In the past I have discussed the very real possibility that we will see significant declines in the amount of software (as well as movies, music, and other electronic media) that is “pirated”, a term used to describe media that is downloaded illegally on the Internet. While I admitted that this was a very bold statement to make, I attributed my theory to a handful of changes in how we as consumers have been buying and downloading software and media through mechanisms such as Valve’s “Steam” distribution network and Apple’s Mac OS X App Store. This is because, you see, these methods allow for end-users to download software in a much more convenient fashion; often times with a reduced price because bandwidth is, after all, cheaper than packing mechanisms.
But even with these improvements, there is still one big issue that I believe is preventing software piracy from declining as much as we’d like it to see. You guessed it. Price. Now, I’m not saying that software developers should flat-out drop their prices, because I honestly do respect the amount of work that has to be put into developing, testing, and distributing a quality piece of software. But with prices for many “popular” software titles going well into the hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars, I can easily see where a consumer would be a bit discouraged to shell out big bucks for a piece of software.
