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Software Piracy
#1 · December 9, 1997, 11:59 am
Posted by: friedo <friedo@...>
In all honesty, I don't blame people for pirating software. As a
student, I turned to FB because it was easy to use and cheap. I was first
exposed to FB when I "borrowed" the disks from a friend. I later
purchased FBII and as a good will gesture lat my friend install it too.
The fact is, people don't really think of piracy as theft anymore. It's
like copying a tape. People do it, it's against the law, but there's
nothing the recording industry can do to prevent it (unless we're talking
about videotapes where they can add backporch signals to garble copied
signal's control tracks, but then again, if you have a TBC at your
disposal, those can be filtered out.) I know if I ever do get around to
developing a commercial release, i won't hold much of a grudge if it is
pirated. I think, since we can't possibly eliminate piracy, we should
learn to take advantage of piracy instead.
For example, FB^3 is not something you can learn without a manual like
Wordperfect is. Macromedia knew this when they made Director. They sold
about 500,000 copied of Director, and more than 1 million copies of the
Manuals! Pretty clever, eh? I think this is something that Staz should
consider. Sell the manuals along with the software, obviously, but also
offer a deal so people can buy the manuals by themselves so they can have
an "extra copy" :). Any pirates will undoutedly buy the manuals, and Staz
gets revenue.
student, I turned to FB because it was easy to use and cheap. I was first
exposed to FB when I "borrowed" the disks from a friend. I later
purchased FBII and as a good will gesture lat my friend install it too.
The fact is, people don't really think of piracy as theft anymore. It's
like copying a tape. People do it, it's against the law, but there's
nothing the recording industry can do to prevent it (unless we're talking
about videotapes where they can add backporch signals to garble copied
signal's control tracks, but then again, if you have a TBC at your
disposal, those can be filtered out.) I know if I ever do get around to
developing a commercial release, i won't hold much of a grudge if it is
pirated. I think, since we can't possibly eliminate piracy, we should
learn to take advantage of piracy instead.
For example, FB^3 is not something you can learn without a manual like
Wordperfect is. Macromedia knew this when they made Director. They sold
about 500,000 copied of Director, and more than 1 million copies of the
Manuals! Pretty clever, eh? I think this is something that Staz should
consider. Sell the manuals along with the software, obviously, but also
offer a deal so people can buy the manuals by themselves so they can have
an "extra copy" :). Any pirates will undoutedly buy the manuals, and Staz
gets revenue.