I've sold 3 copies of Many Faces of Go in China, but when I travel to China I check in computer stores, they always have it available for a low price. I have a collection of Chinese versions of Many Faces, one with a 30 page Chinese language manual explaining all the features in Chinese. I would say that for computer go, China is the biggest pirate.
For version 11 I had very simple copy protection. It only worked if you installed it from the CD - copying the exe was not enough. The CD image was over 30 MB, and in 2002, that was too much for most people to email or download. Today that size is file is easy to transmit. Last year I saw sales of version 11 go down to about 1/3 of what they were. Some of this is due to the age of the program, but a lot must be due to piracy. This is why version 12 has copy protection. I don't like copy protection, but the ease of making free copies requires it. Prizes in computer go today are small or nonexistent. The ICGA world championship makes you pay to enter. David > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:computer-go- > [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Don Dailey > Sent: Friday, November 21, 2008 5:34 AM > To: computer-go > Subject: Re: [computer-go] Selling a computer go program > > On Thu, 2008-11-20 at 23:53 -0800, Michael Gherrity wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I have read that the amount of money that a winning computer go > > program would make in a go tournament is insignificant compared to the > > amount of money that such a program would earn selling to the general > > public. I have also read that the biggest pirates of computer software > > come from Germany, the UK, and the US. The foreign exchange student we > > are hosting from Beijing China said that most people in China do not > > buy software, but download it for free off the net. > > My first chess program only sold a few copies in Europe. But I came to > find out that thousands of people had a copy of it. I met many people > in Europe who said they had a copy and many of their friends did. > Someone pointed me a site where you could download it for free. > > For some reason I believed that Europeans in general would be more honest > about stuff like this and that we were "wild" and violent, they were more > civilized (we have guns like you wouldn't believe, they have > very few) etc. Maybe we are more violent but more honest too? But I > know that as a culture we are not very honest either ... > > - Don > > > > So what is true? > > > > mike > > _______________________________________________ > > computer-go mailing list > > computer-go@computer-go.org > > http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/ _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
