There is right, and there is wrong. Sometimes the line between them truly is blurred (what do you call an otherwise honest person who steals food to avoid starvation?) but sometimes the line only seems fuzzy.

It only seems to be reasonable because of intellectual and ethical laziness.

In any other circumstance, would you simply take what you want without paying and claim that seller lost no money because you have no money to give them? Even though you have reduced their inventory?

At the very least, what is lost in the case of software piracy is a return on an investment. If you take something that belongs to somebody else, against their express wishes, no matter what it is, even if it is "just" a return on an investment, they have lost something and you have stolen something.

What if your definition of "needed" differs from theirs? What if you are self employed? What about the software you use at home? Where do you draw the line?

No, you wouldn't. You would be using pirated software before having access to a different copy of the same software. Even if you work for a company that has a legal copy of the same version of the software you used, the developer of the software only got paid for one version.

I was a glassblower (decorative, not recreational, items.) The people who knew the amount of work that went into a piece never questioned the price. For those who didn't, simply describing the three inch natural gas pipe leading to a 2000 degree furnace that ran 24/7 was enough to make them understand. If that wasn't enough, I told them that I invested a lot of time, energy, money, study, and practice to obtain my skills. They were welcome to spend the thousands of hours and many, many thousands of dollars necessary for them to possibly gain the skills required to make their own handblown glass art, but for $50 (or whatever) and a couple of minutes they could have it today.

I can honestly say that I have no pirated software (or music, for that matter.) Because I recognize the effort that goes into bringing a product to the market, I see no justification for piracy. I won't buy software from a developer that has a no return policy on software with no demo version, but I won't test a pirated copy either (although at first glance that seems less unethical, I wouldn't feel comfortable doing it.)

Nor would I keep pirated software that I would use only for occasional personal use any more than I would steal a book that I would only read once or twice.

You're only looking for justification, which you won't get from me.

It has been enlightening reading the posts in this thread. I can recall a day, many years past, when I would have applauded stealing (pirating) from corporate 'amerika' and stickin' it to the 'man.'

I stole Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book." It seemed only fitting.

My views have changed radically from those radical years.

When Photoshop CS was out, prior to CS2, I had Photoshop 6 legally running on my powermac G4 running 9.1. I purchased off eBay an upgrade to Photoshop 7. Upon installing I read a hand written note from the seller instructing the purchaser to enter the provided key code, then delete a certain file (I don't remember which) to disable the program's ability to contact Adobe.

To my amazement, I binned the app upon realizing I had purchased a pirated copy. Never would I have done that in a bygone era.

I suppose we have the ability to change our points of view over time.

I'm sorry, but this is getting silly. What made you think this was not going to become a discussion of morals? Isn't stealing a moral issue.

You say you don't feel guilty about stealing software that costs thousands of dollars, and yet you (theoreticaly) feel guilty about stealing my $300 dollar guitar? It makes no sense! Yes, stealing software is just like stealing anything else! Hundreds upon hundreds of hours were put into writing tens of thousands of lines of code and then debugging them. It takes years to put together a program like that! And you don't feel at least a little guilty that you didn't pay them to use it?

Do you want to know why Adobe is losing money when you steal something like Photoshop? Because it never occurs to you to save the money to buy the program, that's why. You figure that since it's pretty easy to pirate that you'll just go ahead and do it. Perhaps if it weren't so easy you'd get together with some friends, save some money, and buy it. But instead you think, "heck, I'm broke, and I'm only learning, so it's okay..." In the process you're taking money from hundreds of programmers who have families to support. Try thinking about them a bit, will ya?

We live in a difficult era, one where property is easy to copy. Trust me, if the "Model T" was something you could duplicate in a matter of ten minutes then this problem would have cropped up and been dealt with a long time ago. We live in a world where people, not corporations, are stealing other peoples work. It used to be that if I wanted to steal the design for a car and do something useful with it, I had to have thousands of machines and employee's to get anything done. Now it just takes a file sharer, some good search skills and a few hours. You know what? If I stole the plans for the Corvette and built replica's that I just gave away, Chevy would sue my pants off and no one here would defend me or say I am morally justified. How is copying software any different? Just because it's easier? Just because you don't think you're going to get caught? Just because you figure, "well it's only me"? Just because so many people do it, so you feel it's socially acceptable? Give me a break. Piracy kills business, so cut it out.

I've said it twice, I'll say it a third time. There are too many free and easily options available for learning to justify piracy. If you want to learn, grab one of those.

Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.

- Barry LePatner

Adobe's astronomical pricing is caused by millions of individuals who pirate Adobe software; that reminds me of the riddle "Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?"

It would seem a much easier solution for Adobe to lower their prices to make software affordable to the masses. It's much more difficult for the masses to organize themselves and make a unified effort to stop pirating so that Adobe might possibly lower prices.

Additionally, Adobe isn't making any regional pricing considerations. Their suites are slightly more expensive in Thailand than they are in the US, yet the average household income here is a fraction of that in the states. They cannot seriously expect to sell their product in a market like this without making some pricing consideration. They are refusing to do that, and we can see the result: Thailand has one of the least apologetic software pirating cultures in the world.

I would have to say that looking at the big picture, Adobe might be very happy to keep their pricing structure in place and to have millions of people pirating their software worldwide. Why? To keep competitors like Lemkesoft out of the global consciousness and off of people's PayPal receipts. Possibly, Adobe's greatest fear is that one day the computing throngs might wake up and see that there are some really good cheap alternatives to their software.

If Adobe wants to be the Louis Vuitton of graphic software, then they are traveling down the correct path. LV also charges a premium for their goods and are heavily pirated. It looks like the same business model to me.

Um, Photoshop Elements?

People aren't being denied air, water, or food here. The masses don't need Adobe software. It is ludicrous to blame a company's pricing structure for one's unethical behavior.

I am not so sure there is a direct cause/effect between piracy and high prices. High prices are high because of basic capitalism. You charge what the market will bear. Adobe is doing very well at the prices they charge. If the prices were really too high, they would not sell enough, and they would have to lower them. Everyone should stop buying it if it really isn't that good for the price.

But they haven't. On the contrary, they are one of the more successful companies. Those buyers who really know, apparently see the value at the price.

Plus, the Adobe tools are intended for professionals. If you aren't doing that kind of work, you don't need them and you have no right to expect them to lower the price just for you. These companies price for people and who can make the purchases pay for themselves and who can (At least in the US) get a tax write-off as a business expense.

Why does a household user need Illustrator? Or Photoshop? (Again, there's Photoshop Elements for very cheap.)

Isn't Apple just as evil because of their pricing of Final Cut Studio and Shake, and the original price of Aperture? What's the deal with Google selling Google Earth Pro for $400?

Ask any musician, photographer, filmmaker, cook, race car driver, construction worker, doctor, etc. If you are a professional, your tools and equipment will be engineered to professional, not household, standards and therefore cannot be cheap. The pros will tell you, if you try to use cheap tools, you will fail. And ask the same people: Where is software cost on the list of expenses compared to other tools? In many cases it will be at or near the bottom. So many quality pro tools (musical instruments and gear, SLRs and lenses, video accessories, the equipment required for car racing, restaurant, construction, medical, etc.) costs $1000 or more, while much software is priced under $1000 with features continuing to rise over time.

One of the biggest mistakes people make is leaving software out of the computer budget. Every time a friend asks me about pricing Macs and PCs I ask them what software they will need. They look at the MacBook thinking $1100 and tell me they need Office and I say "So your budget is $1250?" (they're usually students). If they hadn't thought of that then I say "Well you need to account for that in your budget." It's no different than needing RAM. If it's part of the deal, you'd better budget for it or make some adjustments or you're being unrealistic about your ability to pay for what you want. (We could go into how that's become a bad habit all the way up to the government itself...let's just say it's another bad habit to avoid in our lives.)

Much of the literature I see from Adobe, both print and electronic, is directed toward those whom they call 'the Creative Professional.'

My dad had made his living as a graphic artist in the mostly pre-computer graphics era, 1945 to 1985. Many of the tools of his trade were quite expensive. Drawing tables, light boxes, compressors for air brushes, paper, pens, inks, velum for masking, etc did not come cheaply.

To make his living as a professional, he had to consider that in his budgeting, and in the pricing of the product of his labour.

Would theft on a large scale (comparable to that of software piracy) of this equipment and supplies en route between the manufacturers of the items and the retail sellers of the items, be considered wrong?

Here's a slant along the lines of CAlvarez' - I know a guy (this really is not me) who writes workflows in AppleScript for a number of graphics and publishing operations; an entirely internet operation.

He doesn't own much of the software these companies use and would have to visit them physically to use theirs. He is not himself a graphic artist and doesn't really know much about using the software, but he knows a lot about AppleScript and the dictionaries of those apps. He follows CA's practice. Is he an evil, immoral person with whom I should no longer associate?

It sounds as if these graphics and publishing companies are benefitting from the fellow who is creating applescripts to improve their work flow. He's being paid for his efforts.

By pirating the software for which he is writing workflows, he is keeping his costs down, and therefore is more competitive in the marketplace. This also keeps the costs down for the graphics/publishing companies, which then keeps the price of their products down. This then can be viewed as a good thing. Except that the developers of the software are losing income, as mentioned in previous posts.

It will require a change in consciousness regarding what is considered bad form. The fellow mentioned above is profiting from his pirating despite not using the software to create graphics or to directly publish. With a certain change in viewpoint across our society, there may be pressure for those benefitting, such as the graphics/publishing companies, who are presumably using licensed copies of the software, to provide licensed copies for those who are benefitting them.

One must pay copyright fees for using work created by others, such as photos used by graphic artists in the software about which we're speaking. If one is creating an applescript, if one is creating a full blown major app, if one is creating an advertisement, and using something which is the fruit of someone else's creativity, it is considered proper form to pay for that.

All that said, one need not disassociate oneself from friendship with the aforementioned low life. It's okay to be friends with people who do things we might not consider moral.

Elsewise, lawyers would have no friends, eh?

I don't know about that, but I do think he should charge enough for his services to be able to legally own all of his tools and resources.

As a glassblower, I often took special orders. Because they sometimes interrupted production and often required me to purchase tools and materials that I might never need again, I charged accordingly.

And I, as a consulting engineer, occasionally needed access to software that I wouldn't have ordinarily used myself. I usually tried to arrange to have the company buy a copy for me, borrowed a seat from them if the software license could be transferred to me temporarily, Timbuktued to their machines (I own quite a few licenses for TB2 that I no longer use), etc.

In some cases the SW houses were willing to permit a short-duration trial license for the job either as a regular practice or by persuasion on the phone, so I never had to steal one. Also, as a professor in an Engineering school (now retired), I had access to several programs for which the school had a license (like the AutoDesk suite). Using those for my own gain was as close as I got to cheating, and I rarely did it.

Again thinking about tools and creativity, if you had been a professor in the fine art school, you would have been creating a piece using materials which probably would have been purchased by the school. Would that work be considered your intellectual/creative property, or would it be considered the school's? My fuzzy old brain is trying to think of instances, usually involving research I think, but also of material objects, where the school has retained the intellectual property rights/ownership rather than those who created 'the whatchamacallit.'

You'll find that that's quite variable from school to school, it certainly was in the three universities I taught at. If the "intellectual property" is funded by a research agency, they and the university share rights with you the inventor/composer/artist/author. If the work is unsponsored, but done on University premises and/or on their time, it's supposed to be shared with them. If done on your own time with your own materials, it's yours -- those conditions being a bit fuzzy vis-a-vis software or drafting tables, etc.

I'm a bit confused, as to some of these posts in this thread.

Anyway, I forget what the URL to the news article was, but a person recently sued OpenOffice, using GIMP and Firefox as examples of free programs to 'compete' with 'paid' software...

I'm not sure if there is a lawsuit, but googling openoffice and lawsuit brought up these urls:

http://www.linuxelectrons.com/articl...40914141417417

http://beranger.org/index.php?fullarticle=1945

http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl...38229&from=rss

It would be a shame if micro$oft can scuttle the openoffice project.

This seems to be fodder for a whole new thread.

im all for "Ethical egoism" as Wikipedia calls it.
Ethical egoism
Self interest for sure.

not sure if anyone wants to rant about morals, but if im up for it if anyone does.

Do you believe it justifies piracy software piracy? According to some of it's adherents it might not. From the Wikipedia page -

This philosophy in any variation is too similar to amoralism for me to accept it as valid. This is not a conclusion based on religion - I do not believe religion to be a prerequisite for morality.

Your rationalizations for software piracy are logically fallacious as well as morally misguided.

Been there, done that. ;)

I think we'll avoid that discussion.

To slightly play devil's advocate...Adobe has taken one great stride in their licensing agreements. I first noticed it in CS2, but perhaps it was started before then.

Basically, if you have a legit copy of CS2 on your computer at work, you can legally install it (the same license of course) on your home computer also. The only requirement is that both copies are not run at the same time. I'm not sure how this works with a Corporate Licenseing package since it uses one number for everyone.

At least Adobe has taken one step towards doing the practical thing. They realize, or heard enough feedback, that creative professionals are working from home a lot and don't feel like spending the money for a "spare" copy.

I understand there are alternatives, and so does Adobe...but this is a customer-centric policy they never had to implement. This old thread has more info. And no, I don't work for them. I did in the past...but that was a long time ago

Personally I feel the software piracy laws are working just fine. It's somewhat of a "equal reaction" to the level of theft. Software companies know that piracy is rampant in universities. Unlike the RIAA they have a drop of warm blood, and don't target them. *I Think* they realize that a) students are going to support their software in the future, b) students don't have much money, 3) students aren't making a profit from the use of the software...with exceptions of course...but even then they aren't making gobs and gobs of money like Chiat/Day.

Accordingly most software piracy shakedowns are Joe Schmoes selling Windows Vista and Brokeback Mountain DVDs out of their trunk. I've never heard of an individual being busted for downloading Photoshop from LimeWire.