Software Piracy

On his blog, Nick Bradbury, the Man behind TopStyle, HomeSite and FeedDemon tells his story of software piracy and how the little independent developer is affected.

It is very interesting and counters the claims by most people that they’re only stealing from rich mega-corporations that screw their customers, and shows that the people who are hurt the most by piracy are the small independent shareware developers.

Being a developer myself, i’ve often thought about this issue and about the effects it could have. And i totally agree that the people who really get hit hard are the small companies and independent developers who can’t afford to keep going in and out of courts filing lawsuits against wrong-doers.
A consequence of this is that more and more companies and developers will end up losing financially and will quit developing altogether, and so we’ll have both less innovation and creative programs as well as more and more jobless developers pulling down our wages and the economy alltogether.

Published by

Mohamed Marwen Meddah

Mohamed Marwen Meddah is a Tunisian-Canadian, web aficionado, software engineering leader, blogger, and amateur photographer.

4 thoughts on “Software Piracy”

  1. So, how about buying original programs only from small companies, and the “expensive” ones are to be cracked?

    My personal opinion on this is to make “tailor-made” versions of each major program and lower its cost. Why should I pay for tools that I don’t use?! It is good if the customer choses his tools that he needs, and not let the company decide what he needs, and make him pay for it.

    It is a multi-angled subject, I myself can look at it from different perspectives, one which concerns only software piracy, and another about piracy in general. Each point has different angles as well!

    As for software piracy, we could divide the users into two categories, one that makes money out of the pirated copy, and one who owns it for personal purpose, you can say experimental.

    To make the long story short, the damage is done, piracy is not good for the seller, and it would be forced publicity! The owner has the right to chose how he wants to spend his money on publicity, given that piracy can be looked at as publicity! But, as Warner Music has started doing in China, which is selling original CDs -manufactured there of course- to the public with very low prices down to $3.0 for an original album, in a way to fight piracy. I would see that a good solution for other pirated goods.

    The right and wrong is very clear, you want something, you have to buy it from its authorised owner, and not take it from somewhere else! if you can’t afford it, then you are not entitled to use it!

    If I use pirated copies, that doesn’t mean I should make myself feel good about it! I do use them but I know it is not just.

    When my work expands, I will start buying original versions, hopefully!

    I must say that piracy is very tempting, for it can be achived easialy!

    One thing I know for sure, it will never end, unless we have Tom Cruise behind our back with the Pre-Crime technology to hunt all the hackers down!

    Who knows..

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