The Economics of Torrents
Torrents are a big problem in our society. They are managed by peers and online websites promoting peers. They are supposed to be entirely for web development of software by everyone that wants to help make something. In other words, it is supposed to be for freeware developments such as Linux, android, and other things of the sort. But software pirates have infiltrated the market. They post every type of software, games, movies, TV shows and anything else they can.
They may not earn anything monetary wise, but one would think that they get something out of it. Otherwise why would anyone waste their precious time and energy after such endeavors? When people share software online they can either get utility from being able to crack the so called un-crack-able software and post it so that others can enjoy the stuff without having to pay for any of it. I am not complaining about this. If I use these sites, then I don’t have to pay rental fees to watch movies, play games, or buy different software’s.
You can place any kind of software after cracking it online for anyone’s use. I’ve seen packages that usually cost people around 5000 dollars on there for free. The only people who lose in this arrangement is the producers of the goods that are being stolen. One might think that they have enough money. It I think it really depends on how long the software had been out. Since research and development costs are sunk costs, and they tend to be really large, it might take years to recoup all the money spent.
The marginal cost of producing each individual CD, DVD, etc. is probably around 0, but it doesn’t take the sunk costs into effect. I know that I get satisfaction from putting my programs that I’ve written for simple things such as a sleep timer, online so that everyone can try it out. It makes me feel proud that people are using my programs, but I just do it for fun.