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I have recently read a magazine which was talking about copies, pirates and crackers. In this thread i would like to know who of you buy copies of programmes and games and if you would buy an original copy of it if the prices would be decreased.
I appriciate your vote. I warn all of you that i will use the results on my project which i will publish on my school and if you want i won't mention your country because i would only mention your countries.
No I don't buy them, I ask people to burn me a copy.
Why?
Why not? I don't have the cash to shell out on some of the stuff I have, I'm not using any of it to make money. . .and if I didn't get a burned copy, I would never have bought the proggie anyway, so I'm not really eating into anyone's profits.
edit-->Guess I shouldn't have told the truth. :confused:
Oh yeah, your question, yeah, I would buy a lot more software if it were cheaper.
I dont buy burnt copies, if i dont buy them new I can usually find them online myself and do it that way. Just easier. If prices did drop, I would probably buy more games and definitely more OS's
Well, my answer to your question may not be a popular one. I buy my games and applications. To keep this within the scope of your poll, my reasons are fairly simple.
1. I get all original manuals, technical support, and low-cost upgrades.
2. For games, I get to play online (Such as Diablo2 and RTCW).
3. Game "rips" are not good in quality at all (cinemetographic scenes are gone, etc.).
4. There is no need to find "add-on's," "cracks," or "keygens."
It is not necessarily true prices will decrease if everybody bought everything legitamately. The point of buying programs is to pay for programmers, the board of directors, distributors, OEM's, PR's, manufacturer and everybody else down the line. What does this mean? It means profits, tax revenue, jobs, and better products.Quote:
and if you would buy an original copy of it if the prices would be decreased.
I am not going to bash those that cannot afford applications or games. Everybody has rough times. Some main arguments of pirates and the justifications of piracy are:
1. I cannot afford it.
2. It does not go to the programmers and those who really deserve it. It only pads the pockets of the CEO's (The make Bill Gates richer argument)
3. Everybody else is doing it.
4. Applications and games are too overpriced (goes along with 1).
5. I like the challenge of cracking protection.
6. I like to collect them. (You will be surprised how many people I know who have many programs who either used them only once or not at all)
Here are some links that may further interest you in this "war" that has been going on for many, many years:
http://www.gamespy.com/legacy/articles/piracy.shtm - Is a great article on the subject of piracy and what it is in a frank and clear form.
http://www.textfiles.com/piracy/ - Shows the scene in a pirate's eyes.
and the DOJ has interesting cases invlolving not only piracy, but other forms of intellectual property cases as well:
http://www.cybercrime.gov/
I wish you the best of luck in this project.
albn
I don't buy original games or programmes because are to expensive...if the prices are to high, if the prices where lower i would buy some original games, but i do understand the industry that goes behind all that cd (the people involved in research, development, marketing and all that) and the industry have to make money to keep going...
But i don't believe in all those things that they keep talking that if it wasn't so much software piracy the prices would be lower, in example in the times of the Mega Drive and Master System, NES and SNES it never exited software piracy and the prices stood high forever until they quit with those plataforms...
First off wow! what a question ! I personally do not buy illegal stuff, How ever there are times I wish i did simply because of the prices. I dont do it because of the possible repercussions that may follow if caught. Then there is the issuse of it not having viruses, trojan's and what not. There are alot of things out there that i'd like to have just cant afford them, so it's almost a catch -22 , your damed if you do, your damed if you don't. So for me, if the prices were reasonable I would buy them. If i was desperate then i might buy them elsewhere.
I am like ALitteBitNumb. I purchase the games and programs I use or they are purchased for me (MS Office was given to me by my work so I could work at home). If I cannot afford a program I don't use it. I use PhotoImpact instead of Photoshop because it is 1/5th the price. I have to do some things differently but it meets my needs and is fully functional.
I do burn copies of many of my programs and store them seperately but that is protection against disk damage. I will also borrow a game which has been burned and try it out. If I like the game I go buy it. This can save me a lot of wasted expense without some of the dangers that I have experienced with demo copies. In this manner I found Half Life, Unreal, and many other games and was able to reject a bunch too. This is as close to skirting the pirating issue as I come. I also do not consider it piracy (although legally it is) for a group of friends to buy a game together and then share it as long as only one is using at any one time. Most games protect themselves online by requiring the CDKey to play it.
Unlike Numb I will state that pirating is stealing. Just as there are times I would justify stealing (food to keep from starving etc.) they usually do not reference the people who steal software. The fact that someone cannot afford it does not justify the piracy of games and most software. Software is usually a luxury not a necessity. Can't afford Word, use Notepad, download freeware or shareware, or get *nix and download a number of freebies. "Wouldn't use it anyway if you had to buy it etc." is a non-starter also. If it is not important enough to buy then it shouldn't be important enough to steal. That is like justifying theft as long as you wouldn't buy it. I hate rap music so it is okay for me to steal rap CD's. This does not make sense to me.
So when do I approve of piracy? While there may be instances I would approve of I cannot think of any right now. If someone could show me that it was a desperate situation, life or death, etc. I am sure I would back down. However, I want it and can't afford it doesn't cut it for me. I often wait months until games go on the sales rack to try out a game that was popular. Sure it puts me a few months behind the cutting edge gamers but it also saves me a lot of green.
This is my opinion on the subject.
you have got to be kidding me, I got negged for answering this question? Saying I dont pay for stuff? Maybe I should be more explicit in what I mean by my comment
Quote: if i dont buy them new I can usually find them online myself
(ie. shareware, freeware, trial software)
I buy my software as it says, I dont even really own that much, everything I do is from work and the company pays for that stuff. But no reason to rant and rave I just wanted to make the point clear for whoever decided to neg me and for ii-monk to have valid info when he turns in his stats.
I like Spyrus get allot from work, shareware, freeware etc.
i'm very careful in who i hand my money to and someone selling pirated copies just dosn't fit into my catagory of trust worthy. so no, i have never bought pirated anything.
Yeah, I buy my games, I do not burn progs or games or ask somebody to burn them for me. I have seen a friend of mine get suited for breaking a copy right, and i do not want the same to happen to me. He was making boot-legs or whatever they call it of some program. He got away with it for a while, and then he decided to get greedy and was making copies of WIN XP, and cracking the cd keys, until one day one of his customers was asked to automatically update on XP, he accepted, and they found out that he was not a registered. He told on my friend, and he was taking to court and was suited. He went through a lot of stuff that i do not want to go through just because i didn't want to buy some, and have the evidence taht i bought it. I understand if you don't have the money, i will have to say buying it and having the receit and all the customer services alittlebitnumb said, is really worth it.
I usualy find that after I palyed the (FREE) demo of a game, I'm all done with it in the first place (short attention spann) so why buy the original.
Most of the software I use is GNU GPL or free/shareware (www.sf.net)
But sometimes I too tend to pay friends and family the cost of the copy (like $3 for the disk)
But usualy It'll be a beer ;)
thank god for the free platform GNU/Linux or BSD !!
long time ago i used to buy copies , but it was expensive that time, not like today.
anyway, since i studied programming and i know how much it takes from time to hard work to come up with a good application, i start appreciating and show respect by purchasing the original if i can do that.
and if i can't afford it, then i don't need it .
nowadays, my company afford everything original for me, from OS to VISIO, Project, MS Office, AV, whenever i need a pack of software they get it.
Note: although i appreciate the good work but i still believe it's unfair for lots of peeps who can't afford.
Well I think if you can afford it buy it legally.If not rather go without it.The consequenses could be lethal.
I don't agree with you. Companies can decrease the prices, but they keep the high prices (i can only speak for Greece). I don't think that programmers are so expensive so the companies need to have so high prices.
Yeah i know a things about programming, and i know how hard can be to put a piece of code working right, but i think that if the companies could profit with a software then they never will decrease the price...
I know programming too and in games even more difficult.
I'm with Numb on this one. I buy all my software, music CD's because I get the original pressed copy. I place value on this, a programmer or a music artist deserve to make their choosen living by their craft. Last time I checked it costs money to live in the world and free has a price. Best I can put it my son burns music CD's if I let him up to 20 per week and most if not all are discarded upon his bedroom floor listen to one time. Music is an art a language something to be held dear but because he gets it for free it has no value, yet all the people music he burns for free have a life need to make a living and be it music or a program if one pays the cost it has value to you if it is for frrr it becomes a broken CD on a floor. Is this what you wish of your life to discard everything? Free has a cost as Freedom has it's cost, Free is the value you place upon your life and the items in it that you paid good people for so they can also make a living.
Although I have occasionally used pirated software, I do mostly use software that is legal to copy or bought legally now.
I would definitely *never* *buy* illegal copies of software because not only is the copyright holder not getting their cut, but someone else who is a criminal is instead.
I also feel that people who don't want to pay for commercially licenced software should use free software, rather than pirating commercial stuff. Unfortunately sometimes I do have to use commercial software for business, in which case I have to buy it and pass the cost on to my clients... I may have to buy more licences for Windows soon for some new work I'm doing unfortunately.
I buy both. IMO the only way to stop piracy is lowering dramatically software prices, that way companies won't have to spend money developing copy protection schemes, which most can be cracked, also if a program or game is well priced there is no reason to buy pirated copies.
Same goes for the music industry, lower cd prices and you are gonna stop people from downloading songs.
Thank you all, i see that many of you appreiciate the programmer's work and reward them by buying their work even the prices isn't good. Recently i have heard of Mafia -a very good game- since i saw some screenshots and the trailer, i decided to buy it legally. It was the first non-burned cd i have bought since 1997. I'm sure it's been a long time. I bought it mainly for two reasons:
1) Reward the programmers' work (very good graphics-by their engine LS3D)
2)Play it on-line become a member of a clan.
Thank you guys i gave the project to my teacher and he will tell me the mark next year. Thank you all guys...