maemo.org - Talk - View Single Post - Is it okay for a student with limited financial resources to pirate software?

geohsia	2010-09-21 , 17:51
Posts: 515 \| Thanked: 259 times \| Joined on Jan 2010	#128

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Originally Posted by Grok

Interesting to see the poll results and read the justifications on this discussion.

There was a fully functional, expensive cad/cam 3d software I tried a few years back that was handed out freely. We were encouraged to make copies to take home and give to friends. Their rational was that they wanted maximum exposure and they wanted potential customers to see how great it was.
They said anyone who profited from the software without purchasing it would vigorously pursued and sued.
I felt this was an interesting approach and indeed, many got hooked on it.

Getting people hooked has been a tried and tested strategy for getting your software out there. Most software companies have a way to let you try it without anyone having to resort to stealing.

Originally Posted by Grok

Something that irks me in Canada is how pay a 12 cent copyright levy on every blank cd sold based on the assumption that the disc will be used to copy an audio cd. Guilty before charged!
I've been told this is what makes blank cd's more expensive in Canada than blank DVD's.

That's a shame. If people didn't pirate, then it would be cheaper for everyone. Why Canada chooses to punish law abiding consumers is strange.

Originally Posted by Grok

In a similar vein, check out this interesting story about manufacturers charging to activate features that already exist. http://www.boingboing.net/2010/09/19...-crippled.html

It's a new model. The fact of the matter is you get what you paid for. You pay for 3 cores you get 3 cores. You look at what people are paying for 4 cores and you decide that's too much for you. Fine. 2 years down the line, you things change, you use more resource intensive software. By then you start to think you want to upgrade because your CPU just can't hack it. In this solution, you pay a small fee and then bam, you are upgraded to a faster speed.

When you pay for the fourth core you get more speed. At the end of the day you still get what you paid for. If they decided to just physically break that last core, once you decided you need to upgrade your only option is to replace the chip or the system. In this case, for a small fee it extends the usage of your system by another year or two. Interesting model, no?

I think it's like Cable (if I understand how Cable works). The physical cable actually has data for hundreds of channels but you call up Comcast or whoever and unlock channels you want to watch. It's kinda the same, though this is totally off topic.

Last edited by geohsia; 2010-09-21 at 17:56.

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