Sorry, Texrat is so right in his comment on mine. It was an utter crock.

**Software was never incredibly expensive.

**WordPerfect copy-protected its program, didn't have lots of disks, and didn't make frequent changes in its software so there were many changes.

**WordPerfect never did prosper, and what it did did not affect the software industry.

**The software industry DEPENDS on customers who are ethical robots. It's important for you to never, ever pirate anything. The sky will fall if you pirate, because everyone assumes that no one will pirate.

**Consumers are HAPPY to invest in software they have never tried and will willingly invest THOUSANDS of dollars in software in the hope that it might work.

**In particular, students should NEVER try out software just for the sake of learning. Companies that sell software do not WANT students to be familiar with it; they want students to go out into the world ignorant of what is available by virtue of not having tried it. A student who spends five minutes playing around with a software program he does not own is committing a HEINOUS CRIME!

Bill Gates NEVER WAS QUOTED AS SAYING

“It’s easier for our software to compete with Linux when there’s piracy than when there’s not.”

or

“They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”

Thanks for setting me straight, Texrat.

I don't think you're morally allowed to steal something you don't really need. You can steal bread if you or your family are hungry. You can't steal a game - come on you don't need it to survive.
In my humble personal opinion, though, stealing music to multibillionaire rock stars or films to multibillionaire actors isn't as unrighteous as stealing an application from a company which puts hard work of real people in it. Now throw me in jail.

Most students cry about being poor, then turn around spend $$ on iPhones, beer and Aber-whatever_is_popular_at_the_time-Fitch.

They need to learn to do what everyone else does. You save for what you need and live within your means.

Students that don't learn this in college have a good chance of growing up to be adults who also try to game the system and live beyond their means.

BTW, in college I bought PKzip (I'm probably one of like 3 people who've ever bought an unzip program). I also pay every piece of software I get from Microsoft and Adobe (painful). Why? Because all of these tools are useful. If we don't buy it who's going to make it? Seriously, like who's the software angel fairy that magically funds software companies? Just because a lot of what we see on the internet is free because of ads, that doesn't mean that the software we use on our laptops is free.

We can choose to contribute to the society as a whole or we can be a leech convincing ourselves we deserve things for free and that the man is out to get us.

I don't know the OP, but usually someone who asks that type of question is looking for someone to give him a decent enough argument to not feel bad about doing what he knows he shouldn't be doing. The people that know its wrong don't bother to ask.

My $0.02

I know you're being sarcastic, but the industry does depend on customers who pay. If no one paid, why would the software company be around?

If no one paid for Adobe products, do you think you'd have Photoshop?

Um, you've never heard of a trial period? Most software packages have it in different forms. I mean, seriously, have you tried to be honest or do you just assume that "the man" is out to get you so your your default response is to find a warez site?

Um, that's what college is. If you can't afford the hardware / software they do provide labs where you can get access to it.

Um, companies do and that's why there are huge discounts on software like Adobe and Microsoft.

No, because most software you can use for like 30 days. That's plenty of time to kick the wheels... seriously...

This likely in a specific context, for example some emerging markets where Microsoft has not had a strong presence. That doesn't make it right.

They are not naive. They know it happens.

Rationalizing:

I see this lawn chair that i could use on my neighbour's backyard.

It looks old and i've never seen him use it at all. God, it's so dirty and unkempt, i don't think he appreciates that thing at all. I definitely could use that chair more than him. He's just bought himself that new flashy car anyway, this is chump change to him. He won't notice it gone.

I'm more worthy to own this chair than him.

Artists aren't real people and don't work hard? I didn't realize that.

What, they hum a tune before breakfast, mention it to an assistant on the way to the gym and by lunch time the money's rolling in? Niice.

In all seriousness most of the money doesn't go to the artist, they go to the label, the promoter, the agents and etc so technically you're stealing from them. Doesn't mean the artist doesn't get rich, they're just not Scrooge McDuck swimming in a pool of gold coins.

Quite apart from anything else, downloading hookey software on Windows is so damn risky these days, what with all the malware. At work we constantly see viruses detected on users laptops, and 99% of the time trace it back to the user r their family downloading and trying to install "warez".

If you are a student, and there is a requirement to use products which rely on windows, then they are usually available at big student discounts, and should be factored in as if it were any other learning tool such as textbooks.

Otherwise bang Linux on it and use the FOSS stuff. There is often good free stuff for windows as well btw.

So there's no possibility of an honest disagreement on this? Your opinion is fact, and everyone who disagrees must be rationalizing? If you really believe that, I don't know how a rational conversation is possible, so I hope it was hyperbole.

Take a close look at what you just said. AFAICT, you justs aid buying or trading used software is theft (at least if that software is still being sold new).

Also, for it to be theft, it requires that the party you're stealing from loses something. Now admitting, for the sake of discussion, the concept of counting unrealized potential revenue as a "loss"*, consider the case that someone may not even have enough money to purchase the software they pirate -- what has the copyright holder "lost" here? Initially, they have a certain amount of physical assets (e.g. boxed software). If I don't download it, they keep all their physical assets and I don't pay them any money. If I do download it, they still keep all their physical assets, and I don't pay them any money. They didn't lose anything by my downloading it, either vs. the initial state, or vs. the hypothetical state where I didn't copy that floppy, and where there is no loss there is no theft.

*Counting unrealized potential revenue as a "loss" is a dangerous doctrine, and one should carefully consider the implications before accepting it. For instance, if I want to sell, say, some NOK stock, this doctrine allows me to claim that people selling instead of buying it, and thus lowering the price I get, are stealing from me.

Not sure what you mean here -- if you're referring to the service of distributing that good, then you'd have a point in some cases. For example, if I offer software for download to paying users, and a paying user shares their auth credentials to allow everyone on the internet to download that data, sending my bandwidth bill through the roof, sure, that's some sort of "theft of services". But if I pay for a copy, then make copies and redistribute them at my own expense, I'm not making further use of that distribution service.

If, on the other hand, you mean the service of developing the software, producing the movie, etc., then no, a copy of the resulting work does not represent that service. The company speculatively does the development on their own dime, in hopes of earning back those costs, and turning a nice profit besides, on per-unit sales and/or licensing. Oddly enough, while we're so accustomed to this business model that it feels perfectly natural, it's only sustainable by virtue of special-interests legislation and an artificial scarcity caused by the government's continuous threat of force against people who would dare copy their own property.

What I think you mean to describe, the notion that one pays, not for a copy of a speculatively produced work, but for the service of creating that work^, does form a natural and sustainable business model that would work fine in the complete absence of copyright -- but that's absolutely not the system we have in place, because until recently, it's been much easier to bribe the government.to bully everyone than to fix your business model. Sorry if it is "rationalizing", but I've never found "do as I say, or men with guns will sieze your money/throw you in jail" to be a morally persuasive argument.

The advent of computers and later the internet has dropped the high entry barrier to piracy; now that you don't need a printing press, there's a lot more would-be pirates, and it's a lot harder to force them all into compliance with an artificial business model based on artificial scarcity. The transition is still underway, but it's just possible that it'll end with a proportionate increase in enforcement being seen as infeasible or inefficient, and an industry shift to saner business models.


^Anyone remember Dark Angel? Firefly? T:SCC? In a world where people who want to see a show pay for the show's further development, no reason any or all of them couldn't have gone on for several seasons, with hiatuses if the fanbase wasn't enough for a full season every year. For software, the examples are less obvious, but the principle's the same -- if you let customers pay for what they want/need, you'll be a lot better at delivering it than if you guess/study/analyze what they want, implement it, then see if anyone will buy it. Actually, Vista might be a good software example: of what wouldn't happen.

This is not about me wanting to justify the use of pirated media or software. Let me put it more bluntly - I have always pirated stuff and will do until i feel the time i spend on the whole process is worth more than the money i save in buying the product. I was just wondering what others thought about this topic. Infact, i really dont feel bad while i pirate music or software.... i think this depends a lot on the way you are brought up. In a country where piracy & corruption is the norm it is easy to get lost with everyone.

Yes. I purchased the student edition of the Modula2 compiler we needed, so i could skip classes.

Would you steal someone else's coursework if you didn't have time to write your own?