Forums | MacLife

just out of curiosity how much software piracy do you plan to stop?

Using that logic, then it should be ok for me to go steal a Jaguar, since I can't afford to buy one anyway.

I know I know, it's not the same thing but still.

Piracy = Theft

period.

Sugar-coat it all you want to and justify it any way you can, but it's still stealing.

Using that logic, then it should be ok for me to go steal a Jaguar, since I can't afford to buy one anyway.

I know I know, it's not the same thing but still.

Piracy = Theft

period.

Sugar-coat it all you want to and justify it any way you can, but it's still stealing.

Theft requires the equal loss of one party to the gain of another.  Not the case in software piracy.  As I demonstrated, regardelss of whether the people are "stealing" the software or not, the company makes the same money.

If everyone that pirated, let's say, Adobe Photoshop decided to pay for it, would Adobe really lower the price of Photoshop?

Theft requires the equal loss of one party to the gain of another.  Not the case in software piracy.  As I demonstrated, regardelss of whether the people are "stealing" the software or not, the company makes the same money.

You're nuts.  If you steal a license of Photoshop, you have just deprived Adobe of $600.  I have no idea how you came up with that "equal loss" bullfrog.  I'll put it simple to you:  If you steal my car that I paid $20,000 for and cash it in at a chop-shop for $5,000, it's still theft despite the difference in loss and gain.

Theft requires the equal loss of one party to the gain of another.  Not the case in software piracy.  As I demonstrated, regardelss of whether the people are "stealing" the software or not, the company makes the same money.

You're nuts.  If you steal a license of Photoshop, you have just deprived Adobe of $600.  I have no idea how you came up with that "equal loss" bullfrog.  I'll put it simple to you:  If you steal my car that I paid $20,000 for and cash it in at a chop-shop for $5,000, it's still theft despite the difference in loss and gain.

Read all my posts and you'll see this isn't true. 

Also, please reread what I said about equal loss since you obviously don't understand it (sigh).  If I were to steal your car the software piracy way, I would make a carbon copy of it, not take it, thus you lose nothing, and thus it is not theft.  Unless of course you could prove that I would have bought it off of you had I not copied it, which is almost always not the case.

People just went crazy with being able to have whatever they want without paying so they download a bunch of crap they don't need and wouldn't have bought anyway.  Thus Adobe is not losing $600, since the people that would have actually bought it still do buy it.

If some punk kid downloads Adobe Photoshop it doesn't hurt Adobe at all.

Using that logic, then it should be ok for me to go steal a Jaguar, since I can't afford to buy one anyway.

I know I know, it's not the same thing but still.

Piracy = Theft

period.

Sugar-coat it all you want to and justify it any way you can, but it's still stealing.

Theft requires the equal loss of one party to the gain of another.  Not the case in software piracy.  As I demonstrated, regardelss of whether the people are "stealing" the software or not, the company makes the same money.

It's not "stealing" ... it's stealing. Theft. No quotes needed.

What about the software companies that pay hundreds of programmers top dollar for thousands of hours of work? What about all the product testers, etc.? There is all kinds of costs to the companies from the head of the project to the person who designs the little cardboard dohickey that holds the cd in place in the box. All that money, time and effort all going to waste every time some clown downloads a pirate copy.

I do see your point. Some people who steal big-ticket programs like Photoshop may never buy it or want it otherwise. In those cases, yes, Adobe's losses are mostly just on paper. Does that make it right? no. The problem is that if enough people steal software, it starts getting an aire of credibility. It becomes "alright" to steal a program because everyone else is doing it, they charge too much, they have enough money, bla bla bla.  That's when serious potential customers can get swayed to steal it instead.

And one last thing... what about games? How many games are priated? Most are under $50 and have very low profit margins. How many people who steal games wouldn't really buy it if they had to? Suddenly your justification becomes silly.

Using that logic, then it should be ok for me to go steal a Jaguar, since I can't afford to buy one anyway.

I know I know, it's not the same thing but still.

Piracy = Theft

period.

Sugar-coat it all you want to and justify it any way you can, but it's still stealing.

Theft requires the equal loss of one party to the gain of another.  Not the case in software piracy.  As I demonstrated, regardelss of whether the people are "stealing" the software or not, the company makes the same money.

It's not "stealing" ... it's stealing. Theft. No quotes needed.

What about the software companies that pay hundreds of programmers top dollar for thousands of hours of work? What about all the product testers, etc.? There is all kinds of costs to the companies from the head of the project to the person who designs the little cardboard dohickey that holds the cd in place in the box. All that money, time and effort all going to waste every time some clown downloads a pirate copy.

I do see your point. Some people who steal big-ticket programs like Photoshop may never buy it or want it otherwise. In those cases, yes, Adobe's losses are mostly just on paper. Does that make it right? no. The problem is that if enough people steal software, it starts getting an aire of credibility. It becomes "alright" to steal a program because everyone else is doing it, they charge too much, they have enough money, bla bla bla.  That's when serious potential customers can get swayed to steal it instead.

And one last thing... what about games? How many games are priated? Most are under $50 and have very low profit margins. How many people who steal games wouldn't really buy it if they had to? Suddenly your justification becomes silly.

Suddenly... not really.

You said "if this is the case..". Well it is.  Graphic Designers are not going to steal Adobe Photoshop.  Novel writeres are not going to steal Word.  Proffesionals are not going to steal Powerpoint, and big companies will never steal anything.  Come on, let's be serious for a second.  You're trying to tell me that if so many people steal it that by the time the next version of word comes around colleges are going to say "Hmmm... Well, the pirating option has become much more credible, lets just steal this copy, are funds are running low you know."  And that big companies are going to say "You know, people steal so much that I myself have swayed, lets steal the next version of Pagemaker."

Obviously not.  And this is in fact the market that these companies aim for.  I'm not arguing for software piracy, I'm saying it basically doesn't exist.  If I go and download adobe photoshop 6 million times you are going to say that I commited 6 million wrongs since this act is "inherently wrong" and that Adobe has lost 600*6 million dollars, in other words I just put them out of business.  Is this true?  No.  I would not have gone out and bought six million copies.  The hard workers have not lost anything.  Just like little Johny would not have asked for photoshop for christmas.

Suddenly your argument becomes a little silly.

If you present to me someone who has actually considered buying it but instead goes and downloads it, then yes I am with you.  But I don't think that's normally the case.  Maybe in the gaming world, but not in the areas that are doing a lot of the complaining.  I just think what people make out to be the pirating problem is blown way out of proportion.

Worthless thread of the year vote, anyone?

Mass-Piracy is gonna happen as long as consumers are being raped.

I am not going to argue with iopossum's opinion, because I would say it is basically true. But I do think that mass pirating of Shareware happens. And they feel it far more than mega corps like Adobe, or Microsoft.

But also on the other hand. How many people do you know that use computers are actually into them enough to track down and use serials? We all know because we, I assume, spend a lot of time on the computer. And one way or another the knowledge comes to our attention. The average computer users I know can barely do what they have to do, and usually that is at work or school.

I don't mind piracy too much, as long as everyone follows these guidelines:

1. Buy Mac games, don't pirate them.  We need to boost the Mac Game industry.

2. Register shareware, don't pirate it.  Shareware authors are the ones that can't afford to be raped.

3. Never, ever, EVER pay for a Microsoft product.  Go on a pirating frenzy.

I develop software (by the way).  Anyways though, Windows programs are pirated way more than Mac ones.  So I don't think thats much of an argument, but as I said before, this I think is wrong.  I'm just saying I don't think this situation exists a lot.  I believe that if people were not to pirate, then many of them would not buy them either.

Scenario 1:

- 10000 people bought the program, 5000 people pirated it.  My program is selling ok, but I'm losing so much money I'm going to stop making software because it isn't worth it.

Scenario 2 (Pirating doesn't exist)

- 10100 people bought the program.  My program seems to be doing ok.

As you can see, its just a matter of perception.  The person in scenario 1 thinks he's losing money (around 33% of his profits), and thus leaves the platform feeling he is doing badly.  While in reality, he is only losing 0.01 %.

I believe that's 1% not 0.01%

Anyway, I completely agree with iopossum. As a teenager, theres no way in hell I could afford Photoshop or Final Cut Pro, but I would like to learn these programs on my own. Now fast forward several years. [Hypothetically] I'm a graphic desgin professional or video editor...which programs do I know well: Photoshop and Final Cut Pro. Which programs am I going to purchse for my business: Photoshop and Final Cut Pro.

So yeah, I think software piracy, in a way, can help out the big guys. I also agree with the points about shareware and games.

The majority of gamers are typically in their teens, so if they can't afford to pay for it then, by the time they can they're not going to want to play games. In this case I think software piracy is bad, as it probably will lead to developers leaving the platform.

Shareware as well. Generally shareware is pretty cheap. Even I could afford it, so I do like to support shareware authors.

Also, operating systems...since the OS is the most used software I will purchase it. I like to support Apple. I don't know about Microsoft though