Waging War on Business

[Voltage Spike]

On Wed, Feb 12, 2003 at 07:13:17AM -0700, Darrell Shandrow wrote:
> property to make money!  I think that part of the reason for the high prices
> has to do with software piracy.  The industry is trying to figure in the
> costs of such piracy and is passing those costs along to legitimately
> licensed users.

I am not sure that I understand your reasoning here.  You think that
because the author would have charged $X for a product and there exists
Y copies, that they could potentially have made $X*Y.  However, they
only sold Z copies so that the price is adjusted such that $X*Y ==
$(X+delta)*Z?

I am sorry about all of the math.  Let me try again.

The author of a piece of software believes that they could have made
some amount of money, but, due to the expectation of unauthorized
copying, they will not.  As a result, they charge the legitimate
customers more money so that those that are following the law are
actually paying additional money to cover those that are not.

If the company has higher sales than expected, should they give that
excess money back to their customers?  Do you expect them to lower their
prices because the product is selling well?

Or do you think that it is more likely that the author chooses the
highest price point that he expects the market will bear?

-- 
                                                           Voltage Spike
      ,,,
     (. .)
--ooO-(_)-Ooo--