71–80 of 235 posts
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Piracy for personal use is a 'victimless' (don't bite my head off please) crime, that's why it's OK here. Stealing is not.
Not necessarily. When you pirate something, you are hurting the owner's chances of selling it to you in the future. If you know that there is no chance that you will buy it, then it is victimless. If however things change and you are in a position where you would buy it, you are far less likely to, which does hurt the seller.
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Same with Windows and Office. It's better to have them pirate your program than run somebody's else.
"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade." -- Bill Gates during speech at University of Washington http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/09/business/fi-micro…
I'm glad things worked out for Vlad -- when I was younger, I pirated a fair amount of software and games, and, like him, I think it enabled me to get inspired to learn more about computers in general and, indeed, now I stare at them all day for work. But. I'm not sure what the bigger point is, here. Should we be okay with piracy as long as the pirate is using it for self-betterment? Do games count for that? What abou…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same with Windows and Office. It's better to have them pirate your program than run somebody's else.
"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade." -- Bill Gates during speech at University of Washington http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/09/business/fi-micro…
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Stealing a car deprives someone of a car. Copying a car does not.
This trope comes up every time piracy is discussed. The point is no one is talking about the legal meaning of "stealing" versus "copyright infringement". What people are saying is that it's immoral. The fact that a content company's product is easily stolen simply because the nature of his business means it is effortless to do through the internet doesn't change anything. If you go to a lawyer for legal advice and th…
That changed over time. As my time became more valuable, I couldn't spend all day fiddling with software anymore. I became more focused, downloading only stuff I used a lot. And then it hit me: It would be far easier to just buy the damn thing for $10, $20, $50, whatever and not have to hunt shit down, find a keygen, or in the worst case crack it myself.
So now I don't pirate anymore. It's not out of a feeling of moral obligation, but rather because I appreciate the convenience. And, realizing that pirates are people at various points on the price/effort spectrum, I don't even worry about my own software being pirated. Why should I, when I get income aplenty from it even with pirates in the equation?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade." -- Bill Gates during speech at University of Washington http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/09/business/fi-micro…
Sadly that didn't stop them from claiming that piracy was a $1.5B$ problem because the retail price of Office was $495. Even though even a child would tell you that no sane individual would spend more than 1/2 their annual salary to buy a copy of a buggy, but ubiquitous, set of tools. In fact they were willing to pay $2 for a pirated CD on the streets so the actual "loss to piracy" was $6M ($2 per each of those 3M ma…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same with Windows and Office. It's better to have them pirate your program than run somebody's else.
"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade." -- Bill Gates during speech at University of Washington http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/09/business/fi-micro…
-- Steve Ballmer, 2009 http://www.osnews.com/story/21035
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Skype for a very long time had some absurd protection against things like attaching debuggers, adding code, and whatnot (as I recall). There was a great presentation about it, but I cannot for the life of me find it.
To my very limited knowledge, the most difficult software to crack was Steinberg Cubase. Such a PITA the hackers decided not to do it ever again. They quoted a ridiculously large figure for the amount code devoted to detect cracking (~30%), and having a significant impact on performance. I had links about about bypassing anti-debugging techniques, I'll see if I can get my hands on them again.
As a matter of course, pirates often find themselves becoming quite knowledgeable about topics (audio and video encoding, protocols (FTP, NNTP, BitTorrent, etc.), tools such as BNCs and VPNs, encryption, storage methods, etc.), all of which have valid uses aside from committing piracy, that they would otherwise have little motivation to explore.
The desire to commit piracy undetected acts as a motivation for people to gain a deeper understanding of the systems they are interfacing with, and this is often a good thing.