Meh, that's a weak argument. The software industry wants to benefit from the fact that data can be copied for free (a unique property of our world), but also wants to put a sticker price on each ephemeral "copy" as of it's a material object.
In the world if matter, things have copies and we can count them. In the world of knowledge there's no such concept and it lives by different rules. RIAA and other luddites try to turn ideas into stones to sell them.
>The software industry wants to benefit from the fact that data can be copied for free (a unique property of our world), but also wants to put a sticker price on each ephemeral "copy" as of it's a material object.
so things that have low cost of materials / low cost of delivery, but high cost of skills required shouldn't be expensive? or what?
I don't understand how is this even relevant that software can be distributed very cheaply.
Creating software, or even better - the game requires significant investment and risk, so I don't understand how anyone would want to act as if that pirating was OK.
I was trying to say that the reason we have this paradox of "pirated bytes" that simultaneously causes losses and doesn't cause losses is that we try to impose rules of the material world onto the world of ideas.
I'd argue that software isn't built, but discovered and selling the same knowledge of how to sail the discovered island is a challenge, as we know. SaaS is essentially hiding that knowledge and selling bits of derived knowledge specific to each customer. SaaS doesn't attempt to sell the same knowledge twice. Otoh, the movies and music industry hasn't figured out this derived knowledge trick, so it struggles.
In the world if matter, things have copies and we can count them. In the world of knowledge there's no such concept and it lives by different rules. RIAA and other luddites try to turn ideas into stones to sell them.