How does Software Piracy Affect Me?

This is just sad.

Most people who pirate would never have bought it in the first place.

A pirated copy does not take anything away from a company. The company loses nothing.

Software piracy generates sales. In the last year, I've paid for two copies of Anno 2070, four copies of Minecraft, two copies of Left 4 Dead 2 and paid for the collectors edition of both BF3 and the upcoming BF4 after pirating those games, or the earlier version. There have been many many more purchases where a pirated copy was used as a "trial" copy.

Piracy generates free advertising. From blog posts to word of mouth, youtube reviews to getting friends to pay for accounts, piracy takes a person who would not have bought something in the first place, and allows that person to spread the word.

Anti-Piracy efforts only affect legitimate users -- Sim City, Diablo 3, Anno 2070, Skyrim, Crysis and Crysis Warhead, Assassin's Creed 2, Silent Hill 5, Gothic 4, anything GMWL, Ubisoft Online, etc., etc.

How many of you have $75,000 to spend on software? Most of you think of software piracy as stealing an $89 copy of windows.

Let's pretend you are required to know about high end software to advance your career. That software can cost a fortune. Are you still anti-piracy? Next, let's discuss the tactics of software companies.

Nowadays, software companies are major corporations that make huge profits at the cost of paying their skilled software designers next to nothing. Are you still anti-piracy?

Now let's talk about how software companies promise you their software will solve your problems, and then come loaded with bugs, and you cannot ever return your software for a full refund. In fact, there is no way to verify their claims without getting cheated out of a fortune. Are you still anti-piracy?

Lastly, let's consider that piracy made some software a huge success. The more people who learn how to use software through piracy, the more their employers are eager to purchase that software because there are a lot more potential employees from which to choose who can actually use it.

This is especially true for companies like Autodesk, Autocad and Mastercam. None of these brands can compete with others for quality, but they are at the top of sales because people who pirated them learned them and forced their employers into making purchases.

Being anti-piracy is a stance only for the ignorant who have never spent more that a few seconds analyzing the realities of the effects of piracy. Piracy greatly increases the chances of a software company's survival. Wake up!

@JaneAir - Don't fool yourself. Software companies are out to make a profit. If piracy magically stopped tomorrow, I don't think the high prices of some of these software packages would just magically come down.

Plus, I've never seen a compelling argument in any software piracy articles that proves piracy makes companies lose money. A lot of people who pirate were never going to pay for the software in the first place! So I think it's kind of a non-issue as far as profit is concerned.

I think the worst part about software piracy is that it drives up the cost of software for the rest of us. If companies didn't have to spend so much money protecting their software from piracy and didn't lose so much profit from illegal downloading, maybe software would be cheaper.

@Ted41 - Yeah, getting a computer virus or having your credit card number stolen seem like pretty compelling reasons not to pirate software to me. But some people are really into pirating, I think they do it just to do it, you know?

Because there aren't really that many compelling arguments to pirate software anymore. There are tons of freeware versions of popular software packages, for one thing. Also, a lot of software companies offer their software as a download on their website, so you don't have to go to the store.

Pirating software just isn't worth it. First of all, it's both illegal and unethical, which should be good enough reasons not to do it. But even if you don't care about that, the simple fact that pirated software often gives people computer viruses should be a good reason to just buy your software!

I think it is ridiculous that giving someone an old version of your software is piracy. My mom is using an ancient copy of a word program, and yes, I do have the updated version on my own computer.

I think that once you have purchased software you should be able to do what you want with it. Of course, this is in regards to personal use.

I figure as long as you aren't profiting from selling it, or installing it on strangers computers that it should be yours do with as you please. You paid for it.

It's not like my mother would have ever bought the program in the first place, she'd still be using the free notepad.

Can you think of any other ways that the rules against piracy have gotten to be too much?

I believe that if companies want to prevent software piracy they should stop making one size (and one price) fits all software.

I enjoy photo editing and page design, but the software to do this is in the thousands of dollars range. There is no way I could afford this for something I do as a hobby.

I think if companies want to make more money, they should release their professional grade software with fewer features for those who just want to play with it.

This may help to stop people from just ripping off the expensive suite, or borrowing a friend's copy.