Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!well!farren
From: farren@well.sf.ca.us (Mike Farren)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Pirates and swapware
Message-ID: <18831@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: 2 Jul 90 13:36:47 GMT
References: <1990Jun24.075559.13459@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <90U702Unb2ZK01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> <18721@well.sf.ca.us> <25535@usc.edu>
Lines: 57

papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa) writes:

>I've seen quite a number of studies that have quantified, foe example, the
>lost sales that Micropro had of their Wordstar program.  The numbers are
>staggering. A one point Micropro had 100,000 registered users and an
>approximate user base of 500,000.  No lost sales?  Give me a break, man :-)

Marco, those aren't "lost sales".  Show me the studies that show how many
of those 400,000 folks would have bought WordStar if they didn't have a
free copy.  Guess what, guy - there aren't any such studies.  And if there
were, they wouldn't show a 400,000 copy loss.  I'd guess that MicroPro
would have been lucky to gain 20,000 more sales.  And, by the way, I'd
hesitate to accept those studies at face value - MicroPro had plenty of
reason to try and "explain" why their sales weren't very good.  A much
better example would be WordPerfect - after all, they aren't copy protected,
either, and their sales don't seem to be suffering a great deal.  More to
the point, they don't seem to have a particularly bad pirate problem,
either.  I've known five people now with pirated copies of WP - and all
five have ended up paying for their copies.  Could it be, do you think,
that there are other things which will cause sales to increase even more
than draconian copy protection schemes?

>Take a look at the computer games that
>are on the shelves of Amiga software.  You'll find it VERY HARD to find one
>that is NOT copy protected.  If your theory were true, they'll all be NOT
>copy protected, "because dropping copy protection would result in net
>increase in sales".  I guess few people in the industry subscribe to your
>"theory" :-) Gee, they really must not have your "13 years of experience
>in the industry". :-) 

No - they mostly don't.  The vast majority of people in the game business
have been in it less than five years.  The burnout rate is horrendous - it
takes a special kind of idiot to try and make a living doing computer
games.  And those that are in it accept, as a matter of faith, that
copy protection is required.  Faith, not reason.  They're not interested
in any other viewpoint, and part of the reason that they're not is
simply because everybody else does it.  They've bought into the same
mindset that you have - the paranoid belief that there are thousands
and thousands of people lurking right outside the doors, just waiting
to rip you off.  Oh, they're out there, all right - but they aren't there
to steal your software as an alternative to paying for it, they're there
to get free software which they would never, ever, ever pay for if they
couldn't get it free.

Can you really try and maintain that copy protection does any good whatsoever?
If you do, you are the one who needs to wake up, not I.  I have seen cracked
copies of games with new and "unbreakable" copy protection schemes available
on BBS systems within two or three DAYS of the product's release.  I have
seen kids with over a THOUSAND pirated games, and know that, if they had
had to pay for their software, they would have had NONE.  Pirates are
pirates - there's damn few of them who are in the least bit interested in
going "legit".  As long as they can copy freely, they will copy freely,
and all the copy protection schemes in the world aren't going to stop them;
nor are they going to convert those "lost" sales into real sales.  That's
why I can't see calling them "lost" - you haven't lost what you never had.
-- 
Mike Farren 				     farren@well.sf.ca.us