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From: chase@Ozona.orc.olivetti.com (David Chase)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: Copywrongs
Message-ID: <47252@oliveb.olivetti.com>
Date: 28 Aug 89 23:16:46 GMT
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Reply-To: chase@Ozona.UUCP (David Chase)
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In article <15885@pollux.UUCP> merlin@smu.UUCP (David Hayes) writes:
>	Well, *some* software is sold.  The last estimate I heard, from
>ADAPSO, I believe, is that the small-computer world has 9 copies made
>from every legally sold copy.  By those stats, it seems the market will
>bear about 10% of what software companies are currently charging.

Not that this is relevant to the goodness, badness, or
anything-else-ness of the GNU Copyleft, but your interpretation of the
statistics is woefully out-to-lunch.  All we know is that of the users
of software, 10% believe that the price is worth paying (and that the
law should not be broken) and 90% believe that given a choice of
breaking the law and paying the price, they'll pay the price.

You seem to assume that legal-use-rate times price is equal to some
constant, and this is definitely not the case.  For example, if the
price is lowered by 90%, will there still be *some* piracy, somewhere?
Almost certainly.  Furthermore, if this relationship actually does
hold, it seems that it is in the interests of the vendor to raise
their price until they ship only one copy -- the same amount of money
flows in, and maintenance and upgrades (such as they are) will be
vastly simplified, along with distribution.

The impression that I get from reading things in the industry rags and
looking at the pricing of software is that vendors are convinced that
a pirate is a pirate, at any price, and that reducing price will
affect only profits, not piracy.

In practice, I think that vendors (of PC software) are failing to ask
themselves the question "how much 'better' is this than the existing
similar products" (where "better" is defined by users) and pricing
accordingly.  (Does this mean that I'm a pirate?  No.  A good friend
writes software for a living, such as it is, and piracy clearly hurts
him.  I've worked as a DJ, and am a fan of obscure bands appearing on
small labels, and piracy clearly hurts them because many of them just
barely get by.  If I want something but it costs more than I want to
pay, I do without.)

In fact, I haven't yet figured out the difference between "free
software" and "free music"; can someone enlighten me?

David