Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

EULA is a contract, no? I bet you'd be pissed off if your employer doesn't adhere to your employment contract too.

And if people pirate my software then I don't get payment for my work that they're using.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

this is even more wrong than "downloading a car is stealing" -stuff. Remove that "namely removing money from your bank account" and it is far more near the truth....

pirating something isn't the same than cloning a credit card and stealing money. The model is million times more complicated.

1. Pirating isn't taking any money from anyone. It just makes cashflow to the author smaller momentarily. And this doesn't really tell much without deeper knowledge about models how people act. Monitoring single payment vs not paying from one piece of software is a bit like measuring your shopping trip and stopping the measurement just before you dig your wallet for paying.

2. Pirating something doesn't completely exclude possibility that the author gains more money than without pirating. Compare to music industrys findings.

3. All analogies utterly fail, so please don't use those.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

A violation of a contract is a bad thing, there is no doubt about it.

But it's not theft, it's a violation of contract.

If you incur some financial loss from piracy, this means that EULA is a contract that your customers do not respect. This is moral risk in finance. You have to evaluate it precisely and decide what to do to avoid it : engage legal proceedings with unknown efficiency, or reconsider your economic model.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

@azorni:
It depends on which part of the contract was breached. If you're not being paid of your salary, which is governed by the contract, how do you feel?

Ok, so I will add clauses in the EULA to ensure that those that use the program acquires it in legitimate manners.

And I will specify penalties that the user agrees to pay if they do not acquire the program in legal manner or if they redistribute it in any ways.

What then?

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

of course you are. but unfortunately your words are like a fly buzzing to "the markets". And the markets decide if your software sells well, gets pirated and only couple buying users, .. etc.

before doing anything like that, every reasonable person weights all risks that can be imagined with such big project. giving a .deb for download with zero DRM is one remarkable source of risk. Especially if asking price of the software is relatively high.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

Philosophically and economically, trying to sell a product without alienation, that is to say by keeping some rights on the future use of the product, is quite dubious.

Let's say you produce a very nice car which, for some reason, you think does only look good in red. You will decide to only sell this car to people who will agree to sign a contract which will forbid them to paint it in any other color.

Although it might seems ok, I would have much difficulty to blame anyone who would sign the contract, but who, as soon as the seller is away, would paint the car in blue.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

@ossi: we're not at DRM yet :D be patient...

@azorni: let's do away with the analogies and use specific examples. this is the reason I started with this query in the first place. Like ossi said, there's no analogy that's sufficient to illustrate the intricacies of software sales.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

I would be pissed, of course. Same as you I guess.

This is something you cannot do. A contract is a legal agreement between two persons. They have to be present in the same time and give their written approval on the contract. For a customer, this occurs when he purchases the product. The bill is his signature. You are represented by the seller employee, to whom you delegate your power.

But you can not enforce people you don't know and who didn't formally agree to respect your contract. Otherwise your contract is not a contract, it's a law. This is different.

A contract is a materialization of a commercial transaction and this is not what you are suggesting.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

My 2 cents..

1. Piracy allows a person who didn't pay to experience something that only a paying customer should.

2. If the pirate never would have purchased that good anyways, the maker of the good is no worse off monetary wise.

3. In the case of #2, the maker of the good is getting free publicity and potential advertising. Some may disagree but imo, this is actually a "good" side effect of piracy for the maker. You can't say this is never the case.

4. If the above act by the pirate actually causes a potential buyer to not pay and get it for free also, the maker is losing money.

What I don't like is the fact that the maker thinks that they lost money for every single download and say that they need to price it high due to piracy. As if all of them would have bought it instead.

But you know it doesn't stop here. It's the moral part which is bad. The pirate is getting potential enjoyment for free when the maker did not intend to provide it for free to anyone.

Hence it's illegal. To ensure maker does get what they deserve.
But I also believe that the maker will usually get what they deserve.
Even with piracy. People are willing to pay if it's good. Really.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

Another thing.

According to me, EULA should be considered as tying ("vente liée"), which is forbidden in many countries.

If someone want to buy a product without signing the EULA, he should be able to. Of course, the seller might give another price, for instance much higher. That's for instance why it is always possible to buy a mobile phone without any mobile phone provider subscription. (I bought my N900 without any subscription, as far as I'm concerned)

Of course for software this is not possible and EULA is almost always mandatory, since the selling of any copy of a software without EULA might immediately turn it into a shareware.

But still, such a selling should theoretically be possible. And, in order not to endanger their business, software editors would have to put a very high price for this selling. In that case we find the idea I was suggesting of selling the program for a huge price, comparable to development costs.