[ruthmarx]

> It's huge enough risk that they still choose to invest in fighting it.

It's not a risk though. Movies still make over a billion dollars regularly. All it is is greed and ignorance.

> But clearly they determined it's cheaper to fight than let it go rampant.

This is due to poor decision making, like companies like Coke continuing to pay for advertising at the scale they do.

> And for small businesses and projects it absolutely hurts them. It's not even worth much debate there.

It doesn't hurt them like you might think. It's well established at this point that pirates are the group that spends the most on content, and also frequently leads to an increase in sales.

[johnnyanmac]

>Movies still make over a billion dollars regularly

And if they make a million more fighting piracy rather than not then they'll do it. It's a risk to their expenditures.

Risk is obviously relative. Hacked movies don't kill anyone, a hacked game server of cheaters can kill the entire game.

>companies like Coke continuing to pay for advertising at the scale they do.

Honestly that's such a discussed topic with so much literature that I don't have more to add. It comes down to how fast you think people would forget about coke of they stopped, or how quickly the next generation would pick a new coke. Remeber that advertising includes making sure soda machines have coke on the front, as well as plastic cups with the same label. It's clear the Coca Cola company made it's decision there.

>It doesn't hurt them like you might think. It's well established at this point hat pirates are the group that spends the most on content, and also frequently leads to an increase in sales.

Word of mouth for product 1.0 doesn't matter if the single dev can't afford to get to product 2.0. Thars how "pirates spend the most" work Survivor bias is playing a huge role here, and most pirated services doit survive. And "we'll pay you on exposure" is just as insulting to hear from a pirate as it is from a conglomerate.

But again. Most small businesses don't have much choice because they can't chase needles in haystacks full time. Giving away your 1.0 for free works at the scale of Microsoft or Adobe where you can reel them in later (by shutting off the very piracy they benefitted from). Small businesses can't sit on rent or debt anywhere near as long.

[ruthmarx]

> And if they make a million more fighting piracy rather than not then they'll do it.

Right, but they don't. That's the point.

> It's clear the Coca Cola company made it's decision there.

The question is to what extent was that decision based on real research and data, versus being influenced by being taken out for a nice lunch by some admen and because "that's how we've always done it".

> Word of mouth for product 1.0 doesn't matter if the single dev can't afford to get to product 2.0.

Piracy isn't going to impact that reality at all.

> Thars how "pirates spend the most" work Survivor bias is playing a huge role here, and most pirated services doit survive.

There's no bias, nor is this speculation. This is a topic that has been researched for more than 20 years at this point and consistently shows that pirates spend more and lead to an increase in sales.

> And "we'll pay you on exposure" is just as insulting to hear from a pirate as it is from a conglomerate.

Only in the context of certain expectations, which people can't accept were wrong and maybe shouldn't have been ingrained into them.

People rewarding what like, especially in the context of art, is how humanity has done it for the vast majority of history. You could say, perhaps, that sharing and rewarding is more in line with human nature.

I don't really have a problem with the involuntary shareware situation pretty much every dev has been forced into. I don't believe it's ultimately harmful at all.

> Giving away your 1.0 for free works at the scale of Microsoft or Adobe where you can reel them in later (by shutting off the very piracy they benefitted from).

I mean, most software these days that home users use tends to be open source with a donation button anyway.

Any software developer heavily dependent on commercial sales of a first version software product would likely already have some sale contracts in place, because it would be foolish to take out loans or be wasting money for something that might not sell.

> Small businesses can't sit on rent or debt anywhere near as long.

Then they shouldn't have ventured into software if they were unaware of what the market is like. This has little to do with piracy, unless you assume every pirated instance would be a loss sale, which is obviously never the case.