OT: The death penalty for cracked software - too harsh?

[Yhtomit]

i say no to everything with a hardware dongle

[astromass]

there is no excuse for using cracked shit. i don't drive a stolen car....nor do i play a stolen jazz bass......

[thefinger]

i say no to everything with a hardware dongle

i agree. what rubs my turkey is how some of the best software is dongle protected (arturia being the main culprit here).

[friend_kami]

you know. as a software company you should realise that pirated copies of your product can actually help you. most people i know that uses live HAVE been using a cracked version before finally caving in and buying it. they wouldnt have bought it if they wouldnt had the cracked version int he first place.

@friend_kami
To me, this argument always misses out one very important factor - time. Companies don't have an infinite amount of money to burn through (though some act like they do!) While it's great that people do eventually pay for the software, there is always the chance that they're too late. The fact that they used it without paying (along with thousands of other illegitimate users) means that a company can go under. This is definitely something people should consider when it comes to smaller companies or one-man operations.

yes, and im not arguing with you here. i agree.
at the same time though you have to consider that out of all these people who bought it, perhaps not more then 50% would have bought it if it werent for the fact that theyve been using it for years getting to know it well enough to feel that they should invest in it, whatever factor may apply to their financial and/or moral arguments about this. its just fact, every pirate user is a potential customer. however, not every pirate user is a potential loss.

why is that you say? well, because from all these pirate users, atleast 30% or so of them wouldnt had tried it unless it was because they found a cracked version of the software in the first place. some might not have heard about it from other sources then their favourite torrent trackers forum.

infact, if you look at the studie they conducted when napster was the news of the century and the whole industry wanted to shut it down before someone could blink with their eyelids, the studie showed that users of napster spent ing eneral 40% more money on music then an average consumer. why?

two reasons, number one: napster lead them on to music they otherwise wouldnt have discovered. and two: they are in general more interested in music then your average consumer. the same goes for the software pirates.

ive said it time and time again, im not condoning piracy, nor do i curse the use of it, but the fact remains that piracy is great exposure for a company, no matter how you spin it. granted, smaller companies may collapse, but this is no different then how companies collapse in the "normal" buisiness world. buisiness in general is a risk. you either win, or you dont. software buisiness is the same.

hees an interesting tidbit about napster, the death of the music industry as it was called once:

Along with the accusations that Napster was hurting the sales of the record industry, there were those who felt just the opposite, that file trading on Napster actually stimulated, rather than hurt, sales. Proof may have come in July 2000 when tracks from English rock band Radiohead's album Kid A found their way to Napster three months before the CD's release. Unlike Madonna, Dr. Dre or Metallica, Radiohead had never hit the top 20 in the US. Furthermore, Kid A was an experimental album without any singles, and received relatively little radio airplay. By the time of the record's release, the album was estimated to have been downloaded for free by millions of people worldwide, and in October 2000 Kid A captured the number one spot on the Billboard 200 sales chart in its debut week. According to Richard Menta of MP3 Newswire,[9] the effect of Napster in this instance was isolated from other elements that could be credited for driving sales, and the album's unexpected success was proof that Napster was a good promotional tool for music.

One of the most successful bands to owe its success to Napster was Dispatch. Being an independent band, they had no formal promotion or radio play, yet they were able to tour to cities they had never played and sell out concerts, thanks to the spread of their music on Napster. In July 2007, the band became the first independent band to ever headline New York City's Madison Square Garden, selling it out for three consecutive nights. The band members were avid supporters of Napster, promoting it at their shows, playing a Napster show around the time of the Congressional hearings, and attending the hearings themselves. Shawn Fanning, the founder of Napster, is a known Dispatch fan.

Since 2000, many musical artists, particularly those not signed to major labels and without access to traditional mass media outlets such as radio and television, have said that Napster and successive Internet file-sharing networks have helped get their music heard, spread word of mouth, and may have improved their sales in the long term[citation needed]. One such musician to publicly defend Napster as a promotional tool for independent artists was Dj xealot, who became directly involved in the 2000 A&M Records Lawsuit.[10] Chuck D from Public Enemy also came out and publicly supported Napster.[11] Although some underground musicians and independent labels have expressed support for Napster and the p2p model it popularized, others have criticized the unregulated and extra-legal nature of these networks, and some seek to implement models of Internet promotion in which they can control the distribution of their own music, such as providing free tracks for download or streaming from their official websites, or co-operating with pay services such as Insound, Rhapsody and Apple's iTunes Store.

death indeed.

[leedsquietman]

Arturia only have SOME of their range synchrosoft dongled - Jupiter 8V, Prophet V/VS and Analog Factory, AFAIK.

The rest, such as Minimoog, ARP2600, CS80 and Moog Modular are not dongled AFAIK.

I can understand why they dongle up - Cubase 4 has only just been cracked after 2 years (and only the C4 STudio is stable) and now they are onto Cubase 5.

Many quality plugins, especially signal processing such as Waves, Soundtoys, Sonnox, and some of PSP's windows and almost all of PSP's Mac OSX software are dongled.


I don't mind it personally, although if I were DJing or needing to take my laptop around a bit, then I see the disadvantage.

[friend_kami]

Arturia only have SOME of their range synchrosoft dongled - Jupiter 8V, Prophet V/VS and Analog Factory, AFAIK.

The rest, such as Minimoog, ARP2600, CS80 and Moog Modular are not dongled AFAIK.

I can understand why they dongle up - Cubase 4 has only just been cracked after 2 years (and only the C4 STudio is stable) and now they are onto Cubase 5.

Many quality plugins, especially signal processing such as Waves, Soundtoys, Sonnox, and some of PSP's windows and almost all of PSP's Mac OSX software are dongled.


I don't mind it personally, although if I were DJing or needing to take my laptop around a bit, then I see the disadvantage.

i say no to dongles aswell. i need my ports.

but yeah, piracy is not a black and white subject, its not something that you can put equal with stealing someones cars or tv. it is illegal though, and we all know that. so technically you are stealing, but its just not that simple. the crime commited may be that simple, but the topic is not.

[rjbourc]

[the crime commited may be that simple, but the topic is not.

And that seems to sort of summarize this issue.

Some people see an inherent truth in that statement.
And some people see it as flatly incorrect.

Different worldviews, I guess.

[mkelly]

yes, and im not arguing with you here. i agree.
at the same time though you have to consider that out of all these people who bought it, perhaps not more then 50% would have bought it if it werent for the fact that theyve been using it for years getting to know it well enough to feel that they should invest in it, whatever factor may apply to their financial and/or moral arguments about this. its just fact, every pirate user is a potential customer. however, not every pirate user is a potential loss.

why is that you say? well, because from all these pirate users, atleast 30% or so of them wouldnt had tried it unless it was because they found a cracked version of the software in the first place. some might not have heard about it from other sources then their favourite torrent trackers forum.

I know all the arguments about it. You could boil it down to "any publicity is good publicity". And I won't deny that it works as a business model to a certain extent. I think it's called donationware isn't it. You use it as long as you like, and if you so feel inclined then you pay some money for it. You got to also look at the losses that this causes.

There are people who may be prepared to buy, but they don't because they find a crack available instead. It's easier to use the crack and they never get round to paying. So for the users piracy brings to the table, the very availability of cracked versions can take other users away. And yeah, it's hypothetical, but I think a lot of this whole debate is based on unknown quantities.

What I wouldn't mind seeing is a try before you buy system that allows people to pay a small amount - say $20. For that fee they get to use a fully functioning version of the software for a limited time - say 30 days. At the end of the time period, the software becomes more restrictive. But they then have the option to pay for the whole shebang, less the $20 they initially paid.

infact, if you look at the studie they conducted when napster was the news of the century and the whole industry wanted to shut it down before someone could blink with their eyelids, the studie showed that users of napster spent ing eneral 40% more money on music then an average consumer. why?

two reasons, number one: napster lead them on to music they otherwise wouldnt have discovered. and two: they are in general more interested in music then your average consumer. the same goes for the software pirates.

ive said it time and time again, im not condoning piracy, nor do i curse the use of it, but the fact remains that piracy is great exposure for a company, no matter how you spin it. granted, smaller companies may collapse, but this is no different then how companies collapse in the "normal" buisiness world. buisiness in general is a risk. you either win, or you dont. software buisiness is the same.

I agree that both businesses are similar, but there's a subtle but critical difference in my opinion. Let me give you some background on myself: I've got about 900 CDs - not many in these circles, but amongst my own friends, I'm the "music collector nut". I don't have any illegal MP3s - whether downloaded or ripped off my friends. I used Napster back in the day, and more recently I used OiNK. I downloaded a lot of albums, listened to them and deleted them. If I liked what I'd heard, I bought it, if I didn't like it, I never thought about it again.

The reason I downloaded music, was because there was no adequate "demo" facility with music. I'm not going to base the purchase of an album on a shit quality, snippet of a few tracks. In my opinion there is still no adequate way to hear music properly before you buy. Listening posts in stores are useless and too fleeting to make a proper judgement. Very rarely are there decent quality and long enough samples online for me to audition. Though I've suggested an alternative based on DRM in other threads in this forum which I can repeat if anyone wants to hear it again Until a decent auditioning process is presented for music purchases, then downloading pirated material is probably the only viable option.

Software is different though - there ae demo modes available for many applications which can allow someone to fully evaluate what they are considering buying. There's no need to resort to cracks for software - e.g. Live - who provide decent demos, and even better, Lite and LE versions. Companies that don't provide good evaluation options have not evolved with the marketplace and should probably expect teir software to be cracked for evaluation - the problem there is that for people who do that, some wll pay up, some will not.

[noisetonepause]

there is no excuse for using cracked shit. i don't drive a stolen car....nor do i play a stolen jazz bass......

That's not the same. Neither legally nor morally (IMO).

It's not quite the same as playing a Chinese (or American) ripoff of a jazz bass, either. Its closest analogy in the physical world would be reading a photocopied book.

The difference is, once the software is written, each additional copy costs exactly nothing. That's why software is covered by the right to make copies, not the right to own like one would own a plank of wood. That's also why we have to deal with this abomination they call software licenses.

[necho]

1. Cracked software is theft

2. Cracking software is about a short-sighted as shitting in the corner of your room because you can't be bothered to go to the toilet

3. Having loads of cracked software will fuck up your ability to make music by saturating your brain with far more options than you need

4. Yes - its generational. I know quite a few teenage dubstep fanatics and they don't own a single piece of legit software between them

[friend_kami]

yes, and im not arguing with you here. i agree.
at the same time though you have to consider that out of all these people who bought it, perhaps not more then 50% would have bought it if it werent for the fact that theyve been using it for years getting to know it well enough to feel that they should invest in it, whatever factor may apply to their financial and/or moral arguments about this. its just fact, every pirate user is a potential customer. however, not every pirate user is a potential loss.

why is that you say? well, because from all these pirate users, atleast 30% or so of them wouldnt had tried it unless it was because they found a cracked version of the software in the first place. some might not have heard about it from other sources then their favourite torrent trackers forum.

I know all the arguments about it. You could boil it down to "any publicity is good publicity". And I won't deny that it works as a business model to a certain extent. I think it's called donationware isn't it. You use it as long as you like, and if you so feel inclined then you pay some money for it. You got to also look at the losses that this causes.

There are people who may be prepared to buy, but they don't because they find a crack available instead. It's easier to use the crack and they never get round to paying. So for the users piracy brings to the table, the very availability of cracked versions can take other users away. And yeah, it's hypothetical, but I think a lot of this whole debate is based on unknown quantities.

What I wouldn't mind seeing is a try before you buy system that allows people to pay a small amount - say $20. For that fee they get to use a fully functioning version of the software for a limited time - say 30 days. At the end of the time period, the software becomes more restrictive. But they then have the option to pay for the whole shebang, less the $20 they initially paid.

infact, if you look at the studie they conducted when napster was the news of the century and the whole industry wanted to shut it down before someone could blink with their eyelids, the studie showed that users of napster spent ing eneral 40% more money on music then an average consumer. why?

two reasons, number one: napster lead them on to music they otherwise wouldnt have discovered. and two: they are in general more interested in music then your average consumer. the same goes for the software pirates.

ive said it time and time again, im not condoning piracy, nor do i curse the use of it, but the fact remains that piracy is great exposure for a company, no matter how you spin it. granted, smaller companies may collapse, but this is no different then how companies collapse in the "normal" buisiness world. buisiness in general is a risk. you either win, or you dont. software buisiness is the same.

I agree that both businesses are similar, but there's a subtle but critical difference in my opinion. Let me give you some background on myself: I've got about 900 CDs - not many in these circles, but amongst my own friends, I'm the "music collector nut". I don't have any illegal MP3s - whether downloaded or ripped off my friends. I used Napster back in the day, and more recently I used OiNK. I downloaded a lot of albums, listened to them and deleted them. If I liked what I'd heard, I bought it, if I didn't like it, I never thought about it again.

The reason I downloaded music, was because there was no adequate "demo" facility with music. I'm not going to base the purchase of an album on a shit quality, snippet of a few tracks. In my opinion there is still no adequate way to hear music properly before you buy. Listening posts in stores are useless and too fleeting to make a proper judgement. Very rarely are there decent quality and long enough samples online for me to audition. Though I've suggested an alternative based on DRM in other threads in this forum which I can repeat if anyone wants to hear it again Until a decent auditioning process is presented for music purchases, then downloading pirated material is probably the only viable option.

Software is different though - there ae demo modes available for many applications which can allow someone to fully evaluate what they are considering buying. There's no need to resort to cracks for software - e.g. Live - who provide decent demos, and even better, Lite and LE versions. Companies that don't provide good evaluation options have not evolved with the marketplace and should probably expect teir software to be cracked for evaluation - the problem there is that for people who do that, some wll pay up, some will not.

so.. you broke the law, and downloaded something that wasnt yours. you effectively stole the album, and then decided to like it and in the end, buy it..

exactly how is this different from effectively stealing a piece of software, use it and then decide that you like it enough to buy it?

[mkelly]

so.. you broke the law, and downloaded something that wasnt yours. you effectively stole the album, and then decided to like it and in the end, buy it..

exactly how is this different from effectively stealing a piece of software, use it and then decide that you like it enough to buy it?

It's not. The difference I tried to point out is that with working demos of software, there is no need to break the law. With music, there are no working demos - the majority of the samplers are poor quality and incomplete. Akin to software that is crippled when you try to demo it.

I will happily download tracks from iTunes that "time out" but give me a decent quality and quantity for evaluation.

[friend_kami]

so.. you broke the law, and downloaded something that wasnt yours. you effectively stole the album, and then decided to like it and in the end, buy it..

exactly how is this different from effectively stealing a piece of software, use it and then decide that you like it enough to buy it?

It's not. The difference I tried to point out is that with working demos of software, there is no need to break the law. With music, there are no working demos - the majority of the samplers are poor quality and incomplete. Akin to software that is crippled when you try to demo it.

I will happily download tracks from iTunes that "time out" but give me a decent quality and quantity for evaluation.

but this is why so many people get a cracked version and play with that instead of a demo.
they are crippled.


its like, downloading a song by whatever artist only to realise that this particular song was stripped of the bass, just to give you a taste of what the song sounds like. they crippled it.

[dysanfel]

Since you don't own the software you buy and thus the vendor is not selling it, how can you steal it? You can not steal that which can not be owned.

The software industry really needs to got open source.

[glitchrock-buddha]

oops... double post.