undefined | Better HN

0 pointsmkdirp4y ago0 comments

> A good rule to live by is to ask "what would happen if everyone did X?"

For example: "What would happen if all companies blocked individuals from doing what they want with the hardware they bought?" You get a hacking community and people imprisoned for the unlocked hardware they paid for. Not to mention a whole lot of ewaste that could otherwise work for years.

No, that's not a good example. How about this one: "What would happen if all companies opened up their hardware and stopped forcing people to upgrade for no reason?" Eutopia, that's what! Less ewaste. Less consumerism. People can actually use the hardware they paid for the way they want to use it.

This argument has been (ab)used since piracy has been a thing. I'm not aware of any company going under directly because of piracy, especially not just because of emulators. If there is one, I'd love to know, but even so, the numbers is negligible. Also, emulation is not the same piracy. While emulation can be used for piracy, it is not the main use case.

Corporations like Nintendo are not your friend.

0 comments

6 comments · 2 top-level

realusername4y ago· 2 in thread

> I'm not aware of any company going under directly because of piracy

You can go further than that, there's never been a study proving that piracy is making companies lose money.

It's repeated ad-nauseam by lobbies but as far as I'm aware, it's just urban legend for now.

TMWNN4y ago

>You can go further than that, there's never been a study proving that piracy is making companies lose money.

One empirical demonstration of piracy's impact on sales (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#Softwar...>):

>Will Wright said that Raid on Bungeling Bay sold 20,000 copies for the Commodore 64 in the US, but 800,000 cartridges for the Nintendo Famicom with a comparable installed base in Japan, "because it's a cartridge system [so] there's virtually no piracy".

realusername4y ago

> One empirical demonstration of piracy's impact on sales (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#Softwar...>):

That's not a demonstration, that can be explained by the difference in hardware penetration, the quality of service provided which was much higher on consoles at the time, pricing, market differences or other factors. You had plenty of counterfeited/bootleg cartridges as well on the famicom.

I'm sure we can find more than one story from the 80s if that's really a thing.

SkyMarshal4y ago· 2 in thread

> I'm not aware of any company going under directly because of piracy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_Records#Bankruptcy

ekianjo4y ago

You need to read your own links

> Factors cited were the heavy debt incurred during its aggressive expansion in the 1990s, growing competition from mass discounters and Internet piracy.[10] Mismanagement, managerial incompetence, and crippling restrictions from the first bankruptcy deal also contributed to Tower's demise.[11]

Not just piracy to say the least.

1 more reply

0xedd4y ago

Piracy's impact on the digital industry is propaganda. No link has ever been established by factual data. It's just corporations' PR.

The Government Accountability Office came out in 2010 with a report that said these numbers “cannot be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology.”

http://freakonomics.com/2012/01/12/how-much-do-music-and-mov...

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse