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Poll: Are you a software pirate?

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Re: Poll: Are you a software pirate?

#71

This poll is rubbish. "Are you a software pirate?" -- completely loaded question. You're not asking people if they use copyrighted software-- you're asking people to label themselves a PIRATE. Maybe I'll submit a poll about abortion "Are you a baby murderer?" Maybe you should rewrite the poll "Do you believe in a free culture unencumbered by copyright laws that are specifically written to protect corporate interests?…

I think that reasoning would be more apt if the question were phrased, "Do you _steal_ software?" or, "Are you a software thief."

Re: Poll: Are you a software pirate?

#72
I've said "Yes" but I'm in a grey area.

I'm a member of BizSpark and am developing for SharePoint inside VMWare images. BizSpark provided me with a set of licenses for Windows Server 2008 R2, but it's only really enough to build 1 whole environment (1 server license). As a result I've simply copied/branched my VMWare image so that I can have 2 instances, a dev and a test environment. The test being a snapshot of dev prior to installation of Visual Studio.

I suspect this is pirating because now I have 2 machines available from 1 licence, but then again... it's just an image of the same machine, still running on the same physical machine and really just represents an earlier snapshot of the dev machine.

Something's wrong when it's not simple enough to know whether you are or not, and when a developer program (BizSpark) doesn't really give you enough to do the job you need.

Re: Poll: Are you a software pirate?

#73
post #62
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression is that mac users tend to buy software more often than windows users as a percentage of the whole, at least for small to medium applications. Examples: Textmate, Transmit, Sizeup, Divvy, etc. I highly doubt that would apply to behemoths like photoshop though. Not that I have any data to back that up, just my general impression.

I am amazed at the amount of trivial mac apps that sell for $20+. OMG, bold font pro and spellcheck+ are on special offer! Culture shock for a Linux user.

This is true, but there are quite a few high quality applications that that kind of culture enables as well. I would gladly pay for an ftp app as nice and polished as Transmit 4 on Linux, but as far as I know one doesn't exist. Not that there isn't great software on Linux, but I enjoy the emphasis placed on design by the Mac community when it comes to the top applications.

Re: Poll: Are you a software pirate?

#74
Perhaps there is a certain perverse form of karma to software piracy. When you are a kid and all your family has is a crappy <$500 PC and you really want to learn to do something cool, you can't even afford student or lite versions of the big name development, drafting, or graphic design apps. So maybe you pirate them, learn to do something useful, get paid to do said useful thing, then buy a license or so to ensure the cycle for the next generation.

Re: Poll: Are you a software pirate?

#75
post #38
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes to all of your reasons, but I think you missed the biggest one: - Many of us produce and sell software and we understand that pirating makes it harder for people like us to make a living at it.

I actually voted both yes and no, since I do pirate software, but only software I own. I don't consider it piracy, because it doesn't impact anyone's ability to make a living off of it (it usually just saves support costs) but the law sees it differently. Also I did pirate a game from the early 90's because I couldn't figure out where to send a check. http://downloadgameonline.blogspot.com/2008/08/enchantasy-qu... Ac…

I do that with books--- I generally will buy a hardcover, then pirate a searchable PDF, if I can find one.

Re: Poll: Are you a software pirate?

#77
Like almost everyone else around here, I used to when I was a kid. Finding hard copies of software was hard. Even if I found them, I couldn't afford most programs like Turbo C or Visual C++ so downloading was a must.

Console games were super expensive and buying a game was rare. On the PC it was equally expensive ,plus the lack of HD space was very limiting. Not being able to fit a full install of 2 or 3 games made downloading a 'rip' a must.

Today: The feeling of opening Visual Studio or a new game box is as awesome as 10 years ago, but now I do it way more often :)

Re: Poll: Are you a software pirate?

#80
For all of you that answered "Yes", please don't pirate software. When you create anything, no one has a proper right to it except on your terms. Without you, that thing you've created would not exist. You should be concerned about proper rights because your life, along with everyone else's, depends on individual rights (this has always been true, but it should be quite obvious to us because our technologically advanced civilization - through which literally billions of us are supported artificially - is the product of man's mind, left free to act). No one could live without the right to their person and property. Without those rights, they would not have space to exist in, a body, food to eat, etc. In this way, respect for someone's intellectual property is just as important as respect for their physical property. As more people fail to respect the creator's terms, they will increasingly have less motivation^ (and resources, if that's the gating factor) with which to pursue and share ideas. A result of this is that pirates hurt themselves long-term: they are depriving themselves of future material and intellectual advances that their honest patronage would make possible. For example, a single $100 payment for a company that has millions of customers has an exceedingly small impact, but that is not the same thing as $0, and all those payments together result in wonderful products (or not, in which case the company stops getting so much money). A well-managed company with a bigger product development budget can pursue more ideas and build better products than they could with a smaller one.

The consequences of piracy for the pirate are arguably more severe than for the company getting ripped off. For example, take the case of a aspiring person trying to improve their vector illustration skills with the eventual goal of becoming a paid designer. Stealing a copy of Illustrator won't give them the same result as someone who pays for it. Someone who saved hundreds of dollars working at a low-paying job will be more motivated to put their investment to productive use than a pirate that just rips it off a torrent site, all else being equal. The trader who traded value for value (money for software) will do better work, and more of it. A pirate will be more likely to employ the same "creative method" that they used to get their ill-gotten software: "I'll just download the ideas, too. Why not?" Instead of just second-handedly copying designs from others, our honest artist will be more likely to actually learn their tool more fully and look to novel sources for inspiration: "I worked an entire summer to get Illustrator. I'm going to skip going to that party, fun as it may be in the short-term, because it means more to me to make that summer of hard work amount to something more than a shiny package on my shelf." Furthermore, by behaving ethically, they'll be able to more easily advocate for the kind of society that rewards people for using their minds, which is precisely what they need to survive as designers. (Our fledgling designer could not exist as a designer in a world where all people pirated their work; they would have to devote more of their time to supporting themselves some other way.)

To express this as a general principle: anything that you take by force of theft or fraud is against your long-term self-interest. It's like cheating on an exam - you might get a better grade short-term, but in the long-term, you are more likely to end up with a job you are unqualified for, with all of the ramifications that entails (performing badly [the cheater has not acquired the same depth of knowledge that an honest student has], getting fired, decreased self-esteem [as the cheater is left in doubt about whether they could have passed without cheating], decreased income, etc.)

^Motivation doesn't have to be financial. People who violate the terms of an open source license can drain the motivation out of a programmer that might otherwise be perfectly happy, stalling or even halting future work. Open source license violators violate exactly the same principle that software pirates do: that the creator of a work has a right to dictate the terms of its use.

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