Will you keep on getting free software?

[swirly]

I didn't read everything on here but, free software doesn't mean pirating. Theres such a thing as opensource and free-ware. You know like, software thats FREE?

 

[SkuToV]

So, because you can't afford something, you steal it. That doesn't sound right in my book.

Well, as far as I can thell there isn't any other way of getting it. If there's free software that works just as well as a product you have to pay for then I'll use that, but last time I checked, there wasn't a freeware application that allowed people to create flash documents.

So, because you don't like old software, you go and steal some new stuff. That doesn't sound right in my book.

No, because the old software that may be available to me isn't compatible with the newer versions my school has. If there's no way to save my work as a format thats redable by the lesser version I have then I'm stuffed if I want to work on stuff at home. Also, if I already payed for one version I don't see why I should pay more for an upgrade.

Ok, sometimes, parents don't always think along the same lines as you do. But still, does that really justify stealing?

As I said, there's no other legal way to get old of the software without my parents helping me.

Everyone else steals, so it is ok for you to steal too? That doesn't sound right in my book.

Thats not what I'm saying. Millions of people are sealing even if they don't know it. Have you watched a music video on youtube that wasn't uploaded with explicit permission of the record company? Have you ever sent an mp3 to a friend so they could try out a new band? Have you ever read a book in the shop and not bought it?

As I said piracy is everywhere, even if I was to stop that would be like taking a pippet full of water out of the ocean. Insignificant. The only way it would make a difference would be if everyone did it. And I doubt that's gonna happen any time soon.

 

[ichwar]

Well, as far as I can thell there isn't any other way of getting it. If there's free software that works just as well as a product you have to pay for then I'll use that, but last time I checked, there wasn't a freeware application that allowed people to create flash documents.

so, There's a unique program, that you don't want to pay for, so you steal it? If you don't want to pay for adobe flash, that doesn't mean that you can then go and steal it. It means that you don't get adobe flash.


[quoteNo, because the old software that may be available to me isn't compatible with the newer versions my school has. If there's no way to save my work as a format thats redable by the lesser version I have then I'm stuffed if I want to work on stuff at home. Also, if I already payed for one version I don't see why I should pay more for an upgrade.[/quote]
Again, you don't see why you should pay for it? Because the owner doesn't want to give it away free. Adobe flash belongs to adobe until you buy it. If you don't want to pay for an upgrade, then you don't get the upgrade. Not wanting to pay for something doesn't give you permission to steal it.

As I said, there's no other legal way to get old of the software without my parents helping me.

Well then, get hold of it with your parents helping you.

Thats not what I'm saying. Millions of people are sealing even if they don't know it. Have you watched a music video on youtube that wasn't uploaded with explicit permission of the record company?

No

Have you ever sent an mp3 to a friend so they could try out a new band?

No

Have you ever read a book in the shop and not bought it?

No

As I said piracy is everywhere, even if I was to stop that would be like taking a pippet full of water out of the ocean. Insignificant. The only way it would make a difference would be if everyone did it. And I doubt that's gonna happen any time soon.

So, you're still using the same argument: everyone else steals, so It's fine for me to do it too. That doesn't sound right in my book.

 

[xPlozion]

i've read online in several places (don't feel like looking for sources), but pirated music doesn't hurt the industry that much. People d/l the album to see if it's worth them buying, and if they like it, 9 times out of 10 they'll go out and buy it. The artists themselves make very little from it, but instead the lawyers for the labels make a marginal profit off of it (and they had nothing to do with making the songs/album).

canada has a good plan in place, where media (cd/dvd/etc...) costs more than in the us, and that offsets the "piracy cost" issue, meanwhile it's legal to dl music there.

----------

you're gonna tell me that you've never went to borders or gamestop and looked at the content of the book for one or two items, which is not worth spending up to $20 for game guides and varies for other books, or just wasn't into it?

So, you're still using the same argument: everyone else steals, so It's fine for me to do it too. That doesn't sound right in my book.

If you take one fish out of the ocean, there's still tons of fish in there. Onto the security issue of it. there's a few sharks (anti-piracy) in the water and they feed on about 10 fish a day (meanwhile there's millions of fish). the probability of you actually getting eaten is slim (but still possible). i don't know the figures for my little situation, but it's like a .0001% chance, or 1/10000 (prob wrong numbers)


have you ever ripped the songs from a cd onto your computer for easier listening and let your friend or relative borrow or have the cd? if so, you have just contradicted yourself.

think of times before myspace and purevolume were here (back in mid 90s or w/e). you've got a few love songs that you like, so you want to make a mix tape. you make it, and give it to your gf or w/e... again, contradictions (unauthorized reproduction in any shape or form).

do you go to youtube? if so, what do you watch? tv shows, listen to music, or just look at those making a fool of themselves?



No matter how you look at it, in one way or another you may _INADVERTENTLY_ pirate things w/out even knowing it.

 

[ichwar]

i've read online in several places (don't feel like looking for sources), but pirated music doesn't hurt the industry that much. People d/l the album to see if it's worth them buying, and if they like it, 9 times out of 10 they'll go out and buy it. The artists themselves make very little from it, but instead the lawyers for the labels make a marginal profit off of it (and they had nothing to do with making the songs/album).

canada has a good plan in place, where media (cd/dvd/etc...) costs more than in the us, and that offsets the "piracy cost" issue, meanwhile it's legal to dl music there.

----------

you're gonna tell me that you've never went to borders or gamestop and looked at the content of the book for one or two items, which is not worth spending up to $20 for game guides and varies for other books, or just wasn't into it?


If you take one fish out of the ocean, there's still tons of fish in there. Onto the security issue of it. there's a few sharks (anti-piracy) in the water and they feed on about 10 fish a day (meanwhile there's millions of fish). the probability of you actually getting eaten is slim (but still possible). i don't know the figures for my little situation, but it's like a .0001% chance, or 1/10000 (prob wrong numbers)


have you ever ripped the songs from a cd onto your computer for easier listening and let your friend or relative borrow or have the cd? if so, you have just contradicted yourself.

think of times before myspace and purevolume were here (back in mid 90s or w/e). you've got a few love songs that you like, so you want to make a mix tape. you make it, and give it to your gf or w/e... again, contradictions (unauthorized reproduction in any shape or form).

do you go to youtube? if so, what do you watch? tv shows, listen to music, or just look at those making a fool of themselves?



No matter how you look at it, in one way or another you may _INADVERTENTLY_ pirate things w/out even knowing it.

There's room here to agree and disagree here.
No, I don't go into bookstores and look through books just to find some info.
No, I don't give copies of media away to friends or relatives. I give the original CD/DVD sometimes, but I don't rip my self a copy first. So, there's nothing wrong with that.

I watch stuff on youtube, but I think it's debatable whether that's really pirating.

Can we get a good definition of pirating here?
It seems useless to argue over whether we are pirating or not unless we first get a good definition of pirating that we all agree upon.

 

[Russ]

I wasn't going to enter this one, I was infact going to stay as far away as I could but, i'll go ahead. First off, the economy isn't failing because of piracy, it's failing because of governments all over the world making stupid decisions, mainly our own.. The United States, and their interest rates that they forced upon the banks a few years back. Thing is, when it happened, everyone who knew anything predicted this, and surprise here we all are! And, good news, it's not ending any time soon! So, hold on and enjoy.

And, now back to the issue at hand, I do download all of the software I use from different sites, and yes, some is pirated. Why do I feel I deserve this? Because like now, I am running Windows 7 on my computer, I am truly testing it, unlike most who have it. I have submitted bug reports, etc. It's going to expire in a few months, and I will promptly download a pirated copy of it and continue, See, as I am testing this software for Microsoft, I feel they owe me a copy of the final version that wont destroy my system, or lose months of work for the risk I am taking.

And, furthermore, lets look at the price side of it, Windows 98 came out, it was a hit.. 2 years later, ME came out, and this was a flop.. They still charged the same $100 for the crap, but when XP came out, did they offer any kind of discount for it? No, they didn't, instead they acted as nothing ever happened, But, lets be honest, there are people who will read this who don't even know what Windows ME was. XP was a good release, then Vista came out, again, a flop. No one likes vista, and it's general crap, And, guess what, they charged for it again, Now, windows 7 will come out, it'll be a big release, but all it is, is a fixed version of vista. And, guess what.. you'll be paying for it again. See, this is how the it works, they force you to upgrade, because of the previous version not working, and charge you for it.

Honestly, someone really should start a class-action law suite against Microsoft for the fact, their software is truly never working correctly, and instead of addressing the issues at hand, they fix it in the next version, and charge you for it.

 

[ichwar]

I wasn't going to enter this one, I was infact going to stay as far away as I could but, i'll go ahead. First off, the economy isn't failing because of piracy, it's failing because of governments all over the world making stupid decisions, mainly our own.. The United States, and their interest rates that they forced upon the banks a few years back. Thing is, when it happened, everyone who knew anything predicted this, and surprise here we all are! And, good news, it's not ending any time soon! So, hold on and enjoy.

And, now back to the issue at hand, I do download all of the software I use from different sites, and yes, some is pirated. Why do I feel I deserve this? Because like now, I am running Windows 7 on my computer, I am truly testing it, unlike most who have it. I have submitted bug reports, etc. It's going to expire in a few months, and I will promptly download a pirated copy of it and continue, See, as I am testing this software for Microsoft, I feel they owe me a copy of the final version that wont destroy my system, or lose months of work for the risk I am taking.

And, furthermore, lets look at the price side of it, Windows 98 came out, it was a hit.. 2 years later, ME came out, and this was a flop.. They still charged the same $100 for the crap, but when XP came out, did they offer any kind of discount for it? No, they didn't, instead they acted as nothing ever happened, But, lets be honest, there are people who will read this who don't even know what Windows ME was. XP was a good release, then Vista came out, again, a flop. No one likes vista, and it's general crap, And, guess what, they charged for it again, Now, windows 7 will come out, it'll be a big release, but all it is, is a fixed version of vista. And, guess what.. you'll be paying for it again. See, this is how the it works, they force you to upgrade, because of the previous version not working, and charge you for it.

Honestly, someone really should start a class-action law suite against Microsoft for the fact, their software is truly never working correctly, and instead of addressing the issues at hand, they fix it in the next version, and charge you for it.

Yes, windows sucks. But that doesn't mean you can pirate it.

Why not use Linux instead? If you stick with a main distro, you'll be sure of getting something that works fine and has had all the problem ironed out of it, at no charge what so ever.

 

[Parsa44]

Well piracy is actually much lower than it really should be. Mainly because of all the open source out there.

 

[winlux]

But... if we kept on buying, then the economy would never go down, that means that the economy will go up, and eventually crash bigtime.

If we were not to buy anything atm, then supply and demand will cause prices to go down, lowering imports, and increasing the economy as we buy during that time.

I agree with the first part in a way, the economy would not keep going up because there are different companies, and some will be more succesfull than others. The reason economies fail is because wall street traders speculate a lot and also receive bonusses to the value of $18 billion between them. Chief executives get multi million dollar salaries, but instead of these money hungry buggers caring for workers and taking pay cuts, they keep it all. Besides why should the government bail out the markets, they are basically rewarding those buggers for failing by giving them more money. Let them go hungry for a while and we will see what happens.

Besides getting back to the argument about piracy. Products are too expensive that is why people pirate them. Take m$ windows.... when it came out the ultimate edition, which offers little excpet some more fancy graphics sold for hundreds of dollars more. Why is that? it's just to make more money. Also note that it is always the most popular products being pirated... why because people assign value to expensive things. There are plenty of open source projects which are legal and does the job perfectly. Let's take an example. for the majority of people, they will not even know what the differences between microsoft office or open office are. For most usage the way they behave has no difference at all, exept open office does pdf convertions on the fly without having to buy yet another software... so which is better in this case?

I think people should use more open source and just make small donations to developers for their time so that these products can get even greater functionality and active research.
Edit:

There's room here to agree and disagree here.
No, I don't go into bookstores and look through books just to find some info.
No, I don't give copies of media away to friends or relatives. I give the original CD/DVD sometimes, but I don't rip my self a copy first. So, there's nothing wrong with that.

Well mate, next time you watch a dvd read the warning message properly. You are not supposed to pass it on according to that.

 

[Briganti]

I would like to say one thing and then I will give you the floor John. I use to get freeware and shareware when I first started using the web. I do not do it now because of all the viruses that are going around. However, where does one go to get his/her website going so where he can make money? What does one do? I have been laid off of work for six month now and trying my best to get my websites going. As you can see by my avatar that I made that in paint but do you think anyone will buy or click on it? or Do I go with free programs to make it more professional?
I would like to thank companies like X10Hosting for giving us little people a chance to gat started. I just wish that the bigger companies can make smaller programs to fit the need of people that are just starting out on the www.

 

[Parsa44]

As i said i usually use opensource however how does a company expect anybody pay £1000 for a software? If prices where lower i am sure nobody would pirate.

 

[theexefiles]

As i said i usually use opensource however how does a company expect anybody pay £1000 for a software? If prices where lower i am sure nobody would pirate.

I think that even if software was cheaper, if it still had stupid restrictions, such as DRM that give downloads more rights than people who have legally bought the product, then people will still pirate. Also, I think some people create cracks and patches and the like for software for the fun and challenge, so I doubt piracy will stop, at least any time soon anyway.

 

[SinTechA]

First off i dont feel bad for the people that got laid off. This country is finally waking up and smelling the coffee. This country vote thefts into office and expect everything to be all hunky dory but guess what its not. They give out a bailout plan and CEO's give themselves bonuses. That is why our country is in trouble and not because of downloading illegal software. You didnt see Adobe begging for money like the vehical manufactures did and Adobe sure didnt fly down in private jets to ask for that money.

Secondly most people pirate because of price, prices on software were high way before the economy got bad. If anyone is to blame for pirating it is because of outrageous prices. Why pay $400+ on some thing you may rarely ever use, when you could get it free or get a OSS legally free almost identically as good? Here is what I'm going to leave you with "Greedy people, make more greedier people".

 

[Wolfhaze]

I pirate proprietary development software (Adobe, for example) because I am a software-engineering student and do not have the cash to even come close to affording this software (not even the student editions). On top of this, there are often restrictions to the usage of the student editions that keep them from being used even in as portfolio pieces.

I will be the first to say that I strongly dislike the idea of pirating software. I will ALWAYS take the "legal" route whenever possible, or when I can attain student access to software. This includes making use of Open Source software.

If I truly enjoy a software package, I will always try and to contribute to it, and when I can put my skills to real, professional use, I will hopefully be able to afford the real deal and help the propagation of the software through the use of my skills. ^.-

 

[Zdroyd]

Personally I get freeware because I know I am helping other developers like me grow. The only way a freeware developer can get any where is if s/he gets support from the community.

And About P2P Downloading:

Yes I do it... I do not have the money to buy $200 products! If I did I would buy those products... So I find that if there is something that I really NEED I will P2P it. And when I am done with it I destroy it, and I never share such files.

But I am completely against making money off other peoples products. Now that is True Piracy.

 

[swirly]

Dude. Free software isn't pirated. Theres something called FREEWARE. And Sony and Sony and EA make games not neccessarily software like you are referring too. Are you saying you have never used freeware or pirated software in your life? You've never downloaded music for free?

 

[nterror]

Quoted because people keep posting about freeware.

When I said will you keep getting free software...I meant illegal free software, pirated software. Yea there are many free legal programs out there, ....but it is the guys that pirate software that they can't buy with money that do harm others in a way.

Yeah I pirate software, but its usually because I'm only going to use it once. Can't justify paying $100+ for that. Sure they offer trials, but most are unusable and a waste of time (ie can't save/output unless you buy). I bought things I use nearly everyday like NOD32 and Total Commander. Industry standard software is very expensive, maybe if they brought the price down, less people would pirate it. Others are just expensive for no reason, like M$ Office. Its not great, cost $200 and up, and offers little, prime target for pirating.

Then theres DRM. It does not work, and only cripples those who bought it legally. Until they learn to stop using DRM, I will pirate it instead. I gladly bought Sins of a Solar Empire.

Back when most online music stores had DRM, I pirated that too. With the music I listen too, CDs cost two, sometimes three times the average price. Now the only problem is quality, sometimes I'll buy and download the pirated version too. I'll also mass download CDs from artist I haven't heard yet to preview, 30 seconds is not enough.

 

[ashhhevil]

I personally like freeware software over paid ones because, well, it's free but also I know that it's made out of love, not greed. People who make paid software always leave some stuff out that they will release as updates for more money while freeware stuff usually has it all and the updates are just more ideas or fixes.

Personally, I would download pirated software 'cause I can't afford them but I usually go the freeware route first and only go to "free" paid programs if nothing freeware is good.

 

[igames]

i only usually get trials because i usually dont use a product that much, one time i got a adobe product and i only used it for like 20 days and i didnt need to use it anymore, so if i would of bought it i would of wasted amost 1g so i usually dont buy software

 

[iwaproductions]

Here is why I get free software...

I feel, and this is just my opinion, feel free to rebutt it, that many companies market their product entirely the wrong way, offering said products for 15 days or 30 day evaluations, and then BAM! either pay or don't enjoy the service.

Why not this. Why doesn't a software company offer the basic version of their product for free permanently? I'm not talking with ALL the bells and whistles, but the basic bare bones essentials for FREE. This would ensure that they get into the market, not just from the freeloaders, but from interested customers who may want to go ahead and purchase the extensions and the full deal.

A good example of this, Daz3d. Daz3d is a 3d modelling program that is FREE. Not free for 15 days, not free for 30 days. Free for good. However, if you want your 3d model to have more props, or more lighting possibilities, or add-ons to connect it to other software, you can PAY for the expansion. Another service? Google Sketchup. Basic version... free... Pro Version costs.

All the 15 day evaluation version does is allow for someone to find a way to either keep the clock from counting down or just delete the software at the end of the 15 days anyway, so why bother?

Now then... I AM actually one of those blokes who, when given a basic version of something with no strings attached, ends up buying an add-on or too, but only after I have had a chance to see why I want to have the add-on, and what extra it can supply to the projects that I am working on.

For instance... WinRar, a great example. After 40 days, many of the functions of WinRar shut off, but it still allows for the basic unarchiving of .rar files. Because of that, I went ahead and shelled out the bucks for the rest of it.

But, using Sony as an example for the layoffs going across the nation is kinda moot, not really even stemming from Pirated software. I've never pirated anything from Sony, nor have I ever pirated a design from Chrysler, and they've laid off many more people than Sony did. Also, should it be fair to mention that Adobe... the makers of Photoshop (one of the most pirated softwares on the planet) actually hasn't shown a large layoff?

I by no means am advocating pirating software, using keygens and much more ruthless tactics, but I AM letting my voice speak out to the old days of shareware, where when you wanted a basic function from a software, you got it... for good, not for 30 days at a time