

Ask HN: How do you feel about pirated software? - nirkalimi

I live in Silicon Valley, and pirated software seems to have mixed emotions across the board. Some are big proponents of open source, and if something isn&#x27;t necessarily free , they don&#x27;t mind breaking the rules to acquire it. On the other hand, many of those same people work at software companies that are providing them with a salary - and had it been the case that everyone pirates software, they would technically be out of a job.<p>So I ask you, what do you think about pirating software? When is it okay, if at all?
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ACow_Adonis
Its a complex topic, or at least, the themes it inevitably raises are. To stop
writing an essay, i'll just leave some dot-points on my perspective:

\- Intellectual property doesn't make any sense to me. It seems more like a
cultural practice rather than intellectual one, and just comes across as
absurd. So someone trying to justify things based on it might as well be
telling me what some god I don't believe in thinks about my sins...

\- Its good, if you've got the resources to do so, to try to support people
financially who produce things you like/use. The easiest way to do this is
buying their stuff/sending them money.

\- Its bad in general to be parasitical on the work of another, or dishonest
about how/what you've done...

\- The market/distribution of resources amongst society/law is not a moral
authority, so the fact that a person has ownership over something, or that a
certain product is for sale in a certain market for a certain price with
certain barriers/conditions, doesn't imply anything universally, for or
against. It is relatively easy to think of scenarios where i think its
justified to participate in, or ignore, or fight against, any of those things.

So the long and short of it is that if you've got the money and you can
support the author/creator of something that you like/use, you should find a
way to get some of your money to them. You should REALLY do it if you're using
it to make money yourself.

But i'm not going to lose sleep if a pimply teenager somewhere plays a game
they didn't buy, people lend books, people copy software amongst their
computers, use pirated software for their own education but don't make money
from it, or people pirate where a market fails them in their ability to
provide money to the creator/author at reasonable terms/price.

I'm not going to pretend I have a prescriptive solution for all of society. I
think my rule of financially support the creators/authors of things you use if
you can is a good personal rule of thumb, but i'd never seriously consider
chasing up people copying my own work as long as they weren't trying to
literally take credit for it and making substantial money via its use...

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csense
I feel like pirating software isn't really unethical if it's old, there's no
legitimate channel to purchase it, and current software doesn't do the same
thing. Under these circumstances, it may be technically illegal, but it's
unlikely the IP owner will go after you.

Another circumstance where I'd say piracy is ethical is when you have
purchased or otherwise legitimately obtained a license to the software, but
you cannot access the actual software for some reason (maybe you have the
software on a CD, but it is no longer readable).

I think "nocd" cracks are ethically okay for software you legitimately own.
For younger readers: In the olden days, software came on a CD, and you had to
have the physical CD in the drive in order to run it. A "nocd crack" is an
unauthorized third-party patch which disables that check. It can save your day
if the CD has gone bad, if you're lazy or disorganized so putting a CD in the
drive is too much work, or if you don't want to lug around a ton of CD's with
your laptop. Of course, since it breaks the 1:1 mapping between physical discs
and running instances of the software, it makes actual piracy much easier.

Also, I believe patches that disable online-only DRM are ethical. This is the
case where you legally own a piece of software which would be useful without
the Internet, but the software's maker requires Internet connectivity to run
the software, solely for copy protection purposes.

I'm speaking of ethics here, not law. Depending on certain fine points of law,
I believe a case can be made that none of the above uses is actually legal in
the United States.

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workhere-io
I'm against it. People make all kinds of excuses why piracy isn't stealing,
but at the end of the day the people who make the software need to get paid.

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mschuster91
I draw the line for piracy OK or not OK on the simple question: are you making
money with it?

If you're using e.g. Photoshop for your job, Adobe expects you to pay for the
product... and if you're using it for private stuff, Adobe IMHO even _wants_
you to pirate it (up to CS4.5 you only needed a keygen and a line in
/etc/hosts, now you also have to patch a DLL file) in order to create a
massive vendor lock in.

Microsoft followed the same strategy in China and elsewhere: create a massive
lock-in, even if it means allowing piracy outright or just fighting it "pro
forma", and when the people have enough money/education to use your product
for business, they'll end up buying it because they're so used to it.

~~~
nirkalimi
I understand making something free so as to make it a legacy platform, but do
you really think that Adobe isn't already the industry standard?

I am also curious why you think adobe wants you to pirate their software? They
seems to be the leader in the market in terms of design software and such. You
pirating their software gives them one less sale - bottom line. They are a
company who needs to make a profit at the end of the day.

~~~
mschuster91
Adobe's profits originate from the vast amount of companies and one-man
startup/design shops using their products. Get the kids fixed on Photoshop
while they're in school and the chance is high that they'll be using (and
paying for) Adobe products throughout their career.

And for the "want" part: for a company like Adobe, it'd be easy and cheap to
implement much more effective anti-piracy measures (e.g. hardware dongles like
Steinberg's eDongle for Cubase). So I think they either don't care about
piracy at all (because the profits are still huge) or they encourage piracy
(see above for the reason) while still doing "something" to please
shareholders.

~~~
yzzxy
I wonder how much of their consumer business does come from
students/consumers, however. Autodesk is a little more niche but they give
away their software to basically anyone who's not a professional (You can get
almost all of their products for free if you are a student or even unemployed,
IIRC). Adobe's student discounts are extremely weak by comparison, which may
suggest a significant segment of their (paying) userbase is nonprofessional.

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mariuolo
Regardless of ethical and legal considerations, what worries me the most is
malware in cracking tools.

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asko_io
Piracy is not illegal where I live - never has been, so I don't really know
how I "feel" about pirated software. Everybody here pirates software from left
to right, and it's as normal as picking up money from the ground if happen to
see it.

That said, I do pay for software I can't live without.

