| Rath said: Not that it has anything to do with the legality of piracy, but the argument that people are going to lose their jobs and not be able to eat due to piracy is higly flawed. http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/02/8813.ars Piracy doesn't actually seem to cause a loss of sales. |
True. The effect of piracy has little to do with the actual loss of sales that you could see.
People are conditioned to want to pay a price they believe is fair.
The question is "Does the fact that you know you can get this without paying for it lower how much you value the product."
Such a study being mostly academic since it's nearly impossible to study people who don't know about software priacy.
For example. A $5 dollar hamburger slightly better then a $.99 isn't going to seem like a great value. But if there is no $.99 hamburger that other one might seem well worth the price.
With piracy, you've got the same product, sometimes even better for free. Now even though most people won't pirate stuff they see as valuable... the question is... does the fact that you could get it free lower how much you value the medium as a whole.
