[hcknwscommenter]

except he will be 0.1 generations behind. Literally, the day you release your update he will start feverishly reverse engineering it. Once you show the way with all your hard work, copying becomes easy. Good luck monetizing that.

[jchw]

What's the incentive to crack it, to sell it? Does the cracker sell it for less? Would I be willing to buy a cracked piece of software? It'd be a horribly unsafe idea if it were, for example, security software or a tool for modifying my operating system.

Even in a complete wild west, some people are going to do the right thing. Maybe even most people. Probably is far more a cultural issue than a legal or technical one. Still, I'm not arguing that 100% deregulation is a good idea, just that I don't really think this is a convincing argument.

[tw04]

>Would I be willing to buy a cracked piece of software?

It doesn't matter if you would, it matters if the general public would. And all you have to do is look to China, where more cracked copies of windows are sold every day than legitimate copies. The only reason that doesn't exist here is because it's almost impossible for the average consumer to buy a cracked copy. If they were available at every corner store the average person would make that choice 9 times out of 10. And if they'll take that risk on the entire OS, they won't bat an eye at a rom.

[frockington]

Is China full of computers running vulnerable unpatched Windows? At such a large scale a future (or current) vulnerability could have a huge effect

[hcknwscommenter]

Yes it is.

[hcknwscommenter]

It is not unsafe if the cracker is an actual company with brand, customer service, etc., because such a thing will at least briefly exist in an environment with no IP protection.

Then it all goes to heck because innovation just grinds to a halt.

[shawn]

I don't disagree, but at least some money would come my way. Currently no money comes. And yeah, I could build my own game with my own characters instead of modding old ones, but why? It'd be fun to put a silly hat on Starfox and make him into Piratefox and make him go yarrrr as he blasts all the innocent bad guys. I wanna try it and I wanna sell it and it'd be hilarious and benefit society and it's stupid I can't.

To be precise, the argument goes like this: Star Fox 64 is not currently generating any economic benefit for Nintendo. It doesn't harm Nintendo for someone to make a derivative work of it. In fact, I'd be more than happy to cut a deal with Nintendo and just give them most of the money. The problem is that no one tries to do this, and we all lose what could have been made.