New way to pay for licensing of IP? Deferred profit/income linked.

Miscellaneous Topics
#1

While walking the dog this-afternoon I got thinking about ways to fix the underlying cause of piracy. (rather trying to fight it directly as most current solutions are attempting)

Due to the nature of software it is essencially free to duplicate.
The fundamental purpose of software is to accomplish tasks more efficiently.
Therefore, in an ideal world everyone who needs software for a particular task should have access it, because in the end the planet as a whole benefits.

The problem is, currently licensing costs inhibit this ideal scenario.
Not every individual or organisation can afford the licensing costs needed to provide the ideal software for a given task, typically leading to inferior alternatives being used. (Would GIMP exist if Photoshop was available to all?)
More over, licensing software requires a significant initial outlay for an uncertain return, and has almost zero resale value.

So, my idea was to defer the IP cost of software until some future point in time; based upon the profitability of the company or earnings of the individual.

For example, a company would begin paying off it’s IP debt when it becomes profitable.
An individual on the otherhand would pay off IP debt on all earnings above a predetermined threshold. (Similar to the way Student loans are repaid here in the UK)

This solution introduces the graduation in licensing costs that are currently absent from the market place; thereby making software available to all, at a price appropriate to their finances.

Thoughts?

#2

It’s a good idea, that is definitely what should happen.

One way that firms seem to be cutting out the pirates these days is by serving up programs as a web-service (run on a proprietary server) rather than a stand-alone copy-able program.

#3

See: Hollywood accounting.

#4

The husle of payment and registration, or worse, showing a ‘random’ company your otherwise disclosed financial status, to proof you don’t have to pay them, yet again, ha!

To be honest, I think the future is in hosted services and recurring payments. No way to crack, unless you crack the server, and you pay little, each day, each month or each year, for as long as you are interested in that service. Note that a ‘hosted service’ can have a full blown desktop front-end…

#5

This would assume that business folks had the common good, the good of the planet as a whole as their first priority. :persecutioncomplex:

Kev

#6

Well, would you argue they don’t??

Isn’t the current global financial crisis all about saving the planet??

Darn!

#7

From an implementation perspective it would require the management of payments (both from business & individuals) to be centralized @ the national level. (infact, for the system to work fully it would need to be internationally accepted)
This is exactly how student loans are organised in the UK - you have the payments deducted from your salary automatically (above a certain threshold).
For most people there is absolutely no paperwork & no complication, which is quite amazing for a government scheme!

I agree the rather insidious ‘hosted services with recurring charges’ will undoubtably become much more common in the near future as more people & devices become connected,
and while such a solution might reduce piracy, it doesn’t make software accessible to all users irrespective of their wealth.

I think my proposal is abit too far off at the moment; it requires integration of national (and international!) systems that simply don’t exist yet.
It would also require significant changes in the philosophy behind big business, as I imagine ‘the greater good’ would seem a rather alien concept to many big corporations.

I imagine many would be stuck in the mindset that ‘We made this product, why should we give it to everyone, when some may never pay a penny for it?’.

Though you do see some promising signs that corporations are willing to compromise on profits to forward long-term goals such as industry expansion & advancement.
Open-Source being supported by big corporations is one very good example.
Providing tiered products (such as Windows 7ista) is another, as it atleast acknowledges the price point needs graduating - though graduating the feature set to achieve this is wasted effort that would be unnecessary in the licensing payment system I proposed.

The economics of software have never worked correctly in a Free market, simply because software goes from having zero supply (it hasn’t been written yet), to infinite supply (replication is almost free).
This means the fundamental principle of supply & demand creating a price that is correct for the current market state doesn’t work.

Perhaps in 50 years time, when world economics have been rewritten by the new world order - i’ll be able to say ‘told you so’ :persecutioncomplex: (now… if only I could patent this… ;D)

#8

Well, that New World Order is practically almost there anyway. When times are though, changes are quick, and people don’t protest because they think it’s all for the greater good. Oh well, let’s not derail this thread into elaborating on why people should protest agianst such big changes - and at the same time, why such protest is in vain. Mm…k? So now that we’re back on track, I think there is a supply and demand in the IT world, first, the obvious is the cost of hardware, and second, human resources. We pay companies so that they can pay smart people to type on keyboards. It’s not much different from growing bananas, eventually the money drains through all the layers of services that are being provided to get the water to the banana trees / get those programmers to type the keys.

Software is not (almost) freely distributable, as (business) software needs support, updates, upgrades and revisions. Old code rots, it might even be hardcoded to rot. New versions might not always increase efficiency, but at least create the illusion, and keep the company ‘healthy’ - I leave it as an excercise to the reader which way to take the sarcasm.

Now let’s revisit the UK student loans argument, which at first glans seems to hold, but starts to crumble when sit on. You might argue that a study gives everybody the same chance on a productive, fulfilling and fruitful life, and as such can be thought of as a kickstart, with a certain price tag. While the quality of education varies (wildly?), the price tag the government has noted down somewhere in the archives, is fixed - without a doubt backed up by a mighty spreadsheet to proof it all to the supervisor’s supervisor. Now, here’s the catch… how to set this fixed price, acknowledged by the goverment and international service bureaus, for the product you are going to deliver to both national coorporations and the innocent bystander being manipulatively steered into your fabulous product’s general direction only to glance at it and willing to put down some real money. How many lobbyists are you going to have walking down the whitehouse, and on a boattrip to cuba, to set the localized price, to what you thought to be reasonable? (Yes, this is a question! How many!)

The New World Order in which this is all handled gracefully with a smile on everybodies face, is either a totalitair state (or global nation) or rightly executed communism (…contradictio in terminus…). In both environments I’d rather not spend my time coding, but hey, there would be no freedom anyway, so I guess I’ll have to agree, and prepare for my forced version of a fruitful life.

If anybody, 50 years from now, ask where it all went wrong, we can only hope the permalink is still there.