It is when you pirate and keep using the multi-billion dollar annual profit corporation’s software, you are empowering them to overprice.

Here is how I think of it. It doesn’t matter when the ‘little guy’ pirates software. But when there are only these little guys who are used to working with only the software made by these corporations, there is a market, only for those who possess the skills using those software.

You want to put a better case and a stronger hold against these corporations, start using and contributing to open source initiatives (like GIMP when compared to Photoshop). Make it, what one would call an industry norm. That is when they cannot overprice their software.

That is when you would have made if fair for everyone.

When you look at it from that point of view, any corporation with multi-billion dollar annual profits and fat cats at the helm that excludes the struggling little guy from being competitive in business by wantonly overpricing the laborless copy fees of their so-called intellectual property, so that they can go from rich to richer, is more of an “immoral” bane to society than end-user piracy.

The little guy is just trying to get his fair share. The idea that only the rich are noble and deserving of good things is a propagandist sham. Ask for reasonable compensation for reasonable labor, stop kissing up to the rich and powerful, share and share alike… and the world will be a better place.

Notice how Adobe reduces the price ONLY when they see a poor market (as in China) that is driven to piracy for sheer survival… then they sweep in like vultures and try to bleed as much money out of the situation as they can. Suddenly, they are rewarding the “immoral” behavior with a discount?

“Immorality” is sometimes not such a black and white phenomenon. I personally think piracy is fueled by years of debauchery and immoral behavior on the side of shameless, greedy, exploitative copyright holders such as the RIAA, and this is their comeuppance.

It is when we go to the extend of piracy/stealing to use a software, then it is us who is creating this demand for Photoshop giving Adobe the monopoly on pricing their software.

What we have to do is, not depend on Photoshop for our workflow - make extensive use of alternatives, and influence others to do the same, then Adobe has competition.

The demand we create in the market makes them not to lower their prices.

a book doesn’t. it needs physical materials.

When a software creator is not paid for the software when someone else uses it, then I class it as ‘theft’. Seems like we cannot come to an agreement between this difference in view, so we can leave it at that.

On a more curious note, what is the cut-off price for a piece of software, above which do you think priacy is allowable?

If a non-professional individual, the kind who would never pay 1000 dollars for Photoshop (or even 100 dollars!) pirates a copy, Adobe doesn’t lose a dime. In fact they make money. How? Free marketing. That person will help popularize the product. If I were Adobe, I would give the product for free to non-professionals.

By pricing its software so high, Adobe makes it clear that their target customers are corporations, not individuals. Consider video games, which often cost a lot more to make and earn much higher profits than Photoshop or similar products. At 50 bucks, they are priced for individuals, and a strong case can be made against game piracy, because if you pirate and play a game you *are* the kind of person that would have gone out and bought it, and therefore, the company that made it deserves that money.

If we are not looking for specific photo-manipulations, then GIMP can do almost what Photoshop can do - at you can follow those Photoshop tutorials.

And practice works too. No matter what the software.