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Educating Youngsters About Piracy
Colin Winters writes: "The New York Times has an article that is a follow-up to the recent raid by the government on pirates in universities. Some professors believe that "By the time we get them, they already believe it [piracy]'s right." An interesting read. There's also an interesting bit on how business software is now 1/3 pirated, down from 1/2 in 1995. In America, it's only 24%. From the way companies like Microsoft whine about piracy, I'd assumed the figures were increasing, not decreasing."
because my 10 year old doesn't understand why I can't just make a copy of Pod Racer so we can multiplayer at home.
Especially since his Mom has warez copies of MS Office on her machine that she uses to writes her papers.
I know what the Internet is, what the hell is this Interweb business?!
By educating you mean show them where to download the latest P2P program and show them where the warez/crackz sites are. Right? :)
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Piracy. It seems to evoke some romantic image of sailing the seven seas, drinking rum and singing sea shanties. People, when told 'you are a software pirate' seem to shrug it off. Call it its real name, and you can change people's minds.
Its not piracy, its stealing.
MS Dos is (was) incredibly easy to pirate back in the days when it was widely used. If it was never pirated, it would never have become nearly as popular as it was. This would have made Windows less popular. Microsoft has piracy to thank in part for its success.
Successful software WILL be pirated. That's how you know that people are willing to buy your products. In the long run, the corporate clients who have to worry about staying legal within their contracts will comprise most of the legal purchases of software, while the little guy (individual persons like you and me) will still probably pirate the stuff. This is how software gains grassroots acceptance. I think piracy by some individuals is good for business. It's better than any advertising campaign.
Could the drop in percentage of software being pirated have less to do with individuals pirating less than they did before, and just the sheer number of computer users increasing?
In general, even the ease of use of peer 2 peer networks requires a minimum of tech saavy, and a faster broadband connection to make pirating your average 500+MB CD-Rom worth it, two things which the growing population new to computers don't have.
In previous years, the percentages of computer users who actually were real computer users and not just people who owned one for email or web browsing was certainly higher.
With this decrease in more advanced users compared to the general public, and the increase in the sheer size of pirated programs needing to be sent across your connection (Games, for example, going from a couple megs to a couple hundred in size), I'd see those two as the reason for the drop.
Isn't knowing how much software in the country is pirated a bit like claiming to know how many rapes go unreported each year? It's a statistic that is impossible to gather by the nature of the question.
I'll tell you one thing I hate about software these days. If I want to play a multi-player game of Ghost Recon or something with my brother, I have to buy at least two copies of the game (at more than $50 each!). However, if I want to play a multi-player game of Monopoly (pun intended) or Parcheesi, I don't have to buy a new game set for all four or eight people I'm going to play against.
I think piracy is a bigger issue than we think, rooted in the ideas that stealing from a big corporation isn't stealing, because they obviously screwed little people over to get where they are today, so it's alright for us to screw over "them". It's a nameless, faceless "them" kids think they're screwing with, not individual people. Where I went to college there were countless students who had no problem ripping off credit card companies ("it's the companies we're hurting, not people, and the companies have millions to spare so who cares?") to get stuff they wanted, I was appauled, but there was no way to convince them that somewhere down the line, they were hurting the guy next door.
Piracy is about the fact that nobody cares about anybody, and that's just the fact of it.
spacefem.com
I've been wanting to a legit copy of Office 97 rather than living on the MSDN copy from work (should I ever have to get another job). I found a guy on eBay selling a sealed unregistered OEM copy for $75. I used "buy it now" to end the auction and used eBay's own BillPoint to pay. This happened three days ago.
About six hours later I got notice that the auction had ended at Microsoft's request because the good were pirated (VERO rule or somethign like that). See the problem? I already paid for the goods, and the charge has cleared my bank. The listing is gone, and I haven't heard from the seller. What happens to my money?
I've written eBay about it, but of course haven't heard back probably because of the Christmas holiday. Has this happened to anyone else, and if so, what happened?
I think that most of the "pirates" know more about the illegalities of what they're doing more than the actual people aresting them. In fact I would bet my legal software on it.
Now comes the question of why is Piracy so big? Well why is drug use and prostitution so big? Well they make people feel good (not endorsing either, but lets face it ... coke heads like the feeling they get from stuffing their nostrils with coke) ... Getting something for free has always made people feel good about themselves.
Let's figure in the MS-Factor ... MS makes most of it's money from site licenses and OEM's ... they don't make their money from off the shelf Operating Systems. Now their games and apps, yessir they pay for all those. According to MS Though you _can_ have a the same copy of Office and Windows at home and office ... so long as you don't use the computers at the same time (which is technically physically impossible) ... But MS does make games and I will admit that I know of people "stealing" from MS everyday. Do I think that they're criminals? Hell no ... I blame the MS for making a standard that is used in schools and accepted in the office that we are taxed for in our homes for compatability issues.
Now lets throw in the OSS factor. Of course OSS doesn't have to worry about piracy, hell they ask people to share (dumb bastards *note the previous comment was meant to poke fun as a person who is coming from the stance of microsoft*). So what's the solution, THERE ISN'T ONE
So why is it so big??? Well it's promoted. You think someone would buy an Apex DVD player that reads CD-R's because they thought it would look better on their shelf system? Hell no ... they bought it so they could play VCD's on the thing. You think they bought their 12x burner because they wanted to make compilation CD's from CD's they already owned? No they wanted to copy CD's, make Audio CD's, and VCD's. You think that they got broadband to download on the web faster ... lol ... NO ... they got it for that wonderous P2P that is out there to make things easier for those floating in the dangerous seas.
All in all ... and in a nutshell ... piracy won't stop ... there will never be an end ... if everyone who was a software pirate were arrested then 80% of america would be sitting in a jail cell right now ... because we've all "stole from the man".
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
The difference being that what is being stolen is copies of copies. And it isn't tangible property, so dealers have just as many cars in their lots to sell to people willing to pay.
Of the "billions of dollars revenue each year lost to software piracy" how much of that is to thirteen year olds downloading a $10,000 copies of 3D Studio Max from a warez site? I'm sure sonny just would have bought it if he couldn't have downloaded it.
Sure.
...then you have an even deeper problem that neither the software industry, or any other media publishers want to address.
And that is that more and more people, worldwide, are begining to believe that copyrights, and so-called "intelectual property" in general, do not deserve all the protections that they are afforded.
No one wants to address this because it is the publishers' biggest fear: copyright will lose respect and eventually be abolished. Their entire revenue stream is based upon the idea that data, be it software, music, video, or whatever, can be artifically kept scarce. And that's just not true.
What the whole Napster thing has done is to demonstrate that a good number of people (enough to make a "political majority") do not think that CDs are worth $18 a piece. People are now realizing that CDs cost under $1 to make and that the artists aren't getting the remainder. The people are making it known that the recording industry is NOT worth $16 a CD anymore. And since, unlike an ideal marketplace, you can not negotiate the price of a CD, potential customers are looking elsewhere to obtain the products at the price they feel it should be.
Piracy itself is not the primary target of these raids. The real target is attitudes towards copyrights. Since people are no longer respecting them on their face, the industry is attempting to convert the lost respect into fear of the law.
And that fear can only be provided by a copyright police state.
My dad bought a Christler in '86. It was a piece of junk. Do you think it would be OK if he went to the factory and stole a few cars? Oftentimes when I eat at McDonalds, I get the shits. Is it moraly correct for me to hop over the counter, grab a bunch of food and run out the door? RedHat sold me a CD with an exploitable copy of WU-FTP. Can I steal a bunch of CDs or a development server from them?
Certainly there are those, perhaps even the majority, who pirate for entirely selfish reasons. But there are those who pirate because they see it as striking at a morally bankrupt corporations heart.
I would bet that the percent of people who pirate for moral reasons is less than 5%.
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These manufactured piracy figures would be even remotely useful if they included demographics for each group of software pirates. If the majority of that 25% were, say, Mercedes Benz driving, diamond-clad rich folk who light cigars with hundred dollar bills, then we would be worried.
At present, these buckaneers seem to mostly be low-income students and others who have a compulsion to use the latest and greatest software, without the funding to back it up. Rather than paying bazillions of dollars towards enforcement and purchasing new laws, software companies could stand to make a huge tax write-off if they called this willful taking of their software a Charitable Donation.
Big software companies practically print their own money giving out these wares as name brand commercial products, and they enjoy insane profit margins once the development costs get paid off. Since profit==taxes, they should try to encourage software piracy, pull a figure out of their ass equivalent to their taxable income, and then end up paying a few dollars, rather than a few hundred million.
(did I mention, IANAL and IANAA?)
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
You're right, the analogy doesn't hold up.
Sure, stealing is wrong, but might the term 'piracy' applied here be so over-the-top that young people simply can't take it seriously? What are our other options?
- Intellectual theft (too vague)
- technovampirism (too bloody)
- software parasitism (too icky)
Hey, wait? Why don't we just call it "copyright violation?" That's accurate, after all. Doesn't sound scary enough? Maybe because it isn't all that scary.We aren't talking about truckloads of baby food being waylaid by highwaymen; everyone who pays for the software still get their goods, after all. Is it really justified to fight a war on copyright violation the same way you'd fight a war on drugs or terrorism? Does anyone really think every KaZaa user represents a lost sale of Office XP Professional?
Again, I'm not saying it isn't wrong. But so is speeding, and that could be brought under control by mandatory cell-linked speed monitors in vehicles. It would save lives, after all, so why don't we do it? It would appear that no one wants to push the personal privacy issue unless there's considerable money (not lives) at stake.
Perhaps the industry and society as a whole would benefit if we shifted to a more palatable equilibrium point, and treated copyright violations at the user level as they've been treated since the advent of photocopiers and audiotape: frowned upon, but tolerated.
And most software that is pirated is done so by people that collect warez; most of this software is never used _AT_ALL_ and if it is being used, this is mostly done by people that wouldn't have bought the software anyway; Joe A. User won't go to the computerstore to buy Photoshop; it's waaaay too expensive. He either uses the install at his work or "borrows" it from somebody else. There's no way he's going to buy Photo Shop. So that's another difference between theft and piracy: the losses for the industry a no where near the sum of pirated software. My guess it's less than 1% of the pirated software generates real loss.
Apart from companies, nobody is going to pay a hundred bucks for software they only use every once in a while. Unless they get it "for free" with their new PC. Companies are about the only ones you'd expect to actually buy software and most of them do so.
Conclusion: software piracy is no way near as large a problem as the "government" thinks it is. I am not saying it is good at all, but it just doesn't cause that much damage at all.
0x or or snor perron?!
While I can't state that this isn't true for some people (trading one blanket statement for another would make me a hypocrite) I CAN state that the majority of people I know aren't going to fill that statement. My friends and I certainly do bootleg our music; it's difficult to find one band that produces an album that has more quality than filler on it, so we pick and choose the songs we enjoy and download those individually. If an album comes out by a band we particularly like, we'll buy the album, but for the most part, we pirate our music.
However, we don't pirate our software (except for a few big titles
My friends are the same way. We don't, by and large, pirate software; sometimes we share, and if it's good enough, we'll buy it (that's how I came around to Baldur's Gate and Quake III). Music is one thing; software is a different story altogether.
I know people who feel the same way about movies; they pirate movies, since we have faster-than-god internet access at school, but if it's a good movie they'll go out and buy the DVD or the VHS. The only thing we really pirate and NEVER purchase is pr0n =)
I think Prof. Farber is trying to suggest that music piracy is a "gateway drug" for kids, but I don't really see any evidence of this. As someone (the article? don't remember) states, software piracy is down in recent years, even though CD burners are cheaper and broadband access is more widespread.
What is interesting (and potentially frightening) to see is this "war on piracy" turning into the next "war on drugs"... something to keep an eye on, I think.
Merry Xmas*,
~Aaron
(yeah, I'm an atheist, but I still celebrate Xmas, because it's a social holiday, too; so to all non-christian geeks out there, have a good one!)
student of animation and the fine arts
I already have problems with the system, they want to teach my children about "Political Correctness" and other good little citizen values. I want my kids to think for themselves. I don't want the same people who tell me what my kids can and cant wear, eat, say, what to think or how to think.
This is a war of morals, My kids should be able to back up their games, eat peanut butter sandwiches, write stories about death/god, wear black, kiss, give gifts, tell a teacher they are incorrect, tell a grown up no, refuse to accept punishment.
Do I care if my kids are trading mp3's? No, they still buy CDs. I personally don't think an mp3 is much different than recording off the radio or cable music channel.
Warez.. Yes its wrong, you should always buy a game you like. Even the pirates say "If a game is worth playing, its worth buying..."
Make your own choice.
Microsoft faking evidence?
Microsoft illegaly using their market domination (apologists please note that I don't say monopoly) to lock out competition?
Microsoft forcing customers to buy another license although they already have one?
Microsoft forcing people to buy the product over and over again by breaking formats and standards?
The response of the average Microslave is:
"Oh well, that's just normal business. Everybody would do it if they could."
People pirating software?
"Oh well, that's just normal. Everybody does it."
P.S.: No, I don't pirate software, I even paid for my Linux distribution.
The LAW is not about whats right. The Law is about the economy and what we know works.
We know capitalism works. We know businesses make alot of money by selling what is essentially free.
However, this is all about the economy, and rich CEOs making billions of dollars off of us. It doesnt really help the people, it helps just a few rich CEOs have a few more million dollars.
So the question is, what is more important? Would the economy survive if it changed? Absolutely. Would CEOs be as rich as they are today? Definately not.
So CEOs dont want to make more average wages, they want to be billionares, and this is only possible if you sell overpriced software for $500.
Its not like developers get paid billions, no, some CEOs and guys in suits do.
Same with the RIAA, So its not about right or wrong, its a matter of, should we be getting this money? or should some rich guys in suits be getting this money?
Developers and Musicians wont be getting this money either way.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I saw a poster (I think somewhere after 1995) with that 30-ish % figure for the US. It was a poster of the world with every country labelled with a percent.
The US was the lowest as I remmeber. Most coutries cracked 50% and a large chunk cracked 80%. I remmeber russia and china and a few other counttries were up into the 98% range.
Then I look at microsoft. I look at it's gross product. I see that it's gross product, if it were a nation, would be the 5th largest in the world.
I absolutely feel no pity for them. Granted, I do not pirate software anymore, but I used to, when I was a college student and was making no money at all. I buy it now, or do without. Most of the software I buy is games.
So, I hear these arguments from the BSA saying that piracy increases software costs. I think that it's a lie. Simple economics says that they will charge what the market will bear. The market bears this price, and they will not decrease the cost just because all the software in russia suddenly becomes legit. They will charge us the same, because we'll take it. They may charge less for the russian one, because it's a different market.
I'm sorry if this viewpoint bothers professional programmers. I really am, but I really doubt you'll be getting more money when all the russian MS Office goes legit either.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Well, I have news for you. It is a birth right. The number one thing that all of us do from the day we're born is copy, take in, and immitate. There is nothing inherently wrong, destructive, or self centered about copying.
Copyrights are not what they're cracked up to be, and play ruin on those who have the most value to offer society. With a mathematician who could have otherwise coppied a math book and added a few of his own formulas, the copyright market forces him to waste his resources on creating an entirely new book as a seperate market offer. Meanwhile, the Madonna's of the world lavish in wealth while being a relatively unproductive tiny minority. Not that I care about her wealth, but am pissed that it comes at the expense of screwing over productive people.
This applies to much more than just computer piracy though.
The way I see it, you follow whatever you believe. I don't give a shit what the law says. The law wasn't made for me. It was made for the goddamn mega-corporations. As long as I don't get caught I don't feel any worse for breaking the law than if there never was such a law.
Its the same thing with most people and marijuana. Everyone who smokes it feels it should be legal. That's millions of people. Yet it still remains illegal. And as long as you don't get caught, who cares if you're breaking a stupid law that shouldn't have been made in the first place? Right?
There's my $.02
This kind of reasoning (some would say rationalization) is exactly what the article wants to stamp out.
Without even stepping into the unresovlable argument of reasoning vs. rationalization, what alarms me about the article is its unquestioning advocacy of "educating" young computer users to think in a certain way that is to be determined by corporate interests. The question of whether widespread piracy is a moral blight is trivial compared to this article's radical advocacy of implanting corporate moral imperatives in our youth.
You have to grant that moral complexity plus promises of lotsa "free stuff" opens a big old doorway toward the rationalization of theft. Since the ownership of a bitstream is counter-intuitive, it won't be simple to have kids subscribe to the idea. But is the answer to this brainwashing kids into a "stealing is bad" moral reflex?
What kids need to be taught is logic and critical thinking, rather than receive drill in corporate-endorsed moral standards. While we may get just as much software piracy, we might hear some better rationalizations than those quoted in the article; and maybe the next generation will get copyright laws that make sense for the times.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
Let's set the record straight
You can dislike illicit software copying if you like. You can think that the participants are morally suspect, you can say that it does harm to the industry...you can say quite a lot of things. But lets get something very clear here:
Comparing Software Piracy to theft is a stupid analogy!
Meriam Webter defines theft as
1 a : the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it
b : an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property
1)..When someone illegally copies a piece of software, a physical piece of merchandise that existed in a warehouse does not just magically disappear. Unlike in the real world, the proprieter of a business (Say COMPUSA, or MICROSOFT) does not have to spend extra money on recovering lost inventory.
2)..You can argue against it all you want, but the vast majority of pirated software on many people's PCs would not have been bought in the first place. I know there are exceptions, as always. But seriously, look at the Start menu on your average (artist I suppose since I went to school with art students)College Student's PC: Photoshop, Premiere, AfterEffects, Office, 3D STUDIO MAX, an assortment of expensive 3D games (Not to mention about 10 GB of Mp3s, which is a different but incredibly related discussion). Oh Good Lord, this one student has cost the industry thousands of dollars in software, and has cost the music industry nearly $2000-$3000 in revenue! What a load of carp. Apparently most people have forgotten that college students are poor!
Yeah, I suppose you could argue that through pirated software one is stealing profit--depriving the company of the profit it deserves. That is a dangerous argument to make. Because then how would you like it if a company had the right to sue you over persuading a fellow citizen that it would be unnecessary to even wrong to buy a specific product. Would that then mean that you have stolen what would have otherwise been a positive cashflow from said company? I think not. A corporation does not have the right to determine what a consumer should or would have done under their ideal circumstances. That right lies solely within an individual. If we want to crack down, lets crack down on real piracy, where a piracy group sells contraband copies of another person's material. That's what copyrights are all about in the first place.
Plus, Bill Gates really kind of needs to suck my wang, a little bit.
Some professors believe that "By the time we get them, they already believe it [piracy]'s right."
Of course that's what students believe! What student--what consumer--believes it's "right" to ask $600.00 for Adobe Photoshop, $400.00 for Office, or $1000.00 for Windows 2000 Server? If Adobe is going to be stupid enough to ask $600.00 for a copy of Photoshop, then they get what they deserve.
If Photoshop were only $20.00, then nearly everyone would purchase a legitimate copy because they would feel it was worth the money and (most importantly) they could actually afford it! What a concept!
There's also an interesting bit on how business software is now 1/3 pirated, down from 1/2 in 1995. In America, it's only 24%. From the way companies like Microsoft whine about piracy, I'd assumed the figures were increasing, not decreasing
It would be more enlightening to see validated statistics regarding the least pirated software. I bet it's those $10-per-CD discs of discount software you find on those display racks at places like Target and Kmart, due mostly to the reasonable pricing.
- "It's just a matter of opinion!" - PRIMUS
I totally fail to see why "youngster piracy", as in
some kids who couldn't afford buying it anyway sharing software,
would be a bad thing(tm).
The companies don't lose anything (not having the cash to buy
a legit copy, the kids would just do anything else), but they
gain market share, and therefore mindshare.
And their whining about people making copies of stuff that's no longer available legally is even more ridiculous.
Ideally, everyone would move to just Open Source Software and the problem would be eliminated; in a less-utopic
world, we need a revision of copyright law, and fast.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
I reckon that you'd have an easier time educating kids to swear off sex totally (except for procreation within marriage) than getting them to honour all forms of 'intellectual property'.
I argue here that the notion of intellectual property is not natural to humanity.
While animals relate easily to concepts of scarcity, one thing that distinguishes humanity is its capability to comprehend of abundance.
Human societies the world over have emerged from the caves by their ability and willingness to share information freely, and use this information to better their lives.
The notion of 'ownable intellectual property' was an artificial construct used initially to protect the incomes of publishers (who faced the large costs of typesetting and production), then was extended to generating an incentive for authors and providing them with a way to earn a living from the fruits of their creative labours.
However, to me, the 'intellectual property' system is clearly now serving the interests of the 'machine' far more than the interests of original creators.
How many masterpiece books actually make it into print? Many bestseller authors tell stories of their work being only accepted by the 30th publisher they approached. And even for those who find an outlet, they typically get screwed, receiving a miniscule percentage of the profit from their works.
And, it's the publishers and retailers who benefit far more from copyright than the original creators.
But with the advent of the Internet, I strongly feel it's now time to revise the whole notion of 'intellectual property'.
For the first time in human history, it's cheap, fast and easy to distribute information worldwide (anything that can be digitised - music, literature, art - perhaps even sculpture soon).
I strongly suggest that instead of trying to educate kids against 'piracy', we teach them to be innovative in finding new ways of profiting from their creativity in a new climate of abundance.
I would feel happiest with a system which limits copyright to the right of a creator to receive credit and acknowledgement for their work.
I feel that human society would thrive and evolve far better by setting the internet free, and encouraging everyone to participate in the new Abundance.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Some say $50 is a fair value for a game. In some countries, this is enough money to feed a person for 3 months. How do you defend this price now?
You don't do your case much good with this sort of specious argument. The people buying computer games are not living on a $17/month food budget.
First, this article makes me sick. The overwhelming corporate morality is obvious and in poor taste. People just should not get their values from the media. Values come from life experience, peer mentoring, and plain old critical thinking, not something like this.
What burns me even more is the reality that some people live in. If pieces like this actually are expected to sway people one way or the other, we should be more than a little scared. Popular opinion is just like popular music or popular anything --manufactured for those who just can't seem to think for themselves. This sort of thing is not what built this country, instead it is the source of the erosion we see today.
Toying around with some software to learn something about it, or the field of interest it is written for is not stealing. This act costs the authors nothing. The lost sales argument does not hold water either because only the rich or the foolish can afford to just buy software they are curious about. The rest of us are just not going to do that when there is no planned gain to be made. People normally do not invest when they do not see a return. Why would they?
As a kid this whole thing took a couple of days to sort out when I was presented with it the first time. It is simple. Learning is ok, profit is not, unless you are a paying customer. Pretty simple really.
As a result of that simple ethic, I have purchased every piece of software that I actually use to my benefit. Simple again, pay back what you owe.
Does this make me a thief? What harm does this cause the authors of the software I have learned about? The only harm I can think of happens when the software is lame, and I say something about it when asked. Paying for lame software is what started this whole thing anyway so in the end that does not hold much water either.
So this avaliabilty of software to all of us helps the authors much more than it harms. All of us who learn about software recommend it to employers and share knowledge and advocacy with our peers. There is a substantial longer term return for a very moderate investment on the part of the software authors.
Why should we bear the burden on this when we have very little return to show for it when the companies who profit from software sales have a clear one?
The structure of this is obvious. If things are slanted toward the established corporations it is much harder for new upstarts to have a chance at the top.
Return for investment works against us here where it should work for us above. Buying a few laws and maintaining a pile of lawyers is far cheaper than dealing with distruptve technologies once they are out of the bag.
Our loss is greater though. We lose out on choice innovation and in general the fruits that our contributions to society in general promise to bring.
How come nobody writes articles about these sort of things. Could it be structure again? Maybe those damn critical thinkers right or wrong are enough of an annoyance that it would be better to chill them before letting them speak?
Blogging because I can...
In other words, if I form a contract with a software provider or film company when I license software or content, and I break that contract by making a copy and passing it to another person, they should have the right to be able to sue me for damages. If the contract wasn't fair, the court will throw it out. If it was, they can make me pay up.
What is unacceptable, and an erosion of liberty, is that an unrelated third party - the police - can take action against me, on behalf of the state on this issue. Unless I was using this commercial transaction to commit another crime - like fraud, or murder - it should be nothing to do with them.
We rightly give the police tremendous leeway to detain suspects, confiscate goods and enter property. When this power is used on behalf of one party of a contract, it's very unfair. It's a dangerous extension of state and corporate power vs. the rights of individuals.
Breaking the terms of a software licence is neither "theft" nor "piracy". It's simply breaking the terms of a software licence, a bit of paper that comes in the box, written by the software company.
"Well, put a stake in my heart and drag me into sunlight."
Photoshop is $600 for a reason. It's the best pixel pusher on the planet, and the price is well deserved. You don't need Photoshop. 90% of the people who use it (including people who pirate it) don't need Photoshop. If Adobe sold Photoshop for $20, that would be a lot like a certain company releasing a certain web browser for free.
I'm glad that Photoshop is $600, because there's already enough people who won't buy my software because they say "Sorry, but I already have Photoshop."
You don't need Photoshop, or half the shit people pirate. Pay for and use software you can afford. If people keep pirating Photoshop instead of buying cheaper alternatives, there won't be any more alternatives.
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
I'd like to point out that I really wanted to moderate today. But there are just too many fools who know lots about computers, less about society, and very little about the law posting mindless bits here.
Ever wonder why corporates and lawmakers look at open source like a bunch of freaks? Think about the guys who promote copyright infringment against corporations, and yet if Microsoft violates the GPL (a copyright infringement), they'd scream bloody murder.
Face it, we're all intellect workers here. I doubt many of us make a career out of building physical objects, or performing physical services. Most of use here either make or will make our careers of our using our minds. And we'd probably like to make money doing it so we can eat, stay warm, and buy more equipment.
The problem is that there are two camps. Those who say that all copying of software/music/etc costs money per copy. That's bullshit. The other camp says it doesn't hurt anybody. Well, tell that to the game companies who didn't make any money because you spent your $50 on blank CD-Rs instead of a single game.
The problem is that no one here thinks about who benefits and loses. People all over have become way too selfish. This counts the users, copiers, corps, etc. Look at the record companies! They want to control distribution of the music through their channels. But if I play the music enough online and get it to enough people, then the artist benefits because people go to the concerts, where t-shirt sales and such benefit the artist. However, what happens to the small record companies that DO promote their artists if they don't make money on the sales? Back when Windows 3.0/3.1 was making the warez scene, Microsoft was yet another competitor. Now they're a monopoly, in no small part thanks to those who wanted the software to be "free".
This isn't piracy. Piracy means we deprive people of what they have to trade. Maybe it's more of a conspiracy, since we all get toghether and affect companies in ways that in our own little world we don't see.
Let me just wrap up and say that your money votes and so do your actions. You can buy all the Linux software you want, but if you're still USING copies of the latest greatest Windows, you promote the monopoly. You may love a band to bits, but if you never contribute anything to them succeeding, you're a leech, not a fan. Why do the rules that we have in the IRC rooms and trading programs and such not apply when we interact with a world in which we can vote with ballots, purchases, and lobbying?
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
I think a slightly revised selling system could
totally CRUSH piracy. We all know how nice it is to have pretty books, and tech support, and such, but often times the user doesn't want that stuff, and they just want to be able to install the program and use it. They don't want to pay for tech support that they aren't going to use. Why can't software companies sell downloads of ISO's for a fraction of the cost of the retail version of thier software, but ISO users would be barred from tech support and such. They would be still making thier money, and they would be selling directly to thier customers, and a substantial savings to the customer. Retail stores make HUGE markups just because they can, why can't the software companies sell the isos below the wholesale price of thier products? I would never pirate software again, methinks.
Spring is here. Don't believe me, look outside!