Piracy is Theft? Ridiculous. Lost Sales? They Don’t Exist

http://torrentfreak.com/piracy-is-theft-ridiculous-lost-sales-they-dont-exist-says-minecraft-creator-110303/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Torrentfreak+%28Torrentfreak%29

by Uncle_Sam • 15 years ago

130 147 15 years ago

torrentfreak.com

petercooper6• 15 years ago

Quite right. The English definition of theft: "A person is guilty of theft, if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it". To thieve something, there must surely be some thing to thieve.

Tyrannosaurs5• 15 years ago

At some point can this develop beyond a semantic discussion of the term "theft"?

I agree it's sloppy to think that theft and intellectual property violation are interchangeable but the point has been made on here about a million times so it doesn't really add much to the debate.

cturner3• 15 years ago

I share the frustation, but I'll explain why I think it's important not to let an issue like that slide.

A lot of the time the copyright debate is fought between people these world views.

1) Copyright opponents define propert as being like a car - something which one person has by denying it to another person.

2) Copyright advocates think of property as a "bundle of rights" enforced by the state. i.e. property is whatever a judge says it to be.

People who insist on calling it theft are steering the debate towards the second definition - that theft is whatever a judge or politician says it is. It's crucial to knock back attempts to do that. That worldview believes the whim of the state is the root of philosophy, and fundamentally correct in its judgement of right and wrong.

Property predates the state. It exists even in states that try to outlaw it. It's a strong algorithm that is useful for the efficient allocation of resources. Intellectual propert is neither a strong algorithm, nor a mechanism that leads to an efficient allocation of resources. It is not property. Intellectual property violations are not theft.

petercooper6• 15 years ago

If it's a debate about legal issues, it's crucial to not be ambiguous about definitions. We've seen what damage and abuses can occur when people get sloppy with legal terminology - the redefinition of "enemy combatants" in 2008, for example. "Theft" is a criminal offense. Copyright infringement isn't necessarily (though there are conditions that make it so in the US).

Some things warrant rehashing and reaffirming. Note that a new, but substantially similar, discussion about female engineers or gender discrimination pops up here every week or two. That discussion plays out the same way every time not because it adds anything new but because it's important (to someone, clearly).

ajscherer2• 15 years ago

If people are still referring to unauthorized copying as theft the point hasn't been made enough, regardless of how many times you've been forced to read it.

In my estimation "unauthorized copying is not the same as stealing" needs to be said once for every time unauthorized copying is referred to as stealing, plus one or two additional times for good measure.

anon_for_this_12• 15 years ago

So if someone hires me to do some work for them, and I do the work, but they don't pay me, what is that? There is no 'thing' in that case.

Piracy is similar. A band, video game maker, software producer, creates something for an audience with the expectation of getting paid for their work. When the work is pirated, that audience member has just done the equivalent of hiring someone and not paying them.

cturner3• 15 years ago

   > So if someone hires me to do some work for them,
   > and I do the work, but they don't pay me, what
   > is that?

Breach of contract. It's not related to property.

   > Piracy is similar.

It's not. The dynamic of contract violation is not at all like the dynamics of rape, pillage or intellectual property violation.

sophacles4• 15 years ago

What? So if I hire you and don't pay you, you can go back in time, thus not losing the hours of effort you will never get back? I strongly doubt this, but assuming it is true: why haven't you just invested in the stock market and made trillions of dollars yet?

With your creative people, they never had a contract in place. I was never going to buy their music, game, book or whatever. I don't owe them anything. If they want to speculate on me giving them some money for the work they do, they can, but that doesn't guarantee crap. Further, if I copy say, a song: I have the song, they have the song, i paid the same as i would have paid anyway ($0). Somehow you are saying that the band lost money tho? If the pope declares the music satanic, and threatens listeners with excommunication, do you sue the Catholic Church for lost sales?

If I show up at your house and mow your lawn in speculation that you will pay me for that service, but you choose not to do that, do I get to sue you for theft now? Because it sure sounds like that is what you are saying.

marbletiles6• 15 years ago

The thing that is being stolen is the right of exploitation of your creative work (it's one of the UN Human Rights, that). When I make something, I have the right to control how it is exploited commercially -- even if I simply don't want it to be commercially exploited!

So when software I make is copied without my consent, I lose that right. If the infringement is large enough, I utterly lose it. (See also Trumpet Winsock).

Property doesn't need to be physical objects. You can steal an idea just as much as you can steal lunch money. And you can steal my rights.

rome8• 15 years ago

Ideas are not protected by copyrights. If you tell me about your idea, we both have it. Nothing was taken from you.

If I take your pen, you no longer have it; thats theft.

tedunangst2• 15 years ago

I'm curious what you think of "theft of services". The deprivation may only be temporary, not permanent, so would it be theft?

Confusion• 15 years ago

That definition is age old and unprepared for the future. It does not determine what the word theft was intended to mean. In other languages, the definition of 'theft' is not that strictly restricted to physical property.

iwwr2• 15 years ago

Buying Minecraft is not just buying a program, it's a kind of license agreement; the buyer is expecting future updates and feature improvements. Whereas, software bought in a box comes as-is, at most with the occasional bugfix patch.

pilif3• 15 years ago

That's not quite true according to their Terms and Service (http://www.minecraft.net/copyright.jsp),

When you purchase the game, you pay for it as it is right now. Future updates are an added bonus.

Sure. So far the game has been updated regularly, but they explicitly stated that they are not guaranteeing any updates.

iwwr2• 15 years ago

It's an informal agreement. As long as buying the program gives you automatic updates, there is less of a reason to pirate it.

steveklabnik• 15 years ago

You're both right: When it was α, you got it forever, for free. Now that it's in β, you don't.

mostly_harmless• 15 years ago

That was a recent addition to the Terms. What that is referring to is additional DLC once the game is complete. Right now it is in beta. If you own a alpha license, you are guaranteed to receive additional updates free. The idea was that they were afraid of a "Everything in the future is free" clause, so just in case; they added that. There is currently no planned 'bonus updates'

masklinn• 15 years ago

> Buying Minecraft is not just buying a program, it's a kind of license agreement; the buyer is expecting future updates and feature improvements.

Not quite. Only those who bought it before or during Alpha subscribed to a lifetime of updates, since beta the terms are far more "normal".

hnfwerr• 15 years ago

That's what I would call sharing. The problem with physical goods is that if you share it with someone, you don't have it anymore.

With digital goods, you can share and still own the product, so both are happy.

This works perfect for consumers, but not so good for the companies....

rome8• 15 years ago

"This works perfect for consumers, but not so good for the companies...."

The movie industry is thriving and they've been hit pretty hard by sharing.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/piracy-once-...

cturner3• 15 years ago

I defended copyright charges in a civil suit in the late nineties. I was already skeptical about it, and the combination of my skepticism and the case caused me to start to argue against it openly. It has been and is thrilling to see the debate continue to turn against the idea.

Ten years ago, the idea of questioning the justification of copyright was alien even to geeks and lawyers. People who copied lots themselves considered it to be cheeky, unjustified. The idea of questioning it hadn't thought about it, and wouldn't even raise the energy to consider that it might be worth questioning. The reaction to skepticism would always be that laugh that's reserved for contrarians, followed by a brief "doesn't compute" look and then a search for distraction.

Things are shifting.

reedlaw3• 15 years ago

I think in the 80s and 90s the idea of questioning wasn't thought of much because it (copyright) wasn't thought of much. No one thought to much about copying cassette tapes or floppy disks (at least where I grew up).

Derbasti2• 15 years ago

Funny thing, Germany does not have copyright. Instead, it has creator-right, which is very similar and usually compatible with copyright, but not exactly the same.

The difference is that copyright gives rights to the copyright holder, which may or may not be the author. With creator-right ('Urheberrecht'), these rights are always bound to the author and can not be sold.

I think this is interesting, because I would agree more with Urheberrecht than with copyright.

chopsueyar• 15 years ago

See "larceny".

psykotic5• 15 years ago

Whenever a discussion on this subject devolves into bickering over the meaning of words, I feel an urge to smack the participants.

It's completely irrelevant what you call it unless you are one of those curious people who considers private property to be almost an ontological category. Protection of private property exists to the extent it's judged useful to society. Protection of so-called intellectual property exists to the same extent. Counterfactual what-if reasoning is as valid or as suspect in this debate as in any other.

_delirium3• 15 years ago

> Protection of private property exists to the extent it's judged useful to society.

I agree with that view, but I suspect this issue comes up a lot because many people don't agree with it. A common view is that private property is a natural right of some sort, merely recognized by society, rather than a convention created by society.

If you took that view, then whether intellectual property is legit turns largely on whether it is or isn't part of this natural-law category of "property" (which is what you find debate about in libertarian writings on IP, for example).

jules2• 15 years ago

Explain how any right is a natural right. This is a spectrum, some rights require more effort to protect than others. Private property rights require a great deal of effort to protect, as do intellectual property rights.

psykotic5• 15 years ago

My argument doesn't hinge on the negation of natural rights theory. It's based on a simple observation of the way large-scale societies have always worked in practice: they have never treated protection of private property even in its purest forms as an absolute.

My point is not that the question at stake is straightforward, but that once we stop clinging to flawed analogies, the matter reveals itself as a policy issue like any other, an issue that is complex but ultimately resolvable by the usual means of analysis.

All the rest is rhetoric.

jellicle4• 15 years ago

Indeed. People are so used to the abstraction of "property" that they've forgotten it's an abstraction.

Gormo3• 15 years ago

> Protection of private property exists to the extent it's judged useful to society.

Interesting use of the passive voice - who's doing the judging?

mike_esspe• 15 years ago

And protection of slavery existed because it was useful to society. How it can be argument for or against slavery?

sophacles4• 15 years ago

The problem arises not over some strawman of usefulness to society. The problem people have is that equating material property and intellectual property has some pretty serious flaws. It overlooks various attributes an (please excuse the overloading of the term) properties of each that are not shared. These attributes allow for some very different use cases between the two - and using the same words for very different actions is confusing. So while the arguments coming down to definitions may look like semantic wrangling, it is really an attempt to get people to see the different attributes as actually different.

petercooper6• 15 years ago

It's completely irrelevant what you call it

It is important in a debate to not allow people to vilify any participants in "piracy" by declaring them to be criminals from the get go. "Theft" does this. "Copyright infringement" does not. Definitions are important because without sharing a vocabulary, we share nothing with which to debate logically.

psykotic5• 15 years ago

Well and truly said. But my frustration is that the public debate has not moved far beyond the stage of settling on a common vocabulary. No party will cede to the other's framing of the issues because that would admit defeat. Thus we have a stalemate. Skipping this stage and cutting to the chase may not be the best strategy for "winning", but it stands a chance of actually generating some insight.

rome8• 15 years ago

"Protection of private property exists to the extent it's judged useful to society. Protection of so-called intellectual property exists to the same extent."

Protection of private property is to prevent theft. We both can't have your car. If I copy your software, we both have it.

Protection of intellectual "property" was granted as incentive to create. It was (is?) a time based monopoly on your creation. At some point the protection ended. This was a benefit to society as it allowed ideas to be built upon.

ajscherer2• 15 years ago

Of course what you call it is relevant! To claim otherwise is to pretend that language has no influence on thought, which simply isn't true and I believe you know it. Human brains will have different thoughts in a discussion of "stealing" than in a discussion of "unauthorized copying", and that will influence how we ultimately decide to deal with this issue.

marcelvdg• 15 years ago

Surely lost sales must exist... Markus is obvioously doing ok, and pirated copies of his game are aiding virality, but still...

Software, movies and music are now perceived as free. Which is one reason why many developers are now moving to closed platforms such as Apple's iOs where they are guaranteed payment for installations.

That said, I can see the logic behind "going with the flow" when it comes to piracy, especially when cumbersome anti-piracy measures usually only harm legit, legal owners. (E.g. its more convenient to crack Digidesigns ProTools audio editing software and be able to run it on my laptop without any fuss, than to have to insert my legal USB dongle every time I boot the software).

I think anti-piracy measures will work if they are baked into a product from day one. And I don't mean contrived, un-user-oriented measures, I mean doing it iOs-style or cloud-style. In iOs the users love the App Store - its an advantage, not a hindrance. And its the same with Cloud-based or hosted software. Its a selling point - its part of the offering.

Me and some friends have a SaS app that we changed from free to a minimal monthly subscription. Logically, we saw a decline in sign-ups and follow-through by new users, but this was worth it cos we now make some money from the service. If the software had, instead, been a download, then my guess it that we never would have been able to profit of the small user-base that we have. The free version would be out there, and even though it took off we would never have seen any profits.

And then we might not be motivated to cary on creating cool stuff.

greyman• 15 years ago

It's difficult to say regarding the lost sales. In relation with every pirated book, there are several groups of people:

A) Got the pirated version, but wouldn't buy it if they couldn't get it free

B) Got the pirated version, and therefore didn't pay for it

C) Learned about the book because it was pirated, and then bought it.

I don't have the statistics, but my guess is that most of the people are in the group A). Now the question is, which group is bigger, B or C. I don't know myself, and it probably depends on the book itself. But as I have seen, most anti-piracy proponents include the group A) into the lost sales category, while it clearly doesn't belong there.

jokermatt999• 15 years ago

It's not just that some people include A into lost sales though, although that is the major problem. Some people are strongly against group A because they feel that they should not get whatever they pirated for free. You'll see this a lot in conjunction with the word "entitled". I can understand their point, too.

Personally, I think the world is a better and richer place for more shared culture (see also group C, who likely exists largely because of A), and if that means people who weren't going to pay anyway freeload through piracy, so be it. If the would not convert to a sale, then they should essentially be ignored. The piracy that should be focused on is B, because that's the only one that actually has a real monetary effect.

cemerick8• 15 years ago

Just about the only lick of sense in this discussion.

I'm surprised that so many here, a community where lots of people are engaged in entrepreneurial ventures and where many donate to the unpaid author of widely-pirated shareware [1], would appear to be so laissez-faire on this issue. Whether you call it theft or breach of contract, piracy is wrong and not good.

I suspect you would have a better sense of perspective if people could create and use "paid" accounts on your shiny web services without paying.

Anecdotes of (c) described in the parent are few and far between, and don't justify the instances of (b) or the unintended consequences / moral hazard of (a).

(Disclosure: I sell software for a living, and have discovered [and reconciled] piracy of my products by very large organizations in the past. I imagine there are many other instances I'm not aware of.)

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2282875

petercooper6• 15 years ago

I'm surprised that so many here, a community where lots of people are engaged in entrepreneurial ventures and where many donate to the unpaid author of widely-pirated shareware [1], would appear to be so laissez-faire on this issue. Whether you call it theft or breach of contract, piracy is wrong and not good.

Did anyone here really say that copyright infringement was good? Saying that it's not "theft" doesn't automatically throw one into the pro-piracy camp. Copyright infringement can certainly be wrong and extremely detrimental to our culture - that's why we have copyright laws in the first place.

yuvadam• 15 years ago

You do have a point that web services cannot be pirated, and if they could be, the HN community would have a different view on things.

I'm not sure that's the case.

Let's start with the base assumption that piracy is something that exists, and will forever exist. Just work your way around it, and use it for your advantage.

For example, build your product so that the more users it has, even if they are illegal users, the overall experience improves.

Don't fight battles you can't win. Use the circumstances to your advantage.

commieneko• 15 years ago

If I hear a joke on TV one night, and I repeat it in a meeting at work the next day, I might even attribute it, but technically, I've committed (gasp) some type of infringement. Now we might "hrrumptffff" and try and call that "fair use" but what this really is, is a casual use.

Now it's debatable whether or not we could actually function as a society if every little use was tracked, accounted for, and billed; technologically it's probably possible. But realistically, I don't want to live in a society where casual use of intellectual property (a concept that is harder to define than you might imagine) is minutely tracked and logged.

We have a name for that kind of society, it's called a Police State.

The bad news for Old Media (and commercial software developers) is that digital technology has made "casual use" almost frictionless. I can give my brother a copy of Jon Stewart's latest rant, half a dozen different ways, as easily, or easier, than I can repeat the high points over the phone. It's the _ease_ that defines casual.

I write software for a living too. And I've worked in broadcast TV. My TV job, which paid pretty well, thank you, was screwed by the imploding broadcast industry. Boo hoo. The price of progress. If I have to suck it up and re-invent myself, then Old Media can too.

The recording industry did it to live performers, the TV industry did it to Radio. The VCR ... well you get the idea. The only way to stop it is a nuclear war or a police state.

I'm not trying to minimize this. This is a weather change in the way media works. It is gonna be _hard_. But worrying about old models, and trying to prop up old players, who add little value in the new world, is only going to make it harder.

stcredzero• 15 years ago

Whether you call it theft or breach of contract, piracy is wrong and not good.

Wrong or right, good or bad, there are smart ways to get what you want and not so smart ways that don't work.

Taking non-corporate pirates head-on often doesn't work, and is often counter-productive. Taking pirates on indirectly is often a better option. (Use direct conflict as a last resort. It tends to be expensive.)

nettdata• 15 years ago

You might be surprised, actually.

Not necessarily the same as books, but may be somewhat relevant.

There was a Japanese think tank that recently released a report that found the online piracy actually boosted the sale of anime DVDs.

http://torrentfreak.com/internet-piracy-boosts-anime-sales-s...

Personally, I used to work in the music business for Nettwerk Records (hence the Nettdata username), Sarah McLachlan's label. We were one of the few labels that believed that the freely available online versions of songs actually stimulated sales, especially for back catalogues.

When Sarah's Surfacing album released, we actually ripped high quality MP3 versions of the songs and hosted them for free download. We also created a streaming "radio" site that allowed you to make and play your own playlists from any and all of the songs Nettwerk had the rights to.

We had real live numbers that showed sales were up a LOT after we made things available online.

I think more than anything the content producers are being forced to rethink their models, especially when it comes to the record industry.

If they made their back catalogues available in an individual song format for a reasonable price (whatever that would be), I think they'd do well.

And for what it's worth, I actually bought a non-DRM'd eBook this morning, one that I can read on my laptop in PDF, or on my iPhone and iPad in eBook format. I'm sure it was available in some pirated format, but I'm one of those guys that would rather support the things I want to see more of.

mkr-hn2• 15 years ago

Funny thing about anime: fan subs/dubs are why most anime publishers line up a translation during production now. They realized they were missing a big market. It's why the original Fullmetal Alchemist ('03-'04) was a fansub for a long time before an official NA release, while the recent remake came out in English[1] on Hulu days after airing in Japan.

A whole new import market sprung up because of what was technically piracy.

[1]With subtitles, but dubbed episodes started popping up on the Hulu page near the end of the show's run.

jellicle4• 15 years ago

From the evidence we have, group C is much larger than B for most media.

Superstars might lose out somewhat; their group B might be larger than group C. But for almost all creators of media, group C is larger, often extremely much larger, than group B, and therefore copyright infringement is a net benefit to them.

Even for superstars, it's not clear that B is larger than C. You want the latest hit song from Lady Gaga? Here you go:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV1FrqwZyKw

Free to air for the world to see and download, no payment required, put up there by the creator. Clearly Gaga believes that the benefits of publicity outweigh any "losses" from people who decided not to buy the album. I'm sure she is correct.

teamonkey4• 15 years ago

> From the evidence we have

Link?

JoeAltmaier3• 15 years ago

Believe what you like, but at some point the product becomes a "commodity" - its well-known and further piracy doesn't contribute to publicity. Then it'd be nice to switch models (which is of course impossible).

pushingbits• 15 years ago

This might very well be true in the current environment where there are only some isolated cases where people give stuff away for free.

But things might very well be different if it becomes the default mode for everyone. If you give something away for free now, while your 10 competitors are not doing it, you will draw a lot of people simply because consumption is easier by comparison. If your 10 competitors also started giving away everything for free that advantage would be gone.

Of course, there might still be a net benefit, but the evidence we have should be taken with a grain of salt.

chollida1• 15 years ago

Great break down!

I think it's important to remember that groups B and C aren't static.

In my, completely unsubstantiated, opinion group B would be much larger for blockbuster media.

Think a new video game from Valve or Id Software or movies like Avatar or Titanic. These types of media don't really need piracy to market due to the fact that many/most people already know they exist. I would also guess that they gain much less from word of mouth, but I'll fully grant that's just an opinion:)

On the other hand you'd have "indy" games and movies, and other niches like anime, where piracy may actually help spread the word about this media and help it gain sales through increasing the size of group C.

kenjackson2• 15 years ago

In some sense the difference between A & B don't matter. Probably the real question is if the consumer is using the product. Lets imagine I'm Garmin and someone comes and copies my GPS code, puts it on a device and then copies all of my map data. And then goes on to use that for their fleet car service. Now its possible that the consumer never would have bought the actual Garmin product, but there's really no good way of knowing. But if they're using it regularly I almost feel like it doesn't matter. It seems like (IANAL) that quasi-contracts should come into play here.

The fundamental problem I have with (C) being larger than (B) is that if it were true why don't more major companies know about? For example, if (C) were true, wouldn't MS remove all forms of copy protection from its product? No license keys period. You just pay money and get a link, but a link that anyone can use. And they would, accordingly make more money than what they're doing now.

I think what it probably looks like is (A) >> (B) >> (C)

Travis2• 15 years ago

I suspect there's a difference when the end user is not the entity doing the piracy (Mike copies Garmin's code and puts it in many cars for his customers to use). Involving a 3rd party, and probably involving commerce, feels different to me than personal use.

allwein2• 15 years ago

People also ignore a subset of A. Got the pirated version, but never consumed or used it.

I can't tell you how many versions of AutoCAD I downloaded as a teenager, either because I thought I might learn how to use it or just because I could. I don't think I ever installed a single copy. Likewise, I once had several hard drives filled with pirated TV Shows of things I will never watch, just because it was available.

crystalis• 15 years ago

Video games all seem to tell the same story: 8 or 9 pirates to 1 legitimate user (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17350 http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/04/stardock-88-per/)

Pirates converted to legitimate customers (in the face of DRM or other obstruction of the pirated form) at a rough rate of 1 customer per 1000 defrayed pirates. This seems to indicate a rough ratio of 1000 As to 1 B. Are a thousand sales worth a million users?

blub2• 15 years ago

Funny thing how this obviously flawed analysis has popped up at the same time as the Trumpet Winsock piracy story: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2282875.

Small developers can get badly hurt by piracy.

Deestan• 15 years ago

The Trumpet Winsock story had to do with commercial actors "stealing" software and mass-redistributing it for profit.

This story has to do with people "stealing" software for their own private use without paying.

Given the existing level of confusion in all piracy discussions, I believe it is counterproductive to lump these two scenarios together.

blub2• 15 years ago

Do I make more money if a person as opposed to a commercial actor uses my software without paying?

benologist2• 15 years ago

"commercial actors "stealing" software and mass-redistributing it for profit."

So basically exactly the same as torrent sites?

antihero• 15 years ago

I generally support examples like this, but it's important to note that Minecraft development budget is hardly anything compared to the investment of a major game studio, hence the lower price point.

bialecki3• 15 years ago

I don't know whether it is or isn't piracy, but it's hard to take his opinion on this as representative or forward thinking because of how "special" Minecraft is (i.e. it's massively popular). Maybe his goal is to maximize revenue, but it doesn't seem like that. In that case, I'd be more interested in the perspective of someone who's pulling in 30k/year in sales and has the same 70% "lost sales" rate. When you're making millions, there's a threshold above which more money is just more money and doesn't really matter (depending on the person). But the difference between 30k/year and what might be 60-80k/year if there was a lower piracy rate would probably drive me nuts because that's the difference between making a living doing something and not.

rome8• 15 years ago

Just because 70% of people pirate the software doesn't mean that 100% of them would have bought it.

bialecki3• 15 years ago

Right, that's why I said 30k/yr might become 60-80k/yr, implying that of those 70% maybe 40-80% would actually buy it if they couldn't pirate it.

JoeAltmaier3• 15 years ago

I'm glad you got something from the numbers in that article because I didn't. Something about 1% of the registered users coming in the last 24 hours? And a million out of 600,000 being such-and-such.

Is there some place other than that puff piece to get real MineCraft numbers from?

teamonkey4• 15 years ago

Minecraft won an award (multiple awards?) at the Indie Games Festival Awards at the Game Developers Conference yesterday. That would explain the sales.

It beat out other indie games, which of course wouldn't get as high a sales boost. So yes, Minecraft is an example of a very rare case.

bialecki3• 15 years ago

My rough calculation is that Minecraft goes for 15 Euros, so if he's registering 30k people/day, that's 450k/day in revenue. That's a lot. Maybe it could be double that if people who are pirating the game didn't have that option. But my point is, 450k/day or 900k/day? I'd be happy with either.

EDIT: Sorry, 30k/day is registered and 30% purchased, so it's actually 9k/day roughly. That's still 135k/day or 270k/day. Still, two numbers I'd be fine with.

trin_• 15 years ago

the numbers are directy from the creator of minecraft:

http://www.minecraft.net/stats.jsp

olivercameron• 15 years ago

What gripes me most about pirates is that a lot still feel they have some form of entitlement for support. For example, I get emails all the time saying "I'll pay for the app, but only if you provide feature X and fix bug Y, until then, it's just not worth 99 cents.".

sanj• 15 years ago

If only that were actually true.

Colin Messitt actually ran an experiment to figure this out. I reposted it about 15 years ago with his permission:

http://replay.waybackmachine.org/19990420024127/http://scraw...

leon_• 15 years ago

Oh please, can't we keep those piracy apologist posts away from HN? It's bad enough that gamasutra.com's comments are flooded with those "I pirate games because piracy = freedom"-kids. I don't think this kind of discussion would enrich HN in any positive way.

mkr-hn2• 15 years ago

This isn't a piracy apologist post. This is an article about the creator of a wildly successful game saying piracy isn't as big a deal as people make out of it.

citricsquid2• 15 years ago

The thing almost everyone seems to be ignoring is Markus isn't saying "I think piracy is great and you should all do it" he's saying it exists and you just have to deal with it.

It seems almost everyone is taking what he has said as justification of piracy, "oh well he's rich now and he doesn't mind piracy so it must be okay for me to pirate!". If we ask him whether or not he thinks people should pirate he'll not say "yes, do it" he'll say "Well I'd rather you bought it, but if you're not going to then you may as well play it for free as I'd rather you play my game than go without, and I'm not going to spend millions trying to stop you... but I'd prefer if you paid for it".

naner• 15 years ago

Markus isn't saying "I think piracy is great and you should all do it" he's saying it exists and you just have to deal with it.

This is kind of where I always stood (I don't pirate personally, though).

If you're selling some intellectual property, you can sell a bazillion copies with almost no production costs. You produce once and then copy for (almost) free.

Now that everyone has the ability to copy, that massive advantage is somewhat tempered. It isn't quite the wild west, which is good. If piracy was easy and convenient it would eviscerate sales. Most people can't figure out or don't bother with piracy and blatant piracy is legally squashed (in the developed world, at least).

There's not much you can do but accept it as a cost of doing business and soldier on.

pnathan• 15 years ago

What I hear is that there is a vested interest by the common consumer in Getting Stuff For Free.

I like free stuff too. But believe me, I'd rather put in some registration features to "keep people honest" than to let myself be ripped off.

lotusleaf1987• 15 years ago

"No big studio picked up the film [Ink] for theatrical and home distribution. Double Edge Films pitched the movie directly to independent cinemas and to the DVD, Blu-ray and online distribution by themselves. After the release it became the most downloaded movies in file sharing torrent sites more accurately 400,000 times in a single week and exposed the film to a large audience, leading to higher DVD and Blu-ray sales in return. The independent filmmakers wrote in their newsletter that they had "embraced the piracy" and are "happy Ink is getting unprecedented exposure." : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1071804/trivia

iterationx• 15 years ago

Piracy first increases product visibility and increases overall sales until a saturation point is reached. Once market visibility is achieved then piracy represents a loss of sales.

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24446/is-ther...

As for the X is or is not theft discussions, let's see what Richard Feynman has to say about it:

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing — that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.

mlellsworth• 15 years ago

Minecraft is mind boggling from a business perspective AND a gaming perspective. Are there any other communities that are similar to Minecraft that anyone can think of?

I just find it fascinating that a game like Minecraft has such an involved ecosystem around it.

blahblahblah• 15 years ago

Actually, piracy is theft. Specifically, it's a form of robbery that takes place at sea. The attempt to equate the crime of copyright infringement with piracy is a gross misuse of the English language. When a ship of Somali bandits with AK47s boards your yacht, murders everyone on board (or leaves them stranded somewhere), and takes everything of value -- that's piracy. When a college student downloads warez, bittorrents "Pirates of the Carribean", or downloads the new Lady Gaga album through a P2P app -- that's copyright infringement. When the MPAA, RIAA, or BSA use the word "piracy" to describe the latter activity -- that's propaganda.

Piracy is Theft? Ridiculous. Lost Sales? They Don’t Exist

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