From: fletcher@netcom.com (F. Sullivan Segal)
Subject: Re:  What Is this BBS all ABOUT..Pirates maybe
Organization:  bottom up!
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 00:47:36 GMT

>>>Call SPA , I guess.  You might want to confirm the BBS is indeed
>>>a pirate BBS and give the sysop fair warning to stop.
>>
>>I think if you gave them a warning, they'd just move the board elsewhere and
>>continue operations.
>>

Oh, I don't know... I've warned sysops that someone had uploaded copyrighted
S/W before, and it was usually removed within a day or less.  Others are
a little more careless, and get a quick reputation and get a couple of 
dozen proprietary uploads in a week or less.  Typically the sysop needs a 
little bit of a reminder of what piracy can do to the software base of the
machine he is using (especially true in the case of the amiga), and
sometimes a call to the SPA will give him warning enough to clean stuff
up, but I've never seen the sysop try to move 'underground.'

Most sysops figure that if they have pirated software available, maybe 
people will pay their dues.  Most of them just haven't thought through
the consequences of that.

>>Best to find out if it is true, tell the authorities, and let them sting.
>>If the sysop is stupid enough to put an ad in a magazine, then he deserves
>>what he gets.   Can't stop piracy by just a warning - it just moves farther
>>underground.  :<
>>
>--
>I personally think that if software developers wouldn't ask for $50 or more
>for a stupid game, or $100 for a word processor, people wouldn't see
>a need to pirate stuff.   I would buy a hell of a lot more games, if
>they were $15, insted of $50+.  I guess I stay with the few I have bought,
>and some of my PD games....
>---
I can't believe you would write this.  Fifty dollars is nothing for
software.  Game programmers aren't getting filthy rich off of prices
like these (not even close).  Most games these days take about 1.5
man years to program and test.  If your game sells for $50, then the
merchant who sells it probably gets it for about $35, which means that
the distributor will give you about $20 per each.  If the packaging 
costs about $10 including disks, printing, labelling, manuals, etc.,
you may end up with as much as $10 each.  Of that about $5 will go
to your publisher, and maybe $5 will go to you in the form of royalties.

In the real world, junior programmers make about $40k/yr, so lets say
the total cost is about $60k in salary, plus maybe $10k for the 
outrageous interest you paid on your second mortgage which is what
freed up the time for you to program this thing in the first place.

So to make what a junior programmer makes in a year, you'd have to
sell say 14,000 copies.  In the current amiga market 14k copies would
be a successful program.  One bomb, and you'd be out of business.  Get
smart and you get a real job, where you get paid whether your program
is a success or not.  So you're left with hastily put together trash, 
that cut corners on cost, or you price your product out of the market.

Seems to me that the programmers are the ones who should be pissed that
you aren't buying their (inexpensive) $50 programs; you shouldn't be 
angry with them for starving themselves for a year and a half just 
to make minimum wage on an underpriced piece of S/W.

(Btw:  My company would charge more like $500,000 for a 1.5 man year
level of effort.  And we are considered inexpensive.)


--
                           -F. Sullivan Segal
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