I'm glad I got the Adobe CS3 premium package for only $314. Sometimes it pays to be a student

If I hadn't pirated my first copy of adobe's suite, I wouldn't have my current job. Now I get to use by business' expense account to buy all of the video software I want. I still pirate it first to see if it's going to do what we need.

That said, I don't think I'm "For" it.

Photoshop isn't a toy. If you're only going to use it twice a month, it's not for you.



Sure they have. This argument doesn't make sense to me - I wish I knew more philosophy so I could prove it.

Balls to philosophy, save until you have the $400 dollars THEN buy it.

... no, the company doesn't lose anything. Pirating is different from actual theft because only intellectual property is lost. They can claim financial loss, but not actual theft. It's the same as if you burned a copy of a movie that you didn't own, or burned a friend's album. It's not theft, it's copyright infringement.

That said, anti-piracy laws are ineffective, unrealistic, and wholly useless. In adobe's case, the price of their software is the inherent reason it's pirated. Market values should reflect the market for the product, or suffer consumer independence. Not that our laws provide for piracy, but there's a simple logical path to follow from high priced products to piracy. I genuinely think that a company should have to be financially strategic to combat piracy instead of taking lawsuits out on 13 year old girls. That doesn't mean charging more for a product (since you won't recoup the dent, and will instead grow the piracy of your product), but instead finding a price point that ensures far more sales.

The thing about software that gets me is that, especially in our download-age, it costs roughly the exact same amount for a company to sell 3000 copies of a digital product as it does 300,000,000 copies. The idea is to find the price point in between those two numbers that yields the most number of purchases. If you don't define this number in relation to piracy, you're shooting yourself in the foot. Put it this way: If the Adobe suite cost 100 bucks all together, they'd probably have twice as many sales as they do now, with far more prosumer level customers. I've made this argument about music in the past: Give me a monthly paid DRM free inclusive service with all of my music on it, and I'll stop pirating immediately. That's exactly what happened when I got netflix (and no, it had nothing to do with the size of movie downloads. I watched them streaming/bootleg before I'd pay $6.50 to see it.) Sure, if I watch 10 movies in my week, that's 6.50 a movie that blockbuster won't see. The thing is, I wouldn't have seen more than ONE movie if I had to pay the 6 dollar fee. Instead I bay 16 bucks a month, and I see as many movies as I want. That's 10 dollars more than you would've seen from me this month simply because you understand my needs as a consumer.

Assuming it now costs 400, wouldn't Adobe, in your scenario, end up with only half the money (taxation issues aside)?

Kirby, I don't think you know anything about running a business. You're just pulling numbers out of thin air.

The Adobe products cost so much money because they are not intended for the average, single consumer's use. The products are used by companies, and the fact that you're a trendy little kid who likes to post black & white pictures of yourself on myspace doesn't mean that the "market" should reflect the current demand. In fact, it should cost kids that want to do that even more.

You didn't read in the parenthesees.

It doesn't matter if it doesn't personally apply to you, referring to the example, he is correct.

I see where your coming from, my mistake.

Well, technically, the only thing keeping you from doing so is your own ineptitude at shoplifting and fear of getting caught.

I think you missed the point by, oh, about 10 miles.

I honestly have no opinion on the topic.

"What makes a man turn neutral ... Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?"

LIVE FREE OR DON'T

Well this took an unexpected turn.

What? Yes. I am making up numbers. I don't know the numbers. I don't think you could know the numbers.