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I really dislike the "it brings new users" argument for piracy. If it made business sense to provide a free entry to their product they would. Pirates aren't

I really dislike the "it brings new users" argument for piracy. If it made business sense to provide a free entry to their product they would. Pirates aren't somehow doing them a favor and its moral acrobatics to pretend like they are. For students they have heavily discounted licenses and I know a few low-quality(I don't know anyone worth their salt who pirates it), professional graphic designers who use pirated copies. It is lost revenue and if they wanted to provide demos that should be up to them not the pirates.

ender7 13y ago
It is up to them, but the parent is arguing that it's a bad business decision, and I agree. Even their "student" versions are wayyy too expensive for people to dabble with (especially penny-pinching students).
te_chris 13y ago
The piracy amounted to blocking a few urls in the hosts file, between versions they never changed these urls, not even between updates. I'm going to draw the conclusion that making it so easy is at least a tacit acknowledgement of Adobe being OK with having such an effective funnel.
integraton 13y ago
It's a mistake to use the "if it made business sense ... they would" line of thinking when interpreting the decision-making of any organization, especially large established ones. As Marc Andreessen has noted: "The behavior of any big company is largely inexplicable when viewed from the outside. I always laugh when someone says, "Microsoft is going to do X", or "Google is going to do Y", or "Yahoo is going to do Z". Odds are, nobody inside Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo knows what Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo is going to do in any given circumstance on any given issue. ... "The inside of any big company is a very, very complex system consisting of many thousands of people, of whom at least hundreds and probably thousands are executives who think they have some level of decision-making authority. On any given issue, many people inside the company are going to get some kind of vote on what happens -- maybe 8 people, maybe 10, 15, 20, sometimes many more. ... "You can count on there being a whole host of impinging forces that will affect the dynamic of decision-making on any issue at a big company. ... "You can't possibly even identify all the factors that will come to bear on a big company's decision, much less try to understand them, much less try to influence them very much at all." http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4jwZiwL41g0J:pmarca-archive.posterous.com/the-pmarca-guide-to-startups-part-5-the-moby+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4jwZiwL...
- stusmall 13y ago
  You are right. I've been away from megacorps for too long. Thinking of them as rational actors is a huge mistake. :) My point still stands that it is their product and it should be their choice even if they piss it away.
egypturnash 13y ago
Anecdotes are not data, but here's some anecdata to support the "it brings new users" piracy argument: I've been using Illustrator for about ten years. It's my main artistic medium; I'm currently engaged in drawing a comic book entirely in it. I'm at the point where I can pretty confidently say I've mastered it. I've been paying for Illustrator for about five or six years. When I started using it, I was not a student, and there was no way I could afford a full-price legal copy. If I hadn't pirated it, I would have not learnt it to the point where I could make enough money using it to buy it and keep it up to date. I would have used some other program, or gone with physical media. And I would not have been buying the thing for the past several years.

ender7 13y ago

It is up to them, but the parent is arguing that it's a bad business decision, and I agree. Even their "student" versions are wayyy too expensive for people to dabble with (especially penny-pinching students).

te_chris 13y ago

The piracy amounted to blocking a few urls in the hosts file, between versions they never changed these urls, not even between updates. I'm going to draw the conclusion that making it so easy is at least a tacit acknowledgement of Adobe being OK with having such an effective funnel.

integraton 13y ago

It's a mistake to use the "if it made business sense ... they would" line of thinking when interpreting the decision-making of any organization, especially large established ones. As Marc Andreessen has noted: "The behavior of any big company is largely inexplicable when viewed from the outside. I always laugh when someone says, "Microsoft is going to do X", or "Google is going to do Y", or "Yahoo is going to do Z". Odds are, nobody inside Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo knows what Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo is going to do in any given circumstance on any given issue. ... "The inside of any big company is a very, very complex system consisting of many thousands of people, of whom at least hundreds and probably thousands are executives who think they have some level of decision-making authority. On any given issue, many people inside the company are going to get some kind of vote on what happens -- maybe 8 people, maybe 10, 15, 20, sometimes many more. ... "You can count on there being a whole host of impinging forces that will affect the dynamic of decision-making on any issue at a big company. ... "You can't possibly even identify all the factors that will come to bear on a big company's decision, much less try to understand them, much less try to influence them very much at all." http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4jwZiwL41g0J:pmarca-archive.posterous.com/the-pmarca-guide-to-startups-part-5-the-moby+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4jwZiwL...

stusmall 13y ago
You are right. I've been away from megacorps for too long. Thinking of them as rational actors is a huge mistake. :) My point still stands that it is their product and it should be their choice even if they piss it away.

egypturnash 13y ago

Anecdotes are not data, but here's some anecdata to support the "it brings new users" piracy argument: I've been using Illustrator for about ten years. It's my main artistic medium; I'm currently engaged in drawing a comic book entirely in it. I'm at the point where I can pretty confidently say I've mastered it. I've been paying for Illustrator for about five or six years. When I started using it, I was not a student, and there was no way I could afford a full-price legal copy. If I hadn't pirated it, I would have not learnt it to the point where I could make enough money using it to buy it and keep it up to date. I would have used some other program, or gone with physical media. And I would not have been buying the thing for the past several years.