illegal downloading of software

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counterculture

counterculture

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apart from the fact it is illegal, if it was possible, to download certain things for free, if someone couldnt afford to buy CS5 or a similar PP program would it really be so wrong for them to get them for free.

products obviously need registration codes and such like but with the right/wrong knowledge there are steps around this.

could a professional photographer (or amateur) get away with using illegally obtained software on photos that are earning them money? are there steps to stop such activities within the photography domain? is it frowned upon or just not spoken of on forums etc? how could someone know if the photographer had used such software and obtained it illegally, and do Adobe and similar companies have ways of catching people using such software. the same way microsoft can detect when people are using "cracked" copies of their operating systems

what are peoples views on such activities?

personally, i was fortunate to have been able to afford my version of CS5 but i know for a fact that thiscan be obtained from online sources for free (and i may not have paid for it if id been more computer savvy), but people wont have but would these people just be hobbyists or could people earning in the industry be taking advantage of these opportunities?

im not sure how people will respnd to this as i doubt anyone would admit to using illegally obtained software, although most oflk on here im sure wouldnt dream of it, but this may atleast kick up a good discussion.
 
could a professional photographer (or amateur) get away with using illegally obtained software on photos that are earning them money?
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Do you really need to ask that? :D

I would say about 60% of the people on this forum own some sort of photoshop illegally.

There is free and legal software like paint.net and gimp which do a great job. I fully recommend paint.net if your can't afford photoshop.

http://www.getpaint.net/
 
photoshop and other adobe products built up their market share and beat off the competition by being easy to pirate. Home users pirated, professional users and businesses had to pay the exorbitantly high rates to buy.

If photoshop had been harder to crack, I'd be prepared to bet that there would be other serious competition to photoshop out there today. A very astute move by adobe imo.

You /could/ get away, but a) you are a professional b) if you genuinely would buy it otherwise, then I would regard piracy as theft. c) as a business if you did get caught, they would come down very very hard and heavy.
 
I bought my cs3 at the start of my hnd (2 1/2 years ago) and it has worked faultlessly ever since.
A lot of my classmates use illegally downloaded or cracked versions of cs4 and 5 and are constantly looking for discs, codes, key gens etc because their software isn't working correctly.
They are the ones handing work in late because their photoshop was on the blink the week before deadline whereas my work has never been late.
Transfer that over to a professional environment and you'll see why I'm happy to pay for the software upon which I rely so heavily.
 
andephotographic said:
I bought my cs3 at the start of my hnd (2 1/2 years ago) and it has worked faultlessly ever since.
A lot of my classmates use illegally downloaded or cracked versions of cs4 and 5 and are constantly looking for discs, codes, key gens etc because their software isn't working correctly.
They are the ones handing work in late because their photoshop was on the blink the week before deadline whereas my work has never been late.
Transfer that over to a professional environment and you'll see why I'm happy to pay for the software upon which I rely so heavily.
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seriously? :)
pirated software usually works just as good as originals...

Many yrs ago I used to make software... I am talking pre CD let alone DVD when all your software and games came on 520k or 1mb floppy disk.. It was a constant battle trying to stop people copying...We even used to damage unused sectors on the disks because just about all disk copiers would error and not copy a damaged disk....

Software piracy will always exist.. I would never have bought my first PC if I ever imagined I would ahve to buy software as well :) However now and for exactly the reasons pointed out by others.. All my stuff is legal as its my business.. nobody will ever know what i am using.. but I get to cover the cost through the business :)
 
itsdavedotnet said:
photoshop and other adobe products built up their market share and beat off the competition by being easy to pirate.
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?

Back when Adobe Photoshop was at version 1.x and 2.x the main competition was PixelPaint and SuperPaint. To the best of my recollection neither of those had particularly rigorous copy protection either. Nor were they close to Photoshop in their usability for editing photographs.

By the time v2.5 was shipping (the first one available on Windows, Solaris and IRIX) Photoshop was well established as the dominant photo editor simply because there was nothing else to touch it outside of the SGI or Sun platforms.

Most serious commercial graphics people (outside the CAD field) were still steering clear of Windows at the time - you used Macs or, if you were at the high end, Silicon Graphics or Sun workstations.

I suppose there's an argument that Adobe made Photoshop a lot easier to copy than most other software for SGI machines (which had hellish hardware copy protection) but the kind of studios that ran them would never consider installing pirated software - and Photoshop was dirt cheap compared to commercial image editors for IRIX which sometimes cost tens of thousands for a single seat licence.

By the time v3.0 shipped, with layers, the competition simply could not catch up with the momentum Adobe had built in the mainstream professional market. Corel had a crack at it and failed dismally, at least on the Mac, their product was not on the same level and tried to do too many other things (taking on Photoshop and Illustrator in one product) and ended up being master of none.

IMO, aside from its own merits as an image editor, the real key to Photoshop's success was and is its plugin architecture, which came in version 2.0. It created a whole sub-industry and culture around it and allowed end users to customise the product to their particular needs.
 
counterculture said:
apart from the fact it is illegal, if it was possible, to download certain things for free, if someone couldnt afford to buy CS5 or a similar PP program would it really be so wrong for them to get them for free.
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Apart from the fact that it is illegal, to take something belonging to someone else, if someone couldn't afford to buy CS5 or a similar PP program, would it really be so wrong for them to steal from you in order to fund it?
 
To a tight Yorkshireman, CS5 is hellishly expensive. Perhaps if they brought the price down they might sell more and make piracy less attractive. They clearly can afford too, otherwise they couldn't sell Student editions at what can only be described as a massive discount.

I wonder how many pro's would turn a blind eye to pirated software and then create holy hell if their images were used without copyright.
 
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Skyviews100 said:
To a tight Yorkshireman, CS5 is hellishly expensive. Perhaps if they brought the price down they might sell more and make piracy less attractive. They clearly can afford too, otherwise they couldn't sell Student editions at what can only be described as a massive discount.
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It is a bit of a vicious circle though isn't it, development costs and reasonable profit must be covered, so if 50% (for example) of your user base isn't paying then it is obvious that the other honest 50% are going to have to bear the brunt.

Skyviews100 said:
I wonder how many pro's would turn a blind eye to pirated software and then create holy hell if their images were used without copyright.
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I think the problem with software and media is that people have difficulty recognising the material physical worth of it. Because it can be duplicated so easily many people think that no harm is done ripping off a copy, especially if they weren't going to buy it or couldn't afford in the first place.

In reality, software is no different to any other commodity. I costs time and money to develop and the developer/s, should they expect payment, have the same right to receive that payment as the producer of any physical goods when those goods are used.

People wouldn't expect to get away with taking a car from a showroom just because it was easy to do so with the justification that is was ok because they wouldn't have bought it anyway. Yet they freely apply this logic to software.

Meanwhile anti-piracy measures and DRM attempts ultimately don't stop the dishonest, just massively inconvenience the honest.
 
the sort of people that hack these programs such as ps or lightroom dont just give you the program but all sorts of nasties to go with it, easiest way of getting malware etc on your computer.
 
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