" and those paying for content are often the exact same people.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: re: Anonymous Coward, Jan 24th, 2011 @ 12:39pm
I think it's more that he/she refuses to distinguish between them. In which case further discussion is useless.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: re: Anonymous Coward, Jan 24th, 2011 @ 12:39pm
Carry on blithering about whether something is 'theft' or just suffers loss of earning through some scum ripping their product and making it available online. And whilst you continue to ignore the issues the people who create and actually do something will get that pissed off at being ripped off will give up doing anything.
In the last 10 years I've had -
38 of my photographs used without my permission (my starting rate for each image would normally be $75)
4 designs used without permission (my design rate for those items at that time was around $150)
1 logo ripped off by a competitor (the original client paid $100 for the logo)
You do the maths, should I be worried about whether it's classed as theft or not. Should I become anal over terminology or be more concerned that people no longer respect copyright and feel free to rip off people at random.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: re: Anonymous Coward, Jan 24th, 2011 @ 12:39pm
38 of my photographs used without my permission (my starting rate for each image would normally be $75)
4 designs used without permission (my design rate for those items at that time was around $150)
1 logo ripped off by a competitor (the original client paid $100 for the logo)
Tell me: Exactly how many times do you feel you should be paid without actually doing any work? You are complaining about being ripped off, but what would *you* call charging people $75 for permission to use a picture you took at one point in the past? I'd call it ripping people off.
I do understand your pain, you used to get paid for something, and now people can simply route around you by pressing Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V. It sucks when 4 buttons on a keyboard makes your business model completely irrelevant. Don't lose hope yet, though! You actually have a simple modification to your business model that will make copyright infringement (Note: not theft!) a thing of the past: Make people pay you before you do the work. I know, crazy, right? Sure, you'll lose the ability to keep getting paid without doing extra work (bummer, dude!) because works for hire usually end up with the party paying for the work having the copyright to the work, but at least you won't have to worry about piracy anymore.
So, you'll have to actually work to get paid, but piracy will no longer be a problem. Sounds fair, right? I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: re: Anonymous Coward, Jan 24th, 2011 @ 12:39pm
We don't all go out and snap away with a camera and expect to make money, some photographers put effort into their work, one particular image that was stolen took several weeks of planning and execution to achieve* - do you spend several weeks on a project for $75?
I do understand your pain, you used to get paid for something, and now people can simply route around you by pressing Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V.
I don't mind ctrl-c ctrl-v if people are just wanting to use images on a blog or website (as long as they give credit for the image. The ones that are annoying are the ones taken from stock catalogues where they have had to spend time photoshopping out watermarks etc before they can use them.
The more time I have to spend recovering money from copyright theft is time I could be spending actually doing something productive.
*Think flights to Norway, car hire, and a few days in -20C temps for aurora images ;-)
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: re: Anonymous Coward, Jan 24th, 2011 @ 12:39pm
Getting paid for that time and effort is a great idea. The question is, how many times do you expect to get paid for doing nothing (letting someone download a copy of your photo is doing nothing)?
do you spend several weeks on a project for $75?
Nope. If it only paid $75 I wouldn't take the job, and you shouldn't either.
The more time I have to spend recovering money from copyright theft is time I could be spending actually doing something productive.
Right. So... you should do something more productive then.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: re: Anonymous Coward, Jan 24th, 2011 @ 12:39pm
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: re: Anonymous Coward, Jan 24th, 2011 @ 12:39pm
Sorry, I don't understand the question. I can answer if you can rephrase it or explain it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: re: Anonymous Coward, Jan 24th, 2011 @ 12:39pm
Forgive me for asking, but what the hell makes you think that such a person would pay in the first place? Somebody willing to spend time photoshopping out a watermark and open themselves and their organisation up to justified lawsuits in order to avoid paying $75 is not the sort of person who's likely to just have paid the money if the image wasn't available for "free".
In that case, you didn't lose anything, as the potential income was not there either way.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: re: Anonymous Coward, Jan 24th, 2011 @ 12:39pm
Try this, put your car up for sale tomorrow, someone comes along and steals it, they were never going to pay for it anyway so your potential income has not been affected.
If I can no longer sell an image because someone has used it without permission I'd call that a problem. Though to clarify I would still have the image available on the stock library for the lower fee - it's just the exclusivity that's gone.
what the hell makes you think that such a person would pay in the first place?
I forget some people are scum, my bad.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: re: Anonymous Coward, Jan 24th, 2011 @ 12:39pm
So, again, why do you count this as "lost" income, considering they would never pay for it? Wouldn't you be better off contacting their clients and making them aware of their unscrupulous designers and telling them that you are able to produce work of equal quality for a reasonable price?
"Try this, put your car up for sale tomorrow, someone comes along and steals it, they were never going to pay for it anyway so your potential income has not been affected."
Insanely bad analogy, as ever. If I steal your car, you no longer have the car and are so deprived of both the sales value and the transportation value of the vehicle. If a file is copied, you retain all the value of said file apart from the value of selling to the person who copied (in theory, many studies show that people who "pirate" files often pay for them later).
Completely different circumstances. Again, you would do better by arguing fact rather than easily disproven fiction.
"I forget some people are scum, my bad."
Indeed they are, and they would remain so even if piracy was eradicated completely. Why would you waste time trying to sell to such people instead of the majority of honest people out there?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: re: Anonymous Coward, Jan 24th, 2011 @ 12:39pm
You should probably stop publishing your images in a way that can decrease their value like that. You won't be able to stop anyone from copying them, so don't do the work until after you get paid. Or some other solution that works for you.
Listen, I'm not saying it's OK that people are copying your images without paying. I lost my job in part because of customers copying copyrighted content. I'm not on the "filty pirates" side here. I'm just saying that trying to fight it is like trying to hold back the tide. It will take all your time and energy, and will be completely ineffective.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: re: Anonymous Coward, Jan 24th, 2011 @ 12:39pm
Interesting that even when you admit there's a difference between copyright infringement and theft, you still assume that copyright infringement means you've lost earnings.
You do the maths, should I be worried about whether it's classed as theft or not.
No, you should be worried that your business model can be destroyed by anyone with a broadband connection.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: re: Anonymous Coward, Jan 24th, 2011 @ 12:39pm
It's not semantics, any more than arguing the difference between speeding and grand theft auto is arguing semantics. They're different crimes with different inplications, different punishments and different consquences. If people like you would stop pretending that infringement and theft are the same thing, then maybe we could dicuss how best to stop it.
But, people like you are more interested in the emotional reaction from the word "theft" than intelligent discussion.
"In the last 10 years I've had -"
...and had this not happened, would those responsible have paid you? If not, any losses are purely theoretical. Did you take any action against those responsible or do you just whine about it on web forums?
"You do the maths"
According to your figures above, you "lost" $3500 over 10 years. It can't be nice to be in that position but if $350/year is breaking your income, you're doing something wrong. There are ways to leverage even unauthorised usage of your work into something positive.
"Should I become anal over terminology or be more concerned that people no longer respect copyright and feel free to rip off people at random."
Yes. Nothing was stolen - you still have the original work. A contract was breached, that is all. Calling it theft does not make it so, and you should concentrate on using the work you still have access to in positive ways, rather than whine about theft where it does not exist.
Go after those reponsible if you wish - you're totally justified, especially if they're using your work for commercial gain. But, it's still not theft.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: re: Anonymous Coward, Jan 24th, 2011 @ 12:39pm
Nice, do you stereotype everyone you meet then?
A contract was breached
What contract? There's no contracts signed in copyright theft.
$3,500 or there abouts is the amount I know about because it's been brought to my attention. And yes, I did go after the people responsible, but there read the comments on this one article alone, there is little support for people who actually try and create things people are more interested in getting something for nothing.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: re: Anonymous Coward, Jan 24th, 2011 @ 12:39pm
No, but I do judge people based on their words and actions. Nothing I've seen you write so far suggests I'm mistaken in my opinion.
"What contract? There's no contracts signed in copyright theft."
Wow, sorry if I was too cryptic for you there. Copyright is a type of contract. It's (put very simply) an agreement between an artist and the public that the creator holds a monopoly on a work of art, until the pre-arranged expiry date sends the work into the public domain.
Unless you opted out of the copyright agreement via a CC licence, putting into the Public domain, etc., then said agreement (or contract) exists. Whoever copied your work without permission is in breach of that agreement. Clear?
"little support for people who actually try and create things people are more interested in getting something for nothing."
As with far too many people in this type of discussion, I believe you have it backwards. I, for example, have every sympathy for somebody who has their work taken without permission. I have little sympathy, however, with people who cry about works being copied but do nothing to stem or stop the potential losses, or do nothing to turn such situations to their advantage.
Your situation seems to be slightly different, as you're not complaining about phantom losses through copying, but about people who have taken your work to personally profit. I sympathise, but , again, it's not theft and it's not something that can be solved by crying about it on a web forum.
Remember, this discussion started with you trying to misrepresent infringement as being the same as stealing a car. People will not sympathise with you when you deliberately lie like that.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: re: Anonymous Coward, Jan 24th, 2011 @ 12:39pm
But my short falling in legal terminology and 'business models' means I should not be allowed to voice an opinion or when I do should accept the abuse that web based discussions generate. So forgive me for 'crying' that my work has been used without permission, try spending the majority of your life creating images only for people to rip them off willy nilly and there be no real support other than sarcastic comments from the likes of nasch or of course people to tell you to stop crying. I shall of course immediately put my cameras into the cupboard, pack away my paints, and return to university to study for a business degree in order to try and prevent the low life scum who think getting something for nothing is an acceptable way to live their lives.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: re: Anonymous Coward, Jan 24th, 2011 @ 12:39pm
study for a business degree in order to try and prevent the low life scum who think getting something for nothing is an acceptable way to live their lives.
If you're after a viable career, chasing copyright infringers isn't it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: re: Anonymous Coward, Jan 24th, 2011 @ 12:39pm
It's definitely one of those, though.
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The case is much worse on the Windows side where it's a more technical user base and Google promotes piracy and cyberlockers and torrents make it easy. The starting point for software on Windows is usually doing a Google search while the App Store is the starting point on the iPhone. Type any software product in Google, and Google will suggest torrent, crack, etc. Go to the App Store on the iPhone and only the licensed version is listed.
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Re:
[citations and citations and citations needed]
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Re:
*snigger*
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Re:
It would then be simple math to see all the unique ID's that are playing your game minus the sales you know about to come up with the piracy figure.
Plus, in the quoted post he talks about his DRM, so he already had a way to determine if the game was pirated. Instead of blocking the game, he couldve easily just collected that data point.
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Old people just need to understand that and adapt.
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Re:
Sell 'em?
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Maybe someone should start collecting these... they are the pieces of much-coveted evidence about the effects of piracy (certainly more trustworthy than the industry reports we keep getting).
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Not just the future
As much as I'm all for long term gains over short term gains, and doing business in a way that all effected parties are happy, in the current environment, this is the best way to make money. RIGHT NOW, there are many fools who will still pay for stuff they know most people are getting for free, and taking advantage of their willingness to pay can yield huge profits, especially while also taking advantage of the pirates ability to publicize and distribute the works.
Both content creators and end-users will have to adapt a sustainable business model in the future, and as the foolish paying customers are converted into intelligent pirates there will be a much bigger push for content creators to figure out how to make money off of a product that is easily copied and distributed for free. BUT RIGHT NOW, THIS MODEL IS CLEARLY WORKING.
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Re: Not just the future
Everyone in the world will immediately switch to pirating everything ever just as soon as all the elderly people are dead, because no one wants to pay for anything ever. We will also kill bank guards and steal all the money from the bank, at least until we can start pirating cars and getting Insane Stunt bonus points. The Lawless Blood Of Piracy beats within our hearts and it drives us to kill and steal, can't they understand that?
/sarc
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Re: Not just the future
Reminds me of this;
http://xkcd.com/605/
Seriously, though, I don't think it's being claimed that this is a model for the future, or even now. What this simply illustrates is that - yet again - "piracy" is not instant death in the market. "Piracy" can have a positive effect, and it's possible to build business models that utilise those positive effects. At the very least, having your product copied for free does not necessarily remove sales from you.
Yeah, consumers need to realise that they should pay for things, but it's down to content providers to put the structure in place to encourage them to do this. Quite often, the current structure encourages the exact opposite, no matter how many lawsuits are filed...
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Re: Re: Not just the future
Once the less technically inclined understand there is another option besides hitting the app store, sales will disappear.
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Re: Re: Re: Not just the future
You seem to be making the usual faulty assumption - that if people can "pirate", they will never buy a product. Study after study shows this to be false, and in fact shows that people who pirate often also buy more. Feel free to back up your own assumptions, because I can certainly back up mine.
"Once the less technically inclined understand there is another option besides hitting the app store, sales will disappear."
I'm technically inclined, yet I bought several apps last week. The reason? They were good apps, reasonably priced, not region blocked so that I couldn't access them and instantly available. Most apps with all of these factors in place experience some form of success.
As ever, your argument is total bullshit.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Not just the future
The major websites that give it away (like porn tube sites) are going out of business. They have tons of traffic, but people aren't buying anything. They only way they make money is tricking people into installing spyware or buying memberships on scammy dating sites.
Piracy wiped that business out almost completely, my guess is that it is less than 10% of what it was 10 years ago.
The replacement? Free downloadable porn all over the place.
It is truly one of the best examples, because the cycle there is almost complete. You can see how it went from a successful business to dust basically in the time since Napster.
People learned not to pay, so they don't pay.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Not just the future
You show a great amount of hate for free market capitalism. Are you secretly a communist?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Not just the future
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Not just the future
I'm sure you are still doing your bit to keep the porn industry going.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Not just the future
You're sure of that are you? I guess I shouldn't be surprised. You seem sure of a lot of things that you have absolutely no evidence for.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Not just the future
Citation definitely needed for that. Are you honestly saying that *nobody* buys porn? Christ, I can still go to the newsagents any buy a copy of Playboy despite there being much more explicit content legally online for free (and of course "pirated" PDFs of the magazine itself). I hardly think that the entire industry is dead.
A very, very bad analogy - typical for you, of course.
"Piracy wiped that business out almost completely, my guess is that it is less than 10% of what it was 10 years ago."
Then, it's not "wiped out compeltely" is it? Diminished from a point of former glory doesn not mean "not in business any more". There's hundreds of factors that can account for this, other than "piracy" - legally available free amateur videos account for a lot of it, for a start.
Supply some figures and citation as to how "piracy" is responsible, please, and then we'll talk. I'm familiar with you and your horribly inaccurate guesses, which you try to pass off as fact. Once figures are supplied, we can talk details.
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Re: Re: Re: Not just the future
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Might I add....
Once 3-d printers are more common and physical goods can be copied by almost anyone on the cheap who's going to still pay money for anything besides food?
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Re: Might I add....
Wait? What happens when someone can 3-d print a 3-d printer?
Oh crap...
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Re: Re: Might I add....
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Re: Re: Re: Might I add....
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Re: Re: Re: Might I add....
In that case, though, we still require raw materials.
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Re: Re: Might I add....
Already exists.
http://reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page
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"If you like this software, dontations to the developer can be made by clicking this link"
Suggested donation $x.xx via paypal, visa - master card, amazon ...
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Re:
So assuming he made no mistakes on his part, that graph shows that after piracy started to grow his sales grow with it not the other way around.
See the D20 when the piracy started and the D31 with the sales starting to pick up momentum upwards.
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Sure you have the data to back that up, right?
Because if that was true open source would never be able to be realized and explode into the market the way it did.
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Or in other words, the less exposure you have the lesser chances you get for people to pay for it.
What makes more statistical sense? Less exposure leading to more sales or more exposure leading to more sales?
This is economics 101 people.
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I for one....
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Comparison between Piracy and Protection?
I'm a software producer and I went Rex Ryan with my knee jerk reaction: "I work my [tail] off to come up with original ideas and bring them to market and some [idiot] thinks its OK to use my [wonderful] code without [respectfully] paying for it? You're [darned] right it's stealing! If the [stuff in question] isn't yours and you don't have permission to take it or use it, case closed. We learned this in [long-ago] Kindergarten so what's the [relevant] problem?"
After thinking about it, the problem is that software, unlike a stereo or a muffin or a truck, can be reproduced infinitely without any resources after the initial production (if you don't count things like electricity and computer wear), so the "only" loss is profit from the individual who chooses not to pay.
From a business standpoint, I want to sell more code. If piracy can reliably increase my sales beyond drm/licensing efforts, then bring it on.
And I still don't think this excuses piracy. From a moral and societal standpoint, people are still using something that they haven't been given the right to use. If you were the artist making the music or the movie, you'd want to be paid ALL the money you are entitled to for your efforts. People can be remarkably open until things actually affect them.
What I would like to see is an experiment comparing the profitability of piracy versus protection. Take a piece of software. Make cosmetic changes only (the menu names, the colors, the icons, the button layout) and offer the original software and the modified software with different company names. Allow one version to be pirated while protecting the other and compare the results.
Any takers?
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Re: Comparison between Piracy and Protection?
If you read through the whole story, this developer already did that experiment. He found it resulted in very little piracy and no sales.
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