social acceptability of pirating and hacking

[SexyBadGirl]

I LOVE piracy. Especially the eye patches, and foul-mouthed, shoulder perched parrots. Totally O.G. pimps of the 7 seas. HAAAAR MATEYS!

[AngelicKnight]

Hmm...I was thinking about starting a thread on this myself when I remembered this one was here. It's definately an interesting state of affairs. I for one don't mess with warez, though I have to admit it's a huge temptation. Me being the ethics nut I am though, I can't bring myself to do it.

Today, I started sifting through company software so I could start making backups of all of our important programs (seeing as we don't have any backups!). Here, all the software is kept up in the president's office (I know, odd place, would make my life much easier if it was in MY office, being net admin and all...ah well). So, I'm grabbing CDs from his stash here and there and bring them down for copying when -- oh look -- here's this CD-R marked "Flash MX"...Hmm...Must be a copy we made of software we purchased. So, to satisfy my curiosity (plus I'm dying to get my hands on Flash), I install it on my box down here to test it out, when lo and behold, the contents of the CD are an expired trial version and "crack MX.exe".

Lovely.

So, I promptly uninstalled everything and plan on getting that hot little CD out of my hands rather quickly. But it's annoying. The big money-drenched corporation won't dish out the piddly $1,000 to purchase it, meanwhile I'm foaming at the mouth to get my own personal copy knowing that I won't have that kinda money anytime in the near future. Grr...

Meanwhile, it turns out that before I came onboard, it was common practice to make a copy of a Win CD and install it on multiple machines, all using the same product key. So, at this point we're in a licensing nightmare were we to ever be audited by someone. So guess who's been given the job of sifting through all this copied software? Yep, you screw it up, I go and fix it. Ah, fun...

But I disagree with the aformentioned statement that "it's always been, and will always be". Keep in mind that relatively speaking, we're still on the front end of the cyber-era, and I would lay you money that as open-source grows and supply and demand balance out so consumers will get a clue and stop dishing out ridiculous amounts for software, that these software companies will be forced to start pricing reasonably in order to stay afloat. Maybe not soon, but eventually. It's simply how the "invisible hand" of the market works, I'd expect anyway.

[nihil]

Sexy bad girl............or should I say Quad?................please leave those parrots alone................they are totally vicious................and would eat red peppers that would put hairs on your chest.........only way I could get in the pet shop was to bribe them..........that chain is never short enough

Piracy is wrong............but in some parts of the World it is the only alternative, as they cannot afford the full Monty


My thoughts

[AngelicKnight]

Yeah, I remember you making that point in another thread. In those countries no money is being lost since they couldn't afford it regardless, if my memory of your post serves correct. Interesting point.

So Macromedia is evidently near the top of the list of popular suites to rip -- Why haven't we seen an open source alternative show up yet? Linux to Windows, OO to Office, Mozilla to IE, but yet Macromedia remains unchallenged. I wonder why? The demand is obviously high, so you'd think the open source community would have already produced something. If they ever do, I'll be first in line to get it!