Quote:
Originally Posted by Fastolfe
- The mostly-honest who do petty thefts if they can get away with it and if it's not too much hard work: they are those who see the wallet, look around to check that no-one is around, and pocket the cash. They are the overwhelming majority of people.
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I completely disagree. In fact there was an informal study cited in the book "Freakonomics" (or was that "Outliers" - sorry don't remember anymore. It seems someone kept meticulous records about a "serve yourself a bagel and drop the money in tin style business", including informatipn on how many bagels were not paid for, what parts of the city this was in, which building, and even which floor. It seems that based on his long term bookkeeping about 80%(again from memory) of the people are honest. The funny thing was that there was a correlation between how high up in the building you are and increasing theft. It seems people at the "top" (managers, vips, ceos) felt they were more entitled to a free bagel then the remainder of the public.
The author cites a number of related studies and he found that 80% is a good number. Obviously, broad economic conditions where not controlled for nor was the fact that these people were all employed (no one was starving) and that bagels were reasonably priced.
So you may be surprised how may be surprised about how many truly honest people there are out there. Especially for a fairly priced item that they actually "own" - ie. could sell to someone else, or consume as they desire.
"Food" for thought ;-)
The other thing to take into consideration, is the demographics of ebook and book buyers. Somehow, I do not think they are the general public nor do I think they match up well with teens and young adults who pirate software or music.
Unfortunately, there is not much hard data out there to address any of these issues.
No one has ever tested EULA click agreements in the fine print in things called "Stores" in court (that did not have a written contract associated with it).
There have been a few tests by authors of removing DRM from their books and they actually increased their sales (see the WSJ and O'Reilly data on these) but they were not large scale statistical experiments.
In fact, I think we may have a good PhD student behavioural statistical study idea that could be done in a lab setting with actual ebooks! Of course you would have to have good demographics about current book and ebook buyers from which to draw a properly randomized sample. I will see if I can get any of our students interested in trying it.