As pretty much everyone knows, focus and perspective make all the difference in how you view anything from politics to family, and in business too.
Many times in discussions on the true impact of piracy, the comments are flooded with what seems to be two firmly entrenched sides. You have those that suggest that the focus should be on whether or not infringement is wrong. On the other side, you have those that want to look at the overall impact of what is occurring.
Now, I won’t stake out a position on the validity of either argument, but one of the things I hear quite often from those making the moral argument is that it’s important to consider the wishes of the creator when thinking about this stuff. I happen to agree. But I also happen to think that an important change that is occurring is that creators are beginning to push away from the easy reaction of getting upset at piracy and beginning to look at the vastly more important bottom line of their business.
Take, for example, a recent blog post by Daniel Amitay on the recent relative success of his Punch ‘Em — Fight People Through Your Camera iPhone app. He had noticed that his sales had increased around the end of December and he had the same thought when preparing to write about that you’re all having right now:
“This post was going to be about Christmas and how it was responsible for the (relatively) long term increase in my app sales.”
But then he noticed something strange. He found that the timing with folks receiving new phones or devices for Christmas didn’t really match up with the sales. Also, even after what you would expect to be the Christmas rush, the increase in sales maintained. He supplied the graph
