[HN Gopher] Software Piracy and IP Management: Strategic Respons... ___________________________________________________________________ Software Piracy and IP Management: Strategic Responses to Imitation Author : azalemeth Score : 334 points Date : 2021-09-03 15:56 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (papers.ssrn.com) (TXT) w3m dump (papers.ssrn.com) | summerlight wrote: | S. Korea gaming industry once suffered a lot from piracy in 90s. | This was a main driver of their rapid transition toward online | gaming. In fact, one of the earliest graphical MMORPG was | invented by Nexon (a year before UO). Coincidentally, Nexon is | also the inventor of loot box which becomes their dominant | business model. And I think not many people prefer this over old | fashioned game packages. | | So yeah, piracy could corner industry to "innovate" their product | and business model in order to survive. But it's not guaranteed | to be in a societally beneficial way. | faeyanpiraat wrote: | Online gaming is a societally beneficial innovation imho. | reificator wrote: | I agree with that statement. | | MMOs and lootboxes are a societal harm however. | zozbot234 wrote: | Software piracy might not be as bad as actual piracy of the | "attacking ships on the high seas" variety, but it's still pretty | unethical, and promotes the spread of proprietary software that | does not furher the best interest of its users. Please use fully- | FLOSS alternatives instead whenever reasonable. | jedberg wrote: | There is a long standing debate on the ethics. High seas piracy | is bad because when the pirate steals, they deprive someone | else of their property. But in the digital realm, no one is | deprived of anything when someone else steals it, because in | almost every case, the person was not willing to pay for it | anyway, so there is no loss of revenue. | | Honestly, there isn't a whole lot of difference between | something like open core software or open source with | commercial support and commercial software that is easy to | pirate. In both cases, the people who are willing to pay will | pay and the rest don't. | oauea wrote: | In some cases it may even increase revenue. There's been | multiple times I've pirated a game, only to buy it later to | get easy access to updates. Of course a good demo system | would help with this, and Steam's refund policy is somewhat a | step in the right direction. | Dumblydorr wrote: | Is it true that no one is deprived of anything in digital | piracy? There is surely a group who would not pay anyway, but | isn't there another group who would begrudgingly pay but | pirates if possible? Does this not deprive the software | makers of a bit of sales? Is this a marginal bit or a huge | amount of the sales? And does the piracy potentially lead to | popularization and more sales? | | It sounds very tricky to measure these phenomena in software. | | In music, I think the majority of musicians themselves live | off of their fans coming to shows or a small percentage | buying the albums, and side-gigs haha. There are probably | only dozens lucky enough to get huge payoffs from digital | sales. | foxfluff wrote: | > Does this not deprive the software makers of a bit of | sales? | | I'd welcome a more neutral phrasing for this though. Yes, | it may change people's behavior. But depriving someone of | something sounds like something they _had_ is taken away | from them; but these are not sales or property they _had_ , | rather it's something they perhaps _would have had_ if the | world were different. Now, a lot of things can "deprive" | me of things that I'd like to have but never did.. | | As you say, it's very difficult to measure. Actually, it's | not something that can be measured, because it's a world of | hypotheticals. It's like measuring how tall you would be if | you had lived in the 1500s. You don't measure that. | | If piracy isn't a choice, then I might look for an | alternative.. and if I find an alternative that pleases me, | then I'm less likely to deal with the author of the | original un-pirateable software, thus "depriving" them of | something they perhaps could have had if they had first | gained me as a user somehow. | [deleted] | wolverine876 wrote: | > We find that rising piracy increases subsequent R&D spending, | copyrights, trademarks, and patents for large, incumbent software | firms. Furthermore, copyright and trademark filings precede those | of patents, and firms with large patent portfolios | disproportionately increase copyrights and trademarks following | the shock. We conclude that piracy and similar competitive shocks | push firms to innovate to stay ahead of imitator products, and | that this effect is moderated by their existing patent | portfolios. | | Is it pushing firms to claim more intellectual property? | otrahuevada wrote: | The biggest issue with "piracy" overall is that it describes a | phenomenon where users of an existing platform are sticking to | the agreed upon way of using that platform as designed despite | corporate lawyers' best attempts at changing terms to try and | invent a scarcity where there is none. | | They tried to invent jaywalking for the web, and it went... | poorly. At least outside of corporate-lawyer-heavy circles. | sebow wrote: | Yea no sh*t, that's why Hollywood allows it (after the obvious | defeat from the dot-com era of the internet). | jwhite_nc wrote: | Adobe had 3 generations of designers, etc hooked on their | products because of ease of piracy much like drug dealers giving | out samples of crack in early 80s to build their customer base. A | large part of "their" patents came from companies they acquired | and integrated versus innovating on their own. So I don't think | patent portfolios are a good measure. Disclaimer: "May not apply | in all situations. Use at your own discretion". | azalemeth wrote: | And now, the zeitgeist is if anything in the opposite | direction: Capture One Pro, Raw Therapee, and Darktable have | got a _hell_ of a a lot better compared to Lightroom and C1P in | particular _proudly offers_ a lifetime license, not a | subscription. Similarly, DaVinci Resolve has a _free_ (if not | FOSS) business model, designed explicitly to compete with | Premiere, and, again, lifetime licenses. Affinity Designer | /Photo/Publisher are cheap, software that you "buy" and | increasingly "good enough" for pro use, to the extent that many | post about moving away from the CC treadmill to them. | | Adobe arguably won this decade on the basis of the three | generations you mentioned. I am _not_ confident that they will | win the next ones - the last time I printed an actual book, the | publisher used CS6 +- Quark XPress internally (I wrote it in | LaTeX; they had some tricks for printing it on SRA4 paper and | wanted to use those tools to get the bleeds & trims right). | The SaaS model was _explicitly mentioned_ as a reason for | sticking with the old software. | cletus wrote: | So there's a tweet I've seen where some anti-vaxxer is asking if | anyone else has noticed why all these unvaccinated people are | suddenly getting Covid like there's some sort of conspiracy. | Sadly it'll probably be taken as "confirmation" of nanobots or | something. Of course, this all just misses the point entirely. | | I have the same feeling about this. It's not that piracy | increases innovation. It's that overly restrictive limits stifle | innovation and this includes the ridiculous software patent | fiasco. | | It's not really surprising that the Patent Office didn't discover | that patents in general and software patents in particular are in | fact the problem. | | There's tons of evidence of this too. The Wright brothers' | original patent on flight control completely stifled the aviation | industry such that when the US entered World War One they were | unable to build planes and they had to buy them other nations. | This particular event is why there's a patent pool for aviation | now. | | A smartphone is literally covered by thousands of software | patents for completely obvious "innovations". | | Commercial software tends to have a lot of restrictions such that | only paying customers can (legally) use it. Sellers would rather | not have someone use it and view them as a potential future sale | than risk giving it away for a low or zero price. Many of those | people using that software would probably lead to innovation. | | The lesson here should be that overly restrictive IP enforcement | in general is the problem. | [deleted] | duffpkg wrote: | I wrote "Hacking Healthcare" for O'Reilly, which is still in | print after 10 years, amongst others. My intention in writing it | was never pecuniary but to hopefully encourage smart technology | people to enter healthcare. It has sold more copies than many | popular authors I read who seem much more "bestselling", which | always surprises me. | | It is my opinion that piracy has helped that book much more than | it has hurt it. It is very widely pirated in torrents in non-us | countries from what I can tell from google searches and a | longstanding history of emails to the effect "hey your book is | being pirated [here]". I sincerely doubt that the overwhelming | majority of people who pirate that work did so instead of | purchasing it. | platz wrote: | How is piracy defined here | jimbob45 wrote: | Piracy would be much easier to enforce laws for if copyright law | didn't protect nearly a century's worth of works. | | If copyright law was something more reasonable, say five years, | then the MPAA/RIAA could viciously protect everything within | those five years and consumers would more likely stay away from | those materials given the negativity of the consequences. | | The way things are now, you literally _have_ to pirate some games | like No One Lives Forever because the copyright law around them | is so convoluted that no one knows who can legally sell it | anymore. Even worse if you 're looking for something like The | John Larroquette Show which can't be found anywhere outside of | piracy due to a lack of interest by distributors. | bluejekyll wrote: | "We conclude that piracy and similar competitive shocks push | firms to innovate to stay ahead of imitator products, and that | this effect is moderated by their existing patent portfolios." | | I guess it's good to study that this is the case, but isn't this | exactly why companies fight piracy and attempt to patent and then | enforce those patents? That is to reduce competition and make it | easier to extract value from what they've produced? | | Basically, isn't the premise that if privacy was rampant and | patents didn't exist then more people and companies would be able | to innovate on the technology without fear of a lawsuit? I think | of how stagnant the Eink space is, and how much broader usage | might that technology get if it wasn't encumbered by patents | (just one example)? | | I guess I just don't find this surprising. | lutorm wrote: | It doesn't mean that innovation is to the benefit of the user, | though, does it? Maybe all the innovation is in anti-piracy | technology? | kenjackson wrote: | "We conclude that piracy and similar competitive shocks push | firms to innovate to stay ahead of imitator products," | | In the case of piracy, this seems like an odd statement. If I | can pirate your software and make it widely available then | you're innovating to stay ahead of yourself -- which I'll just | immediately pirate when you release it. | | How does me innovating quickly, help me stay ahead of people | simply copying my product? Unless the innovation is around how | to monetize my product, even in the face of piracy (e.g., ads, | support, SaaS) -- in which case those things don't really imply | that I need to innovate on the actual product itself. | azalemeth wrote: | I think a lot of it depends on the rate of piracy -- and also | the circumstances under which it is done. I've met people in | Denmark who genuinely pay attention to, and don't skip, | youtube ads because they want their content creators to get | more financial support. At the same time, at least one of | these people has told me that they pirate software to try it, | before buying it. They tend not to like DRM but will happily | "give things a go". | | It's not hard to imagine that a small percentage of piracy | actively helps spread a product, and if you get 1000%-fold | growth and your piracy rate goes from say, 1.5% to 5%, you've | still massively won overall. If you're a person like my | Danish friend, it's not hard to imagine that if anything the | "try before you buy" piracy then means that products are | evaluated more on their features, if anything _increasing_ | competition to innovate between market leaders in their | segment. | | The company only goes bankrupt if _literally everyone_ | pirates everything -- or, more likely, transitions into a | FOSS-style support+ business model. (Which, IMO, is far more | preferable than software-as-service) | katbyte wrote: | Also if individuals pirate your software and learn that | then that's the preferred let's say image/video editing | software when they work the company more the likely buy | legal licenses for them | 13415 wrote: | I don't know what _their_ explanation is, but one explanation | would be that people frequently use piracy to try out and | compare products. Later, once they have decided on the best | product, some of them go legit. That 's certainly how I used | piracy in the past. | | So the customers are way better informed with piracy, which | forces companies to innovate more quickly to stay ahead. They | can no longer rely on deceptive marketing practices and | market dominance. | PaulHoule wrote: | Specifically that article says that firms vulnerable to | piracy file patents, copyright registrations and trademarks. | | All of those are tracers for innovation because they're not | supposed to give you any of those for something that isn't | new, but they are really weapons one would use against | pirates, imitators, competitors, etc. | deeviant wrote: | > Basically, isn't the premise that if *privacy* was rampant... | | God could you imagine such a world, one which privacy was | rampant, I can't but I wish I could. | | Sorry couldn't help chuckle at your typo. | bluejekyll wrote: | ha, I didn't even notice that and even reread it a couple | times. | | can't change it now ;) | danShumway wrote: | I think you might be slightly out of touch with mainstream | attitudes/beliefs about what the effects of software piracy | are. | | Personally, it is extremely common for me to find people who | argue that piracy reduces innovation and discourages businesses | from building new things. I don't have survey data on this, I'm | just speaking anecdotally, but I suspect that's the prevailing | view among most Americans. I'm not sure if that attitude is as | prevalent in other countries. | | There is a certain group of people where this will basically | just confirm some of their priors and it won't be surprising at | all. But there is another group of people who (I think | sincerely) believe the opposite, and (keeping in mind that this | is only one study) I do think it pushes back against their | priors in a potentially interesting way. | pishpash wrote: | It may do both, increase small, incremental innovations and | decrease large, R&D-heavy innovations. | bluejekyll wrote: | Maybe I am out of touch. There is a different question and | that's if piracy is good. That's a little harder to answer. | | Piracy is potentially good for the overall market (free | innovation, etc). Piracy is probably bad for the | company/person who produced the good (ie they lose revenue | and have to innovate themselves more to stay ahead of free). | | The second has been debated at length, and I know I honestly | don't know the answer. I used to see a lot of arguments that | piracy can be used as a means to get access to free training | and lock-in with a specific product, but then when they go | legitimate, they then acquire real licenses. But the | producing company has to make it clear that if people don't | go legit, then they will get sued. | | It's kinda like the SaaS freemium -> enterprise license | models some providers use. | dogleash wrote: | I don't think it's an argument that "piracy is good", but | instead piracy serves as a sort of test case to explore the | extent to which current boundaries of intellectual property | law is "promot[ing] the Progress of Science and useful | Arts." | bluejekyll wrote: | Right, and that seems to be the ultimate question. Which | side of the scale should society fall on some of these | questions. Is it better for the majority to progress more | quickly without those intellectual property laws, or do | we need the profit motive for companies to innovate and | therefor be rewarded for that innovation. | | It doesn't feel like an either or, but more of a how far | in either direction should the laws be. | | As a question, would software patents be more acceptable | to people if they were limited to 2-5 years rather than | the 15 (I think) they are now? | zepto wrote: | > Piracy is potentially good for the overall market (free | innovation, etc) | | I haven't seen any innovation done by software pirates | other than what's necessary to circumvent protections. | fishtacos wrote: | Innovation doesn't have to be done by the software | pirates, merely nudge it along: | | 1. Circumventing anti software piracy measures and | learning that performance is gained instead of lost when | the DRM is bypassed. -1 for DRM, net gain for users. | | 2. Pushing for new features alongside the updated DRM, a | net gain for users. | | 3. Finding holes in the initial DRM and plugging them. A | net gain for developers/publishers. | | It's a win/win any way one looks at it. | zepto wrote: | As I said, the only innovation I am aware of that piracy | has produced is circumvention. | | You seem to be confirming that. | AlotOfReading wrote: | I think the typical argument is that piracy makes things | accessible to everyone, and the market as a whole | benefits from that greater audience. Think of how many | photographers got started with a pirated copy of | Photoshop or reverse engineers with Ida. | zepto wrote: | Sure, which is only true if the maker actually gains from | the greater market share indirectly. | | This is almost certainly only going to be true in a tiny | number of cases - e.g. photoshop, where commercial users | generally don't use pirate copies, and do get sued if | they are found to. | 10000truths wrote: | Sometimes that circumvention itself has the side effect | of QoL improvements. Like that Resident Evil 8 crack that | significantly reduced framerate stuttering when the DRM | calls were patched out. | zepto wrote: | Just one bug fix that multiple people are mentioning is | hardly evidence of innovation. | silisili wrote: | I agree with the premise of the second. The big money comes | from pros and corporate concracts, who generally (but not | always) avoid pirated software. | | I feel if MS and Adobe weren't so lenient on piracy, they | wouldn't have captured/held the worldwide market in their | segments at such an astounding rate. | | For a smaller, non-monopoly, it may be a very different | case though. | 0xcde4c3db wrote: | At one point, Bill Gates openly admitted that this was | part of Microsoft's China strategy [1]: | | > Although about 3 million computers get sold every year | in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they | will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, | we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, | and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime | in the next decade. | | [1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la- | xpm-2006-apr-09-fi-micro... | bserge wrote: | Don't know about China, but that worked really well in | Eastern Europe. | | After things stabilized and the west "brought law and | order", a lot of companies started paying MS licensing | fees. Because everyone grew up on Windows and Office. | | Same for Adobe. | | Then there's this bullshit: | https://www.inputmag.com/culture/peak-design-accuses- | amazon-... | jokethrowaway wrote: | As a complete remorseless pirate (as in, I download stuff | but I never uploaded anything I purchase) and as someone | whose software was pirated (causing me to go out of | business, for that specific venture), I think piracy is bad | purely because someone is infringing on a contract. | | If customer A buys my software and accepts a contract which | say not to redistribute, he can't go and break that | contract unpunished. I should be able to legally persecute | customer A, if I can prove a breach of contract happened. | If someone is re-sharing that content or if they're | downloading it, they never had a contract with me and they | should be able to do what they please. | | Sure, that's bad for me, but that's part of doing business. | Eventually the price of things will go up to account for | people pirating. | | Also, if I'm selling so much of my software that I can't | possibly trace and persecute all the users leaking my | software, I think we should accept a certain amount of | piracy and loss of revenue. Call it, a natural tax on my | software being so successful. | | Still, the government shouldn't be able to intrude on | customer A privacy, internet providers shouldn't be | compelled to release data on customer A. DMCA is absolute | cancer and the proof that the government is not doing the | people's interest but the interest of big media | corporations. | kmeisthax wrote: | This is a strange argument that I've heard repeated | often: "repeal copyright and just treat it as an NDA". I | personally would consider that _worse_ than the status | quo. | | NDA-based copyright-like ownership has three different | problems: | | - If the group of people with the software is large - | like most mass-market works - enforcing the NDA will be | absolutely impossible. Someone will leak, and that | someone will _not_ have the financial means to remunerate | you for your subsequent loss of exclusive ownership. | Making an example of them will not work. Once leaked, | people will be able to legally republish without | repercussion, so such NDAs are far weaker than even the | weakest copyright. | | - If the group of people with the software is small - | like most specialized software - enforcing the NDA will | be so successful that the software will effectively never | enter the public domain (in both the intelligence and | copyright lawyer sense of the word). Archival of old | works will be impossible purely because the NDA did it's | job too well. Such NDAs would be far stronger than even | today's life+70 monster terms. | | - In either case, traditional exceptions to copyright | such as fair use, first sale, the merger doctrine, scene | a faire, and so on will not apply. The NDA will prevent | disclosure of even things that would not be considered | copyrightable. Want to benchmark the software? Sorry, you | can't, it's all under NDA - just take our performance | claims as gospel. | | The underlying problem is that copyright is supposed to | be a bargain: the public agrees to respect a limited | monopoly over publication of the work in exchange for | creating a market that encourages more works to be made, | as well as unlimited access to the work once the monopoly | expires. In a sense, this bargain has been broken. | Copyright owners lobbied for hilariously long ownership | terms, right around the same time that individuals got | access to commercial-grade publication tools that made | piracy easy and interesting to do. "Just NDA everything" | proposes abandoning the bargain entirely in favor of | extremely authoritarian yet difficult to enforce controls | on all works; something that we should not accept if we | want to continue to have a market for works of mass | culture. | 0xfaded wrote: | Economists use number of patents as a measure of innovation, | and my reading of the abstract was basically "piracy | increases innovation where innovation = patents". | | I think a more interesting study would compare software | innovation in China vs the West. Anyone who remembers | computer vision pre ~2013 will fondly remember that simple | things like image descriptors and occupancy grids are | patented. "Patent encumbered technology" was jargon. | Thankfully a lot of the more egregious patents from the | dotcom era are now expiring. | belval wrote: | Eh this approach still exists at FANG companies, it seems | like we stockpile patents to ensure that if we get sued by | another FANG-level company it's mutually assured | destruction. | | The legal department at a startup I used to work at was | pretty open about it. | rhino369 wrote: | It can also be lucrative if business wanes. Companies | with near monopoly power already printing money | regardless so they don't bother. But a lot of once-great | companies turn to monetizing patents. | | Some of the most successful patent trolls buy portfolios | from companies that were actually engaged in the field at | the time. | jimmySixDOF wrote: | >image descriptors and occupancy grids | | What can actually qualify for a patent in Software seems so | unclear and variable. Did someone invent the concept of | "Infinite Scroll" and just not file for IP protection so it | gets used everywhere? Or is it copywrite of the actual code | that delivers one Infinite Scroll embodiment in | JavaScript_Flavor_1? Pirating software as in cracking a | keygen of some whole branded Application is very different | from launching a relabeled product clone with some reverse | engineered feature parity. By some interpretations you | literally can't implement a text box without infringing on | IP. And I don't see a way, in advance, to figure out what | patents overlap with your proposed innovation... you just | appear to cross your fingers, file, wait for the examiner | to pick a few citations out of a hat, and if you get past | that rejection, then you launch said feature (if you | haven't already) and review the take down notices case by | case. The discovery process can definitely be improved but | a lot of innovation takes place in spite of the as-is | patent system; not as a result. | zepto wrote: | > isn't the premise that if privacy was rampant and patents | didn't exist then more people and companies would be able to | innovate on the technology | | No, because innovating on technology costs money and if you | can't get a return on that, the incentive to invest is | eliminated. | | The eInk situation is indeed dysfunctional, but the fact that | one patent holder is bad at business doesn't mean much more | than that. | reificator wrote: | > _The eInk situation is indeed dysfunctional, but the fact | that one patent holder is bad at business doesn't mean much | more than that._ | | Whether they're bad at business or not, it's certainly not a | situation that makes me feel like the patent system is in my | best interest. | zepto wrote: | Sure, but the point is that no system is going to be | perfect, so just this one example doesn't tell us much. | maram wrote: | Steve Jobs always quoted Picasso | | "Good artists copy, great artists steal" | chadlavi wrote: | The title of this post was changed from a good summary to the | pretty much nonsense businessspeak title of the article. | spir wrote: | As anecdotal and loosely related point, in the ethereum community | we think that the unprecedented rapid pace of innovation is | largely attributable to the need for smart contracts (and often | their UIs) to be open source or users won't trust them. | coretx wrote: | Piracy, according to the United Nations Convention on the Law of | the Sea (UNCLOS) of 1982, consists of any criminal acts of | violence, detention, or depredation committed for private ends by | the crew or the passengers of a private ship that is directed on | the high seas against another ship, ... | renewiltord wrote: | If you read the article you'll find that this is exactly what | it's talking about. Ships of yore developed techniques to fend | off pirates which eventually led to faster, more reliable | shipping. | azalemeth wrote: | For the avoidance of link rot, the full paper is at | https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3912074 | | A populist lay summary: https://torrentfreak.com/software-piracy- | triggers-innovation... | dang wrote: | We've changed the URL to the paper from | https://www.uspto.gov/ip-policy/economic- | research/publicatio..., which is a list of papers that this one | currently happens to be at the head of. | | We've also changed the title above from "US Patent Office | Report concludes software piracy increases innovation", which | broke the site guidelines against editorializing: " _Please use | the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don 't | editorialize._" | (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) | azalemeth wrote: | My apologies Dang - consider me educated for next time. | dang wrote: | Appreciated! | koeng wrote: | Avoidance of link rot should probably be done with the paper's | DOI number - https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3912074 | durovo wrote: | If you consider SAAS and locked-down subscription models to be | innovative, then this is definitely true. | 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: | They're using the release of BitTorrent as a natural experiment | here, seeing what happened before and after with a combination of | a few techniques (matching, DID, and IV). I'm not convinced that | this will say anything more than "after the 90s and early 2000s, | firms started doing XYZ." The causal statement here is plausible, | but the methods are unconvincing. | tablespoon wrote: | From the summary at https://torrentfreak.com/software-piracy- | triggers-innovation...: | | > The research doesn't look into specific types of innovation. | However, it mentions that in more recent years the subscription | model has been embraced by an increasing number of software | companies. | | If the "innovation" is concentrated in anti-piracy | technology/practices, then the real implications may be quite | different from first glance. | duxup wrote: | What if the result is everything is a rental / SaaS? | | For the record I really don't mind SaaS products, they work great | in many situations. | | I just am not sure the innovation is the innovation we want. | jokethrowaway wrote: | Once we get tired of SaaS, the market will create standalone | expensive software. | | Even if I have to say that the subscription model is pretty | good for B2B: fixed expense per month, someone to bother if | things don't work, instead of spending my own employees time | keeping infra up and debugging bugs. | | I don't like SaaS for my personal use, I prefer to pay once, | keep forever and fix on my own (for similar reasons to why I | like cooking my own food instead of ordering take out all the | time). | duxup wrote: | >the market will create standalone expensive software. | | Maybe even hardware, like a Pi server that serves up the app | even... | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: | They suck for two reasons: primarily now I need an account for | everything I use with separate billing charges. It becomes | annoying to manage. The other reason the egregious costs these | companies charge. For a compiled version of software back in | the day, I could get something that worked for $30-$100 and it | would last years if not a decade. Now, some of these places are | charging like $3-$20/month! Software value has not increased | that much. If I gotta start paying for TODO apps and calendar | managers, I'm just gonna move to Org Mode. The majority of what | software provides is a nice gui environment to manage text. No | clue how this crap can be worth as much as it is aside from | supporting multiple platforms and enabling web based usage. | abj wrote: | We need a SaaS that manages all of these SaaS subscriptions | and accounts! That's something I'd pay $10 a month for | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: | I think it's because software has finally reached a point | where everybody is adequate at using computers that new | problems have developed compared to the ones that existed | 10-20 years ago. So now the people who have no idea how to | use a computer (or are willing to learn) they just pay for | a SaaS. | renewiltord wrote: | The big guys are trying to get this in their store models | so that they can pull their 30% cut. | BigMajestic wrote: | I wish more companies would follow the way of open source, | self-hosted free version and paid version hosted in the cloud. | Win - win. | Animats wrote: | _What if the result is everything is a rental / SaaS?_ | | That's the paper's conclusion. They see the beginning of the | piracy-friendly period as the release of BitTorrent in 2001, | and the beginning of the end in 2013 when Microsoft Office 365 | came out. | | Now everything is tied to central control, who can turn off | your service any time they want to. | noasaservice wrote: | Hm. I'm sure it can. However, in my line of work, pirated | software leads to furtherance of proprietary and | unexportable/hard-to-export file formats that further push others | to piracy. | | Switching to FLOSS systems and open data formats sidesteps this | whole issue. With open formats, open specs, and FLOSS | implementations means that data is now portable and easier to | write translators for. And data is not a roach-motel model, where | proprietary software uses that model as a form of lock-in. | | Tl;dr. Starting off makes sense to pirate. Longterm, FLOSS makes | more sense for your data and content. | | (And, software piracy online feels like the equivalent of | jaywalking in terms of "criminality". But this is just a personal | feel.) | rhn_mk1 wrote: | Best of both worlds, pirate FLOSS :) | | Which makes sense, given that FLOSS is a legal response to | overbearing copyright, and piracy is the practice of ignoring | it. | p1mrx wrote: | I only read the abstract, but why do they conflate "product- | market imitation" with software piracy? | | Doesn't imitation mean creating new software with similar | functionality? That would be relevant for patents, but not | copyright. | renewiltord wrote: | Ah, now to see if we have to decide between: | | - Software patents are not a sign of innovation | | - Software piracy is good for innovation | | I have this here in meme form https://i.imgflip.com/5lspw4.jpg | AlbertCory wrote: | "Second, we build a dataset that matches the financial | information of publicly traded software firms with (1) R&D | expenditures and patent, copyright, and trademark counts, and (2) | a unique dataset of pirated software." | | That's fine, but they're measuring what _can_ be measured easily | and calling it "innovation" (at least in the headline), rather | than anything meaningful. Having more patent filings doesn't mean | you're "innovating" more. Nor does spending more on "R&D" which | is mostly just an accounting convention. | | At two companies, I worked on getting more patent filings, | because that was seen by management as The Thing To Do. In both | cases, we would ask the engineers "what have you done lately?" | and then decide if any of that might be patentable. Usually this | involved paying a bounty to the "inventor" if a patent | application was filed, and another if the patent actually issued | (4-8 years later). | | In one case for awhile (Google Maps), they were actually paying | people a bounty for submitting an _idea_ for a patent, even if no | application was filed! I was on the committee that decided if the | idea was (1) great, file for sure, (2) pretty good, maybe file, | (3) OK but don 't file, or (4) so bad you don't even get the idea | bounty. (*Full disclosure: I'm pretty sure this | system isn't in effect anymore.*) | | I've written elsewhere [1] about the dubiousness of software | patents, so I don't need to explain how they have nothing to do | with "innovation." | | [1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2399580 | MadcapJake wrote: | > I've written elsewhere about the dubiousness of software | patents, so I don't need to explain how they have nothing to do | with "innovation." | | _Nothing_ to do with innovation? I 'm not convinced. If filing | more patents and spending more on R&D is not a sign of (at | least a desire for) innovation, what is? | | I think the biggest challenge with studying this is that how to | innovate is going to be wildly different from one firm to the | next. Did this study use the best general measures they could? | I would say so. | AlbertCory wrote: | > "the best general measures they could" | | If you can't put a number on a phenomenon that actually means | anything, then saying "well, this is the best we have" is | pretty weak. | | You also said "at least a desire for" which may be your out. | | I can give other metrics that have been studied, but I think | the onus is on you now to justify your claim, or maybe admit | that one can't define "innovation." | ortusdux wrote: | I'm pretty confident that Adobe came to this conclusion a long | time ago. | vxNsr wrote: | And yet, they've made it much more difficult to pirate their | suite now... | | I disagree with anyone who thinks Adobe, Microsoft, or any | other software vendor made pirating easy bec it would boost | long term sales. | | 100% of executives are focused on this quarter and nothing | else. | | Bad licensing enforcement was just a by-product of focus, and | resources. As we see pirating O365 is impossible, pirating the | offline Office suite is doable but much harder than it once was | and usually requires buying a volume key instead of downloading | a crack. I know pirating Adobe is technically possible but from | what I've seen requires a lot more work and isn't foolproof | like it once was (download Adobe, click crack on crack | software). | | In general good software licensing frameworks have been | commoditized and it's pretty easy to add to your product. Idk | anyone who would look at that and think rolling their own | broken solution is better bec it could lead to better long term | sales. | duxup wrote: | >And yet, they've made it much more difficult to pirate their | suite now... | | Nobody said you get the innovation you want. :( | vxNsr wrote: | As in pirating encouraged innovation in licensing? Fair. | But it's not really the argument that most people | understand the headline to mean. | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: | I think because of their stranglehold and egregious fees, | it's opening up other companies to compete reliably now. | Although businesses just don't want to get away from the | "Photoshop" or "Premier" name so they just shell out for it | when they can easily get by without for way cheaper. | vxNsr wrote: | Right but that would be an argument away from pirating, ie | straight competition encourages innovation bec ppl don't | want to pay the egregious fees for software that they don't | fully utilize. | makotech222 wrote: | Literally ask any marxist about what intellectual property does. | We've known this for about 150 years now; private property is a | parasite on society. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-09-03 23:00 UTC)