On Copyright & Piracy

Up front, I don't condone or endorse piracy (lest someone sues me), and this post is simply bringing a bit of background to the table. You know, a different view point, if you will, helping people to make a more informed (rather than disformed) decission.

For one, there are several differences between movie/music piracy and software piracy, second, between piracy in Asia (say) and the West. Not all pirates are created equal and motives between users tend to vary, as well.

Let's talk Asia first.

In a country where a typical middle class income is below $500 a month and a basic computer costs about $300, why are software packages priced in a way to tripple the purchase price of a computer?
You see, buying a computer for $300 when you earn $500 a month, takes you about six months of saving. The computer then comes with an illegal OS and a pirated copy of M$ Office installed.
If you bought the same computer with a legal version of M$ Windows, it would have cost you $250 more. Add a licensed copy of Office Pro and the machine totals out at about $950.00
If you earned $500 a month and lived in Asia, then you would have had to save whatever you could for about 18 months to afford it.
12-18 months after your purchase the machine is outdated and software upgrades either need faster CPUs or more RAM.
This is about the time when you saved enough to replace the old system. In other words, to have basic computing packages with legal software at your disposal, you'll never have money to spend on anything else...

Of course, if you didn't have a computer you would have had little chance to land a $500 a month job and would have had to work as an unskilled or underskilled factory hand for $200 a month. Then ot would have taken you three years to afford a computer with pirated software and the better part of your youth to buy M$ Office.

What do we learn from this? If 'they' want to fight piracy in Asia, simply drop the price to fit the average income in the countries in which they want to sell licensed copies. Duh!
If they don't, then buyers will use pirated software. As simple as that. Or they will stop buying computers altogether.

In the West people earn more, and buying licensed software hurts them less.

Then why do some people still prefer pirated software, or to put it differently, is there a way to maybe even justify the use of pirated software in the West?

I believe there is.

You see, if you buy a new car, you get a warranty and can be reasonably sure that the car will last as long as the warranty and that if there are faults or damages that you get them fixed for free, often getting a free rental while your car is being fixed, right?
Software is faulty almost by definition. There are no warranties. Worse, you don't even own the software per se, you only buy the right to use it. And with some wellknown packages you don't even get that. With them you RENT the right to use the software.

Imagine you got a new box, and it actually seems to work (yeah, I heard that this actually happens. Really. Okay, not often. But it is possible. Let's just assume for argument's sake, okay?).
So there you are with a functioning computer, doing some major work. Backing up to a floppy every now and then. Then Office screws something up, Windows freezes, you work is gone and when trying to use the floppy in another system you realize that the heads in your other drive were unaligned and the floppy can't be read.
Tough luck! The fine print says, in not so many words, "the customer hereby accepts that he is screwed and waives his right to any discourse".

So, if they give you garbage to begin with, and you risk your time and effort using it, and experience shows that as soon as they finally have most of the garbage issues looked after, and everything runs smoothly (I know, but this is theoretically speaking, okay?), that is about the time the garbage is outdates and replaced with a new faulty piece of crap.

And no, you do not really have a choice. You can't opt out. Not really.

Saying you don't have to use M$ software is like saying, everyone could build their own car, when car ownership was just about mandatory.

I like Microsoft. Yeah, I actually do. Without them computers would still cost $5,000 a piece and the net would still be a tool of ubergeeks and Pentagon's paper tigers.
So, credit where credit is due. We owe Microsoft a lot. And we all paid them a lot. So why pay more if they don't improve?

To sum up, if software was priced in a way that fits the national and regional income brackets and if software was treated like other manufactured items in terms of warranty and reasonably assured functionality, then there would be no piracy to speak of.

Think about it.

I'll post about movies and MP3 collections (oops) later, in part 2.