Media Piracy - Some Thoughts from Someone Who Creates Stuff

[MineralMan]

I've been making my living by creating content since 1974. That's what I do. Whether it's writing or creating software applications, my living has come from inside of my head. Because of that, I never pirate anything. Ever. Someone creates everything, and that person, like everyone who works at something, deserves payment for that work.

I solve the problem with my writing by writing on contract. I produce the work, and I get paid. Whoever buys that work can worry about the copyright issues. I don't. I either get a fair fee for my work, or I don't do it. That's for writing. That's my policy, and it has worked for me since 1974 for my writing. From magazine articles to books, I work on a contract basis, rather than a royalty basis, always. I tried something else, though, that depended on people's good will and the belief that people would pay for what they used if they found it valuable.

For several years, I had a small software company. I wrote a range of useful applications that filled gaps in what was available as commercial software. Some got great reviews in the computer magazines and were very popular with users. I marketed those applications as shareware, and like a lot of shareware authors, I didn't use limitations on functionality as a means of getting people to pay and register the products.

The result was that about 5% of the people who regularly used the products paid for them. Everyone else just used them. I also developed a shit load of utilities and other programs and just dumped them on the freeware market, using a small splash screen when you closed the program to advertise my shareware applications.

I made about $20K per year from registration fees for my applications. It might have been more if I had limited functionality to get people to register, but I was not in favor of that. I actually believed at the time that the shareware concept would actually work and that people would pay for software they found valuable to them. About 5% did. What did they get for paying? Well, they got a nice printed manual, a copy of the program that didn't ask them to register, and notification of upgrades. They also could contact me for support, but my software worked well and didn't need much support. I tested it thoroughly, and took care of issues immediately when I became aware of them. In 1995, I became the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Association of Shareware Professionals, a trade organization that promoted the shareware software distribution concept.

I closed down the shareware company, though, not long after the Internet became the primary way people shared stuff. Registrations dropped when that happened, and the paid versions of my software started appearing on download sites. Why should anyone pay if they could get the paid version for nothing? The shareware model of software distribution failed with the rise of the Internet. It was that simple.

People stopped paying and I stopped developing applications permanently. Too bad. Once Windows 7 came out, those old programs didn't work any more. I could have updated them, of course, and would have, except that shareware had died. I got calls and emails from people, asking for updates. I had to say no. I couldn't afford to spend the time for no payment. Economically, it didn't make sense any long. So, I don't do that any more, because people stopped paying for what I produced. They still used it, and I could see the download numbers staying strong, but they stopped paying for it.

Want to see what I did? Google OsoSoft Shareware. Some of it is still available, but most don't work well on anything later than XP.

So, I'm back to writing for clients. They tell me what they want. I tell them how much that will cost them. They agree on the amount and I produce what they want. I don't work for free. I can't. I have to eat, pay a mortgage and car payment, etc. So, I do what pays the bills, instead of doing stuff that I'd like to be doing. If nobody pays, it's not happening. It can't.

Except for DU. I write on DU because I'm a political guy. It's my outlet for my own opinions, which have no market value at all. That's cool with me. If I'm not writing stuff for money, I'm usually on DU, writing stuff because I like to write and I believe that writing makes a difference. I'm never paid for my political writing. I wouldn't ever take money for that, because then I'd have to write what someone else wanted me to write.

So, think about it when you bag something without paying. I don't really care if you do, but I stopped doing interesting stuff when people stopped paying for it. Simple, huh?