10 Practical Reasons Not to Pirate

[Brink]

You make a finite amount of money. Typically, that money gets spent on essentials, like paying the rent, your bills and procuring fine single malt scotches. With so many needs to attend to, by the end of the month, most folks find themselves with precious little scratch left over to spend on their wants, meaning that decisions and sacrifices will have to be made. Will you be going out to dinner or seeing a movie? Socking away a bit of coin for a rainy day or for a vacation? Buying software or… not? After all, why buy when you can pirate everything most of today’s popular titles for the low, low cost of free? Well, we’ll tell you. Before you decide to go torrent an application or game you’ve been keen on, consider our 10 practical arguments against piracy, and always try to remember — you get what you pay for.

Read more at:
Maximum PC | 10 Practical Reasons Not to Pirate

   Warning

Do not forget the #1 reason why not to pirate.

#1: You will be permanently banned here.

 

[Maguscreed]

While I don't support piracy ...for the most part for the very reasons they bring up there.

I am strongly against DRM, it doesn't prevent piracy and it has caused me nightmares as a legitimate consumer while I know the pirates are happily playing away at the latest game title , I'm stuck dealing with ubisoft because their stupid server won't authenticate my legitimate copy. (sorry I'm still pretty pissed about assassin's creed 2 if you can't tell)

Anyhow I am against DRM because in my personal experience it punishes the person that did put up their hard earned money more than it does the pirate.


All that noise aside Piracy is generally a bad idea just on a risk vs. reward basis if nothing else.

I can't believe anyone in their right mind would even try to pirate a online multiplayer type video game, a security suite, or even their operating system for that matter. It seems the basis of some ill concieved plan imho. You won't trust the big corporation but you're more than willing to jump on board with some guy that lives in his mother's basement and spends his entire life trying to 'stick it to the man' by removing drm off of whatever game or software his mom will buy him a copy of? There are reasons that guy is unemployed in the first place... believe me. I've met him.



Which begs the next question:
Who knows what kind of insanity those pirates snuck into the software while they were in the process of trimming off the drm?
Not too mention the complete removal from legitimate updates and support.

I do think the consumer needs to have more rights when dealing with software in general. Most EULAs just state this is now yours and if you ever want to use it you'll agree to anything we tell you to agree to.

...and god help you returning software you've pulled the plastic wrap off of.


I don't know there are some minor points I can understand that I hear from that community. Mostly concerning what I mentioned above.
The majority of it just seems to be kids screaming about getting something for nothing though, then having the balls to complain about it when it doesn't work right.

Anyhow, at the end of the day it's risk vs. reward.
There is very little to be gained from piracy especially when it comes to software. You are basically digging your own grave keyloggers, viruses, unexplained system crashes.
These are all to be EXPECTED when using any software you are unsure of the author of.
Let alone pirated goods that could very well have been pirated for the sole reason of getting you to install it along with whatever nafarious goodies said pirates decided to package up with it.

At the end of the day I think a way to allow software to be returned when not wanted/ non-functioning needs to be devised.
It's my personal belief that such a thing would do far more to abate piracy than any DRM ever could.

While my views on this may not be 'the norm' for either side of the argument I believe it's the best solution for everyone involved.

Not too mention I only pay 10 bucks a month for legal streaming and physical content both from netflix, even with their recent price hike if you can find the package that works for you it's still a great service, and if you don't like it... you just send it back. what an amazing concept huh?

 

[Kari]

An interesting article. Thanks for sharing.

Kari

 

[Corazon]

Totally agree with everything Maguscreed said above. Huge +1.

 

[boogieboy]

Maguscreed is 100% correct and DRM Sucks!

 

[pincushion]

I agree that it is preferable to stay on the right side of the law with regard to all software and since there are many perfectly good alternatives or even free examples of most software that might be required it doesn't make much sense to risk having malware installed along with the acquisition. However, it is also perfectly understandable that the most expensive software, such as Photoshop or Autocad will be sought (by whatever means) by those who feel a need for such advanced tools and simply cannot afford them. Presumably the prices charged are justified by the huge complexity of these programs and as said earlier there is usually free or cheaper software to do the same job. :huh:

 

[seavixen32]

Food for thought, that's for sure.

Trouble is, it's human nature for people to try and get something for nothing, but it doesn't make it right.

If I was a car maker, furniture manufacturer or whatever who turned a blind eye to people stealing my products I'd soon be out of business.

Same with the software companies who pay a fortune to develop their software. Next, nobody buys it and before long the company goes bust. Now we have a real problem, there's no software for anyone because all the software engineers have been sacked, the distribution network has been dismantled and the company has been shut down.

Who wins? Only the people breaking the law who have made a quick buck, that's who.

For example, just because someone can't afford Photoshop, it doesn't make it right to steal it. If I'm in the market for a new car, I buy what I can afford, I don't go out and steal the biggest, brashest car in the neighbourhood.

Piracy is wrong and we should do all we can to stamp it out. After all, as more people are forced into buying genuine software, it might make it cheaper for all of us.

 

[Maguscreed]

Food for thought, that's for sure.

Trouble is, it's human nature for people to try and get something for nothing, but it doesn't make it right.

If I was a car maker, furniture manufacturer or whatever who turned a blind eye to people stealing my products I'd soon be out of business.

Same with the software companies who pay a fortune to develop their software. Next, nobody buys it and before long the company goes bust. Now we have a real problem, there's no software for anyone because all the software engineers have been sacked, the distribution network has been dismantled and the company has been shut down.

Who wins? Only the people breaking the law who have made a quick buck, that's who.

For example, just because someone can't afford Photoshop, it doesn't make it right to steal it. If I'm in the market for a new car, I buy what I can afford, I don't go out and steal the biggest, brashest car in the neighbourhood.

Piracy is wrong and we should do all we can to stamp it out. After all, as more people are forced into buying genuine software, it might make it cheaper for all of us.

At the same time it could be argued that you failed because you made a bad product. In my eyes the biggest supporter of piracy is the companies themselves in not allowing people who are dissatisfied with their product any course of action.

If I buy anything else and it's busted, I can return it, if I load software on to my computer that causes a micro-singularity and destroys 8 city blocks, not only is the software manufacturer not liable thanks to their handy little EULA , but I can't even return the damaged or flawed product because no retailer I know of on the planet will accept returned software, which can sometimes cost as much as a thousand dollars.

This disconnect needs to be solved, there has to be a way to allow people to return this software. It's the only source of a legitimate complaint a pirate could ever have.

I also firmly believe a free download does not equate to the loss of a sale. People will grab anything out of a bin marked free, even if they have little or no intention of ever actually using it.

 

[seavixen32]

I suppose the only relatively foolproof way is for consumers to pay a monthly fee for access to server-based software rather than buying the software outright.

At least that way you can cut your losses if the software doesn't do what it says on the tin and it would concentrate minds wonderfully if software companies started to lose revenue because people closed their accounts.

 

[Maguscreed]

It's a start I suppose, there are many people, myself among them that are not huge fans of 'the cloud' though.
I'll consider it a work in progress.

As to pirating things like movies on that note I can not see where the consumer has any right to complain I've returned crappy movies before without any problem.

 

[pparks1]

I haven't pirated a piece of software in probably close to 10 years now. There are a number of reasons that I no longer do it, and many of these reasons were mentioned in the article above.

More than anything, I don't find piracy necessary any longer as there is a plethora of perfectly suitable free alternatives available. With the exception of Microsoft Windows, Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD, and Acronis True Image I use no other productivity software that has a cost associated with it.

With regards to the big cost software titles like Adobe Photoshop...I've just determined that it's absolutely and totally overkill for my basic needs. Tools like Paint.net have far more functionality than i will ever use. Sure, I'm not like all of the cool kids using their pirated copies of Photoshop. And I tire of the argument, "but I might want to become a computer graphic artist and this means that I will need to know Photoshop". Well, it's that true, then save your money, pony up for the software and get your hands on educational experience.

I don't use/trust/endorse pirated software because i absolutely DO NOT TRUST that they haven't been tampered with either with malware/virsues, or worse yet...keyloggers, backdoor hacks, etc. Sure, you can say, i virus scanned it and it came back fine. But then again, how do you know that the coder didn't monkey around with core OS functionality to a point where the AV software isn't working properly anymore?

And there have been numerous times when you try to help somebody with some strange problem nobody has ever seen before. Then you find out they are running a hacked/preactivated pirated copy of the software. Get them to obtain a legit copy of the OS and 9 times out of 10, this wierd unexplainable problem simply goes away.

And finally, I have worked for the past 15 years now (almost) exclusively for commercial software vendors.

 

[Maguscreed]

And there have been numerous times when you try to help somebody with some strange problem nobody has ever seen before. Then you find out they are running a hacked/preactivated pirated copy of the software. Get them to obtain a legit copy of the OS and 9 times out of 10, this wierd unexplainable problem simply goes away..

This was actually a large part of my 'why not too' in the initial post I made. It's often enough difficult to find legitimate software that does stuff right. I don't see how these idiots can get something for free then complain when it doesn't work right, or their identity winds up stolen as a result.

 

[pparks1]

Also forgot, back in pirating days, it was almost like a fetish to download anything and everything. The more the better, right? Well, like the story indicated, storage gets consumed. But I cannot even imagine how craptastic a computer would perform with all of this hacked/manipulated garbage installed onto it.

No thanks, I'd rather just have the apps that I want and use regularly and have the fastest, cleanest, leanest system possible.

 

[Maguscreed]

It's often enough difficult

note to self : drink coffee before posting in the morning.