Software Piracy

[tom.mot]

I understand that it is very hard work to emulate a steinberg dongle, but has anyone thought of finding a way to copy a license from one key to another??? the keys are on ebay for £23 (without a license, off course). I got one and plenty of friends with legal cubase versions and dongles, but i still haven't found a crack to copy the license from one dongle into mine... must be easier then emulating the whole, i guess...

Ohh, I'd definately buy a legal copy, but unfortunately cant afford it!

[Corwin06]

Piracy is price discrimination. If publishers want to get their software to everyone legally, they make it a free public download. If they charge anything for it, anyone without a Visa who wants the soft will get a pirate copy.

 

Or anyone who can't pony up the crazy price Photoshop costs... Adobe only wants to sell their stuff to everyone who can hope to see a return on investment. That's why there are several versions of CS3 (for example) : there is the free one on BitTorrent for the people who are not able to buy it, but that's not advertised on the official site. If they wanted to sell more copies they'd price it right. Cut the price in half, get five times more customers. That's called capitalism, you know, that crazy idea that in a free, transparent system, the cost of every item will drop to its marginal production cost. The reason why it's so horribly expensive is marketing : they want us to believe we get something in return for that money and we will get money in return on that investment. The price is only a psychological barrier : "if it costs 10x more than the other package then it must be worth more".

 

About software protection, while I'm at it : see DRM. Mathematically impossible. Alice wants to send a secret message to Bob so that Chris can't read it. If Bob and Chris are the same person, to decipher the message, they need the message, the key and the algorithm. Hilarity ensues. What is different with a program? You must "activate" it ... just copy the version that does not require activation, one exists. Always. May not be published on BT yet, if ever, though.

 

About pre-installing software without paying it : send me €4000 and I'll send you a PC (equivalent to or better than a $10,000 MacPro...*) running MacOSX with any pre-installed software you want (in the following list : Final Cut HD Studio 2.0, Adobe CS3, Office 2004). Where's the problem? If you ever need to do professional work you'll buy the licenses anyway. The answer to "It's illegal to run OSX on custom hardware" is "I do WTF I want with things I buy."

 

* : What for, 3GHz Xeons, but for driving the price to impossible heights? Ask ME to build an eight-core with two RECENT nVidias and 1TB hds (no maxtors) and 16G of RAM and a pair of 20" monitors and such and more : €4000 max, including my work. The cores are not running at 3GHz, but you got eight of them and you can overclock them (happily, because at that price, the water cooling is included ).

[Tetrasoft]

I admit, i do have some illegal software (1, mabey 2 programs). It is only the stuff that is too expensive.

 

Take Photoshop for example. £500. Too Expensive. If they lowered the price, more people would pirate it and actually buy it.

 

In my opinion, Pirateing is due to overpricing. Adobe actually did a survey on the streets of san francisco and 97% of people said they would buy it if the price was lower.

[rezwits]

I would to say in perspective we have all probably heard the argument if more people would pay the prices would be cheeper, which I believe to be true. But the way these programs get updated they would have to do that without books. But in perspective Creative Suite Master Edition (CS3) is $2,500, Final Cut Studio 2.0 is $1,300, Microsoft Office is $400, Filemaker Pro is $400, 16 Shareware programs at $25 a piece is $200, for a total of $5,000. Two Mac Pro Quads at 2.66 mHz is $4,700. Now in Ratio and Proportion that is bullcrap. Metal vs. Plastic, gold even vs. tissue paper? One thing I have always said is that software apps or programs are just numbers, so they are copyrighting and selling numbers, be it large numbers, but non the less just number recorded on plastic. That they can duplicate. Two expensive and two scared to publish at regular book prices. Like Final Cut for $50, or Creative Studio for $50, seriously downloads even, sputtering electricity for $5,000? It just doesn't fit. And another thing is One Computer License? Or limited Hardware support? Like you can't get a computer in 5 years and put that old Photoshop 5.0 on your new Intel... so in my mind there are some serious issues. But they need to offer download version and lower prices... simple...$5,000?Oh, I just remembered back Ratio and Proportion, a car! You can get used or new car ($6,500) for $5,000, two used cars $2,500 a piece. I mean that so much metal. But if you compare a computer $2,500 to used car $2,500 in my mind it's not so off because of such intense circuitry in the computer, and engineering. But even like a big screen 60" HDTV to a Mac Pro to a Car they are logical and legitimate. Four pieces of tissue paper (DVDs) ... um nahHere is another add on, Look at DVD prices, Movie DVDs, they are $15, the studio pay $10,000,000 to make the movie but they sell it for $15. The computer companies spend $10,000,000 and sell it for $400. That's stupid. and right now you are thinking about the rebuke and the addition arguments to that, so go ahead and post it, or better just don't...

[Fridgerator]

There are various reasons to pirating, especially for students who are interested in working in the field which requires that expensive software (Photoshop etc).

 

I mean, how are students supposed to get ready for post secondary, or a career when they cant even learn the staple software used in the industry? Shelling out like $1000 for a creative suite is absolutely ridiculous for a student. Okay, get the student version of the suite, but its much less professional. Alot of students have to pay for their own tuition, rent, food, etc. They might not even have a computer decent enough to run the programs properly, and developers are asking them to shell out $1000 extra to get the "right" program? Its not even investment until the student is actually in the job. Computers are expensive enough on their own, and asking for another handful of $100 bills from parents when a student gets accepted into post secondary is ridiculous for the average person. Education alone costs enough already and thats enough investment for the student or the parents of that student. Personally, I'd think its acceptable for students to buy their programs once they earn some money with it, then it'd be a proper investment. But if there are people who are earning money with the programs and are still pirating it, I find that unacceptable.

[MadDoggyca]

I steel ever thing when it comes to software.... its it involes 01010111 (binery) its free far as I consired...

 

look jsut becuz peopel steal dosn;t mean people to making new veriosn...MS thrives on people actully stealing windows and selling OEMS as far as retail there infact make a more higher profet if people steal the Retail veriosn then buy it...

 

cuz in the end the more of that type of software out there *bought or download) the higher hey make in suport and reapires... upgrades and there 3rd party apps/// ..

 

such as one will steal Vista and go out and buy halo 2 for vista to play on live...

 

if they didn't steal vista they would have not bough Halo 2 ...

 

as for adobe they make the real $$$ from Binsuses and not the end user.....

 

as for as home end user they shouldn't realy have to buy any thing when it comes to software UNLESS they use it to (produces and sell there creations)

 

as far as I consider if I don;t make any money out of it I NOT goign to put any money into it...

[matemago]

i must admit every single piece of mayor software i have, is thanks to torrents, specially if it is from an US company. also music, i cannot remember the last time a bought a dvd or cd. i only buy small developers software since i know they really need the money. the only original cds i have are the ones that came with hardware like mobos or dvd writers. and i feel fine.

[MACinized]

...If you could magically clone your brand new car and give one to your best friend, wouldn't everybody do it?

 

well-put Stadsport! personally, individuals/home users should be spared from the "sins of software piracy". shame & bashing should be for those profit-oriented/income-generating groups/organizations/companies who are using pirated softwares.

[yangj08]

bump...

 

I live in China, well known for stuff like this.

 

Here's my two cents- Some piracy happens here because there's no alternative. Portable games are well-known for this; a game comes out in Japanese, fan-translation teams translate it into Chinese and release it to the public because publishers don't think it's worth the time to sell to China (DS and GBA sales in China would be near-zero if fan-translations didn't exist; the official Chinese library of games consists of less than 10 games- 4 of which are Nintendogs). Then people with flashcarts download (I do this) and others buy blank cartridges (the type that has internal memory and not SD/CF/etc) pre-loaded with the game. Capcom even implicitly supported this by giving away Megaman toys with Happy Meals here in China as part of an advertising campaign when there are no official Megaman games sold in China (none that I've seen).

 

Software piracy- there IS official software in Chinese here, but people just don't want to pay a lot. So people buy pirated discs (heck, even the Apple resellers get in on it here- wouldn't have my copy of OSx86 otherwise). Can't say I support them, but since I'm one of them I guess I'd be rather hypocritical to oppose it all. I'm trying to get rid of that habit, though- I use the GIMP and like it a lot compared to Photoshop. I don't really play any games, at least (the ones I do play are emulated GBA games, which again- they don't exist in any other form I can get).

[Millsy]

The discussion of right and wrong aside, I've noticed one very strange thing since I got my mac a year ago.

 

I don't have any pirated software on my Mac.

 

This hasn't been a consious decision. I don't need photoshop, and I do all my photo sorting / editing on my PC Laptop using Picasa and Paint.net anyway. (MAC VERSION OF PICASA PLEASE!!)

 

But everything else I need on the Mac, I have found a free program that does exactly what I want, and most of the time, is better than any program that wants my money.

 

On the PC, the real quality programs with polish on them, almost all cost big $$$. OSX freeware seems like higher quality than Windows freeware. I don't know if this is my imagination or not, but it is definitily my impression.

[John the Geek]

OSX freeware seems like higher quality than Windows freeware. I don't know if this is my imagination or not, but it is definitily my impression.

 

This is due to Apple's efforts toward making their developer tools free, easy to use (easy as any programming can be I suppose), and an active development community that gathers every year at WWDC.

 

=)

[apowerr]

This is due to Apple's efforts toward making their developer tools free, easy to use (easy as any programming can be I suppose), and an active development community that gathers every year at WWDC.

 

=)

You're right there pal. Apple loves developers, unless if course you want to make your App run on the iPhone

[John the Geek]

You're right there pal. Apple loves developers, unless if course you want to make your App run on the iPhone :censored2:

 

Two perspectives:

 

Mine: How many apps can you install on a RAZR? The phone I do know you can write apps for needs certification first (I can't recall the phone, and I'm driving with my iPhone so I can't look it up right now) the Palm doesn't count in this class of phone because of the level of access you can get with the iPhone.

 

Apple's: Apple never said they wouldn't allow developement. Their SDK isn't even out yet.

[Mr. Harrison]

An OEM copy of an OS can only be installed on that "computer", and it will stay that way until the end of time. That's okay, but what defines a Dell computer, for example? What if I replaced the Pentium IV in an Optiplex GX240 with a compatible Celeron? It's no longer a GX240. Is the OEM copy of Windows 2000 Professional still valid? What if I replaced the case, which probably is the only thing Dell physically designs & manfactures, and fit it with an HP Compaq case? The HD is made Western Digital or Seagate, the mobo is made by Intel, AMD, nVidia, Acer, graphics by ATI, S3, nVidia, Intel, etc., CPUs by AMD & Intel, mouse and keyboard by M$ or Logitech...

Oh, wait - Dell does make monitors. Anyway, a computer is a million different interchangible parts, so if they want to enforce this rule, they need to weld RAM to the motherboard like on the Mac 128K.

[mtotho]

I will admit, i pirate many a software(programs, games, etc.) It is just so easy to do. I will say i take much more pride in the items i have purchased (as they are usually the better programs. Usually if i really enjoy a piece of software.. i will buy it. If i love Call of Duty4, im gonna buy it so Activision has funding and continues to be succesful in future endeavours (same for any software). Now i bought windows for a slightly different reason.. i dont think microsoft needs anymore money... and i have had horible experiences with their customer services and actually think they deserve to be pirated... but i think if something is your main operating system.. it should be clean.. uncracked.. and register... i have had some bad experiences with the cracked version of windows. Now as much as i love pirating... i must stop... i have already gotten 2 letters from comcast saying i was caught downloading a coppyrighted file: SentinalDVDrip.AVI and Office 2007. I am lucky that i did not get into any trouble.. but now i know how much easier it is to get caught. If you use a torrent to download anything.. for extra security i recomend using Peer Guardian 2.

[Azurael]

The only source of income I have now is people that give me money for my birthday ect. All of that money has been dumped into my car (mainly paint, and a body kit) and really Adobe, you most definately want me to have a nice car right?

 

That's not nice, it's tacky. A {censored} car with plastic tat attached to it is still a {censored} car. It's just a heavier, slower (and often noisier) one. If you had a decent car to start with, you wouldn't ruin it by attaching plastic tat and painting it vomit-inducing colours (well, unless you're a mad Japanese tuning shop, but they appear to be an exception to the rule.) It offends my eyes. Of course, I'm not for a moment suggesting that you shouldn't do it if you want to, just that most people think it's a bit daft.

 

Anyway, on the subject of software, what do you think of the GPL?

 

Personally, I find it bizarre that so called 'Software Freedom' includes the requirement to perpetuate that freedom following modifications. That's not really free, the nis is, because you're telling me what I can do with it. I think I'll stick to BSD licensing...

[Syzyx]

This is where I stand:

 

I download apps and tv/movies. I download the odd song...But prefer to get the whole CD (as my music selection is very narrow).

 

The reason why? It's easy. I feel bad by screwing over the developers and programmers that do it...But hey. I'd rather not burn holes in my pockets...I can suffice with a few clicks and boom: I got them.

 

I admit that it's wrong, because I am currently in school for a Computer Programmer (ironic...). I took a course "Computer Ethics", and we touched base on piracy, learning all the reprocussions, etc... and found it to be fairly revealing to both sides of the equation.

 

I also think that a Pirate is a nice title to go by

[numberonekiwi]

I look at it this way but I am not saying it it right

 

If you are a business or company using applications for profit and/or gain then you must pay for what you use an example of this would be TV or film studios using final cut pro for editing for their network etc they make money from this and it is a very powerful piece of software

However if you are a home user and want to cut and paste videos together I myself wanted to create a full movie of Back to the future all 3 parts as one continuous movie which involved cutting some segments at the beginning and ends as well as bits slightly after the start (opening credits) and final cut pro was about the only thing to do it (I own all 3 parts of this movie) I am not making money from this and it is for my own self experience in using this application

 

When trying to find software to do this efficiently I originally used windows applications but there were none up to par (these were also downloaded pirated without payment) I am glad I did not pay for it as I would not of been able to return it after trying it out

 

The same can be said about photoshop and 100's of other professional applications

 

Another point is using Tiger/Leopard on non apple hardware all I need to do is buy an apple HD and install to that particular HD it is then installed on certified apple hardware but as for paying for the OS itself well when it is 100% working and updates can be directly done from Apple without any modifications then yes I will pay for a copy but as yet its not and well my time patching things cost me time=money as well

[superstition]

Here's what I posted in the other piracy topic:

 

One way to think about "piracy" is to think about things like government subsidies and regressive taxation. Everyone who pays taxes in the USA is paying corporate welfare due to lobbying and crooked politics, and the rich with their corporate shells are paying less. That's a form of piracy in my book. It's not as if any of us has the power to replace all government corruption simply by voting, particularly when the machines themselves and the way the results are handled are suspect.

 

The huge amount of money that's been thrown away in Iraq certainly dwarfs any "piracy" I'm guilty of, and the amount in taxes and quality of life reduction due to government corruption is something I've paid more for than the total of products I've tried without a license. I buy the things that are worth buying, too. Downloading software saves me from wasting money on {censored}, and the same is true of music. If it's worth buying, I buy it when I have the funds, which isn't often anymore since wages keep stagnating, health care is going through the roof, the dollar is falling, gasoline is at a record, etc.

 

Those who point fingers at the little guy need to start holding the government accountable, by at least the same standard. There's a lot of piracy in this world, and the vast majority is called social stratification and government is what facilitates it.

 

There's also the extreme wastefulness of our consumption/disposable-based economic model. That's global piracy. The Earth is being raped and who will suffer...future generations. Apple is just one example of many. It dumped thousands of Lisa computers in a landfill instead of giving them to schools, libraries, or the poor. Why? Because the company got a tax reduction from the government for doing so. That's piracy. The company orphaned flat panel iMacs that run at 700 and 800 MHz. Instead of bothering to fix the sleep problem in Leopard, the company simply orphaned them. That's piracy, too. Those machines not only are perfectly useable and shouldn't be orphaned, there should be a way to replace their innards with a modern core duo system instead of throwing away a perfectly good monitor, steel arm, etc. The waste is increasing. In the old days, Apple sold motherboard upgrades. Processor companies keep changing sockets in order to sell new motherboards. Companies shouldn't benefit from harming the planet and everyone living on it and government shouldn't facilitate it.

[VenturAce]

Actually, it is a very big problem especially in my country (Russia).

We have a lot of pirates. We even have a large stores or markets where you can buy a plenty of pirate products. Of course, it is unfair to the real producers. The loose their fair profit! But, honestly, sometimes it is rather handy to have an opportunity to buy cheap soft/music/videos. But 1) it is quite risky 2) you get low-quality product. Well, I guess my country tries to struggle against pirates but it is quite hard to get rid of pirates in terms of great corruption...

By the way, the intelectual property problems makes my country stay outside of World Trade Organization in which Russia procures to enter.

[superstition]

Actually, it is a very big problem especially in my country (Russia).

Well, it's not as if the rich and their corporations in the USA don't embrace piracy:

 

Creative Capitalism Gets Microsoft $528M Tax Break

Microsoft makes products in Washington but records software sales to PC makers and high-volume customers through an operation in Nevada, where there is no corporate tax.

 

So Washington has missed out on more than half a billion in taxes; revenue it could use for badly needed infrastructure needs — such as the needed replacement of the 520 bridge which connects Seattle ... to Microsoft. Reported by Slashdot in 2004, the numbers have increased with the company's growth to approx. $76M in savings last year alone.

 

The author questions the legality of the practice given Microsoft's 35,500+ employees and 11.2 million square feet of real estate in Washington state.

Mitt Romney's offshore tax shelters

[Ferret-Simpson]

IDW, you make a good point about the sale of Pirated and open source software. Freeloading is wrong. I now own licenses for iWork, iLife, Leopard, VirtualKeyboard, Tubesock, and a few other odds and sods. However, had I copied and patched my leopard CD and installed THAT, then the license would be invalid. ATM, I don't know the validity of my iStuff licenses, but I have no other system I would use them on.

 

As a software developer (With aims towards owning a company one day) I don't agree with pirating on a moral level. On the other hand, I do approve of the FOSS and Dual-License models, for example Canonical who offer support contracts for FOSS software, and Trolltech who dual-license their toolkit. For use in commercial development, you pay. You pay, in order to make money - a reasonable system. For FOSS development, the toolkit is also FOSS. This encourages community development as well as commercial adoption of a platform - the code is modifiable by the company for their particular purpose, but they have the community-driven reliability and security-patching as a side-benefit.

 

Even if the whole commercial software industry followed this model, "pure" open source code would still emerge, because of fundamentalists like Stallman. The biggest mistake that can be made is following the model of the RIAA, MPAA and similar organisations who compare software/multimedia piracy to stealing a handbag or a car. If you sell pirates, then you're making money off their backs. Which is theft. If you just duplicate material - you weren't going to buy their "legal" copies anyway, so you're not financially hurting them.

 

Buy the software you can afford. Think about the decisions you make in what media you copy, and what media you license. In a very real sense, the decisions you make will influence the decisions made by the developers. You'll keep small developers alive and coding, meaning the small well written apps will improve in features, and the big apps you purchase will help guide the software industry. For example, if you only buy software that is dual licensed, or from open-source friendly developers (E.G. QT, Apple) then you will encourage other companies to follow the same model, and the same companies to release more code.

This is mostly a hypothesis, but has major grounds in truth. It's the same model that encouraged vegetarian meals in restaurants, vegetarian-only restaurants, and non-beige computer casing as standard.

Although, to be honest - given most non-apple hardware, I'd rather have the beige back.

 

>> The huge amount of money that's been thrown away in Iraq certainly dwarfs any "piracy" I'm guilty of.

 

While I appreciate your sentiment, this is basically completely off topic. Whether the "War on Terror" was a correct action or not is probably a more contentious topic than this one, and far more likely to develop into a flamewar. Keeping these two debates (rightfully) separate in this instance would be a wise move for the continued progression of this discussion. After all, this is a forum and there ARE "trolls" around.

 

>> Those who point fingers at the little guy need to start holding the government accountable.

 

Truedat. However, the people who name consumers pirates are largely corporations acting in the interests of the consumer investors that own their asses, as well as those of the Board of Directors. Before any attack can be made in this case, the mighty will need to fall. Perhaps if people stopped investing in these megacorps their influence and narcissistic attitude would considerably lessen.

 

>> [Apple] dumped thousands of Lisa computers in a landfill instead of giving them to schools, libraries, or >> the poor. Why? Because the company got a tax reduction from the government for doing so.

 

And now they recycle their used products in return for a discount. Companies change, as the cultures they operate in change. I'm not talking about or defending Apple, I'm talking about the entire world. The more onus and public pressure that is applied, the more all these horror stories will be a thing of the past.

 

>> The company orphaned flat panel iMacs that run at 700 and 800 MHz. Instead of bothering to fix the

>> sleep problem in Leopard, the company simply orphaned them.

 

No comment on the decision, here - there's not enough information available. The bug may be a huge issue that would have delayed Leopard by months. It may be greed. It's not possible to say.

>> Those machines not only are perfectly useable and shouldn't be orphaned, there should be a way to

>> replace their innards with a modern core duo system instead of throwing away a perfectly good

>> monitor, steel arm, etc. The waste is increasing. In the old days, Apple sold motherboard upgrades.

 

In the old days, technology was not changing at such a rapid pace. "Perfectly good" is a subjective opinion, not a fact. They may be of use to people as they are - why rip them up for the sake of an OS upgrade? Tiger is still an operating system, and the community will continue to produce updates and new apps as they have for Panther. However, there is nothing to stop you from adding a Mini-ITX board and a replacement display, or with some hacking, re-use the old display.

 

>> Processor companies keep changing sockets in order to sell new motherboards. Companies shouldn't

>> benefit from harming the planet and everyone living on it and government shouldn't facilitate it.

 

You make this sound as if it's the sole reason for the change. Legacy support hurts the efficiency of new software/hardware. This is notable with Apple computers which are benchmarked to show better speed than standard PC's and have abandoned much legacy support. Similarly, modern operating systems such as OS X and Haiku gain large speed increases and code streamlining by abandoning support for old systems and code - this is something that many of the users of this forum shout that Microsoft could remember - and yet it's an ethos that clashes with that of reusing old hardware with the latest and greatest code. OS's should be hardware-appropriate, and remember the efficiency difference of running old hardware. a 240-watt PowerMac is a far weaker system performance-wise than a 110-Watt Mac Mini.

 

Food for thought.

 

[edited to fix postmangling - Also, addendum - If the Core 2 Duo used the same socket as the P3, some moron would put a £600 C2Quad chip into a P3 motherboard, frying his chip, frying his board, frying his memory, frying EVERYTHING. The new CPU's are very different electrically from the old models - different frequencies and voltages. It's really NOT just evil salemongering. ]

[Colonel]

The cheap alternative is iMovie for Final Cut, which is an unbelievably powerful editing tool.

True that. And you can get Final Cut Studio 2 for around $700 (down from the original $1300) with the educational discount.

 

@ Ferret-Simpson, you ever heard of the Enter key?

[Headrush69]

Here's what I posted in the other piracy topic:

 

One way to think about "piracy" is to think about things like government subsidies and regressive taxation. Everyone who pays taxes in the USA is paying corporate welfare due to lobbying and crooked politics, and the rich with their corporate shells are paying less. That's a form of piracy in my book. It's not as if any of us has the power to replace all government corruption simply by voting, particularly when the machines themselves and the way the results are handled are suspect.

 

The huge amount of money that's been thrown away in Iraq certainly dwarfs any "piracy" I'm guilty of, and the amount in taxes and quality of life reduction due to government corruption is something I've paid more for than the total of products I've tried without a license. I buy the things that are worth buying, too. Downloading software saves me from wasting money on {censored}, and the same is true of music. If it's worth buying, I buy it when I have the funds, which isn't often anymore since wages keep stagnating, health care is going through the roof, the dollar is falling, gasoline is at a record, etc.

 

Those who point fingers at the little guy need to start holding the government accountable, by at least the same standard. There's a lot of piracy in this world, and the vast majority is called social stratification and government is what facilitates it.

Although everything you said may be true, the "I'm guilty but someone else is more guilty" argument doesn't make it right.

You talk about pointing the finger at the little guy, but by pirating software you can just as easily be hurting another little guy. (a developer)

 

There's also the extreme wastefulness of our consumption/disposable-based economic model. That's global piracy. The Earth is being raped and who will suffer...future generations. Apple is just one example of many. It dumped thousands of Lisa computers in a landfill instead of giving them to schools, libraries, or the poor. Why? Because the company got a tax reduction from the government for doing so. That's piracy. The company orphaned flat panel iMacs that run at 700 and 800 MHz. Instead of bothering to fix the sleep problem in Leopard, the company simply orphaned them. That's piracy, too. Those machines not only are perfectly useable and shouldn't be orphaned, there should be a way to replace their innards with a modern core duo system instead of throwing away a perfectly good monitor, steel arm, etc. The waste is increasing. In the old days, Apple sold motherboard upgrades. Processor companies keep changing sockets in order to sell new motherboards. Companies shouldn't benefit from harming the planet and everyone living on it and government shouldn't facilitate it.

Not sure how that is piracy since they aren't stealing from someone else. Sure its wasteful but that's a different issue.

 

The only way we will see real changes is when individuals demand it so much that governments and businesses are forced to deal with the issue.

I believe that although at times we might say the right thing the majority of the population doesn't really care about this wastefulness.

(Evidenced by our life styles: bigger cars, computers left on, incandescent bulbs, the list goes on.)

[BlueAvenue]

I find pirating software a lot of fun and quite exhilarating. In recent months i have added ILife,Toast Titanium,

Visual Hub,Photoshop Elements, and others that i procurred from torrent sites for free. I have all these

running perfectly on my OS X 10.4.9 which of course is illegal on my Hackinstosh.

I would NEVER have bought any of this software , so the fabricators of it have lost no money from me.