Thursday, December 11, 2008

Avast Ye Hornswaggler!

I'm pretty sure it's been settled that Vista sucks. From the horrible new interface to the lackluster graphics performance, it never lived up to its promise to "bring clarity to the world". Users haven't been buying Microsoft's inflated Vista sales figures either. The interesting thing is that some posit that the degree and rate at which a program is pirated directly reflect on its commercial success--which is true in this case, since the older moneymaker, Windows XP, maintains a steady stream of downloads from torrent sites as opposed to the newer but less popular Vista.

This development seems to apply to other forms of media as well. Some TV producers now use figures such as seeder/leecher counts as research tools for gathering indicators of current trends. This certainly makes sense--more downloaders and more rippers means a greater legitimate demand for the program, TV show, movie or album being pirated. Some even claim that broadcasters deliberately leak copies of their programs online to guage potential success later. Perhaps producers should take a note from these pirates (a little healthy competition shouldn't hurt)  and employ their cheaper, more efficient modes of production. 

I guess piracy is the sincerest form of flattery.


4 comments:

Ron Villaraza III said...

Piracy could also be used as a form of protest. "Spore" a videogame from the creators of "the Sims" had recently gained the notoriety of being the most pirated game of all time. The reason was not because it was such a great game but because it used a form of Digital Rights Management Software which a lot of gamers found invasive of their pcs and thus in protest, leaked a hacked version without the DRM in torrent sites.

Ron Villaraza III said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

I think the fact that people went out of their way to hack the game says a lot about Spore's popularity as well. In the end, they all just wanted to play the game.

John Milton said...

I agree. Piracy is indicative of real demand. Just look at how few people are seeding Twilight and High School Musical.