Freedom & Piracy
I was cleaning out some old e-mails this morning when I came across a link to an article I had saved last November. Katherine Noyes of LinuxInsider reported the release of 64-bit Adobe Flash for Linux. In her article, she cites a post by blogger Julian Saraceni titled “Stop pirating Adobe Software, Use Free Software Instead”. Both are quick reads and I recommend them.
Commercial software can be expensive, but in my experience, the old adage “you get what you pay for” holds true more often than not. As you might expect me to say, the price of software is driven not only by what people want to pay, but also by what authors are willing to charge. The cost of developing, testing and maintaining software must be recouped and an adequate profit margin added on top of that to keep software companies interested. That’s an economic reality.
Many people feel that software prices in general are unreasonably high. I’ve found that the justification for this belief is usually relative to the specific person’s financial situation at the time, but in many cases I agree that software is overpriced with respect to what you get for your money. Really good software is worth every penny. The perception that software prices are not fair is one of the main reasons people commit piracy.
Pirates also believe (or have to convince themselves) that they have a right to use software, even if the terms of use explicitly require a one-time or subscription payment. Have you ever thought or heard, “I need this software to do [whatever] – it’s the best/only software for this type of task – but I can’t afford it, so I’ll just use it for now.” The person making this statement is obviously dealing with a moral/ethical dilemma.
Piracy does have serious, far-reaching consequences. The most direct economic effect is felt by the authors and sellers, but economic imbalance has a way of rippling through an entire economy, through the product and labor markets in many sectors – the problem is not isolated. As piracy becomes more acceptable, a skewed sense of property rights develops. Society’s standards change and the peoples’ sense of right and wrong dulls. Theft, of which piracy is just one type, is more easily justified and thus, committed more frequently and even casually. Respect for the rights of others, and therefore respect for others themselves, is abandoned and the social contract decays.
OK, I’ll get off my soapbox now. Where’s the FUD? “Everyone” knows that the Linux community was started by a “bunch of hackers” and the negative connotation that accompanies that statement is well-understood. “You Linux people want everything for free!” This perception unjustly deposits the Linux community in the same class as pirates. I occasionally come across the accusation that Linux egregiously promotes piracy, though this is most often made in the context of copyright violations in the entertainment industry.
The truth is, (intellectually) Free Software is available to those who disagree with the concept and/or laws of intellectual property. Usually, Free Software is also (gratis) free or low-cost software, because intellectual protection is often what permits software price gouging. The authors are usually the first users of a Free software package, so overall quality is generally higher than one might expect. As expressed in the articles above, the availability of Free Software should reduce or eliminate the perceived “need” for piracy. Free Software is not limited to the Linux platform, but the Linux community supports and fosters this mentality explicitly.
Perhaps we can solve the problem of piracy at the root. (pun intended)
-Brandon
FUD Alert! Cheap Laptop Prices Misleading
An article from the Business Standard entitled “Cheap laptop price tags can mislead users” (by D’Monte & Shinde, Mumbai, India, January 24, 2008) warns consumers about the pitfalls of buying a cheap laptop in today’s market. It doesn’t focus on suboptimal hardware offerings, or limited expandability, or the defect-rate of cheap components, or even the impact of pre-loaded bloatware on the unit’s usefulness. I expected any or all of these when I first clicked on the link. Instead, it focuses on the OS cost component and how Linux is being used to bait customers on price point.
The authors (almost) immediately write Linux off in the fourth paragraph, citing the general lack of support for the OS (FUD Pattern #2), commercial offerings of Red Hat and Novell excepted. Once again, the business-centric concept of “good support” – evidenced by a toll-free phone number and a paid staff – is reinforced in the mind of the reader. This simple statement effectively obscures the wealth of online Linux support information and gives the OS a second-rate appearance at best. It also sets the stage for the remainder of the article, a discussion of the popularity of Microsoft’s products in India and the unfortunate piracy rate. The only disparaging remark about Linux after the fourth paragraph is that the affordable Vista Starter Edition has successfully displaced Linux on most new cheap-laptop orders.
On a side note, essentially all of the initial comments support Linux, several even calling FUD. I was impressed with these fourteen opinions…so strong and impassioned, so consistent in thought… so written by only five distinct users. I get the impression that the comment input-box was too small and that two comments had to be spread over eleven submissions. Still, many good points were made in these rants.
Cheers!
-Brandon
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