Originally posted by ZeroAltitude
The argument that convinced me of this position is a parity argument from physical goods. Note how the piracy arguments sound insane when applied to e.g. buying a car (e.g. they're so expensive, BMWs, so, if you can steal one, kudos to you...). I know that software is not a limited resource like iron. But in this instance, I think that disanalogy is unimportant -- software developers' *time* is a limited resource, and the analogy is reinstated.
No, it isn't reinstated. Car analogies are very common, and most of them only work to a certain point. Let me try and illustrate why.
Yes, it costs something to initially produce the software - the developer(s) spend time and are (ideally) rewarded by getting paid, whether directly through the profits of the software, or a nice salaray from their company. Since we're talking about Microsoft SW here, it's with a salary for those developers, and they tend (rightly) to be one of the highest paid non-executive groups within MS. Along with R&D, marketing, legal, etc., the Office product has an initial production cost that can be very high indeed. I'm just gonna pull numbers out of the air here, but lets say it costs about $2M to produce a verson of Office. The profit margins on Office are extremely high. As an employee, one can go to the MS company store, and buy it for COG (cost of goods), which as I recall (for Office2000) is about $95 (that's the full version, not upgrade), suggesting that the profit margin is somewhere around $200. But, for the sake of our little experiment, let's cut it in half to $100 clear profit for Microsoft on every copy sold. It's simple math now - Microsoft needs to sell just 20,000 (twenty thousand) copies to cover its initial costs. We all know they've sold a helluva lot more than 20 thousand copies. After that 20K copies, it's nearly pure profit for them - all of the development costs are paid, the legal resarch paid, the R&D is paid. Bugfixes still cost something, but that cost is often assigned to the next version of the product, where the cycle starts all over again. The reccuring distribution costs are very low, given the kinds of volume that O2K generates. And, most importantly for our discussion, the developer's costs have been covered (and then some).
BMW, on the other hand, isn't so fortunate. They have fixed material costs for producing each copy of, say, a 330ci that doesn't decrease significantly over the life of the product. Also, the life of a given model of BMW is much longer than the average life of a version of a software package, which means that given the smaller margins on cars, they take much longer to recoup the development costs for a given model.
All of this makes the software industry's profit-model at once very lucrative, and very difficult to nail down. Microsoft (and others) would claim the full retail price of the product as the loss represented in piracy of that product, even if the product was 2 years into its lifecycle. But to claim that pirating Win95 in late 1997
actually cost Microsoft $200, is just plain wrong. It didn't cost them anywhere near that (COG on Win95, IIRC was around $35).
I'm very certain that, by now, the initial costs for Office.X have been paid. I'm
not arguing that it makes it right (or legal) to get a pirated copy to run, but if I already have a legit copy, the waters are rather muddier WRT what's right and wrong. The EULA is not that much help in clearing this up:
1.
GRANT OF LICENSE. This EULA grants you the following rights:
* Applications Software. You may install, use, access, display, run, or otherwise interact with ("RUN") one copy of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT, or any prior version for the same operating system, on a single computer, workstation, terminal, handheld PC, pager, "smart phone," or other digital electronic device ("COMPUTER"). The primary user of the COMPUTER on which the SOFTWARE PRODUCT is installed may make a second copy for his or her exclusive use on a portable computer.
* Storage/Network Use. You may also store or install a copy of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT on a storage device, such as a network server, used only to RUN the SOFTWARE PRODUCT on your other COMPUTERS over an internal network; however, you must acquire and dedicate a license for each separate COMPUTER on which the SOFTWARE PRODUCT is RUN from the storage device. A license for the SOFTWARE PRODUCT may not be shared or used concurrently on different COMPUTERS.
So, I
am allowed to install a copy on my iBook, with it already installed on my desktop machine. But, the license is not supposed to be shared on different computers... Except, I'm not running my copy from a network drive.. Gah.. my head hurts...
Seriously, I think what's happening in my case (I'm the only user) is that the technological controls to prevent 2 copies running concurrently are there to prevent 2 separate
users running those 2 copies concurrently. But I'm just one person, so maybe it's ok. I doubt, at any rate, that MS is gonna come after me for it.
Sharing it with a housemate, or spouse, child, whatever, again gets pretty grey, and although the EULA doesn't permit it, I don't see that MS is gonna get to twisted in knots about it (assuming they ever found out), with two conditions. The first copy
must be legit. And, it must not be shared outside the household. IMO, the moral/ethical standpoint isn't too bad if that's what's going on.
But, I'm not a lawyer, and I won't pay for yours if Microsoft's lawyers disagree...
(sorry for the length of the post, just too much ground to cover)
