That extra fee per month concept sounds interesting. I think it would be a great concept if it was optional and feasible.

The biggest problem I see with that structure is determining who gets how much money. Say a new record label comes out of the woodwork at a later date and gets very large. At what point would they start getting a cut? How would the other record labels feel about it?

The same would go for software. Myself... I probably would fork out $50 a month to be able to get any software I wanted at any time. That would be about tops for me and very likely the novelty would wear thin at some point and I would regret ever agreeing to forking out an extra $50.

There would have to be some downloading portal that provided everything so everyone would get the right cut based on the number of downloads. It would be very tough to keep the system honest. I can totally see a system like that getting exploited. Some people would come up with a way to pay people to download their software so that they would get a more substantial cut or something like that. It would get messy. if everyone got the same amount, I would write some trashy application and put it out there so I could start earning my cut.

Ok im not as educated as i should be on this subject, feel free to flame.

1. Game piracy is about doing something for fun, how many pirate groups make profit at it? I have no clue, but i doubt they make much. Nothing can be gained by pirating games except for free entertainment to a point, you still need to buy the hardware heh.

2. Remember back last year when several of the publishing companys backed by the Riaa and such went after the Digital FM streams? Its still not resolved but pushed back. That in my opinion is our corp. publishers being greedy basty nastards that cannot STAND the idea of any form of music being free. Hense piracy of music INCREASED, and those who download care even less about if its making a publisher spend only 50k on the gold toilet seats instead of 100k. I gotta stop here i get upset thinking about it.

3. Insurance for anything is modern day legal piracy. They take your money, give you nothing in return, then when you ask for help, you get buried in paperwork/court/fees and an adjustor that will do everything he can to give you less than what you need. However, IF they stand a chance to make a profit at YOUR pain/property damage/problem, then they are very helpful. Odd isnt it?

The whole perspective of piracy could be: Real pirates need to do things to survive, Others do it to upset anyone who tries to tell them they cant. Then in the sofware pirate, its just to see if it can be done. Those who download wish to save money, so they dont spend 50 bucks on a chunk of software that in less than 2 hours turns into a dust collector. If its worthy, then they spend the money and are happy people, they may even convince friends to buy it. Hmmm.

So far every time a government squeezes its people to get rid of the piracy, more of them show up to defy the government. Its allmost an artform heh.

Voidster, piracy will always exists and there are things that will make it worse, but I don't think there is anyway you can actually rationalize piracy. Sure you can argue it's not really hurting someone if you pirate then go out and get the item, but the thing is most people don't. Also you are partaking of the intellectual creation, the 1000's of hours of work that people have done without offering compensation simply because you don't think they deserve it. It's a principle thing. But principle things are personal and I don't think you can legislate principles or control honesty with technologies. People will do what they do.

This kind of thing could probably be likened unto a street musician who has people listen and clap to his work but don't pay anything to the guy. Software developers are not street musicians hoping to catch a quarter in their hat (though maybe some people think of them as that, maybe the pirates do).

If no piracy existed (ha right) then would companies get bigger sales numbers? sure they would. Because people payed before they found out that the thing they think they wanted disappointed them. Others wouldn't buy but they are of no consequence to the developer, just the potential buyers.

Piracy happens for many reasons and the actual fallout from it is not easily if at all quantifiable. If anything it just seems more economically sound to focus on ways to encourage purchases then obsessing over pirating. How many millions of dollars are lost a year to companies wasting money on anti pirating drm and the like? When in the end time after time it does nothing except MAYBE improve sales SLIGHTLY on release week purchases. "well Bob it looks like spending that million on drm really helped our sales this time. We managed to bring in a whole $100,000 more this time" (but managed to piss off a sizable user base from ever buying from them again).... seriously WTF?!

How many people avoided the PC version of a game because of draconian ,overbearing or plain buggy drm schemes? Significant number. Someone on the boards mentioned that over 20% of people polled said they would avoid a game with drm. That equals a pretty significant amount of money. To put it in perspective that would be 2 million (or more) of World of Warcrafts 10 million users saying no to the game if it had drm. Thats $100,000,000 plus lost subscription fees out the window. Madness I say! You can't tell me that a Drm scheme would make up for that kind of lost money.

Piracy is a problem. A real problem. How big the problem actually is and what it's real toll is on a given company is highly debatable. I do not make light of it or say its a non issue but I certainly think companies as of late have turned it into a scape goat/ straw man to blame all things wrong in the industry on. Chris's statement just shows how insane the industry has gotten lately. What ever happened to personal responsibility? Facing up to mistakes and moving forward and doing better and not pointing fingers somewhere other than yourself? Apparently these are outmoded oldfashioned sensibilities. The boogey man is always to blame....damn him.