Software Piracy

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One word about Piracy

Pirates usually exert physcial violence to obtain their goal of robbing a physical good. Using software without paying usage fees does not involve physical violence or threat of death. This is the first deliberate wrong connotation when the proprietary software industry uses the term 'Software Piracy'.

From the Wikipedia Article:

A pirate is one who robs or plunders at sea, or sometimes the shore, without a commission from a recognised sovereign nation. Pirates usually target other ships, but have also attacked targets on shore. These acts are known as piracy. Unlike the stereotypical pirate with cutlass and masted sailing ship, today most pirates get about in speedboats wearing balaclavas instead of bandannas, using AK-47s rather than cutlasses.

How does it fit together?

To be able to claim money for the use of existing software a shortage of this good has to be brought about artificially. Physical goods like flour to bake bread underly external parameters, e.g. a flood or drought. With software this has to be accomplished by selling limited licenses to use software packages. The art of this business is to not ever set the price higher than what people can afford without starting to think, because people tend to be quite ingenious when they do start to think.

One pragmatic "solution" to this artificial shortage caused by the proprietary software industry is "Software Piracy". The software industry tries to pronounce the great losses caused by piracy, but in reality it is only a marginal and easily manageable problem. It can even be misused as marketing and distribution channel.

• most legal systems condemn piracy thus limiting it to a black market
• the industry can comfortably use legal measures and public finances to prosecute piracy
• people using stolen goods usually do that because they cannot afford paying for it, thus it is a rather unprofitable market anyway
• markets can be dominated easily by the help of the pirates who busily spread the (intentionally easy to crack) software
• proprietary rights can be claimed later

Lately the whimpering about dislosses caused by unsold licences (what a crap, when you come to think of it) hace receded. Marketing seems to have won the fight over the license swat commando in corporate strategies.

This is good for everybody.

Thank you.