If you can arrange things so that some (but not all) of the functionality in your app is unavailable in a pirated copy, then piracy becomes a form of trialware, and can be a huge marketing channel.
Way back in the day, I co-wrote an early networked multiplayer game on the Mac, Spectre. We didn't use copy protection, as it was too much hassle for legitimate users. However, there was a nontrivial-to-hack requirement that you have N serial numbers for an N-player game. This led to people pirating the game for the single-player mode, enjoying it, and buying a second or third copy for multiplayer. I don't have hard data, but we believe a lot of our sales originated this way.
There's probably some psychology at work here: if you let someone download a "trial version" for free, they may not value it as much as an app they had to "pirate".
Glad to hear it! I have not-quite-so-fond memories of debugging all that AppleTalk code. :) Still, writing Spectre was one of the most fun things I've done. It amazes me, after all these years, how often I still run into people who remember the game.
Count me in as one of those who loved the game. Also, I was one who only played a pirated copy, unfortunately. Not a good excuse, but at the time I was just a kid with no access to any kind of payment method. I'm happy to see Spectre has been released on iOS, and at last I can pay for a legit copy of the game! In fact, I just bought two licenses, one for myself and one for my friend who originally "shared" the game with me. Are you at all involved in the iOS port?
My only involvement in the iOS port was to give it my blessing, after the fact. The author got in touch with us (the original Spectre authors) at some point when he was pretty far along in development, asking us about a license, which we gave him for free -- we were happy to see Spectre live on.
This article is misinformed. We've been in the AppStore for the past 3 Christmas's and have noticed a significant spike each Christmas (30-50%+ increase sales) that doesn't really taper off. Sure the week between Christmas and New Years has the greatest spike (70%+ spike) but after that it returns to much higher numbers than before Christmas (ie., about 30-50% higher sales). Surprisingly, these numbers seem to carry on throughout the year until the next Christmas season and then you experience the same spike in sales. Throughout the year there are some ups and downs but it's pretty steady. Sure, piracy might have helped his app sales a bit, but he's wrong to discount the fact that the holiday season changes everything in the AppStore and it's effect continues on throughout the year.
I can corroborate this with iPad app sales. I believe a large number of iPads were Christmas gifts this year and am in my highest grossing 30-day stretch to date.
I'm not completely sure why this happens. But in our experience over the past 3 Christmas's, it appears that there's a huge number of new users and new app purchasers. My guess is iPod Touches and iPhones as Christmas gifts, and also tons of iTunes gift cards that people use in Jan-March. But after the iTunes gift cards and the iPod Touch users wane a bit, the user base grows still because of iPhone and thus somehow the market is stable throughout the year.
I'd guess the market of iPad/Phone users expands every year on Christmas, and if market share stays consistent for everyone that means a permanent boost in sales.
I think the piracy marketing effect works especially well for iOS because not all devices are jailbroken. If Alice jailbreaks her phone, and Bob doesn't, Alice can show Bob her pirated apps, but can't easily share them with him. If Bob sees somethings he likes, he must buy it.
The same might be true for game consoles, but probably not for PCs.
iPhone app "piracy" is perhaps a little different from run of the mill software copyright infringement. It's one of the only places around where even for consumers, there's no way of trying before you buy. I can imagine that there is a significant (I have no idea how large, and not a majority certainly, but significant) number of people who will pirate an iPhone app and then later buy it if they find themselves using it. I'm honest enough to admit that I do this, and I very much doubt I'm alone.
Back before Pinch Media merged with Flurry, when we had piracy detection in our analytics, we found that less than 1 in 200 people did this. You're not alone, but you're in a small minority.
A lot of apps, especially games, you can finish using within 7 days (or even 1 day, plenty of iPhone games do not have over, say, 12 hours of gameplay).
A lot of books, especially fiction, you can finish reading within 14 days.
I was never made to feel guilty about borrowing those books from the city library, returning them two weeks later and never buying them. When did the standard change?
An App Store is not a library any more than your local Borders is. At least the copy of the book that's in the library was bought and paid for somewhere along the way.
Libraries already do lend eBooks, and they do enforce scarcity. You can go today to check out an eBook only to be told that it's not due back for another two weeks.
Android got around this by giving people 15 minutes to get a refund. That would make it so there wouldn't be much reason for the pirates to contribute to valid purchases.
Well, with an alarm you could still set it up to go off within 15 mins I'd assume; fairly useless to be sure, but at least it'd give you a way to test out the app's reliability. What bothers me about the 15min limit, is that sometimes the first-time setups/downloads for bigger games already take about 15mins to finish, leaving you with virtually no time left to actually try them out. I know this happened to me with Dungeon Defenders even though I was on wifi while it downloaded its assets. I didn't mind it too much cause the game was decent, but I could easily see this not being the case for other people buying similarly large games.
You have the same issue in other areas. For example I wanted to check out a multiplayer city builder game with a friend some years back prior to buying and there was no way to do this outside of piracy as the demo didn't cover this feature.
This illustrates perfectly why sharing software shouldn't be called "piracy" or "stealing." These terms are simply inappropriate for software, movies, music, and other works that can be copied for almost zero cost.
When real pirates steal real goods, their owner doesn't have them anymore, and can't benefit from them anymore. They don't double their sales, because there's fewer things left to sell. Software isn't like that: you just make another copy for the next paying user. This is true whether your software is proprietary or free.
Comparing people who share your software with others to pirates means you are criminalizing the folks who are doing your marketing for you.
Calling it marketing doesn't make it so. Depriving the owner of their revenue is theft just as much as deciding to occupy a seat on a train without paying is depriving the train operator of revenue and is theft, claiming that the seat is unused or that you doing marketing is bogus. You are depriving them of revenue and are committing theft. If the term of usage is pay to use then not paying is stealing, if you don't like it then don't use it.
Unless the creator has explictly granted you the right to copy, copying is certainly theft in the legal sense and often in the ethical sense.
Whether or not you agree with the legality of it is irrelevant, the fact is that it's illegal for you to make copies of software that you are not authorized to copy.
Ethically, it's not fair to the people who build these apps to be deprived of the revenue they would earn from your usage of it.
They don't have a right to your money, but then, you don't have a right to their software either.
Your second, third, and fourth sentences do not support your first. Copying software without paying for it (when the author has not licensed you to do so) is arguably immoral, often unethical, and nearly always illegal...
...but the claim of the gp was that it is not "theft" as such. Copying something from someone and taking something away from someone are not the same.
Drawing a definitional distinction there helps us to have a meaningful debate about the moral, ethical, and legal dimensions; the only benefit to muddying the distinction is as a rhetorical tactic to confuse the issues.
Don't be so simplistic, that's like saying that stealing a car isn't theft because it is just driving and anyway you are just moving it somewhere else. The economic consequences of copying are a deprival of revenue, that is tantamount to theft and 'theft' is a good word to describe it.
What really ticks me off about thieves is how they try to quibble over definitions as though that changed the consequences. Making an unauthorised copy of something that is supplied for money IS theft.
That is sheer propagandist nonsense. You do recognise the basic unassailable physical difference between copying something and removing it, don't you? The differences of economics follow from the differences in physical fact.
Consider this quote from Landes and Posner -- one of the primary orthodox authorities on the matter:
"Copyright protection -- the right of the copyright's owner to prevent others from making copies -- trades off the costs of limiting access to a work against the benefits of providing incentives to create the work in the first place. Striking the correct balance between access and incentives is the central problem in copyright law."
Is that how physical goods, and theft, are understood? No. To say there is a tradeoff is to say both are good: that is, copying is good.
That doesn't make any sense. You can't deprive someone of revenue, because (at least given a few assumptions of non-totalitarianism) nothing guarantees that a thing will produce revenue. Owners don't have a "right" to revenue, especially in a capitalist economy.
> ...just as much as deciding to occupy a seat on a train without paying is depriving the train operator of revenue and is theft, claiming that the seat is unused or that you doing marketing is bogus
No, the problem with taking an unused seat on a train is not that you are "depriving the train operator of revenue." The problem is that the seat is a physical good, and once you take it, the train operator no longer has it. You have taken the seat from them (not the "potential revenue") -- and thus prevented them from selling it to a paying customer, or doing whatever else they wanted to do with it.
To see this more clearly, note that it would be wrong for you to take a physical good from someone regardless of whether they planned to sell it or not. The moral problem with theft does not lie in depriving someone of revenue.
Software isn't like that. By obtaining a copy of a program, you're not taking anything from anyone in a way that prevents them from using it. In particular, if the software has an "owner," you're not preventing them from selling it.
"Software isn't like that. By obtaining a copy of a program, you're not taking anything from anyone in a way that prevents them from using it. In particular, if the software has an "owner," you're not preventing them from selling it."
Piracy isn't theft. It's counterfeiting, which us much worse for the product creator. As an example, theft may deprive LG of a physical television, which isn't that bad. Counterfeiting can destroy the actual value of the product being passed out for free. Software, like any digital good for sale, is almost like proprietary currency. It's value is only in the minds of the consumers, because there isn't any physical cost involved. If it gets shared and anyone can get access to it through Google, torrent sites, etc, this value approaches $0 (and will eventually be $0).
We probably shouldn't be using terms like theft anymore, but counterfeiting. However, I have a feeling that those words will still be used because many people still want to justify piracy and want to make it seem like it's not really a bad thing.
Identity theft is not "theft" and we still call it that. A person's data is merely copied (the original is still there).
Counterfeiting is the wrong word, too, because the illegally copied good is (usually) just as good as a real one. Counterfeit physical goods are usually lower quality than the genuine article, and can damage its reputation.
Well, I guess we could call it copyright infringement, but most people will come up with their own terms for it.
I feel that the only reason you don't like any of these words is because you don't want copyright infringement painted in a bad light. It's a bad thing and it does cause software developers to eventually lose business, the words we use to describe it aren't going to change that.
Even excellent counterfeit money is still called counterfeit. Also, the majority of pirated apps tend to not support auto-updating, as you need to go and get a new hack and you can't get support or advice from the application's author. I would say that is an obvious way in which they are inferior.
I think the difference with "counterfeiting" is that it suggests that you're intentionally misrepresenting the good as something it isn't. The underlying crime is when you trade such a good in bad faith (you sell a handbag to someone whom you allow to think it's from a famous designer, or you buy something in exchange for green pieces of paper which you pretend were issued by the US Mint).
By this definition, "brand-name" shrinkwrap software that you bought cheaply in SE Asia that has suspiciously poorly-reproduced covers and instructions might be counterfeit (because the purchaser might be misled into thinking they're getting an official edition), but most p2p piracy is not (because there's no discrepancy between what the recipient gets and what they think they're getting).
I think the people who act like copyright infringement of whole works are deluding themselves as to it's harmless nature, but people overwrought about the issue and trying to map it onto the real world crime of theft are not helping the situation.
Coming up with a new name that's not theft is probably a good idea, then we can mete the appropriate opprobrium upon that word instead of the too much of theft and the not enough of copyright infringement. This is definitely a goldilocks issue.
"Coming up with a new name that's not theft is probably a good idea, then we can mete the appropriate opprobrium upon that word instead of the too much of theft and the not enough of copyright infringement. This is definitely a goldilocks issue."
I don't think it has anything to do with theft, it has to do with painting piracy in a bad light.
Really? I think it is a case of mapping onto the most obvious existing word. When you end up with something you did not pay for, most people would assume you had "stolen" it.
The fact the metaphor doesn't line up perfectly is a problem, but it is the closest word I can think of that most people would understand.
The issue is that there should likely be different amounts of "bad" meted out to the two instances, and using the same word for both confuses that issue a great deal.
I mean, by what you're saying, you can call killing a pig for meat murder as that's what we kill it what Damer did it.
I'm contending we should have two words similar to how for killing we have "Slaughter" (Implies animals and farming for food), and "Murder" (Implies purposeful taking of a human life except for certain animal rights/vegan groups trying to use the overloaded meaning).
When I hear theft I think of guys in masks sneaking into someones home at night and depriving them of their belongings. Associating illegitimate use of software with theft is misleading. It's like telling kids that marijuana can kill them to dissuade them from using it. I'm not saying it isn't wrong... I'd just like to see a word that wasn't deliberately chosen for it's connotative baggage.
Personally I look at it like this. While I'm not physically 'stealing' their product, I am still profiting by not paying X amount for its use.
As an example, imagine if you are planning on purchasing a copy of Photoshop at $1000 but before you leave to go to the store you do a quick search on your favorite torrent site. Sure enough it's there and you download it, saving yourself $1000 while still benefiting from the use of the software and using the $1000 on something else.
So while software piracy might not harm the developer directly, it greatly benefits the person who downloads the software.
Meh, that argument is just a sideshow distraction. The real issue (as stated elsewhere) is that you are using something for which you are required to provide recompense. Avoid that recompense is depriving the distributor.
While the semantics of "is it theft" does have a slight relevance, the overhead of how this concept completely derails the legitimate debate is far worse. Theft or not, it's an issue that needs to be addressed, and the "it's not theft" folks always seem to want to avoid addressing it.
A bit like how those folks who always say "but information wants to be free / you can't stop it" never want to divulge their bank account details and passwords...
Basically, this article is saying that through piracy, you get more exposure for your app, and if your app has any social features in it, the network effects can outweigh any potential lost sales through piracy.
I think a more effective way to do this would be to make the app free for limited periods. You'll reach a much broader audience, with the same effects.
Jailbreaking occurs for dozens of non-pirate reasons, most commonly to allow tethering, or the installation of apps that apple does not like, or to allow the user to use a non-approved network (such as T-Mo in the US).
Also, does flurry now disambiguate multiple devices on the same account? I know I have 6 or 7 devices on my account [I too write apps for a living] alone...but I'm sure I only count as one sale. Seems like those people would also show up as pirates by your metrics.
(I know this is a bit pedantic, but I do want to remind people that not all jailbreak users -- and, in fact, more than half of them -- aren't pirates.)
From the author's text:
> My app has a sharing feature: if you like the app, you can email your friends about it.
Unless your software product has something similar (and is also priced low, and is also installed via something like an app store: and hence is one-click away), I don't think piracy will help you much. At least it does not to the s/w authors who claim a persistent 30-80% drop in sales the day the crack comes out.
When I first got my iPod Touch and was looking for applications, I started asking around to friends who had Touches and iPhones to find applications. I found the people who could recommend me the best selection of applications were those who had pirated a lot of applications, as they had tried the most. I based my applications I bought mostly on 3 friends with jailbroken phones with a plethora of applications.
With 100,000 apps, the majority of apps aren't in the Top 100. This means this pro-piracy approach will probably increase sales for the majority of apps.
I don't have any data on this but I'd wager that piracy increases exposure even for a top 100 app; it would just pale in comparison to the existing exposure of being a top 100 app.
People using an app are people using an app no matter how they acquired it.
Oh, yes I agree there 100%. I didn't mean to imply that it's not a problem in any way, just that pirating users provide some exposure too.
You could argue that they also decrease exposure by not counting as a download & dollar earned in the app store, but first you'd have to prove that all pirates would buy have purchased the app if not available for free, which I think many people agree is patently false.
I suspected this for low quantity apps already but couldn't prove it as it might have been (or might still be) a statistical anomaly.
I had a non-appstore Mac app pirated and after a known "scene group" released a keygen and the app started to appear on known sites the sales actually increased. (Though it was nowhere near a 200% increase.)
Way back in the day, I co-wrote an early networked multiplayer game on the Mac, Spectre. We didn't use copy protection, as it was too much hassle for legitimate users. However, there was a nontrivial-to-hack requirement that you have N serial numbers for an N-player game. This led to people pirating the game for the single-player mode, enjoying it, and buying a second or third copy for multiplayer. I don't have hard data, but we believe a lot of our sales originated this way.
There's probably some psychology at work here: if you let someone download a "trial version" for free, they may not value it as much as an app they had to "pirate".