Expert says 'good pirates' help to sell more items

The conventional wisdom is that all software pirates are ‘bad’. However, an Oxford economist by the name of Karen Croxson spoke at the Annual Conference of the Royal Economic Society and said that when pirates download software, music, movies, or games, it may actually help the producer.

She elaborated by saying that many pirates download their stuff without the intention of ever buying the media they’re downloading. According to Ms. Croxson, you might be a ‘good pirate’ if you fit that description.

Croxson goes on to say that these particular pirates spread the word about the media they download and the people they tell go on to buy the products for themselves. Then they tell their friends, and so on and the word gets around that the product is really great.

The argument, from her logic, is that because these pirates never intended to actually buy the products, they’re not hurting the industry, but instead helping it. After all, you can’t lose a sale you never had in the first place.

She says that the pirates who download media and then copy them to hand out to friends are considered the ‘bad pirates’ as they simply download the products and don’t spread the promotional buzz. On the other hand, she says, copying is slowly becoming less popular.

Karen Croxon certainly has an interesting point. I know I would never have thought of software piracy from her point of view as being good.

[Via TorrentFreak]

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Author: GamerNode Staff View all posts by

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