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Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

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Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#101

Post by reinhardt »

kybernetikos wrote: post #59
cremnob wrote: post #27

Earlier 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…

> 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…

"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 his life."

A builder:

  - is hired by a single client
  - to build a house for many months
  - and is compensated throughout the engagement with an hourly/daily/monthly wage or salary, 
    which is pretty much guaranteed (unless being let off for typically external reasons).
An author/actor/game developer:

  - also takes many months to complete a book/movie/game but
  - he is not hired by any single client
  - his income is directly related to the reception of the end product by the audience.
I'd be interested to know how do you think should the creative professional be compensated if not by the actual people who benefit from it.

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#102

Post by glomph »

kstenerud wrote: post #76

I'm one of those people who would pirate just because I could. It was almost a game, trying to amass as much warez as I could, to the point that 90% of the stuff I got I either never used, or used only once. 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 ea…

Private torrent trackers are also fuelled by this drive. The 'game' abstraction has been made so real with ranks, stats, leaderboards and so on. It really is quite amazing how willing people are to sink time into providing a service, moderating, sourcing, encoding (people sink LOADS of time into learning the finest details of x264), cracking, uploading and distributing all for for no material gain outside 'the game'.

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#103

Post by gfodor »

BadDesign wrote: post #60

I think he's completely unaware of the GNU/Linux distributions and the gratis software that comes along with them and the freedoms that that software offers to the user. " “Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. With these freedoms, the users (both individually and collectively) con…

I don't see how Free software has anything to do with his post. First, there is only good Free software for certain things. Especially when the author was younger, there were no good Free software alternatives for many popular commercial products.

Even today, GIMP is no Photoshop, Blender is no Maya, Openoffice is no Office, and the list goes on, and this has been after decades of trying to catch up. The truth is that for many domains, commercial software is the standard and has been shown to be adept at outpacing Free competitors. (This is not true in many domains as well.)

And besides this, a teenager who is a sponge for learning the coolest and most popular software could not care less about the tired philosophical debate about free vs Free, they just want to be able to play with Photoshop because that's The Thing.

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#104

Post by dbrian »

ddorian43 wrote: post #63
ender7 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I must admit that when I was a kid I taught myself how to use most of the Creative Suite via pirated copies (back then it was the Macromedia Suite plus whatever Adobe was calling its software at the time). I'm now employed because of those skills, and my employer has to purchase annual copies of said software for me to use.

Why annual? Do you really need the latest CS(n)? Or do you buy by subscription?

Compared to a designers salary, $50/mo to keep them on the latest software is money well spent. The Joel Test #9.

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#105

Post by gfodor »

CoryG89 wrote: post #42

Until Microsoft Dreamspark, this is how I was able to teach myself to program. This really happens. However, I think programs like Dreamspark are the answer to this. Microsoft will let you download Visual Studio if you go to school. Not word (but it's only $99 for a student, affordable). Article is a little misleading when it comes to paying for Adobe CS in general. If you are a student you can usually pick it up for…

Not certain but Dreamspark requires some type of "student verification" process, which may be prohibitive to many young people who could stand the most to gain from access to these products.

I certainly can't imagine my 13-year-old self, who was a big enough geek to be giddy warezing Turbo C++, getting access to Dreamspark.

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#106

Post by demetrius »

eshvk wrote: post #39
chasing wrote: post #5

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…

Since the car analogy isn't working: Let me try another one, equally with flaws no doubts. :-) Piracy as we known it is rampant of the coasts of Somalia (Yes, I am talking about real world pirates). One of the reasons why that is happening is the systematic breakdown of the livelihoods of fisherman in the region due to dumping of toxic wastes of those coasts and the free flow of arms. Now, it is arguable that those f…

>> What is wrong with accepting that

>> you are doing something wrong and...

>> keep doing it if you wish?

Because we believe there’s honestly nothing wrong with it.

Paraphrasing you: I don’t understand what is wrong with accepting that pirates are doing something right and... abstain from doing it if you wish?

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#107

Post by winfred »

chasing wrote: post #5

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…

You are overly western-centric, if you honestly think that the world in the 1990's is any different than it is today.

The only difference is that the there has been a shift of development, where some Eastern European and South American countries can now afford software licensing, but at the same time massive numbers of people in Africa and Asia have reached wealth levels that are sufficient for buying computers yet too low to afford the software.

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#108

Post by JagMicker »

Tyrant505 wrote: post #40
meritt wrote: post #9

It's always been rumored that Adobe software, especially Photoshop, has been easy to pirate to encourage adoption with a user base that might otherwise seek alternatives. As those people hone their skills and eventually find jobs, Photoshop is the norm and what their employers purchase licensing for.

What exactly is HARD to pirate? edit: More specifically, Crack. I remember x-force having sources in all the major places ready to dump it to their cracker division.

Many DAW's (Digital Audio Workstation) such as Cubase, and DSP "plug-ins" have special software protection schemes. Cubase uses something called eLicenser[1].

Another popular, niche product that has proven difficult to fully crack is a program called Pro Tools, created by DigiDesign, now owned by Avid. It uses a protection called PACE Anti-Piracy[2]. Many expensive pieces of software require unique hardware, either a security dongle or some other external device.

[1] eLicenser.net

[2] paceap.com

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#109

Post by javert »

I’m just saying that it’s not all black and white.

It is black and white. It's theft.

The issue of whether you shold steal in certain conditions is a separate issue, as discussed some in the article.

But it is black and white, it's theft.

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#110

Post by kruk »

glomph wrote: post #102
kstenerud wrote: post #76

I'm one of those people who would pirate just because I could. It was almost a game, trying to amass as much warez as I could, to the point that 90% of the stuff I got I either never used, or used only once. 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 ea…

Private torrent trackers are also fuelled by this drive. The 'game' abstraction has been made so real with ranks, stats, leaderboards and so on. It really is quite amazing how willing people are to sink time into providing a service, moderating, sourcing, encoding (people sink LOADS of time into learning the finest details of x264), cracking, uploading and distributing all for for no material gain outside 'the game'.

I don't think it's just about the game. I believe many people involved in distribution of illegal content do it out of a genuine desire to share. For every released movie, every song, a book or a piece of software there exists a group of people with no means of accessing it in a legal way (and probably another, much larger, of people who can't afford it).
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