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Question of the Day: Will you be watching the FIFA World Cup Final?
SA bangs the piracy drum
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Joy-Energiser
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Hmm,I think I like this myBB journalist.You can immediately see the quality of the article improves when theres a name behind it and not just "Staff Writer".
Nice job.
Nice job.
Joy-Energiser
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JoSorc said:
but thats just the thing with software, if you can't afford it, you actually can ****ing have it.
but thats just the thing with software, if you can't afford it, you actually can ****ing have it.
Lol. I know that's tongue-in-cheek but it's indicative of the state of this country and it's poeple.
Nutty Grandad
Well-Known Member
well then...
For a couple of years I used a hacked version of Kaspersky Internet Security which I got from Romania until they woke up and found like 100k people using the same key
and stopped us from getting updates.
As I was very impressed with it, I went out and bought the disk locally and became legal! Well well, the LEGAL version works worse than the pirated one!! It slows my PC down to a grinding halt when it scans (and I have a top of the range PC) Try and get assistance from their office in Johannesburg and you might as well give up! They are USELESS! PLUS the little application that they insist you download and run to get your full system info before they will even look at helping you gets BLOCKED by their own software as containing malware!! Can you believe this crap?
And as for my genuine windows, I made a huge error in selecting automatic updates! After service pack 3 was installed, I have had nothing but hassles! At least if you call them in Johannesburg, they are very helpful and will remain on the phone with you until the problem is fixed...so in this case, I valued having a genuine version!
The problem is price!
Software is priced for the USA and the EU where people earn 10x or more than we do here...not fair on us!
For a couple of years I used a hacked version of Kaspersky Internet Security which I got from Romania until they woke up and found like 100k people using the same key
and stopped us from getting updates.As I was very impressed with it, I went out and bought the disk locally and became legal! Well well, the LEGAL version works worse than the pirated one!! It slows my PC down to a grinding halt when it scans (and I have a top of the range PC) Try and get assistance from their office in Johannesburg and you might as well give up! They are USELESS! PLUS the little application that they insist you download and run to get your full system info before they will even look at helping you gets BLOCKED by their own software as containing malware!! Can you believe this crap?
And as for my genuine windows, I made a huge error in selecting automatic updates! After service pack 3 was installed, I have had nothing but hassles! At least if you call them in Johannesburg, they are very helpful and will remain on the phone with you until the problem is fixed...so in this case, I valued having a genuine version!
The problem is price!
Software is priced for the USA and the EU where people earn 10x or more than we do here...not fair on us!
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well then...
For a couple of years I used a hacked version of Kaspersky Internet Security which I got from Romania until they woke up and found like 100k people using the same key
As I was very impressed with it, I went out and bought the disk locally and became legal! Well well, the LEGAL version works worse than the pirated one!! It slows my PC down to a grinding halt when it scans (and I have a top of the range PC) Try and get assistance from their office in Johannesburg and you might as well give up! They are USELESS! PLUS the little application that they insist you download and run to get your full system info before they will even look at helping you gets BLOCKED by their own software as containing malware!! Can you believe this crap?
Try Panda Cloud. I am very happy with it.
http://www.cloudantivirus.com/
murraybiscuit
Executive Member
Agreed. The irony is that I often buy software from overseas to avoid local markups. How can you charge a blanket global price for software when the entire local industry remunerates you less? It's like buying a big mac in SA for 8 euro... or am I wrong? I guess the idea is to do more work for international clients if your software is priced internationally.
You clearly don't operate in the graphics industry. Try between R 20k - R80k+ for single user software licenses from Adobe and Autodesk. Sorry, open source video, 3d and other media apps just don't do the job. In the graphics industry, if your competitor uses pirate products, it's a HUGE advantage. Add some decent spec hardware and you're making a huge loss before you've even started...
It's easy to say "if you can't afford it, you shouldn't be using it" when your software is only costing a few thousand zar and there are cheaper alternatives.
Yes and no. A lot of software I've used has either free or hugely discounted educational versions. But if they don't, I can see why it's pirated. If Adobe did implement foolproof anti-piracy, the market would open up and produce more competitors, so it's not necessarily a bad thing.
My issue is that companies like Adobe don't try to meet the consumer half way because they don't have competition. A good example of this is their Font Folio, which retails at R16000 for a couple thousand fonts. This is ultimately a 4 user license, but they refuse to sell single user licenses. And those four people have to employed by the same company - you can't split the cost across companies / individuals. You wonder why nobody buys commercial fonts?
Then they employ a strategy of "upgrades" which charges large amounts for very little added value in order to force users into the upgrade cycle.
I often feel that the role of the BSA is to protect the interests of a few monopolies and keep artificially inflated prices high.
Kosmik
Honorary Master
Hehe, I'm quite aware of how much graphics software costs but it's not my field so would rather not comment on it
It's only the metro's who use it anyway, most IT like a plain old white page 
murraybiscuit
Executive Member
Hehe, I'm quite aware of how much graphics software costs but it's not my field so would rather not comment on it
well, that makes me a metro who also likes white pages.
superfly
Well-Known Member
Most folks have queried where the BSA gets their 41% from. Now, I don't know either, but I'll hazard a guess that they're calculating their "loss" and using various statistical probabilities (based on the size of the population, the number of computers in a sample group of people, etc). However, like the article, and others in the thread have pointed out, this is actually a PERCEIVED LOSS. They are assuming that every person who has a pirated copy of some software would buy a copy of that software. Of course that's not the case, most folks in poorer countries (like SA) can't afford those high prices, which is part of the reason why they pirate the software.
Now, I don't think that affordability is a 100% valid excuse. It has a lot of truth to it, but it's not the whole story. There *are* open source or cheaper alternatives to most of the consumer-level software packages, but most folks can't be bothered to go look for them, because it's so easy to get a copy of Office from their friends.
There's a project called SharpDevelop, which is written in C#, and supports C# and VB.NET IIRC. I don't know what it's like, I haven't used it, since I don't run Windows, but you might want to look at it.
Some other free or cheap alternatives (that run on Windows):
Office: OpenOffice.org, SoftMaker Office
Photoshop: The GIMP (of course), Pixel
Illustrator: Inkscape
There are others out there too. You can find some more open source software on the following sites:
http://opensourcewindows.org/
http://opensourcemac.org/
http://osalt.com/
Now, I don't think that affordability is a 100% valid excuse. It has a lot of truth to it, but it's not the whole story. There *are* open source or cheaper alternatives to most of the consumer-level software packages, but most folks can't be bothered to go look for them, because it's so easy to get a copy of Office from their friends.
There's a project called SharpDevelop, which is written in C#, and supports C# and VB.NET IIRC. I don't know what it's like, I haven't used it, since I don't run Windows, but you might want to look at it.
Some other free or cheap alternatives (that run on Windows):
Office: OpenOffice.org, SoftMaker Office
Photoshop: The GIMP (of course), Pixel
Illustrator: Inkscape
There are others out there too. You can find some more open source software on the following sites:
http://opensourcewindows.org/
http://opensourcemac.org/
http://osalt.com/
but thats just the thing with software, if you can't afford it, you actually can ****ing have it.
And best of all, it costs the copyright holder NOTHING if someone pirates it! Since he isn't depriving anyone of a copy by for example shoplifting it, 'piracy' falls under a different paradigm. Google the Wiki for the history of Copyright.
People who complain about piracy are just jealous someone is using their things for free. Often, those users are collectors who have so much warez and so little know-how it's impossible for them to even make use of all that software.
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Which is why I like Apple. Apple bought Shake, before it was $5000 for a render-only license, now Shake costs R5000 for the full GUI package.
Color cost $11,000 per license, Apple bought it, now it's included free in the $1000 Final Cut Studio package.
But they are deprived of the right to decide who can use their intellectual property.
That is true, but that is an intangible concept. It's not like a grocer whose shop is shoplifted or a bank which gets robbed. Maybe it hurts their feelings or makes them upset but so does a person who cuts in front of them in traffic.
Yep sure, or like somebody swimming in your swimming pool which you never use anyway.
murraybiscuit
Executive Member
@PeterCH - I don't get your argument... or am I getting you wrong?
Are you saying that if one person in the world bought a piece of software and everybody else copied it, the software company wouldn't lose revenue?
You can be guaranteed that next time the price will go up for the poor sod that actually wants to buy the legit copy. Sure, increasing the price is a failed strategy - the guy who wants to be legal loses out, the guys who write the software lose out, and the only people who benefit are the pirates.
Which is why, as long as I buy legal software, piracy indirectly screws me over.
Are you saying that if one person in the world bought a piece of software and everybody else copied it, the software company wouldn't lose revenue?
You can be guaranteed that next time the price will go up for the poor sod that actually wants to buy the legit copy. Sure, increasing the price is a failed strategy - the guy who wants to be legal loses out, the guys who write the software lose out, and the only people who benefit are the pirates.
Which is why, as long as I buy legal software, piracy indirectly screws me over.
I think most of the posters on here realise that pirating is at the very least immoral and try to justify their actions with the usual excuses. Well those that are old enough to understand capitalism anyway.