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pirate software, why?


Xserver

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It's not the schools' fault, at least not entirely. They have to prepare their students for work in an economically competitive world (where software companies can charge upwards of 50,000 USD for a product to do a single task), where the software that the companies use is extremely expensive. Thus the schools must buy that software to keep their students competitive. In this respect, it's the companies fault, and if they suddenly decided that freeware was the way to go, they would lose the software companies' business (yes, all business is related this way). It's a circle of businesses who all depend on each other for revenue, so they buy other companies' products in order to keep their own profits high.

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I'm not going to make any new comments or anything special on piracy... People can't buy what they ain't got money for, that seems pretty simple. True enough, software shouldn't cost this much either. If a game sold for just 10-20$ instead of 50-70$, they'd sell 25x as much copies. Perhaps there would be a way to compensate lower profits by more sales. Lots of these apps cost far too much for the average guy. The new "yearly" build of windows/office/photoshop together is already too much for most people :( It's not bad if you make a living off it, but otherwise... (true enough, most people don't *NEED* the absolute last version to do the basic stuff either)

Enterprise wise, freeware sometimes isn't cheaper. Lots of companies stay with windows instead of linux because of the cost of training exmployees, IT staff and everything. Sometimes what seems cheaper isn't really cheaper...

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well as I'm taking economy class and engineering management classes this issue becomes more clear.

well to make this point of course u don't have to go to school but in order to make some calculations for myself it helped.

if they decreased the price the sales will go up. and since ppl do want to get nice boxed games they'll pay for it and the pirate stuff will go down. and at that moment the companies should encourage the buyers to get their legit copies for lower prices or say buy 2 get 1 free kind of stuff.

but i'm sure companies like valve (half life 2) are not thinking like this. since they know ppl have been saving money to buy hl2 they're okay with the ~$40-60 price range. and since most who'll buy hl2 will probably play it online so they'll need cd-keys so this is 1 way to get ppl to buy legit stuff.

but as for the programs goes i cannot find an example like this.

many software these days are sold for min $25 no matter what they do.

why because there are not much demand for it and simply the ones who need it and cannot find an alternative program will buy it from that price. for those who find it silly to pay $25 for a simple program will go search for pirated stuff. but if they were to sell it for $5 or $10 they'd have earned more money over time.. and be more popular..

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because all the cool kids are doing it

peer pressure! >.<

I have to throw in a Laugh at this one. My friends were the ones that showed me to the dark side :P
Lots of companies stay with windows instead of linux because of the cost of training exmployees, IT staff and everything.

Very good point. The norm has been set, and unless some money is willing to be sent out there, the norm will stay set.

And as for schools teaching freeware, I mentioned that some of our (the school i work for) software can be replaced by freeware. I am supposed to find which software can be replaced and with what. Thinking I should have kept my mouth shut. Oh well ... maybe if we save some money I will get a christmas bonus :P

But yes all in all its a vicious cycle determined by competing businesses.

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about windows in school, my school has about 200 PCs, amd 50 Mac. the macs are only used by the english department to write essays and stuff. the other programs like website, flash, and photoshop are all on the pcs. :} id love to just use the macs becuase of itunes and my ipod, but i guess we wont becuase of the new "smart" boards.

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i think we're telling the same...

NO! We aren't telling the same.

I say that we don't have to like or need (nor even think of) anything unless we can afford it.

You say (like many others) that we can like, need, and think of anything without having to afford it. In this case, stealing is no problem. And we have already justified it----high prices.

And one of you said we should fight hackers; Let me tell you something:

Do you think that Robin Hood was a bad person and was doing a bad

thing when he was stealing for the poor ones without their asking for it?

Realize: Hackers are modern Robin Hoods, every one of them, Just

look at the Core, Orion, Razor, Paradox, Blizzard, Tsrh, Ecl and so on...

Why don't you read their stories and reasons in their releases?

They love each and one of us, as much as they love their "scene".

So, you must dare announce it to software authors:

"You dogs, son of bitches, why do you want to charge people money? Are you crazy? Do you even work? Aren't your softwares coming by themselves even if you weren't there to create them? Why don't you just work then go to hell? I like to see you sitting on streets begging people money! I am proud of thieves like Robin Hood and those crackers, but I spit at you."

I can't understand why a person should hate software authors and like thieves.

Piracy is not there because of high prices. Piracy is there because peolpe can easily steal when there's no controller.

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not that simple

2 reasons

1. bc of high prices

2. the ego thingy, say u've 2 hackers, crackers whatever 1 goes and cracks 1 software, well then the other one is not as good as him (in lame terms) so that also makes some competition between hackers/crackers.. so that's why this business has gone far too....

so mazin u say u never had the need to test an expensive software and liked it so much that u wanted to keep it forever. and u've purchased all those software seen in your signature? is that so? u must be hell of a symantec products lover!

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@buletov

You probably haven't authored a piece of software, yet. You haven't been stolen, yet. Therefore, you categorize hackers as "not bad persons".

So, who's bad then? Could you please let me know?

You, probably, don't know how much money software authors invest in their business. It's too much, again; too much, man.

If you have political reasons why you boycott some software authors, then I respect your attitude.

Otherwise, sorry, no other reason can be acceptable.

Oh, and please let me know what feeling could you have if you paid some $### for a CD or two while your neighbor got them for some $#?

Would you still see hackers as "not bad persons", hah?

@XtremeMaC

FYI, I've been using Office 97 from 1998 upto the moment. Only this year (2004) I decided to purchase Office 2003. I regretted the money I paid, though, because most of my customers still use Access 97!

Pirated CDs of Office 2000 and Office XP have been floating aroung all the time, $1 each. Imagine?! I didn't buy any of them.

I do not charge my customers money for only MY WORK, but also for my assets.

I can't even get money from customers if they do not respect me. Since my customers (mostly, companies) have had licensed softwares I MUST also purchase licenses.

Also, since I have got such valuable data on my computer, I MUST protect it. And protection is not all free.

FYI, again, I've been using NAV5 for years before I bought NAV2004Pro (in 2004, too). I've used (and still) F-Prot for DOS somewhere between. It's freeware for personal use and runs on all versions of Windows.

I've never used NAV 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003.

As you can see, I do not spend much money. But I BUY software. All utilities I use are the cheapest or free ones.

Unless for business, I do not buy expensive software.

Well!

And there's the teasing point tongue.gif, some of my customers were willing to give me a single license of some of their multi-user licensed software. It's not illegal.

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Alright tension is high, and I think hackers are being misunderstood in the mist of this battle between morals. So lets all tickle each other with a feather and leave it to the question of "To pirate or not to pirate ... ARRRG"

Piracy can be good and bad in the long run for all business's. Look at bittorrent ... INGENIOUS idea to transfer a large file between several people. I highly doubt that kinda program would be around today if it werent for piracy. So piracy creates ideas ... good. Piracy also spreads the word of software fairly fast ... this also gets the consumer used to their product rather than someone elses. In turn companies will buy certain products that the incoming employees are used to. They dont buy products based on this ... but its a factor non the less.

Piracy takes profits from companies, however, companies plan for this or at least should. Piracy is not purely based on price. Some people just dont want to spend 5 bucks for great software, hence a markup on software to compensate.

Personally, piracy doesnt bother me, but it may someday as I further my programming career (if I am destined to do so :P). There is one issue that does bother me about piracy, and that is if the software is used to develop something for profit. Example - I develop websites ... I use photoshop and an HTML editor, both in which I own because I make profit from using such items.

I dunno ... it's your folks morals. Its kinda like relegion, belief on using drugs, etc etc. Just remember not everyone thinks like you, just take their ideas into consideration, and dont attack something you dont like.

PS Blacklisted! 411 : Hackers and the Media A good read!

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They say piracy costs billions to the software industry, just like the RIAA says the same song which has been proven untrue many times.

I mean, how many kids, students, and people "just playing around" say, 3dsmax, autocad or whatever app would really end up buying it if it wasn't pirated? Just about none of them. People would also use their 20$ dell-bundled version of microsoft works instead of using the very latest office 2003 pro corp. I mean, you can type, save and print - and that's about as much as the average guy really uses (the old 90-10 rule).

The industry IS definately loosing money over it, but not quite as much as they'd want us to believe. It has other impacts though. I code for a living, and I also do some web stuff (mostly asp or asp.net; xhtml 1.1 strict and css positionning and all). Good stuff, but who wants to pay you for that when every kid around the corner has a warez'ed copy of frontpage or dreamweaver? Only big corporations would be interested, but how many webmaster jobs does that reall mean? ... IT is a dying field, I'll be glad to be retired in a couple years :lol:

We could be debating this one for a looooooooong time

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To an extent the old days of IT are dying but new ones are being reborn dont ya think (probably not as fast as it should)? If it is dying, I am not too worried ... along side with my ping pong playing nights, I also do some mechanics and carpentry ... I got my back covered just in case IT fails me :P

PS - Debate all you like ... my cat will keep chasing that butterfly.

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