Software Piracy

[The Coop]

I would've contacted id about it to avoid having to pirate it.

If that ended up being fruitless, then yeah I would have done what you did. Or returned the disc.

I contacted Activision and Activision Value half a dozen times each, being sent back and forth, before I was finally told that they didn't support that disc any longer... which is their nice way of saying, "You're SOL. Bye." And, since id wasn't the one making the CD, it wasn't their problem. So, I took action myself to rectify the situation.

Fun game by the way.

[Zephyr]

I think there should be way more open source programs because open source rocks, everyone's happy and people get to give back to the community and make their own program better, and due to the amazing world of ads, nobody has to lose any money! Plus it gets us one step closer to COMMUNISM .

I also think that there should be some sort of law that when a copyright holder dies, unless they sold it off to someone, all of their stuff should be available for free everywhere. Chopin is dead, get over it and give me his sheet music already!

[Moseph]

Chopin is dead, get over it and give me his sheet music already!

Here ya go!

[JadeAuto]

Here's an interesting situation I'd like all of your thoughts on.

Say you purchase a CD. You rip the mp3's for personal use. Somewhere along the line, you lose both the CD and the mp3's from the CD.

Do you view re-downloading the CD via torrent as acceptable? Or do you shell out more cash for yet another "legal" copy?

The way I see this situation is like this: I've already supported X band or Y software company or Z retailer with my business. Through no fault of my own, my copy is damaged/destroyed/lost beyond my abilities to restore it. The only option left is to 1) repurchase the cd/dvd/software/etc, or 2) download it via torrent/etc.

In my opinion, I don't see an issue with re-downloading a digital copy of said material, as long as you've purchased/supported the entity at least once. Hell, I've bought certain cd's two or three times, and each time I've had them stolen/etc. Rather than continue to spend more money on something I had already purchased the rights to, I see no reason to not re-download that item.

Now, if there's software that I've never bought before (I'm looking at you, oh desirable music sequencing software), much as I would *love* to download it and get away with it, my conscience tells me that that's stealing; e.g. taking something I have not specifically purchased the rights to use. This is what some people forget when they talk of downloading. Company A has the right to decide how and where to sell their product. It's not up to Joe Hacker or Jill Downloader to decide they want to stick it to the man and rip them off. If they want something that has the same abilities, I'd love to see Joe and Jill go and start an OSS company and provide a program with the same capabilities for free. Then, Company A would have to be competitive with their product as you can get something similar for free, and thus have to either switch to offering their product for free, or go out of business. Or offer a technical support model or some other tangible benefit to the customer who decides to pay for their software.

Going back to the previous candy bar analogy - If you buy a candy bar, you buy the rights to consume/eat/waste/destroy/whatnot that candy bar. Nobody can tell you what you can and can-not do with it. However, that candy bar is made up of physical matter that cannot currently be replicated, duplicated, or copied in any shape, way, or form. If you steal the candy bar, then you have not paid for the rights for that candy bar, and thus are stealing because the say of the manufacturer/seller are still in effect. It's hard to tie in a candybar to this analogy, because technology has made what is impossible with physical matter in a 'copying' sense possible.. Copying data still leaves the original material intact - If there was a way to copy a candy bar from a shelf at a store, and not have to pay for it, and leave the original intact and have no harm done, then the candy bar analogy would fit the bill here.

In my mind, it all boils down to respect. If you respect a company for what they are trying to do, and you respect the law and the governmental authorities set in place at this point in time, then because of that respect you purchase what you want, or you follow the law and don't purchase it, don't download it, just do without.

If you have no respect for a company/entity/government/artist, then of course your conscience is going to justify downloading an unlicensed, unauthorized copy of whatever music/video/program/insert copyable item here.

Yes, I've pirated certain items in the past. Usually as trial methods on full software that does not have an applicable trial/demo period, to see if that software would fit my needs for a specific task or project. Once I locate said software that will do what I need it to, usually I follow up by uninstalling and deleting the illegal copy, and purchasing the full version from the company who creates the software, to support more quality programming from that entity.

Hope I didn't ramble too much here.

*edit - for clarity on a few ambiguous sentences, and spellcheck*

[SoulinEther]

<--hopes he gets a dev job for some OSS project when he seeks employment.

Here comes the crazy man talkin about crazy crap.

It's quite a conundrum, a quandary keen on killing any quick exit without catharsis or cannibalism. I don't believe software, text, art, anything reproducible should have the control of ownership; we're all human beings. We all have some cultural vat of knowledge, creativity, etc. that we contribute to and take from, in one method or another. If I write a piece of software and release it into the world, if you really need to use it, why should I stop you? If I make a medical discovery, find some cure for some disease, and make it known, what right have I to prevent you from benefiting from it? If you feel some burning desire to compensate me for my work, what is there to stop you?

It's like that one Russian proverb. Once a word goes out of your mouth, you can never swallow it again.Once something - an idea, a poem, a creation, a manifestation of a melody, some grand discovery - leaves my brain or my lab, I can't own it again. I've communicated it to someone else, and I thus no longer control it.

So does that mean copyright goes against the principles of human communication..? :/ Maybe.

Granted, that is no justification for copyright infringement; there's this law thing that still applies most of the time, right? I don't use it as one, either. Which is why I've stopped with the personal pirating.

Hm. What if it became impossible to copy material and infringe on copyrights not because of restrictions preventing you from succeeding but due to the freedom/rights to do so. What would happen then? Would I somehow attain nirvana..twice?

Still, something that cannot be reproduced, such as musical concert, the showing of a play, the demonstration of a movie on a humongous screen, cannot follow the same principle - it's impossible, given our current means, to reproduce something like that exactly as it was when it first occurs.

So.. I'll go around holding symposia about my software? (I'm still working on the details.)

Great topic.

[big giant circles]

I hate coming into a discussion late. I'm sure I've missed plenty, but I'll comment on a few things briefly.

something about already owning the program in the first place[/paraphrase]

in your case, you already own a license to use FL. I'm pretty sure it's not stealing if you're using any copy of FL, as long as you're only using the stuff you are legally licensed to use. (if you're only licensed for v4, then you probably shouldn't use v8...). anyway, I'm pretty sure you'll get the matter resolved with IL soon anyway.

You asked for examples besides laziness and etc, yet your response still relies on the persons laziness. The (very true) observation that having free access to music will diminish the overall tendency for people to go out and buy the stuff that they just got does not serve to combat my argument that not all people who pirate are doing it wrongly. Your argument just serves to condemn those who I specifically excluded.

The theft of a candy bar is a tangible theft. If you're including all pirates in your argument then stealing a candy bar is not analogous because if every person stole a candy bar the loss would be far from miniscule.

Perhaps you should make up your mind about who your argument applies to.

I'm not entirely sure I understood any of this.

I do have quite a few CDs, DVDs, and games, but I might as well try things out to see what is worth my money. If the product is actually worth buying then they deserve my money.

Appraising certain products after you've already taken them is kind of LOL. Besides, who are *you to determine a product's value anyway? (*you in a general sense). Just because you didn't care for something as much as someone else, does that give you the right to take what they paid good money to see/hear/use for free? It's very tough to win a debate with such a subjective statement.

There are fewer and fewer justifications for pirating most media now anyway:

Software: demos generally give more than enough time and ability to test out the features to see if it's something that could be valuable to you before you buy it.

Music: there are so many ways to hear the gist of a track/album before you buy it. Virtually every legitimate music retailer/reseller has track/album previews available before you buy.

Movies are pretty much the only *risk* investment in the media industry in that previews don't always allow you to personally assess it's contents completely effectively from their previews.

Also, I disagree with ANSO that pirating is NEVER theft. I understand where you're coming from, and I even tend to agree, it seems more of an infringement thing, but isn't it also that prohibiting profit by illegally taking a product for free is (although implied) still a form of theft?

NOW THEN. While I generally don't condone piracy, I can and do understand SOME of the opposing arguments. (I don't think Coop did anything wrong, for example). Dave makes some pretty interesting and valid points. Almost puts a Robin Hood-ish perspective on it.

"Is stealing from the wealthy to feed the starving poor wrong?"

and all that. I suppose ultimately it depends on the situation, which I'm far to lazy to try to list out which are and aren't justifiably correct.

I will say that I'm CERTAINLY not a wealthy individual, and I spent more money in 2008 (and I'm 27 as I type this) than I ever have before on music gear, and I'm still scraping to provide for myself and my wife, so I can definitely sympathize with the "oh, but I'm poor" argument to an extent. However, I'm also a little bit perturbed when people pirate the stuff that I worked hard to pay for despite my own financial struggles and then hear it *justified* it with the old "but I'm too poor to afford it" copout.

Good example, I (along with lots of other people) paid a substantial amount of money for Omnisphere when it came out. Recently, a copy was stolen from the Guitar Center here in Knoxville. It infuriates me to think that some jerk is getting to use that program for free when I worked hard to save up the money to actually buy it. He's definitely not getting any sympathy from me, no matter how rich or poor he is.

Backtracking just a bit, another factor to think about when deciding if a program is "worth it" to you or not, is how much time you spend using it. If you want to buy a game, and let's say the game cost's $60, and in theory if you had the game, you would play it for say, 500 hours of your life, then personally I'd say that the game is probably easily worth $0.12 per hour for you.

I bought FL studio years ago for $150, plus another $30 for the lifetime updates. I've probably used FL at least ~10 hrs a week for the past 5-6 years, or roughly 3000 hours. Considering that's probably comparable to the use a typical console gets (not to mention the cost of buying new games constantly) which I estimate would run easily $1000, I'd DEFINITELY say it was worth it.

If you're pirating a program that you "wouldn't have bought anyway", and you're using it more than a couple hours here and there, and especially if you COULD afford it if you applied yourself and saved for it, then once again I am withholding my sympathy from you.

Also, oddly enough, I'd actually enjoy AD chiming in on this, regardless of which side he's for/against. If for no other reason than I've grown to enjoy his style of debate.

*EDIT*

Also:

If you steal a CD from a store, the store owner will no longer be able to sell that copy because you stole it. They lose money. If you download a copy of a program you would otherwise not even consider buying because it is several hundred dollars for example, nobody has one less copy to sell, nobody lost a purchase that would have otherwise been made, and nobody loses money.

I don't think you understand how most product distribution and retail/resell works at ALL.

Also, upon further reflection, I'm not certain half the people here really understand the difference between a license and ownership. Buying a program or a music CD is a lot different than buying a couch or a bar of soap or a pair of socks, but I still get the impression that most people don't realize that.

[OverCoat]

I don't think anyone (ReMixers especially) believes that benefitting from others' work is justifiable.

wait what

what do you think we're ReMixing?

Also I pretty much have to post this:

[Nekofrog]

wait what

what do you think we're ReMixing?

Also I pretty much have to post this:

If it were possible, I SO fucking would.

[Antipode]

There are some things which I buy and some things I download. It entirely depends on the circumstance and the media. I download current episodes of TV shows that I'm interested in and can't see because I don't have cable or am away during the scheduled airing. I buy games that I know I'm going to get a huge amount of play out of, have really been looking forward to, or that are made by a struggling developer. I download games that don't fall into any of those categories but that I'm still interested in playing through (something I often won't have enough time to do with a rental). And so on. Frankly, systems like DRM, rental contracts, fees, and the actual length of time it can take just to get legal media are all inconvenient and drive piracy. Piracy offers the ultimate convenience, control, and satisfaction to the consumer (at least if they know what they're doing), and legal media still hasn't caught up to that. Once it does, maybe things will start to change. But for the time being, I'd think anyone could see the appeal.

Oh no, I downloaded and played through Halo 2 PC. Now what? What are the effects of my download and playthrough? I had fun, I have never played it online, and I definitely wouldn't have bought it (and wouldn't even have been able to since it's intended for Vista only and I have XP, so I downloaded a user-converted copy - boom, it worked perfectly, with all the pointless restrictions of use removed). I don't feel any guilt over it, I had fun, I downloaded it and installed it quickly, easily, and for free on a system that shouldn't even have been able to run it.

I do think there's something to be said against people who download ALL media they see or hear or play, but I see nothing wrong with moderate piracy when you at least think it through.

[big giant circles]

I download cars all the time, but it's not like I was going to buy them to begin with. Plus, I like to hack into them and invent better, cheaper cars that other people can download for free. And since I wasn't buying the car from a dealer, nobody lost any money. Besides, cars are faceless people and don't care if you pay for them or not. They're just pieces of metal and plastic and rubber and cheese that have no feelings. The guy who invented cars is dead and doesn't need my money anyway. Plus, I'm too poor to afford cheese, so I feel completely justified in downloading cars for free. I also like to drive cars around a few hundred thousand miles before I buy them. If I don't like them, I either leave 'em in my garage, or drive 'em into a chasm. Either way, they eventually go back to the earth, and since rubber and petrolium are biodegradable and good for the environment, I'm also recycling and keeping our planet beautiful, and that makes Mother Earth happy.

[SLyGeN]

I think the best argument in favor of intermittent piracy is the one regarding programs one would never buy in the first place, where the only difference is the use of my personal time.

The only attempts at refuting this that I've seen are poor comparison arugments like the one above me, which I hope is only facetious.

I recently got chewed out in ReMixing for using a pirated copy of an old, unsupported version of Steinberg Cubase. Steinberg doesn't do demos, and I wanted to try it. I wouldn't have simply went out and bought it, and now that I've used it (and other demos), I won't be buying or using it. Bottom line, piracy or not, they aren't getting any dough from me. No harm. (and in my opinion, no foul.)

Yes there are alternative programs to use and I could have simply ignored Cubase altogether. But before telling me that, one must be able to explain how I've wronged anybody.

(and to those familiar with that little ordeal, all staff editors that I've seen built into actual DAW's are all absolute fucking jokes. Sonar was the worst.)

[linkspast]

So, Just because you are never going to buy it means nothing. The fact is that just because you think "Adobe is never going to get my money because I never am going to buy/use/need/whatever photoshop." Dose not give you the liberty to use it for free. Buying software is a privlage. If you cant/wont pay for it, you do not deserve it. Plain and simple..

Also.. you are supporting it. If you are getting it off a torrent, you are helping transfer the file(as i understand it) Which is likely going to some one who might of bought the software..

Now I however will download TV shows.(Not the DVDs with all special features) And here is my reasoning. It is no different than recording it on a VCR. (I am unsure how DVR`s work, is there a fee?) I have cable that the show is on.

[Sole Signal]

Ethical arguments aside, I'm convinced that piracy does in some cases, "help" the software company. There was a thread in the FL forums a while back asking who had at one point pirated FL. If memory serves me, there were about 100 people who fessed up to pirating, and then purchasing. About twenty fewer people demoed and then purchased.

The real users will pay up as they see results and continue to use it, while the ADD pirates will move on to the next big thing.

Storytime: I bought a used copy of Red Alert 2 at Gamestop a couple years ago and when I got home I discovered that there was no serial number provided. Called up Gamestop and was told by a noticeably uncomfortable employee to look online for a "crack that works."

[Tex]

Yeah. As if life was perfect for everyone and all people from the whole world had the same opportunities to get a decent job and all. Then piracy would never exist at first place.

I wonder, how many mixes posted in this site were done by using illegal softwares.

[Asaudan]

- The corporations have enough money!

- If I couldn't download it, I wouldn't buy it either!

- I'm a student and switching from pirating to free software would somewhat inconvenience me!

- I can afford a computer that plays new games but not the games themselves!

- I'm actually helping the company by... like... advertising their product... um... yeah!

GO PIRACY!

By your excuses combined, I am Major Pirate!

Major Pirate, he's our hero,

gonna drag the system to ground zero

he's petty crime magnified,

seeding our torrents worldwide

gonna help him bankrupt

companies whose product pricing seems to have nothing to do with their overheads or operating co-o-osts yeahhh...

"You'll pay for this, Major Pirate!"

If I clock more hours on it than I spend on the toilet, then I'll think about it. kthxbai

[OverCoat]

This thread jumped the shark.

[anosou]

Also, I disagree with ANSO that pirating is NEVER theft. I understand where you're coming from, and I even tend to agree, it seems more of an infringement thing, but isn't it also that prohibiting profit by illegally taking a product for free is (although implied) still a form of theft?

No. Theft is defined by a physical (or digital if that is even possible) object being taken and thus removed from it's original owner. Since these are COPIES (and some-times sub-par copies in the case of .mp3s and .avis) it will always and forever be copyright infringement. Just like fake NIKE-shoes before them.

[Red9]

In the States it's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement,

and more precisely this is the result : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NET_Act

Do we still do it? Of course we will....

However I agree with linkspast on tv shows.....

[Fishy]

I used to do it a little bit, but after I saw that guy say to zircons face on the boards that he was going to pirate antigravity, I realised what a shit thing it is to do.

The only only reason I would ever pirate anything now is if it would otherwise be impossible for me to own that particular thing, ie translations of animes that don't officially exist, emulators for games that are reeeally rare etc.

[Red9]

but after I saw that guy say to zircons face on the boards that he was going to pirate antigravity,

Is there a link to this?

[Kanthos]

If you download a copy of a program you would otherwise not even consider buying because it is several hundred dollars for example, nobody has one less copy to sell, nobody lost a purchase that would have otherwise been made, and nobody loses money.

I fully agree with analoq's statement about a lack of morals and a sense of entitlement. Trying as a demo is one thing, although, IMO, I believe any reputable software company should release quality demos, and as for demos of a new CD, those aren't hard to find legally (and by demo of a CD, I mean clips of each song). But the "I wouldn't buy it anyway" argument is just stupid. If you aren't willing to pay for it, you shouldn't have it. You *are not* entitled to it simply by virtue of having a computer connected to the Internet. Plus the "I wouldn't buy it" argument is very self-serving: there's a chance you might change your mind and buy it if you didn't already have it pirated (the chance that you'll pay for it anyway *after* you've pirated it is very different).

A good example of that would be scientific tools such as InsightII.

There is not a fairly priced app that will do the same thing as Insight and I do not think it is unreasonable to conclude that no one would buy such a program for the purpose of making a couple models.

The company is well within their rights to ask whatever price they want for the software. You as a consumer are well within your rights to refuse to pay their asking price and not purchase the software. You may not feel the app is fairly priced; the company who made it probably has priced it fairly, given the research and development that went into producing it. The money you would spend on this, were you to buy it, would help them either improve their software or create other software.

Is it too expensive for you? Definitely. Welcome to capitalism, where those with money are able to afford more expensive things.

Here's another thing, since we're talking about pirating games: Used games.

Companies shouldn't limit the selling of used games, IMO, and I won't buy from those who do. I can sell my car to a friend if I like, and Honda won't see an extra cent from the transaction. The problem with the games market is that there's a flood of a crap. There are too many games out there that don't have good replay value or are just plain bad. If it wasn't for the used market, consumers would be much more picky about what they bought, driving initial sales down anyway. Used sales are the price developers pay for releasing buggy games, incomplete games, games that are unoriginal, games that are much too easy for the target market, and games that provide no incentive for someone to replay them.

Yes, there are new copies of games that get sent back. If game X is released to a store that has 100 copies initially, sells 50, gets 25 back as used and sells them again, the message to the game company should be that 50 out of 100 people at the store liked the game enough to keep it (25 initial, 25 who bought used). It's then either a mistake of the store for ordering 100 copies or of the publisher for thinking that they could sell 100 copies.

That I'll agree with. I've pirated a few programs that I already own because I can't find the disc, or the company auth server is down and I need it for a project right away.

For that matter, I even had zircon send me a small set of the samples from Battery (portions of two kits) just because my media was defective. I have the license (obviously; I couldn't run Battery past the initial demo period without it being authorized); I just couldn't install everything and Native Instruments only makes the programs, not the samples, available for download on their website.

[Dhsu]

Companies shouldn't limit the selling of used games, IMO, and I won't buy from those who do. I can sell my car to a friend if I like, and Honda won't see an extra cent from the transaction. The problem with the games market is that there's a flood of a crap. There are too many games out there that don't have good replay value or are just plain bad. If it wasn't for the used market, consumers would be much more picky about what they bought, driving initial sales down anyway. Used sales are the price developers pay for releasing buggy games, incomplete games, games that are unoriginal, games that are much too easy for the target market, and games that provide no incentive for someone to replay them.

I think used sales are just the price developers pay for gamers being cheapskates. :/ A lot of those reasons you just listed could apply to piracy as well.

[Native Jovian]

I don't believe software, text, art, anything reproducible should have the control of ownership; we're all human beings. We all have some cultural vat of knowledge, creativity, etc. that we contribute to and take from, in one method or another. If I write a piece of software and release it into the world, if you really need to use it, why should I stop you?

Argh. Argh argh argh. This hurts me. Seriously, ow.

Okay, here's how software (and music, too, but I'm focusing more on software at the moment) works. When I write a program, I own it. It belongs to me. I can do whatever I want with it (as long as it's not illegal etc etc); I can copy it and give it out to my friends, I can modify it, I can sell it, whatever. Now, say I sell you my program. What I've actually done is sell you a license to use a copy of my software. It's basically a contract that says "I, the maker of the software give you, the user of the software, permission to use the software under these conditions". The conditions are generally "you can't modify the program" and "you can't copy the program", among other things. Even free software has licenses, though usually they take out the "you can't copy the program", sometimes they take out the "you can't modify the program", and occasionally they add in "you can't use this program to make a profit".

Now, movies/music/etc works the same way. When you buy a DVD or a CD, you own the physical copy of the media, but you don't own the media itself. You can't copy it and start selling them, and you can't use them to make money (by, say, putting a song in a movie, or charging people to view a movie like a theater). That requires seperate contracts with whoever actually owns the media (a musician or a recording label, in the case of music; a studio, in the case of a movie).

Let's put it this way. If you made something (whether it be a program, a song, a movie, a story, or whatever), and your livelihood depended on you selling copies of what you made, would you want people to be able to do things besides use/listen/watch/read it without your permission? I don't think anyone can reasonably say "yes". (Note that certain instances, like parody or fair use, are exceptions to this. This is so people like Weird Al can make a living off of making fun of other artists, and so we don't have to do things like pay George Lucas a quarter every time we use the word "jedi" or say "Millenium Falcon".)

The point is, if everything became public domain the instant it was created, which seems to be what SoulinEther was advocating, then no one would ever be able to make any money off of stuff they made, and the entire entertainment/publishing/software/etc industries collapse overnight. "But what about open source?", people ask. "They make programs and distribute them for free!" So they do, but many of the people that do are programmers for a living and work on open source projects as a hobby. If it were impossible for a professional programmer to support himself, then it would be impossible for him to develop the skills necessary to make open source projects work. In short, if you couldn't be a [programmer/writer/musician/artist/etc] for a living, then we'd have a hell of a lot less (and lower quality) [software/literature/music/art/etc] because the only time people would have to devote to it would be leisure time.

So that's why we have intellectual property rights. How does this fit in with pirating? Well, the short answer is that it's why piracy is illegal. The longer answer is that it's why piracy is wrong, in both a moral and a practical sense. By refusing to pay for something, you're reducing the creater's ability to support themselves, which hurts the industry, which hurts everyone. "But there's no lost sale! I wasn't going to buy it anyway!" Bullshit. The options there are "buy it" or "do without". By choosing option 3, "pirate it", you're throwing the whole system out of whack. If you want it, but not enough to buy it at whatever price it currently costs, then that sends the message to the people who made it that their product costs too much and if they lower the price they might get more sales. If you pirate it instead of waiting until it's on sale or something to buy it, you're sending the message to the people that made it that no one wants their product. Which is untrue. See the problem?

Now, that said, I don't think that piracy is always wrong. If it's impossible (or at least very difficult) to buy what you're pirating, then I don't see any moral problems with pirating it. The two easiest examples I can think of are abandonware and as-yet-untranslated media. Abandonware is software that's been abandoned by its makers -- either they went out of business, or they simply no longer support it because it's too old, or something like that. When I mention untranslated stuff, I'm mostly referring to anime and video games. The original Mother was never sold outside of Japan. Season two of Gundam 00 is currently airing in Japan, but isn't available on this side of the Pacific yet. Certain dedicated fans have made these available to the public; you can download and play/watch them. It's technically illegal (it's still piracy), but I don't see the problem with it. If you can't buy it because it's not being sold, then that's a different situation than "it's too expensive" or "I wouldn't have bought it anyway".

As an aside! There's a very good reason why some programs are ridiculously expensive.

In short: programming is hard. It takes programmers -- people who have at least a bachelor's degree, and often a master's or PhD, and expect to be paid accordingly -- a very long time to write complicated programs. They expect to be paid while they're doing this, and the company has to recoup all these costs at the end of the programming cycle, by selling the finished product. Creating software of any size is a huge risk for a company, because you basically have to go into debt to keep your employees paid and your office lights on for potentially years until your product is finished, and only then can you even hope to make back the money you spent to create it.

To put things in perspective: Microsoft spent five years making Windows Vista. It has over fifty million lines of code. I don't know how many programmers worked on the project, but suffice to say that it's freaking huge. The fact that something so staggeringly gigantic works at all is frankly mind-boggling. And guess what. People bitched and moaned and complained about it, and virtually no one liked it. So they had to turn right around and get cracking on Windows 7 just to keep their customers satisfied. Many people (myself included) skipped over Vista entirely, and plan to leap from Windows XP straight to Win7 when it comes out. That all translates to a financial loss for Microsoft.

Now, few programs are as epicly giant as an entire operating system, but by the same token, few programs are in such high demand as operating systems either. So when you complain about price tags in the hundreds of dollars for video editing or music composition software, just remember how much bloody work went into the thing in the first place. In all honesty, it probably wasn't even intended for use by private consumers -- most software is designed to be purchased by other companies. Guess what, guys! If you want to use the same tools as the professionals, then you have to pay the same price. It's not software companies being egotistical dickheads, laughing manaically and counting their money while they swim in pools filled with gold coins Scrooge McDuck style. It's just them trying to actually turn a profit -- and it's a losing proposition for many of them.

TL;DR VERSION:

Huge post is huge lulz.

EDIT re: used game industry

I don't see the issue with this. No one complains when you sell a used car, or trade it in at the lot for credit toward a new one. No one cares when people hold a garage sale and sell off a bunch of crap. Why should games be any different? Games generally require that you have the physical copy to play -- either because the disc has to be in the drive for the game to run, or because there's some sort of CD-key that comes unique to each copy of the game. (As an aside, I suppose it would be possible to sell something like Starcraft -- which requires a CD key but no disc to play -- after writing down your CD key. Then you could copy or download the disc and install it using the CD key you bought, copied, and then sold. Anyone buying the disc you sold wouldn't be able to use it, because the CD key would already be in use. How does the used games industry deal with that sort of thing?) By selling your disc, you're selling your license with it, which I see no problems with.

[big giant circles]

I think the best argument in favor of intermittent piracy is the one regarding programs one would never buy in the first place, where the only difference is the use of my personal time.

Which is something I more or less agreed with in my serious post earlier. Since you tested the product when no demo was available to you. Assuming you decided you weren't going to use it b/c you had no need for the program or did not care for it, aquiring it in such a way seems harmless AFAIAC. However, if you decided you have no taste or use for it, the proper thing to do would be to delete it and give it no further use.

The only attempts at refuting this that I've seen are poor comparison arugments like the one above me, which I hope is only facetious.

My first post was serious. The one about the cars was intended to be joke. Thanks for pooping on my fun though.

Yes there are alternative programs to use and I could have simply ignored Cubase altogether. But before telling me that, one must be able to explain how I've wronged anybody.

Well, again, it really amounts to how much time you're putting into the pirated software. If like I said, you spent a few hours here and there and simply decided you didn't like the program, then no big deal. However if despite a couple quirks you still use the program on a regular basis for (cumulatively) a substantial amount of time, you're probably losing credibility on the whole "but I'm just testing it out, and besides, I'm never going to buy it anyway" argument.

And again (as far as wronging anyone goes), did you read my example of the guy who stole Omnisphere? I paid good money for my copy. I paid for permission to use that program, and I love it. Whether or not the thief decides whether he likes the program as much as I do, or if he would have ever bought it or not does not matter. It's not at ALL fair or justifiable to me or any of the other paying users, and please, do your BEST to convince me some way that it is. Whether or not it was stolen physically (which it was) or pirated seems irrellevant to me.

Have you ever been waiting in the customer service line at Walmart for a really long time, and had someone just walks in and cuts to the front of the line when it was your turn next? It makes me feel like that.

Buying software is a privlage.

Well, that's not the issue so much, I think. I think it could also be said that pirating software is a privilege. The real issue at hand is whether or not one has the right to use the software, which again falls back onto licensing. If you have paid for the license (which gives you the RIGHT) then you can legally use the software within the boundaries of that license. If you did not pay for it, then you do not have that right, plain and simple.

Again, it's not that I don't see the benefit that pirating can sometimes lead to (such as Audix's example, or Dave's, etc) and I'm the kind of guy that can agree that sometimes, the end justifies the means, sure. I'm only making the point that whatever your intentions, you still don't have the *right*.

And ANSO, Theft is also definied simply as "an unlawful taking of property." So I'm still blurry on how it's NEVER theft...

[anosou]

And ANSO, Theft is also definied simply as "an unlawful taking of property." So I'm still blurry on how it's NEVER theft...

Because you don't take someones property, you copy it. That's very straightforward in my opinion. I don't think you can define a digital copy of copyrighted material as property in the traditional sense.

btw, <3 u