Opinion on pirating

I recently purchased a copy of Adobe Acrobat Professional 7.0. When I tried to activate it automatically through the interenet, it gave me an error. It made me wonder if someone pirated a copy of it and tried to do the same thing and Adobe caught the error, what woud be the possibilites of gettin' busted? I know that the percent of busts for pirated music is declining. But I haven't heard much about programs. Any input?

aaaaarrrrrrrrrrr me reckons piriting is the future, to be sure. All that lovely booty arrrrrrrrrrrr. Now swab the decks land-lubber. aaarrr.

Adobe's been really cracking down lately... but they've been leniant to those who actually purchase their software after attempting to pirate it. My advice to you is go out and buy a copy and install it ASAP, that way when they contact you about it (yes when not if) you can tell them you recently bought a copy. If you don't they usually send out fines for double the cost of the program, so I'd get on it soon.

-MBirchmeier

Funny thing, I too bought a copy of Adobe Acrobat Pro, from the SAME guy on the corner that you did. The CD looked legit enough, but I got this funny error when I tried to activate it. So I went on down to this place I get my cheap parts at, and they had a few CDs under the glass. I bought one, and tried it out, and I got this funny error when I tried to activate it… I’m thinking I should call Adobe Customer Service and see what’s up!

I was able to activate it throught the phone process cause I had an autherization code. Would they find that auth code and find it un-legit or something? Or could I just tell them I purchased a coopy and everything would be hunky dory?

Well you're not going to get busted b/c you purchased it right?

Here's how I see it: as long as companies charge large amounts of money for programs that most people rarely use, software will be pirated. One of two things has to happen, either the consumer starts to buy all their software (not going to happen), or the software companies make it affordable so the consumer is willing to buy it.


I don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on M$ office just so I can open, modify, and return an email attachment once a month. And I don't want to spend even more on an Adobe product that I don't even know how to use that well.

But I have spent money on programs I use regularly. But most of these programs are under $50. To me, it's easier to spend <$50 than it is to take the time to find the cracked version. I'll even donate to freeware if it's useful enough to me.

Arg, piriting be 73h r0x0rz! booty of all ye land luber's be belonging to us now!

oh, wait, you mean software.... nm....

Along with Jeremy's post:

I've had really bad experience with freeware. GPFs are only one thing, "not yet implemented" is the other (Hello, PHP & MySQL!).

But I've had the same kind of experiences with paid software too and no help from the company at all. Never ever.

As long as there is no warranty for a product, you better search for freeware/shareware alternatives. Many freeware tools are much better than the "original" or "professional" counterparts. The OSS / Freeware / Shareware programmers are usually more dedicated to their product than programmers who are being paid by "a company".

And if it doesn't work, you can still say to yourself "Well, it didn't cost me any $$". - The time factor is the same for both worlds.

M.

Hollywood movies on tape were that way too at first. One movie might cost over $100.00 USD! In those days most people either taped them off TV or pirated them. Finally Hollywood got smart, lowered the price to $15-20 and now nearly nobody pirates them. I don't even rent them any more because purchase price is to cheap.

I'd like to see Bill $$$ do the same thing. He doesn't have to give his sofware away for free, but make it more affordable.

In today’s economy, what with prices as they are, I don’t see a few hundred dollars as all that much for an application that does some essential task. I agree that most Adobe products are spendy, but for what they do, it’s generally still in the reasonable range for me. $600 for what Photoshop does is not that much (sorry, “The” Gimp is NOT ready for prime time, and DOES NOT measure up to PS in many many ways that PROFESSIONALS that need it require).

People today are used to everything for free or cheap. It was not always that way, and there is no reason to believe that society deserves free everything (including software). People and companies *work* to make professional applications, and they can ask whatever they like for those applications. If you want or need that application enough, you will pay for it. This is as it should be.

I agree. The difference b/w your post and mine, I was talking personal level, you went professional level.

The company I work for uses Word, Access, and Publisher daily. For them, it's worth the money. To me personally, on my computer, it's not. I don't use any of those personally except to view a schedule somebody made in Excel or review a letter in Word. I don't create anything in Office on a personal level.

Photoshop is an amazing program, and yes, the gIMP is lacking in may areas, but for most people, it does what they need, particularly on a personal level. As you mentioned, a professional would almost always opt for Photoshop, but then that professional has probably spent the money on a Mac, then purchased the software, and has then made that money back b/c s/he's a professional.

I'm not a professional graphic artist; I don't want to pay $600 for a program I only play around in.

Photoshop is one of the few "Killer Applications" we're still waiting for in the Linux world. I really hope they'll port it soon, it's really worth the $600.
(only $600? Damn, Europe is expensive... CS2 is ~€1000 here ~= $1300, but it's even worth that).

The "Macintosh Zealot" argument doesn't work anymore. The Mac was dead for some years. It's only for a few weeks maybe months or so that it is celebrating its great return now. Photoshop is used widely on windows today. Because it is a great tool, not because of the platform.

Compared to Photoshop, the GIMP is only a toy, and it will keep this status for another few years I guess.
Once you worked with PS professionally, you won't consider using GIMP for private stuff anymore either.

... I want to say: I could find alternatives for most programs. But not Photoshop.

M.