Overture Search Terms Showcase Piracy Desire

swfnews guy writes: "swfnews.com (a slashcode based site) today published this article regarding how Overture's search term suggested tool can be used to see the desired piracy of a particular piece of software. I find it disturbing that more people searched for the crack for Flash Mx than for tutorials on how to use it."

Comments

Nothing new...

[Tazzy531]

There's nothing new about this "news" article. We all know piracy runs pretty rampant on the net. We all know that many (including us), justify it by saying that

• It's too expensive
• I'm just using it for educational purposes
• I wouldn't have bought it anyways

People have been saying this since the mid-90s where we were downloading "warez" from BBS's.

Right price point, wrong users

[mblase]

Flash, Photoshop, and even MS Office are all products not designed for ordinary consumers. They're just not. They're packed with features and tools for professionals, and those professionals are trying to make money with this software. The least they can do is ante up a few hours worth of their own fees to pay for the tools they use.

If you're a consumer, and you want a cheap product, the vendors are there for you. MS Office cost too much for your school papers? Get a copy of Works. Photoshop expensive for making web graphics and removing red-eye? Get Photoshop Elements for a fraction of the price.

Meanwhile, Macromedia Flash is the perfect example of a tool not targetted at consumers, period. The tutorial takes a couple of hours to get through, minimum, when you're starting from scratch, and ActionScript is hardly a walk in the park.

You say you'd buy Flash MX for $50. Well, what are you going to do with it? Goof around and build crappy animated interfaces for your web site? Or learn to use it properly and sell yourself as a Flash professional? If it's the latter, then take a class or pay for the full product, and justify the $50/hour your peers are charging. If it's the former, just learn JavaScript. It's still free.

Intent is all fine and good...

[2nd Post!]

But these companies do have a right to set the price they want to do a transaction at;

If that means $584 for Photoshop, then that's what you need to fork over. If you don't like it... doesn't mean you have the right or privilege to download or use it.

Then there's the $89 version of Photoshop Elements.

Or you can get an older, cheaper version of Photoshop. Photoshop 5.5, 5.0, 4.0. 3.0, all worked, and continue to work today.

Or you can use gimp.

If you can't afford to use the program, you can't afford to use the program, and that's how simple it is.

If you *need* the program, then you can afford it. If a $584 copy of Photoshop allows you to earn $30,000 a year in consultation fees, you can afford Photoshop.

If you just want to put pictures on the web... use the $89 of Photoshop.