Software pirates stealing from local channel

[PeterCH]

You do have a point but I can mention 4 companies that started with pirated software, made money and guess what? The owners bought new cars, big mansions and they have their pretty wives with big label brands and expensive gym contracts, hair and manicures.

AND STILL NO LEGAL SOFTWARE! Even though they make the money now they still dont give a ***** about the software that helped them start their business or the software that runs their daily business, i am an auditor and I see this kind of thing on a daily basis.

Doesn't the BSA pay like $10.000-$100.000 per case or reported corporate
piracy? Report them, if they're making money off the software then it's different. I'm against someone calling a kid using Photoshop to spice up
his DragonBallZ homepage piracy and lost revenue. What you mention is
worth a BIIIG reward for you.

Then again if the pirate software comes from developers who are not BSA members, BSA won't do anything about it.

 

[PeterCH]

As said before - this is absolute drivel.

So I BUY a couple of Blue-Rays - <read - legally>. Put in my player and guess what - wrong region code...cannot be played as I have the SA version (Zone 2) player and cannot play Zone 1 movies.

Note that I have also payed the rip off tax charges for import duties...

Guess where I'm getting my next movies from...

It's like most things in SA - the more you try to stay legal and give the local bloodsuckers money, the more difficult they make it for you and the snowball continues.

Another thing - the local channels are not even required - we do not want your crappy marketing - wow ever seen linux programs on a stupid billboard...? I certainly do not have any problems with that said Linux sofware, development going great on new ones....so what what were you on about again....?? Get a life and rather go and mow lawns or generate electricity - something that will actually provide benefits to the country...bunch of no good room temperature IQ cabbages...

What you mention is entirely legal. You are allowed to import whatever you want (except for illegal stuff like child porn or drugs) and use the software
(eg BD movie) with your equipment. You're not breaking any laws or civil agreements.

Buying imported software is not piracy either. I can get PhotoShop from international shops for about 50% of the local price. It's legit with manuals
and serial no's. Its' not illegal.

 

[PeterCH]

But piracy means increased sales so you should be happy.



Surely if there wasn't any, or as much, piracy then at least some of those sales would have gone through if piracy wasn't an option. You can't really say that everyone using a pirated copy wouldn't buy that software if they couldn't get it pirated. I would have to buy a lot of the software I use if I didn't pirate it.

Yes and no. The fact that Office, Windows and PhotoShop are so common is not because they are such superior products. There are at least a dozen
R500 and under Office packages out there - not to mention free OpenOffice/StarOffice. Piracy = advertising for free. While some may not
buy the official software businesses which rely on it to make money and which rely on support, updates and upgrades will not mind the expense.
Look at Apple. Final Cut Pro is a far superior product to virtually every
editing package out there except for Avid - but since it's hardware locked
(can't pirate a Mac computer) it's a niche product, same for Mac OSX
and other superior products. A cheap product like PaintShop Pro
costs much less than Adobe Photoshop but when pirating people
will pirate the expensive stuff, learn that and now where is PSP?
PSP can do virtually all that PS can, and for amateur/semi-pro's
its good enough but it's like virtually dead now. What about Corel
Draw and co - dead too.

I agree some businesses do pirate but claims the developers make in terms of loss revenue are overblown and indicative of bittorrent downloads and
Chinese/Malaysian pirate vendors - software sold to people who would probably not buy it in the first place and who usually use it for non-commercial applications or don't even use it at all (some people just
collect software to brag about it).

The answer is simple. Encourage people to report commercial piracy by offering rewards - what the BSA in the US does, and do periodic corporate audits.
I'm not saying go to people's private homes and fine someone R10.000 because his 14 year old daughter has an illegal Photoshop on her pc
used to edit anime pictures for her Facebook page. I'm saying go after the big fish who make money off the products and I mean REAL money.
Heck they're doing this already, maybe all they want is to search people's homes and fine them when they're kid has illegal office or ps.

 

[PeterCH]

What about all of us who buy our software from Take 2 and foreign stores? Are we also "stealing" from the channel because it hasn't gone through the South African tradition of four layers of middle men?

You're right. However self-importation is NOT illegal. If your box comes
with a legit licence key, manuals and DVDs - you are 100% in the clear.
What may happen is that the local BSA may count these as
piracy because they don't know that the software was purchased overseas
and just assume that because YOU didn't upgrade your PhotoShop
to the latest version this year you bought a pirate copy.

 

[km2]

You're right. However self-importation is NOT illegal. If your box comes
with a legit licence key, manuals and DVDs - you are 100% in the clear.
What may happen is that the local BSA may count these as
piracy because they don't know that the software was purchased overseas
and just assume that because YOU didn't upgrade your PhotoShop
to the latest version this year you bought a pirate copy.

I think what annoys me most about these kinds of articles is that it represents yet another one-sided attempt by some faceless PR machine to paint the channel as the victim, rather than exposing them as the greedy middlemen that they are.

While I understand that there may be benefits to "official" channels, these are far more applicable to durable goods such as washing machines, TV's, camera's and other items where if they break you can return them to someone knowing that they'll get fixed. Now you compare that to the software channel, where if there's a problem with Vista and it doesn't work correctly on your computer it's a case of "Tough luck sir, you opened the box, we're not taking it back because you're probably just trying to pirate it."

And for that great "service", they mark up the prices significantly from what it costs you if you just imported it directly.

Yet they still aren't content to just take their cut from the average consumer. If someone dares to step out of line and bypass them by importing directly they start sueing and making a big deal of it:

"Movie production company Universal City Studios and its South African subsidiary have launched court proceedings in an attempt to stop DVD store franchise Mr Video from importing movies directly from the United States" 7 March 2008 (need a Cape Argus subscription to read the rest, sorry!)

PeterCH, even though what you say about self-importing is true, this kind of stuff still gets published in the paper and is designed to make people think that it's all illegal.

As a nation we stand up and complain loudly as soon as we smell the slightest hint of price fixing. Just look at the fines that got levied against the bread companies recently, and while that may be different because it's a staple food, from a business perspective software like Photoshop/Windows/Office could well be considered a "staple" as well.

Finally there's the nonsense spectre of the jobs that could be threatened by not buying through the channel. Imagine if the bread companies had turned around and gone "Hey, by jacking up the price of bread by 25% we've created thousands of new jobs at our company!" No one would accept that for one second, yet the channel tries to pass it off as a legitimate reason and gets it published in respected magazines.

It's not like the money that a company saves by buying from a cheaper source just goes into a big old money bin for the CEO to swim in. It ends up being spent on something else in the economy, or goes back into our pocket via cheaper prices.

Disappointing to see it repeated on a site like MyADSL in any case, but at least I'm glad to get this little rant off my chest

 

[cablemonkey]

When using illegal software, end-users lose many of the vendor guarantees that come with every licensed software copy.

Dunno hey, a lot of the EULA's I've bothered to read basically amounted to saying: "This software isn't yours; it's just licensed to you. But if it breaks your computer, we don't wanna know. If you lose information because of our software, we don't wanna know. By clicking on that little check-box down there you agree that you have no rights whatsoever."

So... like... whatever.

Not that I'm going "Yay! Piracy! Viva!" ; but the BSA really needs to work on a better argument.

 

[eltherza]

not to mention free OpenOffice/StarOffice.

Yeah, never heard of a company moaning that free software is taking sales away from them.

I use open office now all the time. I stay clear of MS Office. Costs to much
(office home R1200 from take2, office Pro R4800) to just have something to open a .doc or write up a 1 page letter...

take2 vs this

Makro is guilty of selling it for R400+ too... middle men can take a running jump.

 

[km2]

Dunno hey, a lot of the EULA's I've bothered to read basically amounted to saying: "This software isn't yours; it's just licensed to you. But if it breaks your computer, we don't wanna know. If you lose information because of our software, we don't wanna know. By clicking on that little check-box down there you agree that you have no rights whatsoever."

So... like... whatever.

Not that I'm going "Yay! Piracy! Viva!" ; but the BSA really needs to work on a better argument.

Definitely, at least with Microsoft software the majority of copies of Windows/Office sold to individuals are via DSP or OEM agreements whereby the company who sold it to you is responsible for support, and NOT Microsoft (with the exception of a few things like activation). So it's not even like you get much benefit in that regard by going the legal route.

If they could get away with saying that God kills a kitten whenever you pirate, I'm pretty sure they would.

 

[Tns]

it is imperative that software piracy be fought and eradicated

it will never go away, it's been around since the 1600 i think

 

[jetpacman]

The article looks like some regurgitated drivel originally penned by the Propaganda Department at the BSA, dolled up and reported as "news" in Computing SA in their desperation not to have to actually report anything other than channel advertorial.

Amen brother.

The local IT channel is so flaky to say the least especially the supplier which full of know it alls who all sit behind desktops fighting for commisions, with headsets on their heads and a cup of coffee in front of them and the cell phone logged into mxit lying next to the keyboard. Some tend to have PMS and then you have to sit and wait while they yak away with another customer on their headset wasting your time.

Try and get them to get you a particular piece of software thats off the market and then you can forget about it. Whats worse is let them mistake you for the "end user" and then some get all hostile like are some kind of lower level low life.

 

[jetpacman]

Yeah, never heard of a company moaning that free software is taking sales away from them.

I use open office now all the time. I stay clear of MS Office. Costs to much
(office home R1200 from take2, office Pro R4800) to just have something to open a .doc or write up a 1 page letter...

take2 vs this

Makro is guilty of selling it for R400+ too... middle men can take a running jump.

I use Abiword for that kind of thing, discovered it a few years ago in a linux distro and now use it on windows, works great for me. Much lighter than open office as well.

http://www.abisource.com/download/

Simple and to the point, why not give it try...

 

[devnull]

"For developers, every unlicensed copy of software that is in use means lost revenue"

this is nonsense, there are no guarantees that someone will pay for a piece of software that they only use because they got it for free.

 

[AK65]

Just more propaganda from the BSA aka Microsoft Software Police.

What I suggest people do is that if they know that people are using pirated proprietary software, suggest they move to free software, failing which, report them to the BSA.

Also the Open Source / Free Software community should put out PR to educate people about free alternatives. Before I discovered Open Source / Linux, I panicked and spent thousands on Windows and Office licences to get 'legal'. Where's Mark Shuttleworth to counter this bs?

They'll never get another cent from me...

 

[XcepticZP]

OpenOffice blows chunks

OpenOffice blows chunks and is too slow. Microsoft Office is far more superior, and that's why it comes with a price tag.
Lol, it's funny knowing how many people will pain through the use of open source software just because it's cool to hate the current big guy in the business (Microsoft in this case).

 

[icyrus]

OpenOffice blows chunks and is too slow. Microsoft Office is far more superior, and that's why it comes with a price tag.
Lol, it's funny knowing how many people will pain through the use of open source software just because it's cool to hate the current big guy in the business (Microsoft in this case).

Err, no.