[HN Gopher] Research Suggests That Software Piracy Lowers Poverty
___________________________________________________________________
Research Suggests That Software Piracy Lowers Poverty
Author : elashri
Score : 119 points
Date : 2022-07-17 17:01 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (torrentfreak.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (torrentfreak.com)
| ajuc wrote:
| Libraries increase knowledge and literacy and IP laws benefit
| rich countries and keep poor countries poor. In another news
| water is wet.
| jhoechtl wrote:
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| klyrs wrote:
| Why yes, I _would_ download a car...
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| The modern vernacular is 'right clicking'
| j45 wrote:
| Reading this reminded me designer friends during education who
| borrowed an early version of Photoshop to learn. There was near
| universal expression that if it unlocked a new career for them
| they would buy it, and they did.
|
| It also reminds me of how many developers were able to pick up
| enough photoshop to be dangerous and better connect with
| designers.
|
| There's lots of alternatives to photoshop today anyways :)
|
| Having access to learning how to use knowledge in your life (like
| photoshop skills) is invaluable to uplift yourself and future
| generations.
| wzy wrote:
| Imagine living in a developing country and earning your first
| $100 USD because you had a pirated copy of Adobe CS6 and learned
| Premier from YouTube.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I mean I pay for Creative Cloud subscription partially because
| I feel like I'm paying it forward (or back)
| ajuc wrote:
| This but with compilers, operating systems, books and other
| software is how 99.9% of people in IT in Eastern Europe started
| their careers. Millions of people live well because of piracy.
| rambojazz wrote:
| Sounds like the story of most of us, if not all.
| wzy wrote:
| Yep.
| krallja wrote:
| A better conspiracy theorist than me might claim that this is why
| there has been such a strong anti-piracy push: gotta keep the
| poors in their place.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| It makes little sense as there is already a good, reasonable
| and convincing explanation: software companies want to maximize
| income.
|
| In any case, software piracy seems to be a thing of the past,
| except a few notable pieces of desktop software (Windows,
| Office, some Adobe software). Everything else moved to the web,
| for better or worse, where piracy is practically non-existent.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Video game piracy is very much alive and well, with some
| triple a title exceptions. Not that that is effecting poverty
| at all. And, anyway, you don't really need new software. You
| can do fine with ten year old video editors and word 2007 if
| you just want to get something done.
| ghaff wrote:
| For that matter, there are open source options for most of
| the relevant productivity software categories.
|
| ADDED: Not sure the objections to this statement. If I
| needed to work on Word files, I'd almost certainly use
| LibreOffice rather than a 2007 vintage copy of Word.
| Certainly the open source software isn't always as good as
| the proprietary software but it's often a better choice
| than doing without or using versions long out of support.
| xzjis wrote:
| That's interesting that you talk about videogames because,
| in Brazil, a good wage is about $400 per month, but
| videogames cost about $40. So if you're a child, you can't
| really buy them as they're too expensive. And I don't even
| talk about the price of a computer or worse, a game
| console.
| makotech221 wrote:
| this is literally just marxist analysis of capitalist
| economies, but expand the anti-piracy to "pro-private property"
| skinnymuch wrote:
| I can't tell. What point is your comment trying to make?
| csallen wrote:
| Why do people believe there's a conspiracy to keep poor people
| poor?
|
| From an economic standpoint, rich business owners want there to
| be more wealthy consumers in the world, because that means more
| customers. You don't see Whole Foods expanding to as many poor
| neighborhoods as rich ones, because there isn't enough money
| there to buy.
|
| From a social and cultural standpoint, rich people with
| expensive tastes prefer to spend their time in upscale
| environments. They aren't happy that so many places are
| impoverished.
|
| Source: I know a lot of rich people.
| ajuc wrote:
| This was the reason for IP laws - to keep industrial revolution
| in Great Britain. And Germany as well as USA industrialized by
| pirating the shit out of these books and ignoring patents.
|
| Same as China and India now. There's no other way to catch up.
| uoaei wrote:
| I mean that's kind of the case, but zoomed out to a systems-
| level view we see that intellectual property rights definitely
| contribute to the domination and monopoly-like behavior of
| corporations in the global market.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Bad old days: go to a poor country, plant your flag on their
| property, demand tribute and export it back home
|
| Bad new days: go to a poor country, plant your flag on their
| intellectual property, demand tribute and export it back home
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > Bad new days: go to a poor country, plant your flag on
| their intellectual property, demand tribute and export it
| back home
|
| Wait, aren't the content companies offering things they
| made outside the new market? Or are they somehow locking up
| the poor country's content producers?
| BenoitP wrote:
| The conspiracist in me tells me big software groups actually
| like piracy quite a lot. Sure they want to extract as much as
| possible from the ones who can pay, but they'd be pretty pissed
| that the others go to the competition.
|
| Piracy is actually a hell of a moat. It provides mindshare,
| ecosystem, network effects.
|
| Let's hear it from the horse's mouth: Speaking at University of
| Washington in 1998, Bill Gates said: "Although 3 million
| computers get sold each year in China, people don't pay for our
| software. Someday they will, though, and as long as they are
| going to steal it, we want them to steal ours."
|
| And I'm currently writing this from a windows 10 OS that I
| never bothered to pay for and activate. It's been 2 years. I
| can't change the wallpaper, though. This is how much Microsoft
| cares.
| calibas wrote:
| So long as everyone's using Windows, pirated or otherwise, it
| means that Microsoft dominates the market. The best thing
| that could ever happen to Ubuntu would be for MS to start
| cracking down on piracy, but they don't because they know
| better.
| cercatrova wrote:
| Indeed, Microsoft now bundles Linux into Windows with WSL,
| creating an even bigger moat. I don't bother installing
| Linux on my computers anymore, just Windows with WSL.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The GIMP's most brutal competition isn't Photoshop, but
| pirated Photoshop.
| agumonkey wrote:
| GIMP most brutal competition is its UX designer
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| All I wanted to do was draw a circle. Thank God for
| photopea
| agumonkey wrote:
| I don't want to criticize FOSS, but GIMP rates #1 in the
| software that turn me furious faster than an IRC troll.
| On par with Eclipse. And I like gnu ed.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Long ago, the CGI companies sent free discs with their demos.
| These packages cost between 10-20K but you could just submit
| a request and you'd get the software to play with (very very
| few limitations like export resolution but the whole software
| was usable).
|
| They probably wanted us to get hooked too.
| 1-6 wrote:
| It's an interesting concept but the domain from the article
| screams 'we're biased by the way.'
| mlinksva wrote:
| The article on TorrentFreak is a writeup of a paper, and though
| the domain maybe screams bias, the writeup is (rightly, as far
| as I can tell) skeptical that the paper has demonstrated
| anything about causality, rather showing an association. The
| paper is at https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-
| file/2476613 in the Balkan Journal of Social Sciences, which
| I've never heard of but doesn't scream any particular bias to
| me.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Honestly I've come full circle on this
|
| No conflict = no interest
|
| What other organization would talk about the topic interesting
| to that organization?
|
| And even when it comes to paid research, why _pretend_ like
| someone else was ever going to do the research? "Woah smoking
| gun guys! The only organization ever interested in this funded
| a paper!" Yeah sure so put that observation in your back pocket
| for how much weight you put into it and move on
| calibas wrote:
| So?
|
| Do you believe all the other places you get information from
| are unbiased? They aren't, every human being is biased, we're
| wholly incapable of being truly objective. The best you can
| hope for are sources who are open and honest about their
| biases. It's the ones claiming to be "fair and balanced" that
| you need to watch out for.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Surely this is a tautology, "sharing" lowers "not having".
| Especially when the resource is not exlusive - like software.
|
| It should be self-evident, like asking if free schooling improves
| education.
|
| Althoguht we did have a debate a few months ago here, some people
| disagreed that building homes lowers homelessness
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-07-17 23:01 UTC)