[Don Y]

On 5/22/2012 6:10 PM, gtbuba wrote:
On May 22, 8:46 pm, Don wrote:

It seems the folks complaining most about piracy are the
"middle men" -- folks who will have an increasingly difficult
time justifying their roles in the future economy :-/

I don't understand why they didn't do it sooner. Of course it's
impossible to predict what the file sharing was going to do to this
business. I remember in the 1980's and the DAT came out and the
record companies were worried about someone with a Dat could make
perfect copies bootleg cd's. Ended up the Dat never sold in the
consumer market, but we engineers used it to mix to. GT.

Why didn't the (desktop) software industry react to the
potential of copying/counterfeiting their products sooner?
I mean if *anyone* could understand how easy it would be to
copy "bits on a medium", it would be these folks!

I think the software industry has started to come to grips
with this problem. Firms that offer products requiring
good support can rely on the availability of that support
conditioned on a "registered sale". Folks who previously
overpriced their products (and found consumers looking for
"gray area" purchases) have repriced them to more reasonable
levels. Folks who had outrageously high support costs
simply went out of business (or left those markets).

Years ago (70's), you'd buy software simply to save the
cost of photocopying the manual! "Heck, we get a genuine
manual *and* the name of a person we can call when something
doesn't work quite right! And, we can write it off..."

Most of the problems with software started appearing when
The Masses entered the market and when vendors started
charging "high" prices for their products (even if those
prices accurately reflected their costs!). That's when
we saw efforts to cut those prices by reducing costs
(i.e., you no longer got 20 pounds of manuals with
your compiler purchase; telephone support was no longer
"limitless" -- nor free; etc.)

Now, people are much more comfortable *without* having
printed manuals. And, with "user forums" where they
can get their questions answered "for free".

The market *adjusted*. Recording companies seem to want to
keep their market on *their* terms.

You will see similar trends becoming more evident with
other media. I.e., television, print media, "news" (in
general), etc. as consumers move the price points of
these goods -- which had previously been controlled
by the *suppliers*!

Interesting times!