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Excuse me but what's the relation between trying a product and the pirates? You will end up buying it in the end if you like it, right? And the pirates will still be there
The relationship between piracy and consumer experience is well documented at this point.

For example, music and video torrents went down when iTunes, Spotify, and Netflix started to operate. It's the same with videogames and Steam or with the Adobe Creative Suite.

Honestly I doubt most professionals use pirated audio software these days. I'm sure some do, but I don't think it's the majority. Heck, who doesn't love spending money on gear and tools? :)

Another point is that a lot of the audience pirating software would not be paying for it anyway. If it was impossible for them to pirate samples and synths, they would most likely just use free stuff.

In my case, I don't pirate stuff anymore. I will admit that used to pirate stuff 20+ years ago when I was a poor student. I started paying for software when I started making money from it. If sample companies like Spitfire found a way to demo their products, I'd be more likely to buy. I've been disappointed way too many times. Honestly, I think what we need is something like Steam for audio software.
 
Making cassettes of albums back when is no different then downloading them now.
That's actually not universally true. In some jurisdictions (including Canada), copying for personal use to cassette or CD was legal because there was an extra charge on blank media to effectively pay for that right. Somewhat ironically you had to pay that charge, even if you never recorded anything, but your own original material.

Copyright law has been messy and varied around the world.
 
Is the pirated stuff all Kontakt libs? Is that part of the reason devs are moving to their own players?
Devs move over to their own players to cut out the middle man….

But you need money and lots of it to develop and maintain your own player…
 
The classic take on this remains from Gabe Newell of Valve:
"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. "If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."
Music piracy is essentially done-zo, same with video game piracy. It's more work to do both of those than pay for Spotify or buy through Steam. When will the same happen for music production software?
 
The classic take on this remains from Gabe Newell of Valve:

Music piracy is essentially done-zo, same with video game piracy. It's more work to do both of those than pay for Spotify or buy through Steam. When will the same happen for music production software?
I think it's most certainly about price with VST/Samples.
All those things he mentioned is already available for Samples.
 
The relationship between piracy and consumer experience is well documented at this point.

For example, music and video torrents went down when iTunes, Spotify, and Netflix started to operate. It's the same with videogames and Steam or with the Adobe Creative Suite.
Yep. As long as you have a PayPal account, decent internet speeds, and the money, then the modern buying experience for software and sound libraries is so quick-n-easy-n-painless that piracy is waaayyy more hassle, and I'd bet that cracked software is a big vector for malware, miner-ware, etc.

Even though we don't have the equivalent of Steam for music software and sound libraries, it's still easy and fast to buy stuff legitimately.
 
This is one of the more frustrating things about buying legitimate software; having to deal with annoying DRM schemes.

It's especially frustrating to think that after paying hundreds of dollars for a piece of software, someone who downloaded it for free is not only saving that money, but potentially enjoying a superior experience by not having to deal with the DRM.

This can be countered through value-add propositions where the delivery and/or continued support of the software can offer a compelling trade-off versus downloading a free version. I look at Valve's Steam store as being a primary example of that.
I agree with your first point about the CP being the single most dystopic aspect of what is otherwise a miraculous, marvelous technological capability.

I don't share your second frustration. I pay for what I use, look for sales, it costs what it costs, and it's irrelevant to me whether someone else got it for a better price or for free. Whether someone downloaded the software illegally or whether someone got a comp because they did a review or whatever, what's it to me?

I'm neither a developer nor a capitalist, but I do not understand why for-profit companies wouldn't be better off thinking of revenue as revenue, and focus exclusively on the people who buy their products rather than worry about the people who don't.

For example, I have never had nor will I ever create an iLok account. Since I don't use pirated software, this means I don't have any of the products that require it, which in turn means that those companies get zero dollars from me. If I were a pirate and downloaded DRM-free versions of their iLok infested software, they would STILL get zero dollars from me. Since 0 = 0, how does whether or not I am a pirate make any material difference to their revenue stream from their point of view?

If, on the other hand, they dropped all of the CP nonsense and embraced the Free Software idea (free as in freedom to use, not as in free of charge) it would open up a whole new market (however large or small) of people like me who would now potentially buy their software. Those who want to pirate would obviously still do that, but this is already happening now anyway, so it's difficult for me to see the downside of giving up "protection" that fails to protect.

Thankfully, there are still many developers who do offer righteous ease-of-use, local license numbers or key files that give us the freedom to use the software independently from remote servers, offline, making it exponentially more reliable and stable, and making it easy to transfer content to a new computer or whatever: Cockos/Reaper, Valhalla DSP, Klanghelm, AudioThing, uHe, ToneBoosters, Garritan, Melda Production, Fabfilter and Hornet are just a few that immediately come to mind. These companies have somehow managed to stay in business without harassing their customers...

...So I have to believe it would be possible for the others to do this as well. But they would perhaps have to give up a capitalist control freak mentality or something. I'm confident that the biggest barrier to righteous software commerce is psychosocial, not economic.

For people who freak-out over the idea that someone else got a better deal than they did, or a deal that you don't think they deserve, I would suggest reading the Parable of the Vineyard Workers in the biblical New Testament. The story is about people who have exactly that problem.
 
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What's the difference?

WE PAID FOR THE SOFTWARE LICENSES.
...which did not give you the right to modify the software.

Did we violate the terms of the EULA? Absolutely. Did we steal? No.

It's not a morally complex topic,
Of course it is, and your post is more evidence of it. You violated the EULA and think that's perfectly OK. I suspect creators of software wouldn't always agree. EULAs are there for a reason, and it's more than just the "letter of the law." PS I am not necessarily criticizing or condemning what you did; frankly offhand I couldn't care less. Just pointing out that everyone draws their lines in different places and different ways and anyone saying "there's my opinion and the wrong one"...well, I would hope that speaks for itself.

it's about stealing things you haven't paid for, not about modifying things you did pay for. I put our ReBirth mods from 1997 in the same category as "right to repair" issues
If I understand what you did (maybe I don't?), you didn't "repair" anything. You changed it to suit your needs. Hardly the same thing. And regardless, no, you don't have any "right" whatsoever to change or even repair any commercial product someone else created without their permission.

There is no moral ambiguity for me, my conscience is clear.
I'm sure pirates say the same thing.
 
.EULAs are there for a reason, and it's more than just the "letter of the law."
No it's not. EULAs are just crap written by lawyers for the perceived benefit of the company's capital interest, and they all say, regardless of the verbiage, exactly the same thing:

We have the right do do whatever the fuck we want and the right to change our minds about whatever the fuck we want to do at any time and for any reason, and you have the right to agree to this condition as a prerequisite to using our software.

So everyone clicks on the agree button without reading it (why should we?) and moves on. That's all EULAs are. To call them worthless would be an insult to the concept of worthlessness.
 
You cant find anything nice about doing something wrong, its just simply wrong there is no other perspective around it but wrong there are no grey areas.
Insert facepalm icon here.

Of course there are gray areas. Quite a few. What's "wrong" or "right" is subjective. Neither you nor I nor anyone else has a lock on it. Nobody here is the Gatekeeper of Holy Truth and Morality. THAT'S HIS POINT. This should not be hard to understand. Agree or disagree with someone if you like, but admit at least to yourself if not others that it's all you are doing...having two different opinions about something...and leave it at that.
 
No it's not. EULAs are just crap written by lawyers for the perceived benefit of the company's capital interest, and they all say, regardless of the verbiage, exactly the same thing:

We have the right do do whatever the fuck we want and the right to change our minds about whatever the fuck we want to do at any time and for any reason, and you have the right to agree to this condition as a prerequisite to using our software.

So everyone clicks on the agree button without reading it (why should we?) and moves on. That's all EULAs are. To call them worthless would be an insult to the concept of worthlessness.
Given that these are legally binding, I would disagree. In spirit anyway. ;)
 
I have a theory that devellopers might not be losing nearly as much money as we think because most poeple who use cracked software were never going to buy it in the 1st place because, a) they don't have the money. Or b) if the only way to get a copy was to pay for it they'd talk themselves out of it because they really don't want it that much after all. The thing is that it's so easy to download stuff so you get way more than you normally would. Imagine all the stuff you'd get if you could walk in a store and don't have to pay for anything. This is just a theory and pure speculation but i think there's truth to that. In the end, i think people that are actually potential costumers are those that are serious and they would rather pay for their software. And I'm writing this dressed up as a pirate so I'm very serious.
 
Given that these are legally binding, I would disagree. In spirit anyway. ;)
How legally binding they are remains an open question. Sometimes they are and sometimes they're not, and a court decision might depend on the specific merits of the case, or on what the judge ate for breakfast and whether or not he or she is experiencing heartburn on that particular day.

The state of North Carolina has a law stipulating that a bingo game session may not last more than 5 hours, so if you ever get into trouble there while engaging in what you thought was innocent fun, don't say you weren't warned!
 
EULAs are there for a reason, and it's more than just the "letter of the law."
I think that's exactly Charlie's point. Even though the letter of the law says you can't drive 56MPH in a 55MPH zone, the spirit of the law allows for it. The law is really designed to deter dangerously fast driving. Likewise, EULAs are written to deter copyright violations and other forms of abuse that can affect the developer. The letter of the EULA says "don't reverse-engineer our software" but the spirit of the EULA says, "we don't care what you do to your own legitimately-purchased copy of our software behind closed doors as long as you're not modifying it to unlock unpaid content, redistributing it, or stealing code."

Any opinions on this scenario?
You buy software, say a vst instrument..you use it on a bunch of projects..a few years later you want to re-install on a new computer. Then you discover that the license server and / or tech support doesn't exist any more. Would you install a cracked version if available?
All risk aside, from a moral standpoint, I think it's perfectly OK for someone to do that since they own a licensed copy of the software.
 
^^^ This could provide a solution against piracy, charging (much) more for commercial use. Some devs do so by offering low cost edu licenses. Maybe ‘hobbyist’ versus ‘pro’ licensing would curtail piracy.
Another great example of turning piracy problem into huge business opportunity was from Epic Games. They literally demolished all competition by giving their very expensive game engine for free until you reach certain profits. They did it by building an eco system around the Unreal Engine. This of course didn't solve the piracy problem completely but boy do they make money from people other companies completely ignored.

In music world this could be solved with "Rent To Own" licence. You can buy expensive software trough easy monthly payments. You can already buy Serum, Pigments, V Collection, Ozone Advanced and other goodies in this way on Splice.com. Another great example is Composer Cloud. Easy monthly payment for their complete catalog. On top of that they have very affordable sales. No need for piracy or its reduced to absolute minimum.

Some companies adapted to piracy situation. They understand very well that some people don't have a lot of money to spend but they still have some money. Other still charge 500 - 1.000 USD while completely ignoring everyone bellow their price range.

Very shortsighted if you ask me.
 
I have a theory that devellopers might not be losing nearly as much money as we think because most poeple who use cracked software were never going to buy it in the 1st place because, a) they don't have the money. Or b) if the only way to get a copy was to pay for it they'd talk themselves out of it because they really don't want it that much after all. The thing is that it's so easy to download stuff so you get way more than you normally would. Imagine all the stuff you'd get if you could walk in a store and don't have to pay for anything. This is just a theory and pure speculation but i think there's truth to that. In the end, i think people that are actually potential costumers are those that are serious and they would rather pay for their software. And I'm writing this dressed up as a pirate so I'm very serious.
To a large extent, I think you're right. More so if you're dressed as a pirate.
 
Another great example of turning piracy problem into huge business opportunity was from Epic Games. They literally demolished all competition by giving their very expensive game engine for free until you reach certain profits. They did it by building an eco system around the Unreal Engine. This of course didn't solve the piracy problem completely but boy do they make money from people other companies completely ignored.

In music world this could be solved with "Rent To Own" licence. You can buy expensive software trough easy monthly payments. You can already buy Serum, Pigments, V Collection, Ozone Advanced and other goodies in this way on Splice.com. Another great example is Composer Cloud. Easy monthly payment for their complete catalog. On top of that they have very affordable sales. No need for piracy or its reduced to absolute minimum.

Some companies adapted to piracy situation. They understand very well that some people don't have a lot of money to spend but they still have some money. Other still charge 500 - 1.000 USD while completely ignoring everyone bellow their price range.

Very shortsighted if you ask me.
And then ironically piracy probably increased vastly when Epic Games later on started to pay game developers to keep games off steam :rofl:
 
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