The lesson is that piracy (and to an only slightly lesser extent, free student licences) was an extremely powerful tool to keep a tool market cornered: impossib

The lesson is that piracy (and to an only slightly lesser extent, free student licences) was an extremely powerful tool to keep a tool market cornered: impossible to compete on price when piracy is so ubiquitous that payment is essentially opt-in. (I had a mouse driver disc, 5.25, that wasn't pirated, it felt like something from a parallel universe with its machine-printed label)