Let's say you can't afford it though. Then you don't donate. Same with music, games and software. If you can't afford it. Download it.
Does this extend to books, bicycles, and motorcycles?
The main defense used is that it costs nobody anything to reproduce- just copy some files, right? whereas with something like a book, or a motorcycle, or whatever, it would cost more to reproduce the same product- labour costs, parts, etc.
What people forget is that there needs to be something to reproduce to begin with. If the developers didn't write/compile the first copy, then nobody would be able to make these "free" copies.
that initial copy costs a LOT in developer time, company resources, etc- the costs involved, and the legal costs as well (any good software company needs a legal department; and no, it's not just for what many people suspect it is- which is usually the ones looking for people infringing copyrights made by the company- the sole purpose is to make sure the company itself doesn't get into legal hot water BEFORE it publishes something that would infringe on an existing copyright.
These costs aren't free. And of course they want to make a profit over top of that, too. Now, this is generally calculated into the unit price; many say the pricing of windows isn't fair- and really, that's something I cannot disagree with. For a component that has become so critical to the operation of what is typically regarded as the standard PC (running windows, that is) it seems silly to give it such a high price point. However, Considering the development time, the huge staff base, the support staff, etc easily number into the millions- there is probably only 10 times more copies of windows sold then there are staff; consider that these staff don't simply "go away", either- that is, while a customer buying windows is a one-time deal, the staff generally stays, and staff expect to be paid.
Of course windows is not the only product that MS sells- and their other products aren't exactly priced much less, nor do I think that MS needs to charge the relatively exorbitant prices for almost all of their products in order to stay afloat. All software companies incur these costs.
The problem is simply this: the content Software companies sell is too easily reproduced. With physical objects, like, say, motorcycles, there is a "sweet spot" of best profit for almost any product. price it too low, and they might sell more product but make a smaller profit- price it too high, and fewer people buy it; It's basic economics, really- the company needs to add on the right amount of "profit" cost to their base product price (the cost of creating the product) to maximize their revenue.
With Software, theses basic premises of economics/marketing no longer apply- it's almost as if physics laws no longer applied as far as marketing drones are concerned; the entire strategy needs to be changed. However, companies are still going with the same strategy. However, now, it's not trying to draw the most revenue as much as it is trying to price it to try to reduce the number of people resorting to pirating- this requires fairly intimate knowledge of the demographic of the target market, their incomes, etc; this type of information is only really something the companies can guess at first. Additionally, it doesn't seem to matter how cheap they can price it- they could price it at half the development cost to break even, and people would still pirate it. It's not a matter of "they cannot afford it" but rather one of "I'd rather not pay for it" which is in fact the very mindset that anybody who says "If you can't afford it, download it" in this case afford doesn't refer to monetary assets as much as it does to getting off your lazy arse and buying the *censored* thing for the reasonable price it is offered for- music albums are like 10-20 dollars; and it sounds a *censored* of a lot better then the 128kbps mp3's you downloaded the album in for free, too.
On top of this, people complain about the legitimacy checks that many products use; and windows is not the only one that does this. Why do none of the people who constantly try to crack these programs, which are often only 10 ot 20 freaking dollars, actually think, hmm, this might be worth it to buy.
the *censored* developers spent time working on a Anti-piracy component because people are too *censored* lazy to simply buy the bloody program. "It's not worth 10-20 bucks" they say. Well, go buy another program then. Or better yet- use a freeware alternative. there are freeware alternatives for everything.
Besides- the entire "I cannot afford it" argument kind of falls apart after they tell you how many ipods they got for christmas, their PC specs and so forth. "yeah, I got a Super ultra quad core and 64Terabytes of Ram and a mega uber Nvidia card but I hadz to pirate windowz cuz I couldn'tz afford it" yeah right, you bloody financially challenged goofball, try to blame somebody else for forgetting to put the cost of software on your build list. Oh! But software isn't REAL! It's virtual! Of course that makes them feel better.
Games are a special issue as well- Games are entertainment, just like movies. People assume that because they are "for fun" that they should be "for free" but while they are a product designed for entertainment they also entail the use of real work to create- things like voice actors, actors, artists, 3d modelling, level designers, programmers of course, sound editors etc. your average game costs more to produce then some other types of applications, simply because of the number of different tasks that need to be done. But people still insist on pirating them- they pirate the game, play it, and post about how great the game was and they cannot wait for the sequel. Why do they expect a sequel? What if the company goes out of business because they couldn't make a proper profit margin (of course this is usually not an issue for the "big name" type of game companies, like ID software and so forth, but it quickly becomes an issue with 1-3 man developer shops that price their product pretty close to simply breaking even). Of course, these people won't feel bad, because the original sucked anyway. (or so they will say).
Oh, I might add that this is simply against people trying to JUSTIFY pirating software. I've done it myself *GASP* but I don't try to pull off some story about how it was my grandmother's dying wish that I beat quake on nightmare skill or something.
