I agree with your stance. I always support small-time programmers like these. I do not pirate from them; I feel a little guilt when it happens. On the other hand, Microsoft or the movie industry simply do not strike up the same amount of guilt: they churn out products like nobody’s business, and I therefore do not feel anything as they are copied and pirated.
Software is a service only if you are writing software for a single entity. As soon as you start writing software for public consumption, you either are giving it away, or you are selling it. If you want to give it away, that’s great. If not, and someone copies it without paying you, that’s piracy.
Having been a game developer in an earlier life, I know that piracy is an unfortunate fact of life. The real tragedy, however, comes when a developer can no longer continue to produce popular software because everyone steals it instead of paying for it. Eventually, creative computer gaming is gone and all we are left with is console crap.
speaking of world of goo, which i have wanted to purchase for a long time now, which version is preferrable–the wii version or the pc version? i’m wondering if using the wiimote would be more difficult than the mouse.
It is true that not everybody who steals another person’s software would have purchased it anyway, but it’s still theft. Not theft of money, but theft of the creator’s right to choose what he or she does with his creation.
In this case, when people pirate World of Goo they’re not taking 20 bucks away from 2D Boy, they’re taking away 2D Boy’s right to choose what they want to do with their own work. Instead of meeting their terms (just $20, even), they’re basically telling the developer they can’t and shouldn’t have a say in how the game is used. Some may say that that’s not a big deal, but this type of theft can’t work. If software developers are going to be able to afford to develop software, they need to be able to control what is done with their software. Charge $20, charge $1,000,000, or charge $0 and put it under the GPL… it has to be their choice. Our only choice as customers are to accept their terms or move on.
If people don’t like what is happening to 2D Boy and World of Goo, I have another suggestion than just buying a copy of the game: Make a personal commitment not to steal software. You can’t change other people’s minds, but you can control what you do.
Hi Jeff,
thanks for writing about this, because it’s near and dear to my heart as a software developer: http://dlinsin.blogspot.com/2008/05/paying-for-software.html.
buying software supports programmers is exactly how programmers should think, because it’s our business which is being harmed when you download something pirated! Stealing from each other is only harming ourselves!
you sound like you are being honest now with buying software which is a good thing but by your own admission you did a lot of pirating as a kid.
this is a perfect example of what goes around comes around. what’s happening is perfectly fair in your case, isn’t it?
nick
The other side of the coin is that with piracy, I get to choose what I buy, like in a free (software) society I should.
I bought World of Goo on my Wii, and enjoyed it, sure. No problem. But about 90% (hey, 90%, how about that) of the other crap I bought from WiiWare I will never get refunds from.
Unless all Altair owners were using Micro-Soft’s BASIC, then a claim of 90% piracy of Micro-Soft BASIC is unwarranted.
@NM, Mike Hussein Cohen, Duh:
You guys are what normal people call, freetards.
Your ignorance is just unbelievable. How does supporting users equate giving you the source code?
Stallman has spoiled many, many kids.
Why World of Goo lets you submit highscores when it feels such a high percentage is pirated is beyond me.
You just have to be smarter. Take Apple iTunes for example. They made it easier to purchase a song for $1.50 than to find it, rip it and then download it.
I don’t see a problem in a $20 game calling home (checking against a server) every time you run it to verify you are a valid user.
As a 20 year old disability pensioner, I’ve never worked. My first and current income is this pension, and it is below the relative poverty line in my country. I have a budget for mind blowing software, but it is unfortunately very small. When emailed the World of Goo guys praising their fantastic game and asking if they could provide some discount or means of donation, they refused. They wanted me to keep my money… Nice guys. One day I’ll be able to afford stuff like this, but till then i’ll have to go forth pirating the majority of my software, and using specially discounted or free licenses in most of the rest.
One big moral I have is that any time I do pirate something, I need to ensure it doesn’t cost the developer anything. That means never using support, never downloading related stuff from their site. I think the moment I cost them something, it changes from sharing to some kind of stealing.
I suspect sometimes an honest unpaid user is worth something special to indie developers too. A story of struggle, and an expression of love for their software. Completely aside from that, I have friends who do have money, and sometimes my positive recommendations cause them to buy apps too. If piracy costs nothing and helps sell more copies to those who can and would pay, well, that sure is a great ideal. 
I’d love to buy this game but unfortunately PayPal thinks that there is huge hole in the Earth instead of country of Serbia, so it’s impossible to buy anything via PayPal from here. I wonder how exactly PayPal managed to become so popular and still they are oblivious to how many countries there are in the world. I guess I’ll just have to pirate it since it is a great game.
Hey. This World of Goo is great. Anybody know of a crack for it?
No, seriously. Thanks for the heads-up, Jeff. That game is so addictive that I had to go and buy myself a copy (the official story is that I got it for my son).
Here’s an example of a great freaking product that has a fair charge ($49 to $361, depending on the edition, if you buy online): FL Freaking Studio! http://flstudio.com/
Versions of the product 7 and prior have all been cracked but real producers who use this software all buy it and what does it matter if kids at home pirate this. When they releaes their songs they will have to buy it anyway (or maybe after they get some cash from a few first songs :P).
Otherwise, thanks for another inspiring post.
Thank you for writing such a thoughtful, balance article on piracy and us pirates. I personally prefer the full version of any software, game, movie, or music before I buy. Just last week I bought HBO’s The Wire. As for software or games, I bought Dead Space after playing it through for free. But really, most software should be donationware. I might even pay more than a publisher would charge standard if it works really, really well for me.
I also didn’t realize World of Goo was out there as I’ve been pretty busy lately. Seeing as I have some time I’ll have to download the torrent from one of my private trackers and try it out. Thanks for the headsup, Jeff. You’re the greatest.
I think it’s pretty clear that the but you should have [paid for the copy] part is pointing at the fact that an individual or organization owns the software in question.
What is it that they own? What other things did they copy from to make it? What, if someone makes a copy of it, have they lost? Certainly not anything that they had before the copy was made.
Ideas are not owned, they are held; and they can be held in multiple places simultaneously without diminishing any one instance. To say that one of those instances is “owned” is a poor way of modelling reality.
When someone gains the same idea (or a modified version of it), the original idea remains. Attempting to apply scarcity to things that can be copied indefinitely without affecting the original is futile, counter-productive, and harmful.
None of this is intended to justify copyright infringement. But attempting to equate copyright infringement with “stealing” is baseless, because copying does not remove nor diminish the original. If you want to justify restrictions on what people can do with a copy of an idea, you need some other model than “ownership” of scarce resources, because copies of ideas are not scarce and they can’t be meaningfully owned.
Haven’t read all comments, so forgive me for repeating.
But as a software developer, I can understand that people want money for the work they have put into the product. Most people don’t even understand how much work is required to produce good software.
But, one thing that developers should remember is that they should be proud of people using their product. No it doesn’t bring food on the table but it shows that at least you did something right.
2nd, I think that it should be possible to make it more attractive to own a legal copy of the software. I am actually proud of being owner of some of the software that I have invested in.
3rd, but what really surprises me is from a global perspective. They may not pay for your software, but that are still USERS of your software. I know several developers using visual studio, artists using photoshop or 3dmax. They maybe used the software unlegal for several years when they where kids or students, but they sure does pay for the products now and are experts with that software now. Because they got the chance to use the software. And no it doesn’t pay your bills now, but what if Bill Gates stopped everybody from using Basic that day, the we might all write Cobolt today ?
Take the hints the music industry finally is learning:
- DRM-Free
- Online Distribution
That’s not entirely true … There are several server emulators for World of Warcraft that allow one to host a private server. I would probably deem that as pirating
Myabe technically, but not in practise. While WoW private servers exist and are not liked by Blizzard, they are hardly real competition for the official servers. The percentage of people who prefer to play on such servers is negligible compared to the number of people who pay for online access to the official servers. Of course I’m going by word-of-mouth here but the community of WoW gamers and bloggers is a pretty strong one and feedback about such private servers does get around.