wildbill@ucbvax.UUCP (William J. Laubenheimer) (04/15/84)
With regard to: > From: kho@hou2a.UUCP (S.KHO) > Subject: Software Piracy - Marketing Persipective > > Second, AT CURRENT PRICE LEVEL, the market profile is such that the > majority (ref. Cole's claim) of the market audience appealed to the > software products are "less" ethical, "less" willing to pay stiff > price, "more" aware of the alternative available source, "strongly" > attracted to the product, ...etc. and therefore, resort to copy-right > violations. At current price level, the "prize", which is the price > of the product minus the costs (tangible and intangible, e.g. > feeling guilty) of unauthorized copying is high as perceived by the > majority of the market audience. > > ... > > Depending on your profile (i.e., income, ethical value, awareness of > the $20 bill, ...etc.) you may not pick up and keep the $20. > But what if it's a stack of bills worth $200? $2000? $2 million? > At what "price level" will the "prize" more than your "value"? > > S. Kho This can almost be regarded as a law of (human) nature. I have always enjoyed the formulation which I heard attributed to Mark Twain: MAN: If I offered you $1,000,000, would you go to bed with me? WOMAN: Well...I guess so. MAN: Fine. Will you go to bed with me for $2.00? WOMAN (outraged): Just what kind of woman do you think I am? MAN: We've already settled that. We're just haggling over the price. However, the ``money on the street'' example may not be quite as good. Small change usually falls victim to the first person to notice it (people who aren't interested in picking up dimes tend to not notice them). If I found a $20 bill lying in the gutter, I would just pick it up and not worry. Yet, a large amount of cash in a sack marked ``First National Bank'' I would attempt to return, as the cost of losing the sack might be quite large to the person who lost it. The same thing can be noted among net people: UN*X has a much bigger price tag attached than any of the micro programs this discussion started with, and the cost of a commercial license (from what I have heard of such, having dealt with it only from the academic side) could certainly be regarded as exorbitant; if you were not producing software (e.g., a chip design or graphics house of some sort), nobody would ever find out you were now running UN*X most of the time; still, nobody has really considered stealing it. And it's probably pretty easy, too: anybody who knows a super-user anywhere can get a copy of the relevant goodies. I don't see where the risk factor is any greater in this case than in the micro case. Hoping this has provided some more food for thought, Bill Laubenheimer ----------------------------------------UC-Berkeley Computer Science ...Killjoy WAS here! ucbvax!wildbill