Comments on: Piracy ‘loss’ statements overblown

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Thu, 10 May 2007 01:28:17 +0000

This is as stupid as RIAA/MPAA baseless claimes that the loss of sales come from piracy(even though sales are us, and new products are down).

As a business man, I am full aware of how when you put a product on the market, there are projected sales numbers, i.e. there are X numbers of people with PCs, most of these people have TV antenas or CATV antenas (let’s say 98%), so there fore we should be able to sell a TV capture card to at least 10% or sales=X*0.98*0.1 .

Now if I project that the number of people needing a TV Capture card is 70~80%, and the company’s sales does not reach this projected sales number, I am held responsible for making a stupid decision.

What I am seeing here, is a group of people, who have not been able to switch their way of thinking, from the times where things changes so fast, that they could safely project a crazy sales number, and actually sell these numbers. But, now that the market has leveled off and other options have arrived, these executives have choosed the easy way out by blaming someone else, instead of their incompitance.

In this case, I wonder how much these people factered in the numbers of system staying with last year’s OS (as stated in an earlyer post), and even more so how many people have switched to open source or Freeware aplications?

Just my two bits

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Wed, 09 May 2007 20:08:01 +0000

there should be a clear distinction when “estimating the cost of piracy” of every possible material versus just one category. Yea i mean counterfeit products can be bad i guess. but the people buying the 10$ designer purse, wouldn’t have spent 3 grand on it.

it’s all BS when they don’t even know how much of it exists

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Wed, 09 May 2007 19:05:54 +0000

The BSA figures are obviously flawed, software is not a consumable item, it doesn’t wear-out or get used-up. Many businesses, especially engineering companies, are reluctant to switch to new OS software out of fear of incompatibility issues with their CAD software. Most of the software purchases and the time needed to learn how to use them, were done in the late 90s. Software today costs many times more and is so bloated that it actually runs slower. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

In manufacturing, product sales are like a glass of water, when the glass fills up (everyone owns the product) sales will begin to drop off. BSA’s belief that everyone should purchase new hardware and software year-after-year is definately tilted.