Quote - I have a program that I can charge 2000 dollars for and sell to 100,000 people who have 2000 dollars, or I could sell that same software to 1,000,000 people who have 200 dollars.

That's a very dubious proposition - the demand/price graph is unlikely to be linear, above a certain price demand is likely to rise more quickly than price drops, so the publisher ends up ahead of the game, but below the threshold price demand will not rise as quickly as the price drops, so the publisher starts to lose. Also, different markets will respond in different ways, and will have different dynamics (I doubt Autodesk has to field the elementary issues that crop up in Poser and DAZ related forums, for example, though the issues they do get may well require a more thorough treatment) which will affect the price and reach that is desirable. And unfortunately price has very little to do with the odds of being leeched - even freebies (permanent freebies, not just freebies of the week) get put up on warez sites.

Quote - > Quote - It's always hard to tell, but I get the strong impression that Rapidshare does have a checksum system that blocks repeat uploads of a removed file (one of the things which was listed as missing at MU in the reported list of causes) so it sounds as if it stands a better chance of standing up to scrutiny.

 

useless. see if I take a file, encrypt it, say with truecrypt, that checksum is now invalid. it's a simple job to then post the key elsewhere, say a forum, for those that know where to look.

and that wasn't even hard to think up... hell you could in theory, encrypt poser assets into graphics files (stenography) and distribute that way. again, not hard to do.

right now tho, it's more trouble than the pirates wish to goto. but in the future....

 

(no I'm no pirate. reading this thread, those 2 methods popped into my head right off.... and if I can think them up...)

I wasn't addressing whether it would be effective, I was pointing out that it suggests that Rapidshare is - in at least one respect - more active in dealing with infringing uploads than Megaupload is alleged to have been, and therefore should be at a reduced risk of attracting similar attention, as the person I was replying to feared.

....sorry? I was discussing the point you raised. sorry if you don't like that, but we are free to talk within the TOS.

Quote - > Quote - I have a program that I can charge 2000 dollars for and sell to 100,000 people who have 2000 dollars, or I could sell that same software to 1,000,000 people who have 200 dollars.

That's a very dubious proposition - the demand/price graph is unlikely to be linear, above a certain price demand is likely to rise more quickly than price drops,...

Quite right. When we offered the million dollar program for $1000 as a desktop application for smaller scenarios, we only sold 1000 copies. We sold 30 copies at $1 million dollars, and 1000 copies at $1000.

The total revenue math is:

Expensive: $30 million

Cheap: $1 million

Not even close to linear. But I'm not going to keep arguing. I've demonstrated my point, with data, while the opposite viewpoint has so far been simply speculation. I've been doing this long enough to know that the other people doing this are not wildly wrong about how to go about it. Armchair quarterbacks or CEOs don't have to justify their point of view to shareholders, or worse, private equity stakeholders.

William_the_Bloody wrote:

Quote - Expensive software might consider moving to a subscription service, so the masses might be more likely to pay for what they're using when it can be paid for on a monthly basis.

Does 3dsmax really need to be thousands of dollars for few people or would it do just as well being 15 dollars a month for thousands of people?

This idea that software needs to be elite, and not in the hands of the poor, is absurd and, well, elitist.

Autodesk does have a pretty big payroll. I think they still have offices in a building with their name on it not far from us in Novi. They have many more offices elsewhere.

Quote - Hackers will be upset that it's a little bit harder to get and distriute pirated software? Cry me a river... I'm having a hard time working up any sympathy. It's like a junkie being upset that his pusher got caught and sent to prison.

On the bright side, maybe we'll get people coming in here to say: "I can't download a pirated copy of Poser any more, and I really want the new version. How can I, what do you call it, BUY the program?"

No True hacker would use MegaUpload to pirate software since it's a site that hosts the actual upload with IP records from whence they came. Any Hacker worth his salt uses peer to peer bounced through many proxies with IP blocking.

Quote - Then there was the Pixologic incident. I lost my copy of Zbrush's registry file in a computer crash. Call them up, and was, to make a long story short, told I was either too stupid to follow instructions, or trying to rip them off. At least that was just a few hundred dollars down the toilet, and it was my fault for storing whatever it was on the dead computer.

In Pixlogic's defense, NO OTHER COMPANY, that I know of, has offered free upgrades from a 1.?? version through a 4.?? version to anyone with a valid serial code to that first purchase. Talk about more bang for your bank!

I bet that in most cases those people have no real financial reason, just looking for "fame" among their peers and hoard stuff. For reference, see this thread on DAZ forums, starting from page 34, where you will read about people pirating FREEBIES!

Quote - I bet that in most cases those people have no real financial reason, just looking for "fame" among their peers and hoard stuff. For reference, see this thread on DAZ forums, starting from page 34, where you will read about people pirating FREEBIES!

Hmm.  Here's a question.  Every now and then, we've recovered a Poser freebie which has been orphaned, with its original creator and/or hosting site long disappeared.  There are several threads on this board where such a recovery has been made, publicly, using these internet archive sites.

So what's the story with those archive sites?  Are they pirating these items?  Where is the line to be drawn?  Or by "pirating" are we talking about freebies being redistributed for profit?  I may have misunderstood.  :unsure:

"on DAZ forums, starting from page 34, where you will read about people pirating FREEBIES!"

I have explained many times  before.
it is about directing traffic to a download site that is replete with advertisements  (mostly russian porn).

When your account at the Ad laden upload sites generates enough unique IP  visits to get the goods you receive a payment for the month.
this includes IP visits  of people going there to get products that are actually FREE from the original creator.

Cheers

When your account at the Ad laden upload sites generates enough unique IP visits to get the goods you receive a payment for the month. this includes IP visits of people going there to get products that are actually FREE from the original creator.

In that case, I wonder why Poser freebie creators aren't posting their own stuff there. Hmm...*

Quote - ..... Me personally I use rapidshare a whole lot to distribute files to my employees all over the globe and to quickly swap files with clients, it is super handy to just upload a batch of proof images to RS or another service and provide a link....

For $11 a month I get to do the same via a peronal domain and FTP with unlimited space and bandwidth.
No risk of someone associating or confusing it with warez, no limits to download speeds or times, no ads and popups for my associates or customers to suffer through. 
Keeping it clean and easy is well worth the $11 a month. 

Quote - I have a program that I can charge 2000 dollars for and sell to 100,000 people who have 2000 dollars, or I could sell that same software to 1,000,000 people who have 200 dollars.

The problem is, in reality it doesn't work out this way.

Whenever somethng can work out the way you suggest, the businesses do it in a minute. No business is opposed to maximizing their market reach.

sigh

Okay, campers...

• Yep - megaupload went down. That's one of literally thousands still out there, and most of them are way out of reach of the RIAA/MPAA cartels. 

• "Hackers"? Heh. A DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, run voluntarily from thousands of misfits using an app to do it, is not true hacking. Mind you, the 4Chan boys do have actual hackers in their ranks, but a DDoS attack ain't it.

• Copyright Infringement is a fact of life. My stuff I cooked up for R'otica back in 2009 still gets passed around on eMule and the big download sites, and so does everyone else's. 

• Personally, you're better off taking it into account when you build and sell your stuff.  If it requires support, only the legit buyers get it. 

Now this whole issue is a bit closer to my own home than you may at first think, and it affects a lot more than just a few pose sets I built a few years ago.

You see, I'm nearing the completion of a book - my first one, that intend to spread and sell commercially. If you think Poser bits get spread around, you have zero idea of how far and wide books, music, and movies get passed about. On my own end of it, I plan on viewing the whole peer-to-peer thing not as a threat, but as marketing. Funny thing is, I'm not the first person to think of this... I gladly swiped the idea from these guys. I strongly suggest you read that link... it's eye-opening, to say the least.

My book subject and content is best put to use as a physical paper copy, so yes, please, spread around all the electronic copies you want (and that's all the hint you're getting. :) )

Anyrate, yeah, this guy got busted. He's not the first (just ask Shawn Fanning), and he won't be the last. The only thing I worry about is not these guys, but the massive damagebeing done to ordinary rights and freedoms, caused by governments manipulated by cartels making a futile grab for power and money - both of which they are losing fast. After all, in an age where distribution is no longer a precious commodity that can be controlled for exorbitant rates, what need is there for the RIAA, MPAA, or their ilk? 

One thing that a lot of people seem to have missed in all of this is the fact that Megaupload being closed has nothing to do with SOPA and PIPA.

SOPA and PIPA are bills, not laws.

Megaupload has been under investigation for over 2 years....

Quote - The investigation was initiated and led by the FBI at the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center), with assistance from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations. Substantial and critical assistance was provided by the New Zealand Police, the Organised and Financial Crime Agency of New Zealand (OFCANZ), the Crown Law Office of New Zealand,and the Office of the Solicitor General for New Zealand; Hong Kong Customs and the Hong Kong Department of Justice; the Netherlands Police Agency and the Public Prosecutor’s Office for Serious Fraud and Environmental Crime in Rotterdam; London’s Metropolitan Police Service; Germany’s Bundeskriminalamt and the German Public Prosecutors; and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police-Greater Toronto Area (GTA) Federal Enforcement Section and the Integrated Technological Crime Unit and the Canadian Department of Justice’s International Assistance Group. Authorities in the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Philippines also provided assistance.

Two of the agencies involved are in the United States, the rest of them are in other countries.

This was an international effort to shut down a companies servers that willfully denied pulling copyrighted and unlawfully distributing those files.

I am not sure what parts people do not get from all of this. Other than the facts that they do not seem to have.

People need to read up on what and why it actually happend instead of listening to the hype about SOPA and PIPA, which had absolutely nothing to do with it at all.

Megaupload had to know 90% of the files on their servers were warez/pirated/illegaly shared material.

Rapidshare, Oron, Filesonic, Depositfile... all these sites make their money from internet piracy.

This is what caused SOPA to be formulated in the minds of lawmakers. Host sites think they are untouchable.

SOPA and PIPA have two major problems, which fortunately have at least put them back in the bin for a while.  The first is the motivation, stemming from RIAA, who the congress has already stupidly given the powers of police and court.  But big money behind it. 

Which is compounded by that particular animal that can complicate anything, called a politician.  Worse is the bought and paid for politician, and there might be 0.1 percent of politicians that aren't of the paid for kind.  Add in liberal amounts of total ignorance of the subject at hand, but this should surprise no one. 

To shut down a site that has a clear and proven record of hosting pirated files is one thing, which I support strongly.  To write something so broad that legitimate sites may be shut down on a complaint from a crank, no. I like to think of the two bills in question were sent back, "and this time, think before you write".

As a little reading will show MU was actively hosting pirated files, knowingly, their being shut down should cause no sympathy for them, criminals of one kind are no different than criminals of any other kind.

Quote - Rapidshare, Oron, Filesonic, Depositfile... all these sites make their money from porn video rips.

There - I fixed that for you. :)

Certainly there's other copyrighted stuff parked in there, which do get removed by a simple DMCA request - I know because I've filed a few with many of 'em), but in most of the undernet circles I know of, the biggest draw for people who spend money at such places is for the T&A. The rest is just gravy.

So why are we wasting tax payer dollars to close down and prosecute this site when the main infringement is stolen porn?

Quote - Hmm.  Here's a question.  Every now and then, we've recovered a Poser freebie which has been orphaned, with its original creator and/or hosting site long disappeared.  There are several threads on this board where such a recovery has been made, publicly, using these internet archive sites. So what's the story with those archive sites?  Are they pirating these items?  Where is the line to be drawn?  Or by "pirating" are we talking about freebies being redistributed for profit?  I may have misunderstood.  :unsure:

The Internet Archive (AKA "the Wayback Machine") is a non-profit organization that collaborates with the U.S. Library of Congress, and is legally a library.  Any use of information aquired there is for non-commercial purposes only, and anyone who wishes to have their site excluded may do so, even retroactively...

Quote - ....sorry? I was discussing the point you raised. sorry if you don't like that, but we are free to talk within the TOS.

I hate to drag this on, but you didn't respond to a point I raised. You raised a new point related to something I mentioned. That is, of course, perfectly fine - I just didn't want to be presented as advocating something I hadn't in fact expressed an opinion on.

Quote - The Internet Archive (AKA "the Wayback Machine") is a non-profit organization that collaborates with the U.S. Library of Congress, and is legally a library.  Any use of information aquired there is for non-commercial purposes only, and anyone who wishes to have their site excluded may do so, even retroactively...

Interesting.  Thank you.

Hmm.  :unsure:

Quote - > Quote - Then there was the Pixologic incident. I lost my copy of Zbrush's registry file in a computer crash. Call them up, and was, to make a long story short, told I was either too stupid to follow instructions, or trying to rip them off. At least that was just a few hundred dollars down the toilet, and it was my fault for storing whatever it was on the dead computer.

In Pixlogic's defense, NO OTHER COMPANY, that I know of, has offered free upgrades from a 1.?? version through a 4.?? version to anyone with a valid serial code to that first purchase. Talk about more bang for your bank!

Vray 4 C4D, actually. You buy a license, and it upgrades every time Cinema does, with no additional charge. The difference is, you can re-download your purchase with no argument once your identiy is confirmed. Pixologic, on the other hand, had my purchase record and still insisted it would cost them money. I wasn't even asking for the program, just my registry key. pah bad water under the bridge. (And, yes, I had my serial number.)

Ok so I should have put more emphasis on "That I know Of" than I did on "No other company". My bad.

With the digitizing of information, combined with the current trends in distributing said info, you wonder if the day may come when private ownership of information would be banned...;)

The closing of Megaupload is no one's fault but their own.  They knew the deal and the risks.  If they didn't want to be exposed to that risk then they should have taking the necessary precautions to limit that.

In my opinion there was nothing that they could do to limit that risk by their approach.  In a business logic, the best way to limit their risk is to

1. Charge a monthly subscription any breaking of the terms would mean account deactivation

2. Charge people who want to download the file a fee (if the don't have a paid membership).

This way you are able to greatly stop much of the illegal sharing of the files because paying to share illegal files pretty much goes against the purpose of sharing.  Some will still pay to share illegal files, but most won't

Whatever version is eventually passed, abuses are possible. There will be sites that will take the safest route, do anything to avoid being on the wrong side of the law. And there will be people and companies taking advantage of that.

Some of it already goes on. eBay, for example, has had rules in place for years that require a auction to be canceled, and the seller to possibly lose his rights to sell on eBay, if someone complains that the auction infringes on their copyright or intellectual property. eBay has a list of registered companies and individuals. If one of them fills out a form claiming such-and-such auction infringes on a copyright, eBay kills the auction. No investigation. None. The safest, most expeditious method of dealing with such claims is to automatically follow the copyright-holder's wishes, even if that person or company merely doesn't like the idea of someone selling their product without being an authorized reseller charging a determined price. Some software companies, for example, have a group of people watching for instances of the product being sold or resold. Some of those people even have the company's proxy to file a complaint and get the auction shut down. I know, because once upon a time I did it.

That's eBay. It's easy to imagine other kinds of host providers following that logic. Who has time to investigate claims and get tangled up in legal fights? Take the path of least resistance and shut down the allegedly offending site. Again, people can take advantage and game the system for their own purposes, ranging from competitve advantage to plain ol' spite (the site banned you for being a persistent and annoying troll, for example). 

I certainly don't advocate letting the pirates and hackers do whatever they want without fear of consequence. Nor can I think of a way to keep any such system from being abused, or from trampling on innocent people's rights. So I think we have to swallow a bitter pill to get piracy under control, but at least let's make it the smallest pill possible. The original version of the SOPA bill went overboard.

what if the shutting down of megaupload was due to mafia influences who want to reduce competition to their file sharing sites?

Would the mafia be interested in file sharing sites?  They have interests in many legitimate businesses and high profit illegal trade.  Is there really that much money to be made from file sharing?

Anyhow, you may be partially right.  The mafia have links to many governments and their agencies so I guess a political move could be construed as acting on their behalf. 

Its been an interesting convo but I think its lived on long enough. :)