Even now that i can afford it, i'd still choose pirated software over DRM and phone-home license checks.
Pirates always get the better product (with the possible exception of AAA online multiplayer games).
Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"
81–90 of 235 posts
Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stealing a car deprives someone of a car. Copying a car does not.
Identity theft is still called "theft", even though nothing is actually stolen. Piracy is more like counterfeiting. It's much worse than stealing. Stealing a TV only deprives someone of that physical value. Pirating software has the ability to destroy the value of the entire product line (why would someone pay $99 when they can just get it for free). The same concept also applies to things like the app store. Now tha…
If you cannot make spending $99 dollars more appealing to your target audience than going to the pirate bay and messing around with sketchy-ass cracks, then frankly you just suck at selling software and really have little business doing it.
The people actually in the market for $99 dollar software in the first are not going to do all that nonsense (unless you have done something terribly wrong with your legitimate distribution channels...), and who cares if people who aren't in your target audience pirate it?
Photoshop is the classic example. The people who pirate it are jobless students, while the target audience for Photoshop is undeniably professionals (who buy it). This is evidenced by the lengths that Adobe doesn't bother to go to to prevent piracy.
Similarly, with video games people either pirate them because they are not in the market for things that cost $50, or because someone royally fucked up the legitimate distribution (with draconian DRM, or by not offering it on Steam, or whatever). Gamers who are in the market for games buy games.
Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Some people are honest about it and say "I just don't want to pay for it". But most people I hear justifying piracy feel entitled to it and don't think there's anything wrong. And what is dishonest about that? When a builder builds a house he gets paid for his work. If he wants more money, he has to do more building. He can't just sit back and take a payment every time someone enters that building for the rest of h…
If a builder wants to take a payment every time you enter the building he is free to do so, thinking otherwise is highly presumptuous. Whether that business model will be viable in the market will be left for him to see (hotel managers operate exactly like this except they don't get paid for entering their building but for getting a room for the night). What's dishonest about it? The mental gymnastics to rationalize…
You seem to think it's impossible for people to genuinely believe that copying is not theft. You're wrong. There are a lot of people who genuinely believe that sharing is not theft, and far from being something that we should persecute, is something that makes humanity richer and the world a better place, and many of those people do not believe it simply in order to feel better about copying stuff, since they don't actually 'pirate' copyrighted things.
Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it's pretty far off from reality. It's an extreme edge case that doesn't at all justify pirating Photoshop.
Ah, you're correct--we were talking about software mainly, not music. Software companies never go out of business without selling off their assets, and it's the extreme edge-case where people continue to distribute the works. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware This truly seldom happens.
Again, abandonware does not justify pirating Photoshop, a product that is constantly updated by a very active company.
Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
>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. It comes up every time because piracy and stealing are worlds apart morally. Were I to steal someone's car, they would be incredibly inconvenienced. Were I to illegitimately obtain a piece of software, the developers jus…
>the developers just get a smaller check at the end of the month.
..Only if you were going to buy it in the first place and decided not to.
Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Piracy is different from stealing, yeah. But I find it kind of short-sighted this notion that it's "victimless." Not intending to bite your head off. :-)
A very simple thought experiment: A rap artist is hired by a label to create an album. Said artist later dies. The label goes bankrupt soon thereafter, or perhaps simply folds up shop and leaves the business without auctioning off its assets. I have produced a copy of the album, which I host at my own cost from my server, once these events have transpired. There is no reasonable "victim" left for this crime of infrin…
See also abandonware or emulation of older systems. It's technically illegal for me to go download a copy of System Shock, but the company that made it is long gone, and the company that bought their assets isn't doing anything with it.
Illegal? Sort of. Immoral? Not really.
Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"
#87I remember when Bill Gates came to Romania to launch their Microsoft branch here, and in front of the public the country's president himself told him how helpful the pirated version of his Windows has been for Romania. It was quite hilarious and a ballsy thing to say to Bill Gates.
But I think Microsoft and Bill Gates have learned to accept that, because imagine if China, India, and all the other poor countries out there were forced to use the free Linux instead of the pirated version of Windows. Then Windows would've had 50% or less market share in PC's, and that would've meant they wouldn't have had a monopoly in browsers, nor in Office anymore. So having Windows everywhere, even pirated, has helped Microsoft a lot to get its monopoly position.
I think in the next decade, it will be Android which will be what Windows was for all these kids in poor countries. It will be much cheaper to even get the hardware for it than it was to get a PC 10 years ago, and this time the software will actually be free and open source. I truly believe Android will revolutionize the world in this sense.
It's unfortunate that Microsoft and Apple are trying to slow it down right now, and make the devices more expensive than they should be through bogus licenses and lawsuits, but they won't stop it.
Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"
#88I'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…
If a kid goes through the trouble of learning how to download, crack, and install software, I see that as a good barrier of entry for someone to start learning a piece of software. If you are going through all that trouble, chances are you are really interested in what you are pursuing and there is a bigger chance you may pursue a career in design/dev. And when you do enter the field, your employer will purchase licenses for you. I know that if I didn't pirate software as a kid, there is no way in hell I would be working in the web now. Also, when I was learning, I pirated all of my software. Now I don't have a single pirated program on my PC. And I gladly pay $50/month for the Creative Suite.
Or the software companies can release 'lite' versions of their software intended only for personal use and then rely on employers/schools and people purchasing the full versions to make most of their money.
Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same with Windows and Office. It's better to have them pirate your program than run somebody's else.
Definitely, but I think is just Microsoft investing in their ecosystem. In schools students learn "Word" and not "a word processor". I've seen high schools getting software licences with special deals (way cheaper), and thanks to that other solutions are discouraged (ie. "Word" is the standard and it will be required by any future job offer) Can all students afford a Word licence? (ie. practice at home) It really doe…
There are avenues to acquire Office inexpensively.
* There was a $60 sale on 2007 for students.
* I was able to get a copy of 2010 for $1 for home use because I also use it at work
* You can always purchase a used copy of 2003 for cheap. It's dated, of course, but not really outdated yet.
Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's semantics and is irrelevant every time this topic comes up because no one is actually talking about legal definitions. Pirates always seem to miss that it's a moral argument when they trot out these familiar lines (the irony isn't lost on me). Whether or not you're guilty of petty theft, shoplifting, larceny, or burglary is for your lawyers and the courts to determine. For me and others from my position it is mu…
It's completely relevant , especially because the normal intuitions about stealing and property rights here are so ill-defined. Consider, if you will, that for hundreds of years the concept of intellectual property--indeed, even the idea of land ownership in some places-was foreign. You simply cannot throw up your hands and say "But semantics!" and expect to be taken seriously. At best, you look lazy--at worst, you a…
Just to back you up on the history side:
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property." Thomas Jefferson
"The ordinary subjects of property are well known, and easily conceived... But property, when applied to ideas, or literary and intellectual compositions, is perfectly new and surprising... by far the most comprehensive denomination of it would be a property in nonsense." Lord Gardenston in Hinton vs Donaldson, 1773