How much does piracy really cost companies?

ponder said:
He does however have a point. Not every pirated copy translates into a lost sale, I'm willing to bet that the majority of copies do not translate into lost sales. Also if people could not afford it in the first place they would never have gone out and brought the product to start with if you could not copy it. If the companies really wanted to they could make the copy protection much harder or even used a system similar to Steam. Just because it got copied does not mean you would have made a sale.

How many times do people simply download something, try it and then delete it. Some people are collectors and hoard the stuff for l33t points but never actually use it. I myself on many occasions have downloaded something just to try it only to wipe it after a few minutes after I have found a freeware or opensource solution that is less bloated and works much better.
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When you pirate aka Duplicate. You don't remove the product from society, where as you STEAL it. You do. Thus, the cost of piracy to the company/artist/developer producing it, is ZERO. It also has no effect on future sales or projected sales, since the cost/lost is ZERO.

Regarding to online piracy, as downloading the CD/GAME,etc has actually increased sales of original copies. Which RIAA conveniently leaves out of there results.

Like take for example, I cannot remember who released the game or the name, 2 years ago. I think it was Sins of the solar empire, which had No DRM, no secureROM, etc. Just a key, which was easily bypassed by a keygen. This game became one of the most legit bought games of its time since everyone pirated it, decided it was a good game and then bought it.

Where as, TOKA RACE DRIVER 2 was ridden with DRM and other hightech security, you had to do a whole load of stuff to get the game working which already throws out most of the warez scene, since its made up by 99% dumb users. Hardly anyone got to play/"test" it and it had basically 0 sales.

Like I say again.
Piracy costs nothing, since it is duplicated not stolen.
 
ponder said:
He does however have a point. Not every pirated copy translates into a lost sale, I'm willing to bet that the majority of copies do not translate into lost sales. Also if people could not afford it in the first place they would never have gone out and brought the product to start with if you could not copy it. If the companies really wanted to they could make the copy protection much harder or even used a system similar to Steam. Just because it got copied does not mean you would have made a sale.
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Look at it this way, say you own a supermarket and people steal R10 000 worth of goods from your store, you go to your insurance company to claim the R10 000 and they tell you no because the people who stole wouldn't have paid for it anyway and thus they don't have to pay you the R10 000 as it is not a loss of income.
 
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Great article, hope this means we won't get more of those BS articles by staff Writer?

what people mus remember are are 4 kinds of pirates
a) People who can't afford to pirate Eg. students
b) try before you buy
c) freeloaders (DL it for free even tho they have the money)
d) sellers of pirated stuff

now IMO C and D should be thrown in jail, they are the ones hurting companies
 
SpoOkie said:
Look at it this way, say you own a supermarket and people steal R10 000 worth of goods from your store, you go to your insurance company to claim the R10 000 and they tell you no because the people who stole wouldn't have paid for it anyway and thus they don't have to pay you the R10 000 as it is not a loss of income.
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please.. if you going to come her at least use some good metaphors, you post was disproved before it was even saved.
 
Jan said:
The question remains: How bad is the damage really, because the numbers being fed to decision- and policy-makers have been shown to be inaccurate time and again.
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Well, the statistic that interests me is the iPhone one: if only 5% of iPhones are jailbroken, then only 5% of the iPhone owners could potentially run pirated games. If the 80% piracy rate on iPhone games is a valid number, then this implies that a relatively small group (< 5%) of the potential market is responsible for almost all of the piracy, and that those persons typically pirate multiple games.

You are still left with the remaining 95% of the iPhone owners to whom you could sell your games. Granted, the actual gaming audience may be only a small fraction of the whole population, but it does seem a bit whiny to go on and on about piracy if it only affects 5% of your potential market.

So maybe they should stop worrying about the damages, and rather try to make a sale to the majority (the remaining 95%) by forging a good deal: great games at low prices = lots of sales.
 
Jan said:
Heh. Would that really cause pirates to stop pirating, though? Recently the guys from Wolfire games had a thing going they called the "Humble Indie Bundle" where they sold 5 games and contributed to two charities and you could pay what you wanted. Even $0.01. A relatively conservative estimate puts piracy statistics of that at 25%.

They (and the people in the comments) give four basic scenarios for the statistic:

1. People want to share the bundle with their friends so they make one large donation and share the download link.
2. The payment gateways offered (PayPal, Google Checkout, Amazon) might not be available to some people, whether due to country restrictions or not having a credit card or an account at a bank that PayPal supports. They might feel they have no choice but to download the games without paying.
3. There are people that are too lazy to go through the payment process.
4. Some people feel they need to be chronically rebellious.

So the question is... How much of that 25% fall in scenario 3 and 4?
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it is NOT the only criteria to stop piracy. But it is the MAJOR factor to decrease piracy. :)

do you think how many people will use pirated window if it is for R50 (FULL VERSION)? I will buy an original copy. :)
 
Tpex said:
please.. if you going to come her at least use some good metaphors, you post was disproved before it was even saved.
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How about this then, you are using something without paying for it. That my friend is stealing you might want to take commercial law 101 its pretty blatant. You might put a pretty word over it but it is in fact stealing.
 
The thing is, the more you treat me like a criminal, the more I'm going to act like one.

This is most apparent with PC games. I game on my PC a lot, and I purchase every single one of my games. Despite this, I have to put up with some of the crappest DRM I've ever come across in my life, whilst my friends pirate the game and don't have to bother with it at all. It's frustrating that despite the fact that I'm giving you my money, I still get worse service.

Solution? I crack all the games I own.
 
Piracy no doubt costs companies money, to think that all us pirates would not buy something if we had no choice is not really the truth but the fact remains that we can pirate so instead of wondering how much it costs why not wonder, how do i turn those pirates into money?

Now they do not actually care about that because they make a killing off people buying legally so to them they are just wanting more income without actually bringing prices down or looking for better ways to reduce pricing.

People can say what they like but you can be damn sure a pc game would not be so cheap if piracy was not so high, look at console game pricing it is very high because piracy is far lower than pc. Believe this or not piracy keeps pricing low, without it they would charge more not less as some may suggest.


Argggggggggg :D.
 
SpoOkie said:
How about this then, you are using something without paying for it. That my friend is stealing you might want to take commercial law 101 its pretty blatant. You might put a pretty word over it but it is in fact stealing.
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No in this case its copyright infringement, and I never said it was right
 
People seem to be missing the point. Pirating is not stealing but duplicating/copy right infringement as said above. It also doesn't affect the sales of the company. However, it does affect the possible sales of the company. Now some people have flawed logic: ''but they make millions, it doesn't hurt them". Wrong. It has a huge impact on companies. Think about it. That company could have made a greater movie/game/song if they had a higher profit. Seriously quality of a product is directly proportional to total income the company has (in the ideal case scenario anyway).

Personally I think that they need to invest some serious money into anti-piracy measures. Possibly even have the rights to search your computer without questions. Now this last point I really doubt and will not defend really due to implications due to invasion of piracy but they should at least have good anti-piracy measures. These measures should hinder the use of the product as some measures do (drm/etc). Now this is the problem of course. If they do come up with an excellent anti-piracy solution companies need to learn very fast that they won't make profits by selling software that cost the size of a house.
 
They will of course probably never search computers. Even if they can do nothing, not even force delete it. Maybe force Microsoft to give you a message of the piracy software and play the sound of a girl crying in the background :P. It is a growing problem. I view piracy as a growing tree. It would be pointless to waste months with each little atom. Better to stop its growth and let it die out.
 
dablakmark8 said:
true,i will always be a digital pirate:twisted:

ok the facts of life--we pirate all the time and we do this so much that we sit with gigs of things we will never use and all it does is go into storage on our tera drives:D

We hope that there will come a day when we will be using it,but we never get there as there is always something new or better out there and we just keep doing it to ourselves.WE are truly a strange bunch of x generation.

Now a real pirate like #&$%# he sells this stuff and this is where the line gets drawn:D
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I'm soooo like that... :whistle:... I have thousands of music albums and movies that I never really watch or listen to. It's just nice to know you have. :D

It costs them nothing, as I would definitely not have bought 99% of the stuff anyways...:D
 
SpoOkie said:
How about this then, you are using something without paying for it. That my friend is stealing you might want to take commercial law 101 its pretty blatant. You might put a pretty word over it but it is in fact stealing.
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There is a big difference between theft and copyright infringement. In many countries copyright infringement is a civil matter and not a criminal matter. Maybe go brush up on your commercial law 101 as you cannot seem to grasp the difference ;)
 
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