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wgrimm · 07-31-2010, 09:03 PM

Piracy is misunderstood, especially in terms of economic damages. I think a large part of the reason is that no one has developed a rational set of rules for defining and dealing with digital products like ebooks and software.

With actual, tangible, material products like cars, price is paramount. If you spend $150k for a top of the line car, like a new Benz, you get what you pay for. The product is better than what you would get by buying a cheap Kia. The price of the Benz is higher because of superior workmanship and inputs.

But that does not hold true for digital products. Take one of the best operating systems out there today- OSX. When I bought the Snow Leopard upgrade, I spent less than $100. To purchase it new would have cost (I think) $125. That purchase price gave me 5 user licenses. Now, look at the competition from Microsoft. Windows 7 can cost you almost $400 if you buy the decent version, which is less crappy than Vista, but still crappy and far inferior to OSX. And that gives you a single license.

And an even better server OS is BSD UNIX, and I can get that for free. And I am not constrained using or developing for it as I would be with the gnu license. I don't have to share source for any mods I make or products I develop for BSD. Back in the 80s, AT&T sold unix svr3 source code licenses for 64k. But bsd source could be had for free, and it turns out the people at Berkeley wrote 98% of AT&ts unix.

It all makes little sense to me.

07-31-2010, 09:03 PM	#13
wgrimm Addict Posts: 230 Karma: 334908 Join Date: Oct 2006 Device: multiple	No clear rules Piracy is misunderstood, especially in terms of economic damages. I think a large part of the reason is that no one has developed a rational set of rules for defining and dealing with digital products like ebooks and software. With actual, tangible, material products like cars, price is paramount. If you spend $150k for a top of the line car, like a new Benz, you get what you pay for. The product is better than what you would get by buying a cheap Kia. The price of the Benz is higher because of superior workmanship and inputs. But that does not hold true for digital products. Take one of the best operating systems out there today- OSX. When I bought the Snow Leopard upgrade, I spent less than $100. To purchase it new would have cost (I think) $125. That purchase price gave me 5 user licenses. Now, look at the competition from Microsoft. Windows 7 can cost you almost $400 if you buy the decent version, which is less crappy than Vista, but still crappy and far inferior to OSX. And that gives you a single license. And an even better server OS is BSD UNIX, and I can get that for free. And I am not constrained using or developing for it as I would be with the gnu license. I don't have to share source for any mods I make or products I develop for BSD. Back in the 80s, AT&T sold unix svr3 source code licenses for 64k. But bsd source could be had for free, and it turns out the people at Berkeley wrote 98% of AT&ts unix. It all makes little sense to me.