Feb 27 2010
Piracy and the future
There have always been cheap knock-offs. Even your grandparents could buy imitation Rolex watches, or smell-alikes of expensive perfumes, or etc. for substantially less than the originals. This was never a serious problem, as the cheap knock-offs were always that; cheap. Cheaply made, cheaply sold, and generally fragile or otherwise not-as-good as the originals. This pattern has been around for an awfully long time.
Fundamentally, that sort of cheap knock-off is no different than modern “piracy”. The pirate looks at a desired, expensive good, and then recreates it cheaper, and sell their copy to consumers at a lower price than the original manufacturer can manage. The only difference we’ve got over the older “Hey Mac, wanna buy a watch?” approach is that it’s possible for software folks to cheaply make an exact duplicate of an existing product, rather than having to manufacture our own version of a physical object using the original as a guide.
But it’s not always going to be like that.