Top 3 Reasons To Pirate Photoshop

Ok. Pirating is illegal. So you don’t do it. Its not worth the possible penalties.

Illegal, immoral… I find none of this logical. You all seem to forget a couple simple facts:

1) A book is simply a collection of letters and number that when arranged in a specific order produce meaning.

2) A computer program is a collection of ‘binary bits’ that when arranged in a specific order also produce meaning.

The major difference between the two is that one is physical and the other is meta-physical. Now consider this when I ask you these questions:

1) When was the last time you were called a thief for ‘borrowing’ a $75.00 book from the library?

2) Was it a crime for you to read that book because you did not purchase it?

I think you and most other people would answer ‘never’ to the first question and ‘no’ to the second.

Is it a crime to use pirated software? Yes it is because ‘mans law’ says it is.

Is it immoral? Absolutely not because you wouldn’t consider borrowing a book from the library immoral.

Over the years I have considered the issue of piracy quite deeply. What I have discovered is that those who are using pirated software are normal people, like you and I. These people are not seasoned criminals and they damn sure cannot afford $1,700 for a piece of software regardless of it’s use.

The problem that I see with the current situation is that most people are blind to the consequences of using pirated software. The threat of legal action is miniscule compared to the threat of espionage, identity theft and terrorism.

Do you think that true hackers are expending massive amounts of time, energy and expertise providing you with cracked software out of the kindness of their hearts? Absolutely not.

You will find several months or years later that the most wonderfully cracked software have extremely clever trojans built in that happily transmitted all of your activities and data to an anonymous destination.

IF you ever found out about it, the reason would be because your Anti-Virus or Anti-Spyware vendor found the trojan and added it to their definitions.

The better question would be: Is it legally and morally acceptable to crack popular software, embed trojan capabilities into it, then distribute it free on the internet so that unsuspecting NORMAL people find and download it.

That’s like planting a wireless microphone/camera inside a library book and returning it for someone else to check out so you can listen/watch in on their private life without their knowledge.

Yes Vyoma that is the classical argument that has been used since the inception of software and the discovery of piracy.

Regardless of the fact that a library has purchased a single copy - dozens or even hundreds of people are allowed to read that book.

Those people did not pay the retail value of the book because they read it by borrowing it from the library. The company producing the book will normally not suffer losses because those people may never have intended to purchase the book in the first place. No matter how you look at it - none of these people paid for the experience they received from reading that book.

Likewise - a software application is cracked and distributed throughout the internet and dozens or hundreds of people download it and use it. None of those people paid the retail price of the software but once again - the producing company will likely not suffer losses because those hundreds of people may never have intended to purchase the software to begin with. Similarly, none of these people paid for the experience they gained using that software.

Using your example Vyoma - if I were to purchase a single copy of some software and loan it out to people one at a time (even if I were to loan it out to hundreds of people over a period of time) it would not be a crime or immoral because I had paid for the initial copy.

Why would the fact that a hundred people used the book/software instantly or over a period of time matter. In the end a hundred people still read the book or used the software.

Immorality is illogical, Nulflux?

Try working and developing a program for a couple of years. All that programming, designing, use of scripting, imagine that - All gone in one instant when someone just decides that they can’t pay for Photoshop, and they decide to download it illegally. Is that illogical all of a sudden? Think of it as plagiarism. You’re stealing their works, without giving them credit. Without the credit, all they’ve done has gone to waste, and the hard months they had to put through to develop this program suddenly fades away. Is it right to take that away from those who have worked so hard to make the program that you so use? Just because you can’t afford it means it’s suddenly alright to just take it from their hands when they’re not looking?

Adobe is a corporation. They get their profit from their product. Without their profit, they won’t be much of a company if they don’t get paid for what they’ve been doing. Wouldn’t you feel the same way if you were a programmer on Adobe and then one of your friends can’t pay for it, so he downloads it illegally, taking profit away from you.

If you can find it in your soul to say that stealing is right…. You ought to rethink that.

Adobe went after me when I tried to pirate Acrobat 8.0. It sent an e-mail to my ISP with a log of the torrent download. Adobe charges $449 for Acrobat. It charges $999 for Photoshop CS3 Extended. If those prices aren’t theft, they’re definitely extortion. The fact that Adobe took offense at my unwillingness to pay that much for their software shows how cold-hearted they are. I am a student, so I can’t afford them. I tried CS3 and it installed spyware on my computer called “Bonjour.” Given their behavior, Adobe doesn’t deserve any money at all from any one. Microsoft is a better company than Adobe. [snip], Adobe. Pirate their products. Never buy them.

I disagree about the extreme cost of the program that makes it completely unaffordable to students and someone who only wants to learn.

But I also disagree about the ones that are professionals and use pirated software in order to gain money.

You still miss the point #9, someone who has the money to purchase the software is not normally the one trying to find a free copy. The people pirating your software WERE NOT POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS to begin with.

By the way Steve when somebody cannot pay for something it is not a decision it is a reality. You act as if by changing their mind they would pay you. They simply cannot.

I am only trying to show that this piracy issue has been blown out of proportion and when someone downloads a copy of some software for free that the company does not necessarily incur a loss because a profit may not have been there to gain in the first place.

I AM a software engineer, I’ve been designing software, art and music since roughly 1993. I DO have commercial applications available that people pirate regularly but I don’t automatically assume that I have taken a loss because of it.

The one reason I am tempted to pirate photoshop is that there are tutorials and support for photoshop that I have not been able to find for the open-source alternatives I currently use. Photoshop has a massive user base and for that reason, it’s far easier to find help, addons and support for their software than programs like GIMP.

That said, I haven’t downloaded it because I believe piracy is wrong, but all the same, if it wasn’t priced so high, then I’d buy it legally. I’m only a hobbyist. I can’t afford to pay $600 for it - and then inflated prices for the UK on top of that!

Piracy is not the same as theft. If you steal something from me, I lose it. If I write a program, and you take it without paying, I don’t lose anything. I don’t gain, but I don’t lose.

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.

Software like photoshop has UNLIMITED “COPIES”

a book doesn’t. it needs physical materials.

Stealing from Adobe is like stealing from Enron. It’s really hard to feel guilty for pirating their software, even if you call it stealing. If they charged $25 for Photoshop, I might agree with you. I’d use the GIMP, but I’ve already read books and watched training videos on how to use Photoshop. I’ve also customized it with plug-ins. My friend told me to use Photoshop a few years ago and I know any better.

I think too many people kiss up to money and power, espousing the belief that you only “deserve” something if you can “afford” it. What does that mean, anyway? That is an elitist (or wanna be elitist) mentality that ignores the fact that most wealth in this world is either inherited or built on the premise of exploiting and/or excluding the weak, in some cases to the extent of child-labor and slavery.

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.

Adobe’s pricing is just outrageous. In the EU at least. After using the student licence I commited myself to legal ways and actually was willing to purchase it. Allas, as it seems the US-pricing was steep but reasonable (and even understandable), but once entering the local Adobe site these prices were blown up with almost 200%!!! Yes thats right, if that’s the way Adobe wants to play…… all I got to say for myself is :
ARRRRR ARRRRRHHH matey! ARRRRRRRR!!!!!!