[geeks] Adobe's Software Activation

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 @ 22:00 -0500, velociraptor said:

> People have been breaking copy protection since the software industry
> got the wild idea that "millions" were being lost on copied software. 
> The real losses in software piracy are to businesses--funny thing is,
> enterprise copies of software are generally not copy protected. 
> Explain that one for me, please.

Exactly!  

It's all BS.

> The reality of it is, there are no figures to back up their claim of
> "millions lost" in the consumer market.  If there was "uncrackable"
> software, the majority of those people who get cracked copies just
> wouldn't buy it.  That does not equate to "lost sales."  Likewise, the
> RIAA's figures are equally bogus.

Places like SPA and BSA calculate loss in a way that would make a soviet
factory manager blush.

They assume that every machine sold should generate a certain number of
sales based on available software titles.

They view any sales lower than this made up sales target as a loss.

In other words:

    loss = (machines * N packages) - sales

It's obvious that this is an invalid assumption.

Computer users vary wildly in what they buy, how often they buy, and
how many packages they use.  This is true of every user, wether home,
government, or business.  Some people run software that is ten years old
on brand new machines, while others upgrade constantly.

> And in fact, if you look at the statistics published by the RIAA in
> support of their "losses" an analysis of the data shows that they make
> more profit per release now.  Sales have only gone down something like
> 4%, but the number of actual releases has gone down almost 1/3.

I've always tried to tell people: beware the billionaire who complains
of poverty.

I can't see how people can be so naive.  Just look at the companies that
are doing the complaining.  They are all astronomically wealthy.  In
fact, the majority of artists who complain are likewise incredibly
wealthy.

The artists who truly are having to struggle almost never complain
about piracy.

You can pretty much say the same thing about software houses.

> It's all FUD to agitate the governments of the world into helping the
> IP-hording multi-national corporations monopolize and consolidate
> their control over the creative processes of the masses even further
> than they already have.

They are even running FUDvertisements in movie theaters now.


-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- [Well, I have entered the "metallic years." 
Silver in my hair, gold in my teeth, lead in my ass... -- Sheldon Hall in
the rescue list]