3 ms·

Piracy is Progressive Taxation (Tim O'Reilly, 2002)

14 points by alexkay 17y ago

RyanMcGreal 17y ago
I just recently referenced this essay in my open letter to Lily Allen: http://quandyfactory.com/blog/26/an_open_letter_to_lily_allen http://quandyfactory.com/blog/26/an_open_letter_to_lily_alle...
clistctrl 17y ago
The post is about books/music etc but i'm going to add a note about software piracy. When I was younger of course I could not afford photoshop, nor could my father who worked at the post office. I downloaded it, played (took me several months) but soon I got good at it. Good enough to get a job using it, I was also still in high school. In addition I downloaded Visual Studio 6. I used that to learn C++ more specifically MFC. Soon I had a job programming. Today I'm a huge Microsoft advocate, and I've urged my previous 2 employers to purchase copies of photoshop for my desk. I'm not justifying what I did... it is still wrong. But they gave me a valuable skill set which i'm grateful for. While I have given them a good amount of additional business. I'll also add that today, now that I can afford it I proudly own (and bought from legitimate sources) most of the software I once had to download.
rick888 17y ago
It's pretty simple. If you don't want to buy software, music, or movies. Don't buy it. but don't pirate it either. You are trampling on the rights of the company, person, or business that created it. Piracy may not be a 1-1 loss in sales, but you have to admit that does effect sales. Another effect is that when these pirate sites appear on google, many of them get keywords higher than the original sites. When someone searches google and they see the first result, which means they get the software for free, and the next result, which costs $49, which one will they choose? Most will just download the free one. I also see a growing trend of people that feel that software is information and information should be free. People feel it is their right to download software that normally costs money, for free. This trend will only lead to the inability to sell software online.

14 points by alexkay 17y ago

I just recently referenced this essay in my open letter to Lily Allen: http://quandyfactory.com/blog/26/an_open_letter_to_lily_allen http://quandyfactory.com/blog/26/an_open_letter_to_lily_alle...

clistctrl 17y ago

The post is about books/music etc but i'm going to add a note about software piracy. When I was younger of course I could not afford photoshop, nor could my father who worked at the post office. I downloaded it, played (took me several months) but soon I got good at it. Good enough to get a job using it, I was also still in high school. In addition I downloaded Visual Studio 6. I used that to learn C++ more specifically MFC. Soon I had a job programming. Today I'm a huge Microsoft advocate, and I've urged my previous 2 employers to purchase copies of photoshop for my desk. I'm not justifying what I did... it is still wrong. But they gave me a valuable skill set which i'm grateful for. While I have given them a good amount of additional business. I'll also add that today, now that I can afford it I proudly own (and bought from legitimate sources) most of the software I once had to download.

rick888 17y ago

It's pretty simple. If you don't want to buy software, music, or movies. Don't buy it. but don't pirate it either. You are trampling on the rights of the company, person, or business that created it. Piracy may not be a 1-1 loss in sales, but you have to admit that does effect sales. Another effect is that when these pirate sites appear on google, many of them get keywords higher than the original sites. When someone searches google and they see the first result, which means they get the software for free, and the next result, which costs $49, which one will they choose? Most will just download the free one. I also see a growing trend of people that feel that software is information and information should be free. People feel it is their right to download software that normally costs money, for free. This trend will only lead to the inability to sell software online.