Software Piracy

[creekster]

No Tick, you are not following this.

Ethically and morally he is, he just doesnt bother to see your nuance.

[Coach McGuirk]

Ethically and morally he is, he just doesnt bother to see your nuance.

I think ethically and morally, everyone is.

[Uncle Ted]

Have not read that from cover to cover, just excerpts here and there. Nugent probably has read it. I do have Raymond's The Art of Unix Programming which is a fun read.

cheers.

Yeah, I read it a while ago. Of course, Raymond is a GPL guy so there is some bias toward that in the essay. I am more of a believer in true software freedom (e.g. BSD, Apache Licenses) because, I guess, of my libertarian roots.

[creekster]

I think ethically and morally, everyone is.

ANd the rest is just a bunch of hoo ha. Sort of my point.

[Coach McGuirk]

ANd the rest is just a bunch of hoo ha. Sort of my point.

Pretty much.

[DapperDan]

I'm going to hit on a few things and stay out of the tired 'is piracy theft?' argument.

What's your opinion about making backup copies of legitimately purchased DVD's for personal use? Does the purchaser have the right to safeguard a legally purchased DVD or CD?

The purchaser technically has the right. However, thanks to the DMCA it's illegal to bypass the copy protection in order to make those legal backups. Rights holders are actively trying to kill fair use.

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Some rights holders are starting to argue that piracy is too sexy of a nickname for copyright infringement.

"We should change the word piracy," she told reporters at the unveiling of the report [about how piracy will cause the loss of 1.2 million EU jobs over 5 years] on Wednesday.

"To me, piracy is something adventurous, it makes you think about Johnny Depp. We all want to be a bit like Johnny Depp. But we're talking about a criminal act. We're talking about making it impossible to make a living from what you do," she said.

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Speaking of all those shocking $ lost to piracy numbers you see, they're about as real as Pamela Anderson's tits (or Heidi Montag for the youngins in the house). Not to say money isn't being lost, but it's virtually impossible to figure out even remotely accurate numbers and the current major studies are bogus.

Three commonly cited estimates of U.S. industry losses due to counterfeiting have been sourced to U.S. agencies, but cannot be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology.

The GAO also noted that numerous experts told it that "there were positive effects [from piracy on the economy] and they should be assessed as well." http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...-are-bogus.ars

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I'm convinced that for quite a few years Adobe deliberately made Photoshop super easy to pirate as a marketing tool. I don't think they do it anymore.

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Back in the VHS era we had quite a few FBI agents in our ward. It was a really tight ward and over a few years I made it to most, if not all, of their homes for one reason or another. Even as a kid I thought it was really funny when the FBI warning came up on the copies of VHS tapes they had in their personal collections.

[woot]

I remember seeing an interview with John Mayer several years ago, and he told the story about how he used to spend full-time hours on the internet pretending to be a teenage girl telling people how awesome this new guy John Mayer is and how they should all download his stuff. He credited the Napster era with a lot of his success, as I recall. I'm sure his views have changed since then, and I don't imagine his record company would have approved, at least at the time. I thought it was funny.

[DapperDan]

I remember seeing an interview with John Mayer several years ago, and he told the story about how he used to spend full-time hours on the internet pretending to be a teenage girl telling people how awesome this new guy John Mayer is and how they should all download his stuff. He credited the Napster era with a lot of his success, as I recall. I'm sure his views have changed since then, and I don't imagine his record company would have approved, at least at the time. I thought it was funny.

Not necessarily. There are a fair amount of musicians that are pro-piracy. Few of them make money on album sales and they view piracy as free promotion for their live shows where they make their money.

[1337coug]

I think one of the biggest problems with piracy is that the rules are to strict, and that nearly nobody understands them.

When I purchased my macbook pro at the apple store, I purchased a $10 upgrade to snow leopard. This upgrade was to be sent to my apartment when the upgrade was released. The update came out, and my disc didn't come in the mail. I checked the next day, and I still didn't have the update. I decided that since I had paid for a license I would just torrent the software. Did I pirate snow leopard?

I haven't acquired my entire music library legally, but the music that I have purchased I've stripped of all DRM so that I can use it on any device I see fit. If removing DRM is piracy, did I pirate all of my music?

My little brother has a serious problem with putting his wii games back in the cases after he plays them. I don't want all the games to get ruined, so I modded the wii and ripped all the games to an external hard drive so that he can play the games off the hard drive instead of swapping the disks in and out. When I ripped everything, did I pirate our games?

All of the things that I've done that I've listed are technically piracy. I definitely feel like none of them are wrong. If I'm going to be put into the same category as the people who do knowingly pirate software, music, movies and games, whats stopping me from just joining them?

sorry if this doesn't make sense, it's late.

[DapperDan]

I decided that since I had paid for a license I would just torrent the software. Did I pirate snow leopard?

Technically, you pirated.

I've stripped of all DRM so that I can use it on any device I see fit.

You violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by removing the DRM.

I modded the wii and ripped all the games to an external hard drive so that he can play the games off the hard drive instead of swapping the disks in and out. When I ripped everything, did I pirate our games?

DMCA violations (the ripping and the moding) and Nintendo would say you pirated.

[Flystripper]

No, in fact he did not. As he stated, he would never have purchased the product had he not received it for free. $0 net/net.

yet clearly the software had value to him or he would not have obtained it. Unfortunately he is not the one that sets the value in the eyes of the law.

[RobinFinderson]

An interesting aside about piracy... we recently picked up the Blu Ray version of Fantastic Mr. Fox (our first HD video purchase!). It came with three disks, a Blu Ray copy, a DVD copy, and a digital copy with rights managed by iTunes. The cost was $20 for all three, but now I can watch the movie on my phone, from a DVD player in a car, or on my PS3. That seems like a good move by the industry, especially when in the near future, we will see the end of physical media.

As for Photoshop pirates, just buy yourself a copy of Elements. It exists to address the need of consumers who don't need the full professional product, and it contains pretty much everything you will use. Another alternative to piracy is to pick up evaluation copies of the software you like. The evaluation usually expires after some time (30 days), and will often have a limited number of saves, or produce a watermarked image, but who cares? If you are working non-professionally, this shouldn't matter very much.

Oh, and people who pirate PhotoShop are depriving Adobe of the profit that would be had if they were to buy Elements.

[DapperDan]

As for Photoshop pirates, just buy yourself a copy of Elements.

Why spend any money? Just get Paint.net. I'd say GIMP too, but no one would wish that UI on their worst enemy.

[RobinFinderson]

Why spend any money? Just get Paint.net. I'd say GIMP too, but no one would wish that UI on their worst enemy.

Word! There really isn't a need to pirate anything.

Edit: Speaking of great FREE software, Space Ghost should add Blender to his mix. Blender is a professional quality 3D modeling program with features that are approaching those of 3D Studio Max, Maya, Cinema 4D, and others.

[1337coug]

Technically, you pirated.

Maybe, I'm not sure though. I had a license for it. I definitely don't feel bad about "pirating" an operating system that I paid for and had a license to use.

You violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by removing the DRM.

I don't feel bad at all for taking music that I've purchased and using it where I please.

DMCA violations (the ripping and the moding) and Nintendo would say you pirated.

The ripping I think you're right, though I'm pretty sure modding my wii is completely fine because it's hardware that I own. For example if I buy a computer from dell and decide I want to put more ram in it, I can do so because it's my hardware. If I buy a wii and I mod it it's the same principle. The only thing I've done is voided my warranty. Either way though, I don't feel bad about it. I legally own all of the games physically, and I should be allowed to play digital copies instead of the physical ones if I want.

Thats my point though. I can't do those things which I feel are perfectly fine morally without being put into the same category as someone who didn't buy snow leopard, downloads all their music illegally, and rents/borrows games to rip to the external hard drive on their wii. If I'm going to be put into that category anyway, it's a lot easier to justify blatant piracy.