I
read an article a long time ago about piracy. It asked whether pirating some
software is the same as stealing. The article itself was not enlightening. But
there were a lot of comments on the article. There were a bunch of great ideas
buried in those comments.
There
was a thread about telling software developers to stop whining about piracy.
Digital goods almost want to be free. Many people conduct illegal activities.
Software piracy is not immune to this. Copyright in general is abused. So will
software.
Let’s
get down to the nuts and bolts. The people who steal software were never going
to actually buy the software. So there is no real missed opportunity for
revenue. If that theft costs you some actual money, such as the cost for extra
bandwidth for their downloads, maybe a developer has a beef. But this amount is
probably going to be a lot less than the purchase price of the software.
The
good thing is that not everyone know how to pirate software. You can put some
safeguards and protection in there. None of that will be foolproof. But you
might be able to make it hard enough to pirate software, so that it is easier
for would be thieves to not do it or actually buy your software. This will be
especially so if you prices are low.
