P2P Networks Blamed For Software Losses Doubling 786
L1TH10N writes "CNET News is reporting that software manufacturers have doubled their losses to $29 billion dollars, according to a BSA survey, which is blaming P2P networks for their misfortune. Seems a little too far-fetched to me - a P2P network would be the last place where I would download software, just too much chance that you are downloading a trojan onto your computer. Me thinks the Business Software Alliance are jumping on the bandwagon and vilifying P2P networks just as the Senate is taking aim at P2P providers."
Why steal software? (Score:5, Informative)
On the other hand, most of the truely great apps are written for linux. They are usually feature packed, have very little security problems, etc.. Examples would be MythTV [mythtv.org], Apache [apache.org], MySQL [mysql.com], the GIMP [gimp.org], Mozilla and Firefox [mozilla.org], etc... The list goes on!
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Linux software vs Windows software (Score:3, Informative)
Apache vs IIS
Apache is free and has less security problems
Mozilla vs IE
ditto above
the GIMP vs Photoshop
Not a graphics person here... Need help.
Please list more.
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Re:Newsgroups (Score:2, Informative)
The emule users are really community-based. Many files are released in forums by people you can trust a lot more than the regular Joe Kazaa user.
Re:Why steal software? (Score:5, Informative)
DUH (Score:2, Informative)
Why do you think the trojans are there? Because there are so many people on there downloading software.
Bittorrent is P2P too, and it's changing the scene. It used to be the elite got fast connections to 0-day stuff, bittorrent by it's design makes the hottest most popular stuff the most available.
Now, I believe the industry is shrinking due to natural causes. There's frankly enough software there. People have programs to do the stuff they want, they really don't see the need for new ones.
Of course I'm talking about "not games". But I've been using the same handful of apps dialy for years.
Re:Linux software vs Windows software (Score:3, Informative)
http://linuxshop.ru/linuxbegin/win-lin-soft-en/tab le.shtml [linuxshop.ru]
Here's the link to Google's cache of that site, as it appears to be down at the moment:
http://snipurl.com/7lhd [snipurl.com]
Re:But Would They Have Bought It Otherwise? (Score:5, Informative)
"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."
A fuller examination of this discussion can be found at K5 [kuro5hin.org].
not worth the effort to 'steal' (Score:3, Informative)
I used to spend some money on software. I don't anymore. It is not P2P, it is the massive integration of software in the OS, the lack of interesting innovation, and availability of free software. These factors mean that I pay significant money to Apple, but not much to anyone else. The most relevent is that most sofware people need comes with the computer. Most people are not to pay to upgrade software. They will just buy a new machine in a couple years. The upgrade fees will be half the cost of the machine!
But the most interesting of these to me is the lack of useful innovation, the corollary to which is the inclusion of stupid or harmful features. The best example is Quicken. I I still use my copy from many year ago. They haven't really done anything new that I need, and they keep pissing me off with their anti-customer scheme. Instead of continuing to build a good product, they wasted time on websites intended to squeeze more money from customers. I need to buy a new copy for OS X, but I don't trust them anymore. I will probably try an OSS instead.
Re:Lost Revenue: Formula (Score:2, Informative)
(computers bought - software purchased) = software pirated
So if 1000 computers were bought, and only 900 computers were shipped with Windows, and 50 copies of Windows were purchased, then they calculate that 50 copies of Windows were "pirated". They used this same trick for Photoshop, Office, and other programs.
So if you buy a computer and don't have Office pre-installed, and don't purchase a copy from the store, they count that as a "pirated" copy of Office, because obviously you need a copy of Office, right?
Ridiculous. I don't trust the BSA's stats farther than I can throw a truck.
Dlugar
Re:I admit it. (Score:4, Informative)
That's what is so great about the Alias guys. They supply a free, fully featured version of Maya as a learning tool -- Maya Personal Learning Edition [alias.com]. There is a watermark on all the renders (and they obviously prohibit commercial use), but aside from that, its pretty much the real deal. I wanted to learn a little about Maya, so I downloaded it off of a p2p network. Then when I found out about Maya PLE, I ditched the p2p one and started using their free version, complete with snazzy tutorials. One downside: no linux version of the PLE.
I have another idea (Score:5, Informative)
I know that five years ago, when I wanted software to do something, the first place I looked was a CompUSA or such. Today, the first place I look involves the link above.
When I wanted software to back up my DVDs, I spent a bare minimum of time searching around before I found free, open-source solutions on-line, where once I might have paid $100 for shrink-wrapped software.
And I do not think I am the only one.
Re:Why steal software? (Score:4, Informative)
Quanta [sourceforge.net] really isn't bad.
Visual Studio is the best development suite I've used.
I'm hooked on Anjuta [sourceforge.net]. Others may prefer KDevelop. [kdevelop.org]
Or Matlab.
Octave [octave.org] completely replaced the casual use of this for me.
Re:Newsgroups (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why steal software? (Score:3, Informative)
Try Eclipse [eclipse.org]. It's got awesome refactoring capabilities, CVS integration, and unlimited potential thanks to its plugin architecture.
Re:Free Software for Mathematicians (Score:4, Informative)
I keep most of my Matlab code Octave-compatible with little trouble, but that just works for the core Matlab features. Matlab has much better (and friendlier) plotting than Octave's gnuplot interface, a nice IDE, and nice (although separately sold) "toolbox" packages for dozens of different application categories. Even the parts of Matlab I don't like are still a step above Octave; Matlab's sparse matrix support is pretty weak, for instance, but (without some unpopular patches) Octave hasn't got them at all.
Re:Silly article summary (Score:5, Informative)
First, shareware may be dead, but it's mostly because freeware (open source or not) has killed it. I honestly can't think of single shareware (or even adware) application that doesn't have a near-equivalent, sometimes superior, freeware replacement. And I'm talking about Windows applications.
Second, the problem with software (and music, and movies, and soon books once electronic readers improve, basically all so-called information goods) is that it's what economists call a pure public good: it's nonrival in consumption (my consumption has absolutely no effect on your consumption of the same good) and non-exclusive (you can't prevent me from consuming it). This is a classic case of market failure and an underlying cause of the 'free-rider' problem.
So yes, basing your business model on the production of a pure public good is problematic. I'm obviously simplifying, but the public good nature of information is *the* heart of the 'piracy' problem and it's silly to try moral-suasion in the face of economic reality.
Re:P2P piracy is a problem (Score:3, Informative)
Why do you think there have been a flood of massively multiplayer online games of late? Because you can't play if you don't pay. No easy way around that.
Exactly--the MM people are selling a service, because they've figured out the software is commoditized. Now these things aren't my cup of tea--if I'm going to buy a game, I'll be buggered if I'm going to pay a monthly fee on top of it. But the fact that this razor blade marketing has been shown to work in games provides hope for the other segments of the software industry. Unless . . . OpenOffice.org doesn't charge a monthly fee and $DOMINANT_WORD_PROCESSOR does. Therein lies the real threat.
Re:Newsgroups (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Silly article summary (Score:3, Informative)
However, since we're being so exact, lets look at some definitions, courtesy of Google.
Copyright Infringement: Violation of copyright through unauthorized copying or use of a work or other subject matter under copyright. The distribution of material protected by copyright restrictions without a author's permission.
Theft: Any act of stealing, including robbery and burglary. The wrongful taking of the property of another.
Since copyright assigns rights of ownership to the copyright holder, any 'Unauthorized copying,' would be 'wrongful taking of property.'
Now these are just dictionary terms, so lets take a look at how legally the term 'Theft' is used. From the Personal Insurance Federation of California Insurance Reference Book [pifc.org] THEFT: This is the common word for "acts of stealing." There is no precise meaning in law.
It would seem that it is not so much of a leap to call Unauthorized copying wrongful taking of property, which would be theft, and since it has no precise meaning in law, it might be that its not wrong to call Copyright Infringement theft.
Re:Silly article summary (Score:1, Informative)
Also, let's remember that it used to be $400 per app, not per suite - and Office consists of 4 apps. So, the price to most consumers has dropped ~90% over the past 15 years.
Re:Silly article summary (Score:5, Informative)
What the copyright holder owns is the copyright itself, not any particular copy of a work or the medium that it's contained on. The only way to "take" this from the copyright holder would be by fraudulently claiming to hold the copyright youself.
Any particular copy of a work and the medium that contains it is owned by the person who bought it. The copyright holder does not own that copy at all; what he has is a "lien" that prevents the owner of the copy from making further copies in most cases.
If the owner of the copy infringes on the copyright, he has violated the terms of the lien. This makes copyright infringement more akin to trespassing than to theft.
Re:Silly article summary (Score:2, Informative)
at the same time, there are many more who believe that software (in general) is highly overpriced, and thus they are being severely ripped off (and will not tolerate being ripped off).
People will tend to buy what their familiar with:
OS $200
office suite $400
Antivirus package 40/yr.
Internet Access 120-500/yr.
Looking it at through most users eyes, You're looking at a minium of $800 in nothing tangible in their first year of having their PC. This is just for the 'essentials' a computer should have.
compare that price to the $500 their friend can build a good "barebones" pc for them, and its no wonder people feel that their getting ripped off.
Look at it this way: $800 for 4 cd's vs $500 for a whole pc!
If companies sold software to consumers at the price that they sell to OEM's, a lot more people would be a lot more willing to shell out for their favorite software package. at least, that is what i believe.
Pirates lose market share (Score:2, Informative)
No, it didn't (Score:1, Informative)
Never.
Office was $130/app as late as 1997. I know, because I only needed MS Word, and I paid $120 for it at Egghead. You could also get the entire suite for $400, but it was unbundled back then. It was never priced at $400 per app. The most expensive app back in the "good old days" was dBase III+, and it was probably that price (or slightly more).
MS realized at some point that most people were better off buying the two most useful apps.... Word and Excel for $260 and not the entire suite for $400. However, they also realized that they were better off forcing you to pay then another $140 to get the entire suite. And you know why they were able to do that? WP for all intents and purposes died off leaving MS with a monopoly. Prices went up. What a shock.
So please, lay off the BS. A lot of us were alive and remember the "old days".
Re:Newsgroups (Score:5, Informative)
Kazaa (and any other software that uses the same networking protocols) uses a very simple file hashing mechanism to identify files. It is trivially easy to produce a modified file that confuses Kazaa into thinking it is the same as an original source file. This could be used to plant trojan horse software into your download.
If you insist on downloading software, use a network, such as gnutella, that uses a secure hashing algorithm (gnutella uses SHA1 -- edonkey et al use MD4 which is not as safe, but still much better than kazaa) to verify the file you downloaded is the one you wanted. And look up those SHA1 codes on a suitable catalogue web site (there are plenty of links from any P2P related site) before running the downloaded program.
Re:Silly article summary (Score:3, Informative)
Nonsense. An optional luxury item like a Rolex is in no way comparable to an essential work item like a wordprocessor.
M$ is a monopoly. They didn't go from nothing to being one of the richest companies in world by giving customers value for money. They did it by manipulating the market, by being lucky, by largely buying, not creating, a few good software products and by being the beneficiary of an unstable market with an extreme economic network effect leading to winner-take-all. They are currently being paid something like $30,000,000,000 plus per year for a dozen programs they largely wrote more than a decade ago. That's insane.
Any system which allows this to happen is badly broken. You can bullshit all you like about rights and how they've earned it but the simple fact is these so-called rights are simply bad law, not natural human rights, and they haven't even remotely earned it. Any bleating by past and present microsofties about "rights" is nothing more than parasites worried that they might lose their free ride.
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It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
Re:Newsgroups (Score:2, Informative)
You can sell it once, no more. I can sell a car that has been sold to me.
read the goddam EULA before you start spouting terms like "outright wrongness"
Re:Newsgroups (Score:3, Informative)
When you acquire an upgrade. That's not what you were arguing. If you buy a new, FULL version of the software, you can sell your old one.