What's your opinion on piracy?

for the love of all that is good, ignore everything I said here.

My opinion is, many people defending piracy banal things with stupid excuses, many activists defending “freedom” of things that have no real importance. Things where very often you can find free alternatives.
You will not die if you stop listening some kind of music (even with the commercial music that exists today, you will be healthier if you do not listen to it), stop read some commercial books or stop using commercial software. So, listen open music, read some open books or go to an open library, use some free software…

But for example, around the world many people suffer, even die from lack of medical drugs, because drugs patents have or inability of countries to make similar of those patented drugs. I do not see so many activists fighting for the freedom of these realy important and vital things.

You’re being real cushy on the commercial software teams. Yeah, they’re real people all right - real people whose job it is to squeeze your dollar out of your wallet. Now, all’s fair in capitalism, right? I mean, commerce is governed by the laws of supply and demand. They worked hard to produce a high-quality product so “we the people” should pay them and use their software… ?
…or is it not so simple?

The sad fact is that companies like Adobe and Autodesk are atrophying in the creativity department.
Their main goal and purpose has become survival in the market. They no longer live to create amazing artistic tools. They live to meet their quarterly goals. The most effective strategies for them to remain on top are to 1. keep on advertising, 2. lock people into their platforms, and 3. introduce “hype features”. Forget fixing the bugs that have been plaguing a given app for years. “We need something that looks enticing when printed on the box, dammit!”

So, piracy is not something I look at as good or bad. Piracy is a natural side effect of having a large gap between the tools creators perceive as necessary for the creation of their art, and the financial means of those artists to obtain such tools.

If you download a pirated copy of some design software then I won’t condemn you nor exalt you.
Just remember though… as long as you use their software you are buying into their paradigm.
And the only way to ever be truly free is to invest in the software that has invested in you - and that is FOSS.

Which 3D suite has been available to any and all artists for the last decade? That is Blender.
Autodesk was too busy buying up the competition and suing would-be proponents of their software for every domain name that contains the word “maya”.

The worst thing about piracy is that it dulls the sense of urgency to create an open source alternative.
Because using a pirated copy of their software doesn’t really hurt them. If anything they’ll just sic the BSA gangsters on you and still make a buck at your expense.
The only way to really hurt them, and more importantly to claim your rightful freedom, is to go open source.

This is not to say that all commercial software is bad. Overpriced commercial software that provides less and less value to users while monopolizing a market, is bad. If you appreciate and believe in a software title and the team that makes it, whether it be open source or commercial, it’s a good idea to show support by whatever means you can so that that software will continue to be developed.

I think that you need a ship with a high top speed, and low turning radius,

grappling hooks are handy for boarding, but sometimes a plank is the way to go,

I don’t have a peg leg, but I am told the technology has evolved significantly.

Aparently Parrots are not really in style anymore, large fluffy cats or bearded dragons are in.

It’s not as B&W as you describe it. There are many allusions that make your mind work right. Right?
In full color…

Thank you.

When your boss says to you that I will not pay your salary for a few months, then piracy its little bit easier to understand when it happends to you.

For those who complain about modern piracy prevention measures, please note that it is your acceptance of pirating that is the reason why companies have resorted to that.

Sure, the software still gets pirated, but software that has no DRM gets pirated even more (a lot of people simply do not believe in paying for software and it’s not just the fanatical wing of the Open Source community).

People might argue that a little piracy will not hurt a company, newsflash, there’s a lot of smaller companies that are genuinely struggling financially because their software is being pirated to the point where few actually pay for it. They go out of business, potentially innovative software disappears, who are the pirates to blame but themselves?

Now it might be that the future might actually be dominated by Open Source, but only because it becomes impossible for companies to sell applications because of widespread piracy. Such a thing might seem good on paper, but it might actually hinder the rate of innovation because those Open Source applications will tend to have little money for R&D and some will be shot through with vapid software ideology (not to mention the countless people who will lose their jobs). Quite an unfortunate possibility as it’s like the other person winning a game of chess because he cheated, not because he is better.

In a truly free market a company that could not survive piracy or open source competition should collapse as that collapse would have been determined by the market. If a company uses its resources in an attempt to prevent the market from turning towards free software that company is attempting to combat the free market by controlling it.

Not saying it’s right or wrong, just saying what makes a market free and what doesn’t. If the market favors free software and you do not then you do not favor a free market economy.

The most pirated software title on the planet is Photoshop. It’s not because those who use it need it. It’s not because Adobe is a parasite. It’s because it’s popular and more expensive than most can afford.

People who give their patronage to FOSS use GIMP. The blame for this is not on these people.

Fanboys and girls pirate Photoshop and whatever else just to say that they have it. Justification is any humans first impulse.

Piracy is illegal and there is no justification.

The concept of the Free Market doesn’t mean the customer being allowed to treat it as a free-for-all in terms of law and regulation.

It’s not really fair to commercial vendors if it was interpreted by the customer saying he’s free to pay when he feels like it (ie. simply pirating everything because he wants to force some ‘utopia’ where everything is free). Even the BF has spent many tens of thousands of dollars to get Blender to where it is now. If no one paid for software then innovation might come almost to a screeching halt (because they will be limited to development only in their spare time so as to have an income and they may not be motivated to do big research projects).

one important thing to remember is that behind the program is a programer, who probably has a family, and has decided that this is the way to support that family. so when someone steals software there taking the money that would have been put into hiring programmers and paying the ones the company has. some people are in it for the money, but some want to make a great software, which takes lots of work and some money, so the company is charging you for the Man hours, energy, office space, systems, and anything and everything a company has put into this project. now sure some prices are so high that it is a investment to get them, but you normally get hat you pay for. i no i wouldn’t be happy if i poured 6 months of my life to a project, allowed people to buy it at a reasonably price then someone puts it on the web where I’ll never get it back.

now i am not saying that people who use pirated software are bad, i am just saying that it important not to think of it as a program, and start thinking of it as someones way of life.

Keeeeeeep blending, its free.

@Ace:
Actually I was talking more about FOSS than piracy. For instance Microsoft once sued Linux vendors for patent infringement as part of a strategy to combat Linux in the networking world. Now Microsoft knew there was no infringement going on and naturally lost the case, but winning the suit wasn’t the goal, the point was to bleed resources out of the Linux community in the form of legal defense fees.

J.P. Morgan used the same strategy against Westinghouse in order to obtain some of their patents. Westinghouse didn’t actually infringe on any of Morgans patents, but they couldn’t afford to defend themselves so they handed over the patents in exchange for Morgan dropping the suit.

Anyway the piracy argument isn’t so much about legality or who gets hurt so much as it is about the incompatibilities between capitalism and communism. Under communism there is no such thing as money and the software being pirated already belongs to those pirating it.

I’m not trying to get into politics, but this thread is inherently about communist vs capitalist philosophies.

I’m not arguing one system over the other, just saying that this argument goes far deeper and is far from settled on the world stage even though neither capitalism nor communism have ever actually been put to the test.

It’s not all B&W.
Piracy is just a word to discriminate those which do not subdue their idea & right of cosmic passage to the Empire. :wink:
Use what you can to have your best way of life for you, your everlasting entity… It’s an evolution. Dear lovely animals, you will only live once and you sure will die and your self-cognition will go back to being nothing. There’s no heaven, nor hell… it’s all life and at the brink of an end, a moment of self reflecting mind upon passing, unless dementia comes for you first. So knowledge is to share. Stared into the eyes of loved, dying ones many times… in my arms.
Winners, occupying powers, aggressors… will always do their best to suppress all who oppose. No matter which side they reside on. The thirst for power, to rule, to be acknowledged as titan, forces the dumb mind with strive to stop the existence of life and everything else if not in their interests. There’s no self sacrifice in profit.
You are basically acknowledging for human to know & understand is a privilege, not a right.
You are basically saying, killing is OK if it is in the name of the industry, for commodity of life.

Respectfully.

Keep bleeding, it’s free!

Keep trusting in monetary system. As that’s all you’ll ever achieve in your miserable empty lives. Who else can you trust?
Nature? Other beings? A common human that understands and knows a simple power of an act a word can make? Or silence? Your prudent intelligence? Self!?

Piracy is a crime punishable by law. The governments of various countries continue their efforts on reducing it as much as they possibly can. Technology is improving so does security.

I run Linux, so everything I use is free anyway. #humblebrag

Using Open Source alternatives is probably more harmful to their business than pirating their software is. Not only are you still not a customer they generate revenue from, but you’re empowering a competitors product also. I wonder if Autodesk would prefer someone pirate Maya, or use Blender.

“when in Rome…”

Depends, if there are no downsides in the pirated software compared to the legit version then i usually download a pirated version.Just the other day i wanted to start learning how to draw with my tablet, the tutor was using Photoshop and i didn’t have Photoshop on my PC after wiping so i decided to download it.

I’ve downloaded quite a lot of top range expensive programs but they just end up getting abandoned since i don’t find any use for them or i get bored with them.Lots of money saved that way.

I bought most of the games i have, some of them i pirated in the past like KSP, Borderlands, some in the battlefield series etc

Though there are some games i don’t plan to pirate like Fallout 4 and the new Xcom game when they come out (definite must buys!), i’ve recently pirated Fallout 3 and Fallout :New vegas to get in the mood again.

Disclaimer: I’m a poor student who runs Linux (hence quite probably biased).
Caution: Disjoint bunch of ideas

I agree with the need for some copy protection, but do not think the way it is handled currently is correct. As a result, my opinion is: apply common sense.


Art, Music, Software, and many other things are representations of peoples effort. As such, the person deserves credit and income for their effort. Applying this says: Don’t copy, ever.
But Art is made to be enjoyed, music to be played and software to be used as a tool. As such these things should be available to all.

As someone else said somewhere else: Information wants to be free, Information wants to be expensive.


The difference between science and alchemy is that alchemy only exists to further the interest of the alchemist. As a result, no knowledge was shared and knowledge was lost with the alchemist. Science encouraged shared knowledge. Build on top of the guy before you.

Unfortunately we seem to have forgotten this. Good up-to-date research is often hidden away, never to be seen unless you fork out big money for subscriptions to scientific journals.
That irks me. The researches pay the journal publishers to publish their work, and people pay the publishers again to view the work. Not a cent of the thousand-dollars-per-year gets to the hands of the researcher.

Something’s fishy about that.


Now, on to software. I run linux. Very little paid software even runs on Linux. Problem solved.
People think I run Linux because I don’t want to pay for Windows or mac, and am too ethical to pirate them. Not so. I like the Linux ecosystem. I like the community. I know the system.
Most people spend many years learning Windows, and think that Linux is strange. I’m the other way around. I grew up on Linux, and find the concepts of Windows funny.

I have come across pirated software. Being at a university it’s impossible not to. Once in a tutorial class, we were working with Excel. Running Linux, I was using Open Office. The tutor in charge offered me a cracked version of Microsoft Office! Eh, no thanks, it won’t run.

If we want open source software to take off, people must begin to realize that: software is made to be used. What if your university, instead of putting thousands of dollars into licensing for Matlab, put those thousands of dollars into the development of Octave? At least the tech departments at my university generally support Linux quite well. (Heck, every second computer science student/software engineer runs it - even the lecturers).

I use gimp for digital drawing. I’m familiar with the interface, and know it pretty well. Every time some see’s me drawing the first thing they say is: why don’t you use photoshop? The answer: I can’t be bothered learning it (or buying it). I’d rather just draw.


The thing to realize is that this is the era of creative commons and open source. People simply don’t recognise it. I run zero pirated software - and only a few (two) paid things. The music I listen to? Again, not pirated, not paid - all is from the authors website, nearly all is creative commons.
This is the era where people do things as a hobby to a (nearly) professional standard. People write books, people make music. Find an artist or DJ you like. It’s just the same as normal producers but they don’t advertise! You have to find their blogs and hunt them out yourself.

Generally if I pay for it, I want it in reality. My physical bookshelf is far more extensive than the list of my digital purchases.

Is it wrong?

Legally, there´s no question that it is.
Morally, depends on if you make money off your pirating.

Is it a victimless crime? Sometimes.

The problem here isn´t the hobbyists at home doing their pet projects, it´s the studios who should be able to afford the software. And this affects not only the software developers but other studios who spend a lot of money on software licenses and are undercut by these studios in the market.

I have used pirated software in the past. I don´t anymore, and it´s not because I can´t or that I think it´s wrong. I use open source because

  1. I think there´s finally good enough software (Blender, krita, Gimp, Inkscape, Libre Office to name a few)
  2. It´s a challenge
  3. I want to encourage further open source development

However that´s just my opinion, and I respect everyone else´s opinion on the matter.

People don’t pirate things they need. For this reason I have trouble seeing where a moral justification is even relevant.

Systemically, I see issues that could bring egalitarian arguments into the mix but I don;t tend to take them seriously when it’s Photoshop, Max, movies, songs, games and porn etc. that are being pirated. All of these have free alternatives, with their own problems that could be a base for rational discourse. If it were educational materials in the absence of gratis access maybe I might give it more consideration.