Poll: Are you a software pirate?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1532453

by lukeqsee • 16 years ago

34 96 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

sophacles2• 16 years ago

Honestly, with the exception of a few things work pays for (and I don't need outside of work -- looking at you outlook calendar), I have no need for any software that isn't (legally) freely available. If I owned a mac myself, I would consider buying a copy of omnigraffle, but, again, I don't ever have use cases for it outside of work...

In fact, when I have bought software in the past, I have ended up pretty disappointed with it. Most recently, I was having hard drive issues (fat fingered a partition delete on the wrong drive). At a friends suggestion I bought eazeus to recover it. This $50 purchase was a giant waste of money, and did nothing to fix it. Later another friend pointed me at a free tool (testdisk) that did fix it. This seems to be the common experience for me -- pay software is way over hyped and under performing.

Does this ring true for anyone else? Is there some magic software out there that is worth the money in personal life any more?

Aside: exception to all of the above is video games. I have no problem buying the occasional game.

shin_lao• 16 years ago

There's a couple of software I'm happy to pay for, sound software, utilities, etc.

If I see a software I like, I pay for it if I have to.

I find that perfectly acceptable (eg to pay for software I use). Software is expensive to make.

sophacles2• 16 years ago

I too have no problem paying for software I use. I just prefer to use no-charge software, as I rarely find for-money software that is better than the no-charge equivalent. If it is not better, why would I pay for no-benefit?

yozhik• 16 years ago

I have felt this way for a long time: In general, the more you pay for software, the worse it is (this is why anything with the word 'Enterprise' in the title frightens me). Note: I don't play many games, so this may not apply to them.

bphogan• 16 years ago

I know I'm in the minority here, but Photoshop is worth every penny to me. I don't upgrade to every version (I usually skip every other one) but I don't steal it, and I certainly don't find GIMP to be an honest substitute. If you dabble in graphics, or are making things for the web, it's fine. If you do some of the things I do, GIMP just doesn't have the workflow or the features yet.

I really don't want to turn this into a holy war, but I have found Photoshop to be an exception to the "the more you pay the worse it is" argument. As a general rule, though, I agree - most everything I use is open-source.

sliverstorm3• 16 years ago

It is true, there is a lot of throwaway software out there. Things are complicated even more when the free stuff is better than the paid stuff (Imgburn anyone?) Just about the only miscellaneous 3rd party software I have paid for in recent memory was mIRC, because no other IRC client for Windows ever satisfied me and I found a discount worth $10. Essentially, there is no little 'killer app' I have found that just magically fills my computer world with unicorns and rainbows, or frankly was even worth using.

The real pillars of software though- Photoshop, Matlab, Orcad, and so on- accept no substitutes (well, except for possibly their direct competitors). Maybe it's a result of the sky-high pricing, but they generally really are good (and even if they aren't perfect, they are still the best)

mirkules2• 16 years ago

You are right about Photoshop, but I would argue that Octave is an acceptable, free, and Matlab-compatible substitute for Matlab. I did my entire Masters degree in Octave -- it was good enough for me. (The one thing I know Matlab supports that Octave doesn't is a Matlab-to-C compiler)

reynolds2• 16 years ago

I really only use free software. Outside of software development I don't really have any other software on my laptops. I have purchased tools and never pirate them. Is pirating more of a Windows user's thing?

mvalle• 16 years ago

I think it is. I only use un-pirateable software.

PStamatiou• 16 years ago

> Is pirating more of a Windows user's thing?

No. I know many designer/Mac folk that have never paid for any Adobe software in their lives and they pride themselves on each CS update so they can play with new brushes in Photoshop. (Okay I'm being a bit sensationalist.. CS5 Photoshop does bring in some pretty nifty content aware features)

reynolds2• 16 years ago

True. I guess what I really meant is that if you're using a platform where most everything is free you don't really need to pirate software. Macs, in my opinion, could almost be lumped in with Windows.

robryan2• 16 years ago

I think culture does play a part, and reasonable pricing. It's easy for someone to justify pirating windows, especially if it's not their main operating system compared with OSX which is at a price point that no one but a broke teenager would really consider pirating it.

pbhjpbhj• 16 years ago

Please correct me if I'm wrong, I may well be on this - approx Amazon prices.

Win 7 is from about £75 (home/student); Mac OS X 10.6 is from about £25.

With Windows you get all the upgrades free until the next major release. With Mac OS X you pay for point releases and that is the price we see here? I note that Amazon (UK) has OS X 10.5 priced at c.£110.

From Apple Computer's website, http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1338:

Reference releases; update vs. upgrade

Mac OS X v10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5 themselves are not downloadable updates, they are reference releases, also called upgrades. This means, for example, you can't upgrade from Mac OS X v10.3 to Mac OS X v10.5 via a downloadable installer. Reference releases are available from the Apple Store online, Apple Retail Stores, and Apple Authorized Distributors (AAD).

nailer2• 16 years ago

Perhaps, but when I was a kid I used Linux and pirated Loki games, Transgaming, proprietary OSS drivers, VMware, and other bits and pieces. I'm clean now :^)

lanstein• 16 years ago

Pretty sure the winning answer would be 'Not Anymore'

lhnz• 16 years ago

I am one of those awful people that pirates Photoshop and barely uses it, but prefers the UX and feature set to GIMP's.

However, other than that I almost only use free software at work.

robryan2• 16 years ago

I can admit to this, to be honest the workload that it gets from me is resizing images and as a colour picker, obviously there is no reason I couldn't use virtually anything for this, just had it sitting there for a long time and got used to going to it for any very basic image task I run into.

I've actually done more advanced stuff in Paint.Net which I was using for a couple of weeks in an intern position to touch up some website images.

Random_Person• 16 years ago

I did-- until I discovered Steam.

pavelludiq• 16 years ago

Other than a copy of XP i use about 2 hours a week to play some crappy game(for which i also didn't pay), i don't pirate software. Everything i need is either an apt-get install or a git clone away.

lionhearted• 16 years ago

I'm living on the road right now off of a laptop, so I don't carry much physical media with me. If I wipe my hardcore and do a clean install, I download all the software kit that I use - most of which I've owned physical copies of at various points. I have pirated some crazy high-end software occasionally to play with. (Hmm, I hope I didn't just admit to committing grand theft copyright)

I used to buy my games, after buying one copy I'd download it if I wanted it again, I just didn't like having physical media around. I'm off video games probably for the rest of my life so I haven't tried Steam, but it looks like a good solution for gamers. I know I bought Baldur's Gate once or twice, and then re-downloaded it from Napster or Kazaa or whatever a couple more times. I must've bought three or four copies of Final Fantasy VIII for the Playstation and later Playstation 2 after moving, lending them out and not getting them back, or whatever. Great game if you delve into it, the mechanics system on it is very enjoyable if you decide to play it a deeper level, probably the most enjoyable Final Fantasy for me, though Final Fantasy X was the last one I played, that was kind of the swan song for video games for me.

Who knows, if I have a massive exit or reach some vast milestones, maybe I'll take a one month vacation where I catch up with a decade or two of video games and play the new Grand Theft Autos, Oblivion, Mass Effect, things like that. I wind up hearing about all that stuff secondhand and it does look pretty enjoyable. I'll probably play team-based shooters and strategy games with my future kids later, I'm actually quite excited about the idea of doing that.

josefresco• 16 years ago

There should be a third category for "improperly licensed" software offenders. I find that uses of personal software for commercial purposes is quite common. So not quite piracy but still not 100% legit.

sabat• 16 years ago

I believe they prefer to be called Swashbuckling Americans.

Yaggo2• 16 years ago

Yes. I pirated WinXP in order to run IE for testing purposes.

weaksauce2• 16 years ago

You know they give you a version of xp and vista for testing ie right? It's a virtual machine image preloaded but time limited.

http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?familyid=21E...

roam• 16 years ago

Last time I checked there was no way of getting those images working outside of Virtual PC.

Yaggo2• 16 years ago

Well, I still would have to pirate WinXP to run VirtualPC.

technomancy• 16 years ago

The last non-freely-licensed software I actually wanted to use was Mac OS X 10.2. These days if I can't modify it, I'm not interested. That said, I've paid money for several free software projects since then. (Clojure, Rails, CyanogenMod, and a plugin to let me use skype from Pidgin.)

jokermatt999• 16 years ago

I don't pirate software because I have no need to. I mostly use my computer for recreational purposes, and all of the software I use is freely available. For professional programs, my employer has covered the cost, so that isn't an issue either. It seems that most regular consumers have no need to actually purchase software as long as they are savvy enough to know about the multitude of free options.

SeriousGuy3• 16 years ago

no right now thanks to MSDN I get most of the stoftware via the university. Before yeah, esp MATLAB which is worth being pirated :D

aw3c22• 16 years ago

I was really really close to do that since my brother suggested it but then discovered that the FOSS tool Octave runs all my Matlab stuff perfectly. It is only very basic matrix manipulation and calculations though.

SeriousGuy3• 16 years ago

I have found Octave to be lacking some aspects, also there is a significant network effect with Matlab, since most of the research groups publish code in Matlab, you gotta have it if you want to compete with them

sliverstorm3• 16 years ago

I'm the other way, I consider MATLAB to be worth buying. First piece of software I paid for, actually.

SeriousGuy3• 16 years ago

I agree, one of the few softwares worth paying for out of your pocket ! :D Though being in India I didn't had that much money.

neilk2• 16 years ago

It's interesting that "No" is winning. If we had run this poll in 1990 I'm sure it would have been about 99% in the Yes camp.

Guessing about reasons... what do you all think?

- Software moved to the web and is funded by subscriptions, advertising, corporate behemoths, donations, or mere hope.

- Free software answers a lot of people's needs, especially on HN.

- Operating systems are good enough that we don't need a lot of random utilities.

- Shareware and $10 utility programs just aren't being written these days, because they'd be instantly pirated.

(By the way, when you guys say you don't pirate software, does that include fonts?)

msmith• 16 years ago

Yes to all of your reasons, but I think you missed the biggest one:

- Many of us produce and sell software and we understand that pirating makes it harder for people like us to make a living at it.

sprout• 16 years ago

I actually voted both yes and no, since I do pirate software, but only software I own. I don't consider it piracy, because it doesn't impact anyone's ability to make a living off of it (it usually just saves support costs) but the law sees it differently.

Also I did pirate a game from the early 90's because I couldn't figure out where to send a check.

http://downloadgameonline.blogspot.com/2008/08/enchantasy-qu...

Actually can't even find the game itself anymore, I'm sure I have it on my hard disk somewhere. Think it was by Eric G. Abel or somesuch. I would very much like to send the guy a check and get a legit key.

_delirium4• 16 years ago

Wasn't that true in 1990 also? Lots of hackers worked for or owned software companies, yet lots swapped disks or downloaded from BBSs as well.

MartinCron• 16 years ago

There's a weird convergence going on here. I'm an old fogey now (34) and it seems that everyone younger than me has little to no respect for intellectual property rights. From their perspective, downloading a movie using Bittorrent is not ethically any different than renting it from Blockbuster.

At the same time, so many good things are either free or bundled with the hardware so you don't feel the marginal cost of them. You don't "need" to pirate MS Office to have a usable computer, OO and Google Docs are pretty damn good these days.

A lot of gaming has moved to consoles (much harder to pirate) or online subscriptions like WOW or Steam, which also make piracy more difficult.

And yes, when I say I don't pirate software, I include fonts in that list. There are plenty of good free fonts, and many great fonts are pretty affordable.

_delirium4• 16 years ago

I think one factor is that the piracy scene isn't as closely connected to the hacker/maker scene as it used to be. In the 70s/80s, copy-protection cracking attracted a lot of curious hacker types as a sort of challenge problem, and lots of hackers got their start in low-level programming by stepping through a game or an app in a debugger. I think at one point all the best freely available x86 asm tutorials were written by cracking groups, so even people not really into that sort of thing would come across it as just part of the culture; it wasn't at all unusual for even legit educational textfiles to be signed with a fancy ASCII signature and 'greetz' to various handles and groups.

The demoscene came from there as well: demos were originally graphical eyecandy inserted into cracked software, and for years, cracking groups and demo groups were either the same, or had huge overlap in membership. So if you were to hang out at a HackerNews BBS in 1980 or 1990, I think there'd be a lot more rubbing shoulders with people who spent their free time cracking software and operating pirate BBSs, because they were the same people building cool things and writing the BBS equivalent of tech blog posts.

clistctrl• 16 years ago

When I was a kid, yes, today not at all. As a 14 year old there's no way I could afford Adobe Photoshop, or Visual Studio 6 (or be able to justify the reduced cost versions for a student to my parents). So I downloaded them, and learned to use the software, and how to program C++, and learned the MFC libraries. As an adult I have paid for the full versions, and upgrade versions at least twice for each product. I'm thankful for piracy because if it didn't exist I would be living a completely different life. I think it also worked out for the companies too. My first job was as a graphics designer at a cable station. It was because of my experience with the latest versions of the software that I was able to make a convincing argument to my Superior to upgrade their software suite. When I transitioned into a developer role (which has always been something I'm better at) I was very familiar with Visual C++ and MFC, so I gravitated towards those technologies.

mcantor• 16 years ago

I pirated Photoshop for years as a teenager, until I was good enough with it to get paid as a freelancer. With my first check from a freelance gig, I bought a licensed copy. In this sense, Photoshop paid for itself, but it could not have happened without piracy. These days it may be doable without piracy, since academic versions are more widely available and distributed to schools.

mirkules2• 16 years ago

Most academic licenses specifically prohibit commercial use (example: Visual Studio), so using academic versions to make money is not legal either

nailer2• 16 years ago

Same here. I manage to do my job fine without anything costing more than 140 bucks - a professional Windows SSH client that support MS CryptoAPI for my day job and VMware Workstation / Fusion are about the most expensive things I've purchased. I avoid Photoshop by using Pixelmator, which I've purchased, and exporting to PSD.

aw3c22• 16 years ago

I pirate software I legally own because their "protection" makes it hard or impossible for me to run them otherwise. It starts with games on Wine, goes over a certain operating system (whose company I do not want to call each time )in VirtualBox and ends with games on Windows that want to install what I call malware.

I use Linux and use mostly FOSS software.

steiger• 16 years ago

Rarely, yes. Mostly, no.

I am willing to pay for every proprietary software that:

- Has no good free alternative

- Pricing is not abusive

If there's no good free or even paid alternative and pricing is abusive, I don't hesitate to pirate it.

I also proudly share other copyrighted media (music, videos...).

defrex• 16 years ago

The only thing I pirate anymore is Windows XP. It lives in a VM and only gets run for browser testing. Everything else is Free Software.

neilk2• 16 years ago

If you're pirating software, what are you pirating?

parbo• 16 years ago

I used to be, then I gradually transitioned to FLOSS alternatives. Four years ago (I think) I finally ditched my pirated Windows copy and switched to Ubuntu.

jim_dot• 16 years ago

Not usually. But I also don't use a whole lot of software to be paid for.

I mean I pay for games and what not, but I do all my coding in stuff like Xcode that is free anyway. Stuff like Adobe Photoshop I have never paid for because it's way too expensive for what I use it for and all the alternatives frankly suck

blhack• 16 years ago

When I was a lot younger, yeah. Now? Open source has priced most everything out of the market for me. My databases are MySQL, my operating system is OpenBSD (except on stuff provided by work), my web server is apache (although I keep meaning to try out nginx), I code in python, mail is postfix/courier-imapd, ftp is vsftpd...

For any DTP stuff, I use GIMP/Inkscape/Scribus.

Looking at my desktop, the only commercial software that I have up is dameware mini remote control; I don't know of a good free alternative for this and yes, I paid for it.

I guess that, to me, there isn't really much worth pirating out there. Dameware, I guess, but they actually will give me a free trial for pretty much ever and bug me to buy it until I do.

pclark• 16 years ago

Adobe Photoshop CS5 : $1500. What do you think?

xist• 16 years ago

The better question - do you make money from using it?

macemoneta• 16 years ago

I switched all our machines to Linux (currently Fedora 13) 10 years ago, and never looked back. All our software since is free.

c1sc0• 16 years ago

I don't need to: most of the stuff I use is open source. When I do need a license for something it's probably produced by a small startup at reasonable prices, so I don't even think about it.

juxtaposition• 16 years ago

I am a student and a hobbyist. Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, Maya and Sony Forge are examples of great software that I really want to use and love to use, but simply could never afford as a student. I'd add Windows 7 and the Office pack to the list, if my school didn't offer free licenses for them.

And to be honest, even if I was making decent money and using those tools as a pro, I'd still only pay for the software if I had a reason to believe that someone was angry at me and might rat on me. Actually, even then I'd rather install a self-destruct mechanism on my workstation and encrypt my hard drives.

I'm not trying to boycot anything either. I think it's a good thing that developers get paid for making good software.

Piracy is just so easy and care free, that the only pressure not to do it comes from within yourself, if it comes at all. The question is no longer "Is this right? Am I being a good person?", where you reflect on yourself trough popular morality, but rather a personal two part question of "Do I want this product?" and "Do I want to give away my money?". The answers are "Yes" and "No", and in my mind the questions are totally unrelated to each other. Paying for software would feel like flushing the money down the toilet when it's actually easier to just download it.

PS: In the end, if I had to pretend that I cared, I could honestly say that I believe I would be generating more wealth for the world when I am allowed to concentrate on creating and learning instead of concentrating on worrying about money and working at McDonald's to pay for my Photoshop license.

junkbit3• 16 years ago

I think it benefits these companies for students to train in Maya/3D Studio

lallysingh• 16 years ago

I make software for money myself. What kind of an ass would I have to be to pirate other people's software?

trainwreckin• 16 years ago

The day I make any sort of money from the software I pirated to make it happen is the day I'll start buying licenses for it.

rmc2• 16 years ago

I run Linux and just happen to only care about open source tools, so I have no need to pirate software. TV shows, Films, music, well.... ;)

naner• 16 years ago

Not anymore. Early in college I pirated a ton of software and used almost none of it. Mid-college I started using linux and shortly after just stuck with free software.

I can afford to buy expensive software now but the truth is I don't really need much fancy software to get things done.

sirn• 16 years ago

The only pirated software in my machine is Adobe Photoshop. Living as a poor web developer in a poor country, single Photoshop license is 6 months worth of salary to me. No way I could afford that now, but I will in the future. Either that, or I hope Pixelmator will be able to replace Photoshop for web development in a near future.

oldgregg• 16 years ago

This poll is rubbish. "Are you a software pirate?" -- completely loaded question. You're not asking people if they use copyrighted software-- you're asking people to label themselves a PIRATE. Maybe I'll submit a poll about abortion "Are you a baby murderer?"

Maybe you should rewrite the poll "Do you believe in a free culture unencumbered by copyright laws that are specifically written to protect corporate interests?"

All this goes to show how much our language about copyright has been affected by the media and corporate interests.

corin_3• 16 years ago

I can't imagine there being anyone on HN who reads this poll and thinks "well I am always downloading software/films/etc illegally, but I certainly wouldn't call myself a pirate, so I'll vote no!"

It's not comparable to the abortion idea, because being called a "baby murderer" is pretty offensive, whereas being called a "software pirate" really isn't ever going to offend anyone who does download illegaly (many of which would most likely already refer to themselves as pirates).

theonetruebob2• 16 years ago

I think that reasoning would be more apt if the question were phrased, "Do you _steal_ software?" or, "Are you a software thief."

xiaoma• 16 years ago

No ships are being boarded. No raping, pillaging or murdering is occurring. The fact that people are calling illegal sharing "piracy" speaks volumes about the RIAA, MPAA and BSA's marketing efforts over the past few decades.

DanBlake• 16 years ago

When I was younger: Yes. Games, software, videos, etc..

Now: No on software. No on games. Besides the risk of virii, you dont get things like updates or patches. Its not worth it.

However, I still do actively download TV Shows + Movies occasionally. Its not because I wouldnt pay though, but moreso because there is no other ways to watch them from home.

viraptor• 16 years ago

Same as many others here. Copied a lot of stuff when I was a teenager (had 200+ floppies of BBS warez - those were the days...). Now I migrated to Linux completely and I don't really need any commercial apps. I buy some games once in a while though (World of Goo lately) and some music CDs.

These days I see the problem games producers face: When I wanted to play games, my parents would have to buy me one, and they wouldn't be keen to do that. Now that I'd happily buy a game which I really like, I'm not interested anymore.

The other problem is about apps - it's in company's best interest to give me (for example) a copy of Visual Studio as soon as I say I'm interested in it. Since I couldn't get it, I learned on djgpp and migrated to Linux as soon as I could. Now you can get new VS from MSDNA program at universities - I think it's still way too late.

GFischer• 16 years ago

My country (Uruguay) has some retarded laws that means that even if you purchase a valid copy of a software program from the US it's not a "legal" copy (my father found out the hard way that the Norton license he had bought in the US was not "legal").

And no, there are no legal ways to buy several programs - meanwhile piracy is unofficially tolerated by the government (there are shops that sell pirated versions of games and other software - not MS stuff or other companies with local presence). I do have every Microsoft program I use legally for instance (as they are available locally).

There are also several other grievances (think DVD region selection and all that) which strongly discourage purchasing software.

I tend to believe that I wouldn't have any illegal program if I lived in the US.

Edit: fittingly, I've had a (legal) copy of a game I purchased for a friend just detained at customs (used to be you could make small purchases without it winding up at customs, but it isn't so anymore). So some very nice paperwork and fees coming up - just for trying to be legal.

I'm not sure if Steam is legal here, but I wouldn't bet for it (it's probably a gray area and it should be OK)

logic• 16 years ago

I pirated an enormous amount of software (mostly games) as a kid for the Apple //e; there was a thriving gift culture around that kind of thing back then, and it seemed "normal". I grew out of that, but now I use open source software almost exclusively for my personal and professional day-to-day. There are very few pieces of software I've paid money for (directly; clients and employers are a different story), and most of them are in the "distractions" camp (iPhone games, indie titles for Linux).

That being said, there are a few pieces of commercial software I've used in the past for which there are no serious viable open source competitor, nor do I expect the level of interest in those areas to rise to the occasion. One example is IDA Pro; it's possibly the worst user UI I've ever had the displeasure of using, and yet there's nothing that comes even close to competing in it's niche. It's expensive, especially if you need support for an obscure processor, because the market for it is so small; but, if your day-to-day involves reverse engineering, it's worth every penny.

At one time, I'll admit that I had access to a pirated version of it; the price presents a significant barrier for an enthusiast, and a casual search of any torrent site will turn it up. It was easy to obtain. There's two things I took away from that.

First, I felt guilty about it, as I know Hex Rays (the company behind IDA Pro) is really only a couple of exceptionally dedicated folks who haven't priced their product the way they have to screw me, but because it was the only way to make it viable at all. There's two major users of IDA: reverse engineering professionals who won't have a problem with the price, and black hats who won't pay for it at any price. The price is, therefore, what it has to be to assure continued development, and I think most reasonable people can see that.

Second, I realized that the functionality I was using was only a small fraction of the whole product, so I implemented what was necessary for myself (in this case, an SH2 disassembler), and eliminated the guilt: the rest of the features were nice to have (multi-arch support, decent navigation, awesome graphing, x86 de-compilation support, etc), they weren't nice enough to warrant $1000 for what amounts to a hobby for me. I haven't used IDA since, and learned a lot about building an intelligent disassembler.

I see a few other products in this niche: Solidworks, Pro/E, MasterCam, and to a much lesser extent, certain pieces of Photoshop and the VMware ecosystems. All vertical-market applications that average folks don't need, but hobbyists would love to have access to (but are stopped by the price). In both the Photoshop and VMware cases, hobbyist-level versions have emerged (Photoshop Elements, VMware Server/Player, etc.) as a direct reaction to open source software eating away at that hobbyist market that builds their brand (GIMP, Xen, KVM, etc). In the cases of software like Pro/E, no such reasonable competition exists, so the pricing is what it is, and the hobbyist be damned.

I'm not sure if I'm actually going anywhere with this little story (other than incriminating myself, and probably assuring that I'll never be able to legally procure a copy of IDA at some point in the future), but perhaps someone can glean something useful from it.

corin_3• 16 years ago

I pirate all TV shows and films becase:

- I prefer storing on my HDD than in DVDs

- Living in the UK, it's the only way to get the TV shows I want to watch without waiting ages and ages after their air

- It lets me watch the beginning on shows/films I wouldn't otherwise bother trying, then decide if I want to keep watching them.

If I find a film that I actually enjoy and watch to the end, I do then buy it on DVD - but rarely watch the DVD, having already got the pirated copy. (I find now days I rarely watch films, more TV shows). I do have a TV license (in the UK) even though I only really watch TV shows that are ripped/downloaded.

Games - despite working in the games industry, I very rarely buy games (maybe a couple of titles a year), but I don't ever pirate them.

Software - I'm always happy to grab an illegal copy if a.) I want to see if I like it and there's no free trial available or b.) I want to learn what the software does, but won't use it after a couple of days.

For example I pirated Adobe Photoshop when I first got it and just messaged around with it. Once I started needing to use it for my job (not that I use it that often, or am any good with it) I bought a license.

With small software that doesn't have any real backing, even if I end up not using it much, I tend to pay for it if I like it, just to support the developer. (Examples: XChat, an IRC client, or UberTweet, a twitter application for the Blackberry).

I've just actually looked through all the installed programs on this computer, all legal.

Music, pretty much same as above - will download illegally first to see if I like it, if I want it in my regular collection then I buy it on iTunes (exception: if iTunes doesn't have it, or if it's only available in the US store which I can't use, I'll just keep the illegal version - except if I particularly want to support the artist in which case I buy/rip the CD)

So yeah, I answered "yes" to the poll, but (with the exception of TV shows) I keep it in moderation.

d0m• 16 years ago

I pay all mac software and use mainly linux as main operating system. For microsoft and big corporation such as adobe, I don't care about downloading illegal stuff. However, for small companies, I'm happy to pay for it if it's a good software.

corin_3• 16 years ago

I'd like to pitch a follow-up question to everyone answering "I used to, but now I use linux" or just "I use linux so no":

If you were to move back to Windows/Mac OR if you faced the same questions within a Linux environment, would you then pirate software?

junkbit3• 16 years ago

There are games like the new Settlers which have crazy DRM that has to be connected to the internet 24/7, even in single player mode, and there are games like Starcraft II which compel you to play online because the multiplayer experience is so good.

One of these will probably be the biggest selling PC game of the next 3 years.

motters• 16 years ago

For the past four or five years I've been using Linux and FOSS, and I've really had no motivation to download or use unauthorized copies of anything since the free software is in virtually all cases better than the proprietary options.

buro9• 16 years ago

I've said "Yes" but I'm in a grey area.

I'm a member of BizSpark and am developing for SharePoint inside VMWare images. BizSpark provided me with a set of licenses for Windows Server 2008 R2, but it's only really enough to build 1 whole environment (1 server license). As a result I've simply copied/branched my VMWare image so that I can have 2 instances, a dev and a test environment. The test being a snapshot of dev prior to installation of Visual Studio.

I suspect this is pirating because now I have 2 machines available from 1 licence, but then again... it's just an image of the same machine, still running on the same physical machine and really just represents an earlier snapshot of the dev machine.

Something's wrong when it's not simple enough to know whether you are or not, and when a developer program (BizSpark) doesn't really give you enough to do the job you need.

theonetruebob2• 16 years ago

Perhaps there is a certain perverse form of karma to software piracy. When you are a kid and all your family has is a crappy <$500 PC and you really want to learn to do something cool, you can't even afford student or lite versions of the big name development, drafting, or graphic design apps. So maybe you pirate them, learn to do something useful, get paid to do said useful thing, then buy a license or so to ensure the cycle for the next generation.

ashitvora• 16 years ago

I was but not anymore.

checoivan• 16 years ago

Like almost everyone else around here, I used to when I was a kid. Finding hard copies of software was hard. Even if I found them, I couldn't afford most programs like Turbo C or Visual C++ so downloading was a must.

Console games were super expensive and buying a game was rare. On the PC it was equally expensive ,plus the lack of HD space was very limiting. Not being able to fit a full install of 2 or 3 games made downloading a 'rip' a must.

Today: The feeling of opening Visual Studio or a new game box is as awesome as 10 years ago, but now I do it way more often :)

gradschool• 16 years ago

I was forced to buy a "license" for Windows when I bought the computer. I wiped it off at first but had a use for it a year later, so I downloaded it and ran it in a VM. Should I answer yes or no?

drKarl• 16 years ago

I find it curious that I can upvote both options in the poll...

maxharris3• 16 years ago

For all of you that answered "Yes", please don't pirate software. When you create anything, no one has a proper right to it except on your terms. Without you, that thing you've created would not exist. You should be concerned about proper rights because your life, along with everyone else's, depends on individual rights (this has always been true, but it should be quite obvious to us because our technologically advanced civilization - through which literally billions of us are supported artificially - is the product of man's mind, left free to act). No one could live without the right to their person and property. Without those rights, they would not have space to exist in, a body, food to eat, etc. In this way, respect for someone's intellectual property is just as important as respect for their physical property. As more people fail to respect the creator's terms, they will increasingly have less motivation^ (and resources, if that's the gating factor) with which to pursue and share ideas. A result of this is that pirates hurt themselves long-term: they are depriving themselves of future material and intellectual advances that their honest patronage would make possible. For example, a single $100 payment for a company that has millions of customers has an exceedingly small impact, but that is not the same thing as $0, and all those payments together result in wonderful products (or not, in which case the company stops getting so much money). A well-managed company with a bigger product development budget can pursue more ideas and build better products than they could with a smaller one.

The consequences of piracy for the pirate are arguably more severe than for the company getting ripped off. For example, take the case of a aspiring person trying to improve their vector illustration skills with the eventual goal of becoming a paid designer. Stealing a copy of Illustrator won't give them the same result as someone who pays for it. Someone who saved hundreds of dollars working at a low-paying job will be more motivated to put their investment to productive use than a pirate that just rips it off a torrent site, all else being equal. The trader who traded value for value (money for software) will do better work, and more of it. A pirate will be more likely to employ the same "creative method" that they used to get their ill-gotten software: "I'll just download the ideas, too. Why not?" Instead of just second-handedly copying designs from others, our honest artist will be more likely to actually learn their tool more fully and look to novel sources for inspiration: "I worked an entire summer to get Illustrator. I'm going to skip going to that party, fun as it may be in the short-term, because it means more to me to make that summer of hard work amount to something more than a shiny package on my shelf." Furthermore, by behaving ethically, they'll be able to more easily advocate for the kind of society that rewards people for using their minds, which is precisely what they need to survive as designers. (Our fledgling designer could not exist as a designer in a world where all people pirated their work; they would have to devote more of their time to supporting themselves some other way.)

To express this as a general principle: anything that you take by force of theft or fraud is against your long-term self-interest. It's like cheating on an exam - you might get a better grade short-term, but in the long-term, you are more likely to end up with a job you are unqualified for, with all of the ramifications that entails (performing badly [the cheater has not acquired the same depth of knowledge that an honest student has], getting fired, decreased self-esteem [as the cheater is left in doubt about whether they could have passed without cheating], decreased income, etc.)

^Motivation doesn't have to be financial. People who violate the terms of an open source license can drain the motivation out of a programmer that might otherwise be perfectly happy, stalling or even halting future work. Open source license violators violate exactly the same principle that software pirates do: that the creator of a work has a right to dictate the terms of its use.

rwhitman2• 16 years ago

I'm sorry but your argument that someone who buys legitimate software will produce better work is just ridiculous.

Mastery comes from practice, not sheer will - someone who has to work all summer to acquire Illustrator is going to be far less skilled than someone who spent the entire summer learning Illustrator on a pirated copy.

Almost every talented designer I know acquired their skills this way. I went to an art school and you could literally see the difference in skill level between students who had pirated & mastered software vs students that waited until college to get the educational license.

I ran circles around those people and ended up making money tutoring them. I got a head start on my career by freelancing during college because I learned the software before I attended school. I took jobs away from those people and left them in the dirt because of instead of waiting & saving for the upgrades I could master new features as they were released.

I honestly attribute most of my success in life to pirating software as a student.

Oh and the best artists routinely steal each other's work and have their work stolen. They just call it "inspiration".

maxharris3• 16 years ago

How do you know you wouldn't be better in some other way if you had not pirated the software? Perhaps you'd be great in another field, and stealing kept you from finding that out.

I think that it is as possible to escape the negative consequences of bad behavior as it is to escape the laws of thermodynamics.

Poll: Are you a software pirate?

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