I read this original article and then this follow up article at TechDirt and it had me thinking, are pirates are just underserved customers? Comment and tell me what do you think. Talk to you later...
I'd say that you can probably only convert less than 5% of pirates to paying customers, and that's by adding some sort of incentive, which in turn costs money. So in the end, is it worth it?
I think some folks are just always going to try and get away with getting stuff for free. You really can't make a profit off them. You can't cater to them, there's nothing you can do...they will simply steal your material. Those are the actual pirates.
I think some of what we call pirates really are "previewers". They check stuff out first, and see if they want to really drop dime on the product. I think the percentage of these is small though.
The vast majority are people of questionable ethics who like to think of themselves as "previewers" but really, this is just to sugarcoat things for their conscience. They usually end up casually forgetting to actually buy the product. Jerks.
I dunno. I think everyone wants to get something for nothing. Human nature. That is fine. But when it requires taking something from someone else, denying somebody else their rightful compensation then that is where it becomes wrong in my book.
I understand being a cheapskate. I'm cheap too. But I can't condone theft.
Most folks who download product and never pay for it would never have purchased the product in the first place. Which means in all but a fractional percentage of cases, a download isn't a lost sale--you would never have gotten that money anyways.
Much of that is because a great deal of so-called piracy is "downloading just to archive", which means the downloader collects and archives electronic releases, but never actually reads or uses them.
(Gods, you know how many free releases, preview materials, and so forth are sitting on my drive right now that I downloaded and promptly ignored? I have core books from a dozen or more systems that the publisher released, I grabbed, and then "put off reading" ie: forgot about.
The majority of "pirates" will shamefully admit doing the same thing with whatever it is they're collecting.)
And I just can't see that as theft or piracy because, in the end, you're losing nothing. You haven't lost a sale, you haven't lost a product, you haven't lost any money (either from your bank or TO someone else).
Given there are various studies in the music industry showing that the piracy we're talking about simply doesn't hurt sales, that it actually boosts sales for underperforming product, the only actual, concrete result of piracy is that it functions as a very large advertisement for your product/company.
I'd say that you can probably only convert less than 5% of pirates to paying customers, and that's by adding some sort of incentive, which in turn costs money. So in the end, is it worth it?
ReplyDeleteI think some folks are just always going to try and get away with getting stuff for free. You really can't make a profit off them. You can't cater to them, there's nothing you can do...they will simply steal your material. Those are the actual pirates.
ReplyDeleteI think some of what we call pirates really are "previewers". They check stuff out first, and see if they want to really drop dime on the product. I think the percentage of these is small though.
The vast majority are people of questionable ethics who like to think of themselves as "previewers" but really, this is just to sugarcoat things for their conscience. They usually end up casually forgetting to actually buy the product. Jerks.
I dunno. I think everyone wants to get something for nothing. Human nature. That is fine. But when it requires taking something from someone else, denying somebody else their rightful compensation then that is where it becomes wrong in my book.
I understand being a cheapskate. I'm cheap too. But I can't condone theft.
Most folks who download product and never pay for it would never have purchased the product in the first place. Which means in all but a fractional percentage of cases, a download isn't a lost sale--you would never have gotten that money anyways.
ReplyDeleteMuch of that is because a great deal of so-called piracy is "downloading just to archive", which means the downloader collects and archives electronic releases, but never actually reads or uses them.
(Gods, you know how many free releases, preview materials, and so forth are sitting on my drive right now that I downloaded and promptly ignored? I have core books from a dozen or more systems that the publisher released, I grabbed, and then "put off reading" ie: forgot about.
The majority of "pirates" will shamefully admit doing the same thing with whatever it is they're collecting.)
And I just can't see that as theft or piracy because, in the end, you're losing nothing. You haven't lost a sale, you haven't lost a product, you haven't lost any money (either from your bank or TO someone else).
Given there are various studies in the music industry showing that the piracy we're talking about simply doesn't hurt sales, that it actually boosts sales for underperforming product, the only actual, concrete result of piracy is that it functions as a very large advertisement for your product/company.