Piracy - by Chris Wenham

Summary: Is software piracy theft, or a symptom of a flawed ownership model? Chris examines the vendors and the users points of view and touches on where alternate models might take us.

Is it easy to get the commercial software you want for free, just by downloading it over the Internet? It is, if you're determined to look and spend the time hanging out in the right places. IRC is a good place to start, you can probably figure out the obvious channels to join and lurk in. Your news server is also likely to carry a few binary groups with the right kind of stuff to be found, a little for OS/2, a lot for Windows. And once in a while a large, 12-or-so megabyte archive will appear on the popular OS/2 shareware archives for a few hours before the administrator discovers and deletes it. It'll be Partition Magic (3.0 was leaked some time ago), or DeScribe (leaked recently), or perhaps only a small text file with the registration codes for a few popular shareware applications.

Is software piracy a problem to be eliminated by more copy protection schemes and law enforcement, or is it better solved by changing the way in which software is owned? To get a better idea of the problem we have to look at it from two points of view; the vendors' and the buyers'.

The Vendors

Piracy is a form of theft. I don't care how cheap CDs or Internet downloads are, it costs real money to have software developed and tested. If nobody is going to pay for it, then the software company is clearly going to loose money when it can't pay its employees and landlord. From the vendor's point of view, they've created intellectual property and feel they deserve to be paid fairly for it by everyone who chooses to use it. Whatever price they set for that software, be it a measly ten bucks or five thousand dollars, those are the conditions of using the software. If a user can't afford it, then they don't have the right nor do they deserve to use the software. Merely being one of those who "wouldn't have bought it anyway" is no excuse -- since why should poverty or disinterest exclude you from the rules that everyone else must live by?

For the vendors, their position is clear: If customers don't like the conditions of using the software then they have the right not to buy it. Nobody else has the right to think they are an exception.

The Users

For the users, piracy is a small sin that doesn't really hurt anyone. Let's put it this way: you can't afford the software, you wouldn't have bought it anyway, the vendor hasn't lost a sale because no potential sale was ever there, so no money has been lost. There is, however, one more person using a productive application and getting work done. The world is a tiny little bit better than it was before, because thanks to cheap copying of software, real wealth can be produced out of thin air.

There's also the issue of irresponsible vendors. Take Microsoft, they make lousy software and Bill Gates is a multibillionaire who isn't going to miss a hundred dollar program. Why should we endorse shoddy software? Bill needs to be punished a little bit for his greed. And then there's AutoDesk or Adobe, they charge a fortune! Why not protest unreasonable prices?

It's worth taking a moment to spank both vendors and users on the wrist for some bad behavior when dealing with the piracy problem. Software companies are notorious for exaggerating their "losses" by counting all estimated pirate copies of their software as lost sales -- resulting in grossly over inflated figures. They conveniently disregard the fact that a large percentage of pirate copies were, indeed, never potential sales to begin with . Users too are guilty by deliberately continuing to use a pirated copy of software even when they can afford to buy it.

So is piracy a symptom of a flawed ownership model -- one where you don't really buy software but buy a license to use the software instead? If this is so, we need to decide if there is really any serious alternative. What if you change the conditions of ownership from licensing the right to use software to actually buying the program and all that real ownership entails?

Licensing has the effect of supplying legal grounds to force companies to purchase a separate copy of the software for every machine they install it on. You don't actually own the software, you've merely negotiated the right to use it.

Buying software means you own all rights to what you hold in your hands when you pick up that shrink wrapped box. Just like you have the right to do as you please to a television you purchased, buying software implies that a company can order one copy on one set of disks, then go about installing that one copy on all of the hundreds or thousands of machines owned. Just like you have the right to pass on the newspaper you bought to anybody for them to read. You can see right away that software vendors, who's bread and buttercomes from large site licenses, have very little incentive to try this ownership method.

Vendors could also switch to a free/open software approach. The software is given away for free, still copyrighted but without a retail price. The vendor can then sell support contracts for the product, everything from fifty bucks for home users all the way up to ten thousand dollar, dedicated technician and on-site service contracts for corporations. Well, this is all nice and good, but if you read between the lines you'll notice that it gives the vendor no incentive whatsoever to make their software easy to use and trouble free. Maybe competition will drive a vendor to make their software a little bit easier to use than the next guy's, but at some point the decreased need for support will undercut any advantages that could be gained from winning the contract. Ever notice that free software tends to have notoriously lousy user interfaces? This isn't just because the programmers can't afford to develop one!

Without the financial incentives, most of the companies making the software we like to use will stick to their current licensing based model of ownership.

Moving back to piracy, we see that it has a lot to do with general disrespect for intellectual property. The term itself, "intellectual property", begs to be frowned upon. How poorly it fits into the world of greasy T-shirt computer hackers and nonconformists. In fact, it's openly criticized by advocates of free software such as Richard Stallman (and don't accuse me of calling Stallman a piracy advocate either). But if intellectual property rights are not respected, can we expect the creators to keep on creating?

There are those who are perfectly willing to work for free and see their creations used and modified everywhere without a hint of remuneration. But in an argument against making all software and information free: not everyone wants to work for intangibles like reputation and recognition alone. Some have mouths to pay and bills to feed. If your talent in life is as a writer or programmer, don't you deserve the chance to earn a living proportionate to your skills? Working as a freelance programmer or consultant might earn you a living when a company wants a custom application, but these jobs are all uninspired. The best music always comes from someone working from the heart, not a corporate directive. This is also seen in software.

Piracy is a slap in the face of every creator. Piracy is possible because the creations in question are pieces of information and the technology of computers makes it possible to copy information quickly, cheaply, in bulk, and without being noticed. It doesn't matter if the pirate's philosophy or ethics tells him he's right, it's still a violation of what the creator considers to be his rights. Ultimately the creator has the final say: He can cease to create, and nobody wins.

I'm going to come down on the side of the content and software creators because I am one. Want to use a piece of software? Then you'd better be ready to play by the vendor's rules. Don't like the rules? Then vote with your wallet and teach the vendor a lesson by withholding your money, but don't be a hypocrite and break the law by copying the software illegally. If you need the software, first try to find alternatives, and if that doesn't work then you'd better sit down and evaluate what your needs really are and just how reasonable your expectations are. Any schmuck could decide one day that he'd like to be an architect, and then bawl his eyes out because AutoCAD is so unfairly expensive. It doesn't give him a right to pirate it.

And yet piracy is one of the easiest crimes to commit and get away with today, easier than stealing an apple from a fruit stand or opening up a fire hydrant on a hot day. It's no surprise then that a lot of pirates are kids who aren't yet mature enough to understand what they're doing and why it's wrong. For all these little brats, I hope the software vendors will offer some amnesty. And why? Because I was one.

I'm interested to hear what you have to say about the ethics and damages of piracy, I'm also very interested in learning about alternate methods of software ownership. If you've got an opinion, talk to me in our Hypernews forum.

Chris Wenham is the Senior Editor of OS/2 e-Zine! -- a promotion from Assistant Editor which means his parking spot will now be wide enough to keep his bicycle and a trailer.