Can proprietary software be justified?
this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2025
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Yeah.
For example, does Microsoft deserve my money for how much of a dumping they've taken onto Windows since Windows 8? No, they don't.
Because if I did give Microsoft my money, I'm REWARDING them for their half-assery.
What's the justification for not allowing me to make a copy? Those who decry piracy call it theft, but it's not theft since they aren't losing anything. Not a physical product they could run out of, nor a potential sale as has been shown time and time again; people who pirate a thing generally wouldn't have purchased the thing anyway.
It's copyright infringement, which I don't give a crap about.
This is the only correct answer.
It IS justified lol.
why is anyone still trying to justify piracy? that's step 2 of a conversation that even non-criminals are on step 9 in
Believe it or not, I've met people like this. I know a guy who was worried about showing a movie to our Meetup group.
Not because he was afraid of getting caught. He thought it might be unethical.
it's crazy how worried normal everyday people are worried about accidentally hurting the feelings of corporations. especially post-covid.
To be fair, I think it's because they equate it with stealing. The propaganda works. Most people think that stealing is wrong, and media corporations have put a lot of money into convincing people that filesharing = stealing. Hell, even people who are okay with filesharing call it "piracy", because that's the corporate framing they were brought up with. (Just look at the name of this sub.)
Richard Stallman calls this out in this essay:
The term "piracy" is used by record companies to demonize sharing and cooperation by equating them to kidnaping, murder and theft.
I mean, yes, I enjoy saying "yarr", and "yo-ho-ho", and all the rest of it, but I have to admit that's the result of a successful propaganda campaign. Before people called it "piracy", they called it "filesharing". And, of course, that was a problem, because everybody knows that sharing is good and should be encouraged; but piracy is evil and should be stopped.
Hey wow! A headline that isn"t answered with "no".
in journalism they teach you to only do headlines with a question if the answer is no, otherwise just make it say “piracy is justified”.
obviously this guy is a musician and not a journalist, and as such, actually thinking about things he makes….
(i like his other videos too)
That's what I was referring to. Thank you for elucidating it, though, for others that may not have known.
Yes
Yes. Next stupid question.
yes but why is probably the bulk of it…
Everyone has already given their response so there's nothing really to add other than, well, there's lots of reasons to justify piracy. Most of them are even provided by the publishers / distributors themselves!
Also it's weird to browse the top 10 responses or even below, and NOT see this xkcd posted or even linked. What is going on, Lemmy?
I am not stealing. It's there, I take it and it's still there. Don't know why these posts keep popping up in piracy communities. Same plague was there on reddit too. Like seriously it's 2025.
Its almost like you think pirating something has no effect on anything.
Not really. I know it can change from people to people. But I personally would have bought it in the first place if I wanted to.
Usability and user experience. I've been on irc, newsgroups, dc++, etc etc. hell i traded d2 items for game keys on d2jsp.
Why? Convenient as fuck. From my perspective, fuck anyone who is gonna tell me how to consume media. Give me a better experience than i can give myself or fuck off. I'll give my money happily (i have subscriptions) if it's a good service. If it's the only service, meh AND if it sucks ass well, fuck off again.
I bought a quite expensive piece of animation software (that cost over $1000) to use professionally. The specific term it was sold to me under was a "perpetual license." I took this to mean "never ending", which is the dictionary definition of the word "perpetual." You can probably guess where this is going.
A few years later, in the middle of a professional project, it stopped working. I contacted support, and was told that they changed the way they were doing licenses so I'd have to buy a new one (at almost double the price) or eat shit. I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it.
So yeah, if you're thinking of buying a Toon Boom Harmony perpetual license, maybe save yourself a lot of money and hassle and just pirate it instead. Or tell them to get fucked and use their direct competitor. I have done both.
Why would anyone need to justify their piracy?
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