Not so absurd...They host only links .. not the material ... exactly like Google or any search engine.If Piratebay MUST close ... Google and tutiquanti must also close or filter such links at least.Regards.Gus.

Let's clear something up. Torrents aren't "just a link". The torrent has what they term a 'tracker'. This tracker requires a physical URL that can be tracked back to for statistics regarding the torrent file. In fact, the tracker is the core element to accessing a torrent file because it also provides the physical link to the file to download.Every single torrent on the internet that is for an ESDG product has a tracker hosted by thepiratebay.org. Every single one. If they didn't allow the tracker to be hosted on their servers, I wonder if there would be ANY torrents of ESDG products out there?Oh... and here's a quantifiable number... I did a quick check this morning and found that ESDG's Citation X 2.0 has been downloaded via thepiratebay.org's torrent tracker over 2000 times. That's over $80,000 at $40 per copy.

Ed,Out of those 2,000 how many would you say would have been legit. customers if they hadn't gotten the plane there?

That is a question no one can legitimately answer. I've seen everyone's opinions regarding it... and that's all they are, opinion.In the mean time... the physical amount of downloading tells the story.

Every single torrent on the internet that is for an ESDG product has a tracker hosted by thepiratebay.org. Every single one. If they didn't allow the tracker to be hosted on their servers, I wonder if there would be ANY torrents of ESDG products out there?

Yes, it's true that, if piratebay would close down, a big part of piracy would disappear. The things that makes thepiratebay so popular, is the ability to search for stuff.But, piracy nowadays is moving more towards bandwidth services, like Rapidshare, Megaupload, etc. These services can't be searched as easily as piratebay, and links are usually more easy to shutdown because these providers usually listen to complains and DO remove links when asked but, of course, as soon as a link is dead, a new one will usually appear. The sharing of links is usually made on forums, which are more difficult to shut down because, in that case, a link IS just a link.Another big source of pirated stuff is on Usenet, on the binary newsgroups, but it always requires some payment to subscribe to those newsgroup (the typical ISP never subscribes to those feeds), and the use of the software is not so easy as bittorrent, so it's a choice for the more techincal users.regards,

It tells only some of the story. The untold part, that opinion part is the important part, because what are we trying to do here? Are we trying to prevent piracy or are we trying to increase sales? And doing one thing does not necessarily mean we are doing the other.

The dollar amount is the amount of theft. Pure and simple.If you want to get into an argument of semantics, that serves no purpose in any discussion topic. I showed a quantity of pirated copies, showed their value to indicate level of theft. It gives a clear indication of the severity of the problem.If I were to toss a hypothetical sales number of 20000 copies, that means that there is a 10 to 1 ratio of sales vs piracy.

Are we trying to prevent piracy or are we trying to increase sales? And doing one thing does not necessarily mean we are doing the other.

The two are linked together, although it's just wrong to assume that every pirated download would equal to a sale.However, there's a significant part of what we call "borderline" users, that might be converted into a sale. For example, if an hypotetical product sells, let's say, 1000 legit copies and gets downloaded illegally 5000 times, I'm not expecting to sell 6000 copies, just by containing piracy. However, if just 1 out of 5 of those downloaders could be converted, using effective piracy protection, my sales would have doubled and, face it, the difference between selling 1000 or 2000 copies of a product, might just be the difference between losing money or not.The only thing that is difficult to estimate, it's the ratio of conversion of pirate users into legit users, but I'm sure we'll never reach 1:1, because many people that downloaded the pirated copy, would't have purchased it anyway.regards,

The two are linked together, although is just wrong to assume that every pirated download would equal to a sale.However, there's a significant part of what we call "borderline users", that might be converted into a sale. For example, if an hypotetical product sells, let's say, 1000 legit copies and gets downloaded 5000 times, I'm not expecting to sell 6000 copies, just by containing piracy. However, if just one 1 out of 5 of those downloaders could be converted, using effective piracy protection, my sales would have doubled and, face it, the difference between selling 1000 or 2000 copies of a product, might just be the difference between losing money or not.

What I want to know is what is our world going to be like when these people of no conscience (I assume most are kids) grow up and are running things. We had one in the hanger chat a few weeks ago who said because he wasn't old enough to have a credit card he was entitled to pirated software. This type of logic will be very scary when the decision making is about more important things.

Hello,

This type of logic will be very scary when the decision making is about more important things.

Little OT:Me think you are some generations lateThink about .. some of those kids have maybe fathers and grand fathers who have ruling the financial system who put your country and mine in economic disasterNuff said about decisions making ...Regards.Gus.

Hello,Little OT:Me think you are some generations lateThink about .. some of those kids have maybe fathers and grand fathers who have ruling the financial system who put your country and mine in economic disasterNuff said about decisions making ...Regards.Gus.

Most who were involved with this are my age and started with the computer generation. It is only going to get worse with the next isn't it. When it extends to issues beyond money we will really be in trouble.

However, if just one 1 out of 5 of those downloaders could be converted, using effective piracy protection, my sales would have doubled and, face it, the difference between selling 1000 or 2000 copies of a product, might just be the difference between losing money or not.regards,

Folks,Umberto has just made the point I would have made. The issue is not the number of sales that would not have been made, it's the number of sales that WOULD have been made.

And if it WOULD have been 6 as JayKay stated over the weekend, then what? Remember now, that number is not an opinion, prediction, horoscope, estimate, guess, or hypothesis. That is the number of pirates that came forward to purchase from them, according to JK. So is that 1 of 5? Did that double their sales over that time frame?

Umberto it's encouraging to see your success rate!It once again proves the point I've been trying to communicate.The simple facts are that FS Developers must become procative and do the work required to render their products unusable during a hack attempt if they are to have a snowballs chance of reducing or stopping illegal distribution of hacked software.Chasing rabbit paths on control/filtering of ISP, Trackers, etc. may also be somewhat effective but that path has been largely ineffective as well. A Common Sense Approach to disabling hacked software would cause an immediate reduction is distribution since no one is interested in downloading software which is unusable. :(Please gentlemen, let's refrain from arguing the conversion from thief to legitimate user ratio as that is unfruitful.The fact of the matter is that if the only usable software available is to legitimate users then the conversion rate will be the unknown quantity of X. :(

It tells only some of the story. The untold part, that opinion part is the important part, because what are we trying to do here? Are we trying to prevent piracy or are we trying to increase sales? And doing one thing does not necessarily mean we are doing the other.

Well now. I'll be hornswoggled if it's not my good friend Jim Skorna ...Jim,You're right that we've been addressing only part of the story. In fact, we've left out all discussion of people who accept money under false pretenses and then laugh at the payer. What would you call a person who did that kind of thing, Jim? Also a pirate, yes?After all, wouldn't that be just like the true pirates of yesteryear? To sail under an apparently-friendly flag and then hoist the Jolly Roger once the victim has no recourse?xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxYou also wrote ... " And if it WOULD have been 6 as JayKay stated over the weekend, then what? Remember now, that number is not an opinion, prediction, horoscope, estimate, guess, or hypothesis. That is the number of pirates that came forward to purchase from them, according to JK. So is that 1 of 5? Did that double their sales over that time frame?"See my post #33 above for a discussion of how installing an effective anti-crack scheme caused the sales of my friend the software development utility guy to double essentially overnight.

There is no useful way to seriously try to stop determined crackers without putting customers through the wringer. Even then the kings of crack will find a way in. So ...In the immortal words of Ron Hamilton of Eaglesoft, what the Flight1 Wrapper does is keep honest customers honest -- it deters casual theft.That's what it does for developers. For customers, what it does is to allow license transfer from one computer to another without your having to talk to a human being, though provision is made for this too.Most developers don't know it but the Flight1 Wrapper can be licensed without the developer having to use Flight1 as his publisher. The wrapper can also be used to create such things as unrestricted 30-day-try-before-buy demos of a full product.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxI'm accumulating links to threads for you but while I was out running an errand I recalled the key statistic. By the best data available (meager), half of all software installations are pirated. There are two sources for this number ...First, the creator of an important software development utility told me that his revenue doubled the moment he installed a (home grown) protection scheme.Second, I haven't found the link yet but an association of IT software developers made the same estimate -- that half of their members' installations were pirated copies.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxI don't think I can improve this part of the analysis. Tomorrow I'll hunt around for my optimal pricing proposal and for my wouldn't-have-bought-anyway guesstimates ...... Because that's what you do in marketing. You get the best data you can, make the numbers speak, and then stick a wet finger up in the air after which you pledge a business plan that you believe in. (All you can do is all you can do.)

I also now remember that the best estimate of RIAA is that 40% of song "installations" are pirate copies. So there really is evidence for 50% pirated being a good working number. (No, don't give me the nonsense about how RIAA is lying through its teeth because it represents Big Music.)