Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ucla-cs!zen!ucbvax!unisoft!gethen!farren
From: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: About Software Piracy!
Message-ID: <558@gethen.UUCP>
Date: 10 Jan 88 09:36:08 GMT
References: <2308@crash.cts.com>
Reply-To: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Organization: There's Unix there in Oakland
Lines: 25

In article <2308@crash.cts.com> haitex@pnet01.cts.com (Wade Bickel) writes:
>        If a program such as WordPerfect were protected in this manner,
>they could sell it for half, maybe a third of what it currently sells for.

One of the most common misconceptions around is that, if there were
simply no more software piracy, software prices would be only (half,
one-third, one percent) of what they are now.  This is simply untrue.
The experience of the software industry has shown, time and time again,
that the most elaborate protection schemes have little effect on the
number of copies of a program which is sold.  What little real evidence
there is, in fact, seems to show that if a program is protected, and
subsequently sold in an unprotected version, sales will actually
increase, which would indicate that piracy alone cannot account for
sales figure decreases.  If WordPerfect were protected with a dongle,
I would expect sales to actually decrease, rather than triple.  Most
of the users of WP, just like most users of most sophisticated software,
will not put up with the inconvenience, hassle, and just plain unreliability
of dongle-protected software, and especially not when there are other
alternatives available without the associated problems.

-- 
Michael J. Farren             | "INVESTIGATE your point of view, don't just 
{ucbvax, uunet, hoptoad}!     | dogmatize it!  Reflect on it and re-evaluate
        unisoft!gethen!farren | it.  You may want to change your mind someday."
gethen!farren@lll-winken.llnl.gov ----- Tom Reingold, from alt.flame