I ran across some interesting stories lately where different people express their view on the added value of piracy. Check "The Marketfunction of piracy" as an example.
It's safe to say that giving something away for free is the most effective way to market a new or even existing product. So in my opinion we can safely conclude that from a marketing point of view, piracy is the illegal equivalent of handing out free samples to everyone who has a slight interest in your product.
Writer Cory Doctorow, who makes his work publicly available in electronic formats, has a solid point of view: As long as the gain outweighs the losses, it's good business to make my work publicly available. Offcourse it's the distinction from all other writers who do not do this yet, that got his name in the news and his work spread around. But the fact remains that he now earns more due to the fact that uncontrolled copies are widely available.
There are bands and artists that made their fame and fortune through filesharing and p2p-networks. And there are even more of them trying to make their way to stardom through these methods of uncontrolled copying.
I will take Microsoft as an example now, but remember this thesis can be applied to a lot more products and companies.
If Microsoft had made an operating system which could not be pirated, would they still have had such a dominant share in the market and would there revenues be better or worse than they are now? An unpiratable version would have "forced" a good share of users towards alternatives, which would have had a much better chance to gain popularity and maybe become a new standard.
Would it be fair to say that by deliberately not making a solution that cannot be copied/abused/pirated, the company has gained more or secured more than it has lost or could have lost? That in turn would mean that a user of pirated software added to the company value, for example through using the Microsoft standard for webbrowsing, the Microsoft standard for documents, etc. etc.
Taking this into consideration, I still think software should be bought if the author chooses to make it closed source, but I can't really be very harsh when judging piracy. Offcourse a pirated copy is illegal, but how morally wrong is it?
If I put 1000 cars in front of my house with the key's easily obtainable and the doors open. They run on regular gas, but even better on my own what is known as "mrbeekfuel", which is offcourse widely available at my own gasstations. I'd consider myself a hypocrit for judging the carthieves while they fill there tanks with my very profitable "mrbeekfuel", and slowly setting my fuel a new standard.
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