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It's always been rumored that Adobe software, especially Photoshop, has been easy to pirate to encourage adoption with a user base that might otherwise seek alt
by meritt 14y ago
It's always been rumored that Adobe software, especially Photoshop, has been easy to pirate to encourage adoption with a user base that might otherwise seek alternatives. As those people hone their skills and eventually find jobs, Photoshop is the norm and what their employers purchase licensing for.
- lumberjack 14y agoSame with Windows and Office. It's better to have them pirate your program than run somebody's else.
- wting 14y ago"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade." -- Bill Gates during speech at University of Washington http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/09/business/fi-micropiracy9 http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/09/business/fi-micropir...
- jfoster 14y agoIt's similar to many startups. Free initially to ensure growth, but always with eventual monetization in mind.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoSadly that didn't stop them from claiming that piracy was a $1.5B$ problem because the retail price of Office was $495. Even though even a child would tell you that no sane individual would spend more than 1/2 their annual salary to buy a copy of a buggy, but ubiquitous, set of tools. In fact they were willing to pay $2 for a pirated CD on the streets so the actual "loss to piracy" was $6M ($2 per each of those 3M machines) but that sounds so much less of an actual problem.
- ciniglio 14y agoSo, by this logic, BitTorrent piracy is a $0 problem? Doesn't sound right to me. Not that I'm really pushing the $495 figure either, mind you.
- huggah 14y agoIf people were selling copies on the street for $2, that suggests that $2 was roughly the right price point (in that area) to maximize profit, and Microsoft couldn't have made more money by selling it for more. That argument ceases to hold in the case of BitTorrent, where the distributors aren't trying to maximize their profit (or make any at all).
- ChuckMcM 14y agoSee previous response, Microsoft actually did change their pricing and captured a huge chunk of value. It was significantly higher than $2/CD. When selling information there is a tail, a few people will pay whatever you ask, a few more will pay less than that, Etc, until you get to all of the people who would obtain a copy if it were zero cost. That defines the "value curve" of the information. It is not a straight line. Because it is "hard" to justify large differences in price for the same product, one of two strategies are used a "steadily decreasing price" or a "fixed but relatively low price". Depending on the product different things make more sense. Games for example benefit from the 'expensive at first but cheaper later' model, reference works benefit by capturing as much market as possible quickly.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoActually yes, well actually approaching zero, and I realize it doesn't sound right. The cognitive dissonance comes from the economics of information, they work differently than the economics of goods. Imagine this thought experiment. Imagine there was a 100% fool proof copy protection scheme in China, and the only way to acquire Microsoft Office would be to buy it. Try to imagine how many people, who make $1000 in a year would then cough up the $495 to buy it? Its not hard to imagine because there is no manufactured good in China that commands a 'half annual salary' value proposition that is not critical to a person's survival. And Microsoft Office isn't that item. There is an exemplar that there is a $6M value for Word based on the $2 CDs that sell, so its not 'valueless.' And there are benefits to owning a legitimate copy over a pirated copy. Further, the cost of producing a pirated product (box, CD, getting started guide, etc) is less than $2 so there actually a real-goods sort of economic value analysis possible as well. So all we really know is that the number is >= $2 and < $495. And in information economics this poses an interesting challenge. How do you capture the maximum value for your information? Microsoft later introduced a plan where Office for this market was significantly less expensive than it was for the US and European markets [1]. That increased the value they extracted for office out of those markets tremendously. It was more than 10x that $1.50 price at $29/CD. And they captured a lot of value for it, millions and millions of dollars. But not billions of dollars. Many have argued that much of NetFlix's streaming revenue has come from previous BitTorrent users [2]. Prior to NetFlix you could say BitTorrent was a "$xB" problem where $x is the money that has been re-captured by offering an alternative with an acceptable price. But to understand how that works you have to think about what gives information value, its much more market driven that fiat driven. Sony can say "Its worth $X to own this movie" but if nobody buys it and it is heavily pirated they guessed wrong. Since the replication cost is nearly $0 they really are guessing at consumer value. Lots of DVDs sell for $9.99 or $4.99. At that price I won't even bother looking for a torrent, I'll just get the DVD. Its a market, it has different mechanisms that drive it. [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/09/23/microsoft-china-discount-idUSPEK1362420080923 http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/09/23/microsoft-china-di... [2] http://gigaom.com/2011/05/17/netflix-p2p-traffic/ http://gigaom.com/2011/05/17/netflix-p2p-traffic/
- mappu 14y ago"Number two market share goes to Windows pirated, or unlicensed ... That's a competitor that's tough to beat, they've got a good price and a heck of a product, but we're working on it." -- Steve Ballmer, 2009 http://www.osnews.com/story/21035 http://www.osnews.com/story/21035
- ihaveajob 14y agoAnother quote by Ballmer, heard in person a couple of weeks ago: "In Russia, we have a great market share, but a bit of a problem collecting".
- eli 14y agoThough it'd be better still if they paid something. Microsoft offers special low-cost editions of their products for developing nations, don't they?
- markokocic 14y agoNo, they don't. I even remember that the prices for legal Microsoft software in one of those "developing nations" were higher than prices in the USA. And it's not only Microsoft, some other companies (Audodesk, Adobe, Apple) also keep higher prices and worse quality in some of poor countries than in the USA. It's kinda like they try to punish people that want to buy their software legally. For me, it's an easy decision, I just don't use their software at all, but some people have to use their software, and I totally understand why some of them decide to pirate it.
- jiggy2011 14y agoWouldn't the issue be that if they sold Windows for say $10 in china that westerners could just import it for $10 + shipping and then install language packs once they had it?
- galadriel 14y agoThere are usually region restricted DRM trying to stop this from happening. For example, a lot of digital distribution gaming companies (like Steam) have cheaper prices of games in Russia compared to US. So there are all kinds of websites that will sell a Russian key and Russian proxy service so that one can get game for cheap. OTOH, the distributors try to monitor and keep disabling accounts if they find that region restricted games are being played.
- kmfrk 14y agoI'm not sure about this with Windows, frankly. "Something else" is not as obvious and accessible the same way one movie or videogame is over the other. I remember getting burnt badly trying to install ... Mandrake was it ... back in the days.
- shocks 14y agoiirc, Microsoft originally uploaded Office to places it could be easily pirated to help it spread and take over the market. It worked.
- reidrac 14y agoDefinitely, but I think is just Microsoft investing in their ecosystem. In schools students learn "Word" and not "a word processor". I've seen high schools getting software licences with special deals (way cheaper), and thanks to that other solutions are discouraged (ie. "Word" is the standard and it will be required by any future job offer) Can all students afford a Word licence? (ie. practice at home) It really doesn't matter, piracy it's OK because it is an investment. Companies are the final target (won't run pirated software and all candidates are trained to use that software). You can find that kind of strategy also in open source (ie. Red Hat benefits from CentOS).
- takeda64 14y agoI agree with you about the last thing somewhat, but not entirely. While RedHat benefits from people switching from CentOS to RHEL, it's not illegal to run CentOS, and the other direction is also available. My company is currently using RedHat in a very large number (let say, we pay a lot to them...), but looks like we might end up switching to CentOS. Basically the price vs. amount of support we get from them does not seem to be worth it. And it is very close to what we would get from an Open Source community or by using Google. But I do agree with the rest what you said.
- reidrac 14y agoI know it's not illegal, I didn't say that at all. I said it's the same strategy. Although a customer that can move from RHEL to CentOS can be seen as a problem, I think it's just an investment. Look at the consequences of CentOS. There are mailing lists, forums, IRC channels, blog posts, lots of people providing support and training for free. That rich ecosystem is translated into business for Red Hat. EDIT: ate a word.
- sliverstorm 14y agoThere are avenues to acquire Office inexpensively. * There was a $60 sale on 2007 for students. * I was able to get a copy of 2010 for $1 for home use because I also use it at work * You can always purchase a used copy of 2003 for cheap. It's dated, of course, but not really outdated yet.
- eli 14y agoI've heard that too, but I have no idea if it's true. (Surely, Photoshop would be pirated regardless of how much DRM is added). But it's definitely not only the goodness of their heart that leads many companies to offer free or cheap software to students. Microsoft BizSpark is all about giving startups free Microsoft software in the hope that they'll build on the MS stack.
- TheAmazingIdiot 14y agoFor the longest time, cracking Photoshop was a 1 byte change. In effect, there was a conditional JMP. You patch the address of the good JMP to the bad conditional side. Voila: enter a good or bad serial, and it works. A bunch of us under +Fravia came to an agreement that this simplicity was intentional. I think we all can come to the conclusion to why that is... As to your supposition that no amount of 'junk' would stop pirates, I do beg to differ. Back around '98-2000, there was a CD burning program that was notorious to crack. I don't remember the name offhand. There were over a thousand verify checks built into the program at crazy locations. Many would also attempt to write corrupt CDs and ISOs. And the "best part": if you were using a 'naughty' code, it would silently take it and slowly corrupt everything that program touches. Most pirates ignored it and went with NERO to crack/distribute. A few of the hardcore crackers took on that program. I knew of 2 successes.
- hannibalhorn 14y agoThe CD burning product must have been CDRWIN, I remember the frustration of searching for a working crack for that one (as a poor student, of course!)
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- meritt 14y agohttps://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/alt.cd-rom/IPpvC20j2cM/ybp7-5O4Ku4J https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/alt.cd-rom/IPpvC20j2cM... CDRWIN's author's rant and viewpoints against piracy, from March 1998 When all software distribution moves to the Internet (which it will when high-speed fiberoptic connections because commonplace in the future), the big developers like Microsoft and Sony are going to come down hard on the pirates and WAREZ. These big companies are not going to allow the Internet to become a "candy store" where software can be stolen with the push of a button from the comfort of your home. If you think that all of these "bits" are free, then try developing a really good software product yourself and see how much money and time you have to invest in it.
- Tyrant505 14y agoWhat exactly is HARD to pirate? edit: More specifically, Crack. I remember x-force having sources in all the major places ready to dump it to their cracker division.
- angersock 14y agoSkype for a very long time had some absurd protection against things like attaching debuggers, adding code, and whatnot (as I recall). There was a great presentation about it, but I cannot for the life of me find it.
- Tyrant505 14y agoOk, but not exactly the type of standalone software we are speaking upon, yes? edit: as an aside, adobe's subscription based model could be seen as a way to curtail.
- agumonkey 14y agoTo my very limited knowledge, the most difficult software to crack was Steinberg Cubase. Such a PITA the hackers decided not to do it ever again. They quoted a ridiculously large figure for the amount code devoted to detect cracking (~30%), and having a significant impact on performance. I had links about about bypassing anti-debugging techniques, I'll see if I can get my hands on them again.
- majorlazer 14y agoCubase was, by far, the hardest program to find a crack for. I remember a buddy of mine hooked me up with a cracked version that actually worked, but then I reinstalled and lost the files. Never found it again and stopped using Cubase. A year later I just purchased Ableton Live. I know so many people that use Live now because Cubase was too difficult to crack.
- sneak 14y agoThe current version of Live on the Macintosh itself took quite some time to crack. Those guys at Ableton are serious business.
- ender7 14y agoWell, I must admit that when I was a kid I taught myself how to use most of the Creative Suite via pirated copies (back then it was the Macromedia Suite plus whatever Adobe was calling its software at the time). I'm now employed because of those skills, and my employer has to purchase annual copies of said software for me to use.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- yozmsn 14y agoAdobe Software in no longer easy to pirate. From what I understand people have to go to great lengths to pirate CS6, same goes for Office 2010, a friend told me that to pirate it he had to call Microsoft and mess around with files, it's not just a keygen anymore.
- learc83 14y agoFor Adobe Software it's easier than it has been in years. No need to install a patch. You just have to edit your host file to block all the domains CS uses to phone home.
- johnpowell 14y agoIt was that way for me. Back in 2001 I got a iMac G3 500 while I was in collage. I used a p2p program called http://www.carracho.com/ http://www.carracho.com/ to get Photoshop and Dreamweaver. The next summer I got a job at the university doing web design. The university bought me legit copies of the software since I preferred to work on My iBook and not the POS they had on my desk.