Cutting piracy would boost economy

Yeah well, the software most home users want to use is priced way out of their budgets, costing much more than the PC's hardware, for example Office.

Windows has come down to a reasonable price so I always get my clients to buy it with the hardware, or I just give it to them blank, their worries then.

Luckily OpenOffice 2 is now out and while not perfect in all respects its free, so you cant pirate it (except if you ask money for it).
 
Cutting prices (A LOT!!!) Would reduce piracy. Why the heck would I pay R220 for a music video, when I can get it online for $12? Until South Afsrican retailers stop with the silly prices, piracy is going to be a more resonable alternative to users
 
The price if DVD's is what gets to me. Dont feel the slightest bit of sympathy when they show those ads..
 
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There are bigger things to focus on that could boost the economy, piracy is the last of our worries.
 
MaD said:
There are bigger things to focus on that could boost the economy, piracy is the last of our worries.
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yep. Piracy is the very least of ZAs problems.

Introducing real telecoms competition would do a 1000000000000000000000000000000X more for our economy.
 
Reducing piracy in South Africa will not create additional jobs in South Africa, only in overseas countries. If you have a look at the pirated software and DVD's sold in South Africa, 99.9% are imports and the pirated copies sell at about the same price as the international price of such software.
 
The people that make the "Piracy will make more jobs" is the BSA! .. they are in M$'s pocket. I dont hold ANY credibility with that organisation as after being audited by the BSA after the company I was at legalised every bit of software, all they cared about was "MS Word, Visio, Windows" and some other arb MS products...

R
This is my opionion and I am sticking to it. :-)
 
in SA, pc vendors should actually distribute linux with new pc's. Windows is only for people who've already have experience with it, and are too lazy to change habits. For people new to pc's, there's no reason not to use a nice linux version (like Suse), Except the fact of course it's virtually out of most people's reach to download the latest distribution.
The statement that piracy destroys jobs is SA is nonsense in my opinion (yes it will destroy some, but affordable software will create many more to counter the loss)
 
can't really argue with that. When i was a university they brought out microsoft license for cheap if you needed it.. like really cheap so i got the os etc. If it were not for that i'd probably still be on pirate software.

I think piracy is more an indication of high cost rather than just wanting to pirate stuff. why would you want to get a dvd with crappy vcd quality rips of movies/games without support info and packaging if you could by the real thing for a good price ?
 
/me deletes 10% of pirated software on mine computer
/me feels like good citizen now that i'v done my part :p

BTW, i agree that it wont help create jobs in SA, more likely is that i might even distroy some. Rather try and make software more affordable, then not only will you see a reduction in piracy, the economy might also get a little boost because of the extra money that ppl have to spend within SA
 
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Too bad Telkom encourages downloading movies... er... I mean downloading trailers of up and coming movies with ADSL. I guess the BSA/MPAA/RIAA should go after them.
 
BSA ..... also getting into the spin game....

If piracy dropped to 0% in SA.....

BSA would have to close down and many would actually lose jobs !
Piracy is good for BSA - why they shoot themselves in the foot ?
 
pimal3 said:
Reducing piracy in South Africa will not create additional jobs in South Africa, only in overseas countries. If you have a look at the pirated software and DVD's sold in South Africa, 99.9% are imports
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I tend to agree with this. Most IP products are imported, so in fact increasing piracy in South Africa may well in fact help the local economy, by increasing the efficiency of businesses (and thus promoting exports too) and making more money available for production and local jobs. Not to mention the money one has to spend on enforcement - our cops would probably do better to focus on other things. I suppose the downside though is that if a culture of never paying for software (or movies or music etc.) becomes a bit too entrenched, there may be less incentive for local IP-based businesses to start ... ? I wouldn't necessarily think so though, because I would guess many South African based software businesses probably try also aim at export markets anyway. (Although clearly music at least is doing well everywhere, including South Africa.)

The article says some stupid things ... "Increasing tax revenues" doesn't *create* anything, it only moves money somewhere else (in fact usually from a more efficient spending structure to a less efficient spending structure). But of course this is just typical BSA propaganda.

Of course piracy is wrong in principle, but then so is the price-gouging by companies like Microsoft.

Slashing piracy drastically could have one major positive effect though on economies everywhere: 100% enforcement would cause OpenSource alternatives to flourish.
 
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As usual there are serious holes in the ideas coming from the Bullying Software Axis. All the law enforcement spending they propose is bound to eat up more than the gains in taxes - the taxes are quite low and the kind of invasive law enforcement they propose is very expensive. Increased spending on software, particular for small companies who can often only survive by not paying for their software until they are established, will mean companies shed jobs to compensate, while others will simply go out of business - alternatively they can raise prices which will either merely shift the job losses to other companies or make us all poorer and less able to afford to buy our software by shifting the costs onto the consumer.

And obviously as others have noted most of the money spent on software simply leaves the country.

Forget about WIPO. Those regulations were created by wealthy countries with broken intellectual property systems for the express purpose of bullying and screwing less wealthy countries. How about we make it a requirement that in order to enjoy protection a certain percentage of the software has to be developed locally? I know the mega-wealthy foreign software companies wouldn't go for it, but why shouldn't there be a quid pro quo?

And they can spend as much money as they like on stupid adverts equating theft of physical property with copyright infringement, it won't change the basic economic reality.

Having the police go after individuals would be an even dumber move than the prohibition on many recreational drugs. Those laws have been great for engendering respect for the police.

The only bigger liars are the major label music mafia.

In the end of course the police have some other minor things to deal with, like murders, rapes and hi-jackings. I'm sure the Bullsht Spinning Association think otherwise.
 
Actually the US was a rampant infringer of copyright in its early days. They did this because it gave them a jumpstart. Now they want to continue keeping poorer countries down by preventing them from doing the same. Think about it, once all countries reach a similar level of development and software production, and other intellectual so-called property, is spread out across the globe, much less money will be pouring into the US, Japan, etc. They have to become poorer for us to get richer (total markets are limited, the world can only accommodate so many people, so until we have easy travel to other habitable planets our market is effectively finite).
 
pimal3 said:
Reducing piracy in South Africa will not create additional jobs in South Africa, only in overseas countries. If you have a look at the pirated software and DVD's sold in South Africa, 99.9% are imports and the pirated copies sell at about the same price as the international price of such software.
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And that only if you believe that reducing piracy would cause people to buy more stuff, which I don't believe. For example, if MP3's blinked out of existence tomorrow I still wouldn't go and buy CD's.

I agree with everybody that said a large part of the problem is simply that the products involved are too expensive.
 
The BSA study provides a five-step formula for the government to protect intellectual property:
- Update national copyright laws to implement World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) obligations;
- Create strong enforcement mechanisms, as required by the World Trade Organisation, including tough anti-piracy laws;
- Dedicate government resources to the problem, including national IP enforcement units, cross-border cooperation, and more training for law enforcement;
- Improve public education and awareness; and
- Lead by example by requiring public sector to use only legitimate software.
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Here's a 1 step solution:

Drop thje f'n price!
 
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