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Re: Media rights.. and wrongs?

On Wed, 2002-01-30 at 22:39, Hazel410 at aol_com wrote:
> 
> 2) In reference to the "well, if I like it I'll buy it later" bit... does 
> that work for software piracy, too?  Is it ok to 'demo' warez before shelling 
> out the cash?  What if it's an old version the company no longer sells 
> anyway?  What if it's shareware?  

Legalities aside, most software vendors already do this.  This is due to
two things:  they want to charge a lot of money for their software (so
they can make enough money to pay their programmers!), and no one is
going to do that before they see if first.

Who among you will just shell out $100-200 bucks for a computer program
sight unseen?  And I'm not talking about an established product like MS
Word or Quicken.  I'll tell you one thing - I want to make *damn* sure
that the software I'm getting isn't full of bugs and trucks you can
drive a truck through (and before someone makes the comment, no, I don't
use Windows. ;).

Bottom line is, people are much more willing to pay a premium for
something if they know they're going to be satisfied.  Would you pay $15
for a CD of a band you've never heard?  Would you pay $15 for a new OTR
cd?

> 3) If you illegally acquire a copy of a work, and then go buy the original 
> and consider it therefore ok, isn't that just a perfect example of trying to 
> claim that the ends justify the means?   And what about the opposite: 
> "They're not losing anything! I'd never pay good money for it in any case, so 
> what difference does it make if I take it for free?"

I'll have to admit to doing this.  I have many mp3s (well, oggs
actually) of artists whose CDs I would never have purchased in the first
place.  Overall, though, this can do nothing but help the artist
(assuming, of course, that I truly would not, under any circumstances,
have otherwise purchased the disc - which in my case is true for these
ones of which I speak).  The more popular they are, the more they stand
to sell in the future.

At any rate, the RIAA is going at this thing all wrong.  They just can't
pull their heads out of their butts to know what's good for 'em.  All
the statistics I've seen have had CD sales only going up, and at decent
rates.  The only numbers I've seen of profits going down are from
*cassettes*.  Well, duh.

Troy

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