Should operating systems auto-delete itself at first sign, EVERYTIME?

What is illegal? Creating MP3's from a CD you own?

 

No you wouldn't and I agree with that, but my parents taught me a lesson a long time ago, if it's not yours, then don't touch it so I would have to apply that lesson here.

Your welcome. :smile:

 

I was responding to "usapatriot" who does not seem all that patriotic. I think he may have deleted or altered his post which I was responding to...

 

I bet you have violated at least one of these rules.

Watch the video. Many of these rules are retarded.
http://reviews.cnet.com/4660-12443_7-6073066.html?tag=vid.2

 

I haven't altered anything nor do I intend to.

All i've done is simple spelling and grammar editing.

 

Does Your avatar and signature violate copyrighted content??? Did you get permission from the owners of that show to use those images?

Stop defending piracy... It is ILLEGAL!

 

I was responding to someone's post.

 

That argument is quite flawed and sorry to say but quite ignorant

How many times you use a product may have relevance to perceived value for money, but it does not act as a justification for theft. You would not be able to offer as a defence that you only drove the Porsche you stole twice. Likewise, whether you use Photoshop once a year or once every day is inconsequential - my main point stands. Theft is theft.

 

Acutally the images of the transformer I used are royalty free so I didn't need to. I have not defended piracy at all, as a matter of fact if you look at my post's you will see that, I only defended the right for usapatriot to voice his opinion.

 

Why do you contridict yourself? You say you use Photoshop, but then you don't???

 

I was talking to that guy who uses the images from that one cartoon show, "Futurama", that aired on Fox years ago...

 

Oh, my apologies... :smile:

 

My uses for photoshop would be to do what was stated in my earlier post.

I am not saying I use it.

 

Anytime you write a paper, internet post or any other document and use any source, it has to be referenced properly. I know most people do not have a clue how to properly reference articles because it is a royal pain in the butt. I spent months learning the American Journal of Botany format before I stopped "stealing" information from books. I am clearly a Biology major. Most curriculums use MLA format. Some curriculums have their own formats like botany, psychology and business. I bet you still reference articles on this site or others without using proper technique. That is stealing.

 

Protections systems; Henry has brought up an issue were corporations campaign for their right to pursue software theft, but at the expense of the user's rights. Of course, the users won't have any of that.

To Henry: this is definitely an interesting topic; but your propositions have huge implications. In order to use such "self-destruct" features in to an OS, the company would essentially have to tell the user how they can use data such as music, games, and videos. As you may know, this is the main purpose of DRM, or Digital Rights Management. You claim that such mechanisms would stop piracy, but in fact they restrict the user in terms of what they are allowed to do on their system, or even what they can do with their system.

I think its safe to say that when most users buy Windows, they don't read the EULA, nor do they knowingly adhere to it. In most cases, they consider the operating system their own personal possession, and as such they have the right to do with it as they please. And so they do. Corporations fail to make it clear that the OS comes with a contract. Why do they do this? Maybe they would make fewer sales if people knew how absurd the contract terms are. Perhaps one solution to piracy in general would be for software makers to somehow make it clear to the buyer what they are agreeing to when they buy the product. Unfortunately companies are unlikely to implement such measures as their terms not only tip the scales in the their favour, but they also tend to coerce the user to spend more money.

For myself, all I can say is that it'll be a cold day in Hell when I sit to read Microsoft's EULA.

 

In response to the original post; such an OS would be a tremendous violation of privacy, and could never be effectively accurate. Plus copyright laws differ in different countries, also, everyone would just switch to linux (not necessarily a bad thing ), and hackers would eventually find methods to disable said anti-piracy features.

About piracy in general; I just want to clear this one thing up. Piracy is NOT theft. Theft involves taking something from someone else. Making a copy of something without permission is not stealing, it's copyright infringement; the original owner is still in possession of his original product, there's just another copy of it. Secondly, I can't believe how certain people blatantly believe what is legal and what is good or moral to be one and the same. I don't know about everybody else, but something being illegal isn't a good enough reason on it's own to stop me from doing something. Sodomy has been illegal, slavery has been legal; the moment people blindly use the law as their own moral code is the moment we lose our personal freedom.

 

Did you just write that and believe in it at the same time?! I honestly cannot believe some people. Underlining used to highlight what I thought was particularly funny. I had a good laugh there

Please do not try to blur the lines. The semantics of the word 'theft' is quite clear

You may wish to justify it to yourself for whatever reason, but everytime Joe plays a song he downloaded off a torrent or uses Photoshop he didn't pay for, it is quite clear to all including Joe what he has done

 

Well said, Iza.

I agree with you completely. I've just finished typing a reply to another of Henry's threads and made a similar point - that legality is not the same as morality. I was going to reply to this one too, but don't really have anything to add to your excellent and eloquent post!

 

I'm not trying to justify it; I'm just saying it's not the same thing as stealing. That's why pirates get charged with copyright infringement and not theft.

I read this somewhere, I forget where; it goes against a typical argument;

• "You wouldn't steal a Ferrari that you'd love to drive simply because you can't afford it, right? So why would you illegally download expensive software?"
• "You're right, I wouldn't steal a Ferrari. But if my friend came over and said 'Hey I got this new Ferrari, want me to burn you a copy?' I would be inclined to say yes."

Again, I'm not trying to advocate piracy, I'm just illustrating how it is different from theft.

 

Are you the self-appointed cyber police? Or did you just join this forum to harass longtime members. Just curious.

 

You are seriously mistaken if you actually believe that. Not only is it sad, it also shows that your definition of 'theft' is very limited.

Software piracy (also called 'software theft') is theft, because you are stealing their product. They develop the software, and sell it at a price they deem reasonable.

Making copies of that software (for personal use or not) is robbing them of the profit they would have made had you purchased the product legally. While the software may still be in the developer's possession, the profit they would have made is not. Simple as that.

---

Re: UsaPatriot's view on Photoshop...

Does it really matter how frequently or for what purposes you use it for or even whether or not you need it? If you pirated Photoshop, you pirated Photoshop - there's nothing else that matters.

If you feel the price of Photoshop is unfair, then don't buy it. Just because a software developer who makes a product that you want, sets the price higher than you are capable of or willing to pay, doesn't mean it's right to steal it.

---

Finally, in response to the original poster's question... if Microsoft were to somehow find a way to indefinitely determine the validity of licenses, I see no reason to not implement it...

If you buy legal software, you will not be affected.


Matt

 

Praise be to the modern day Robin Hoods!

 

Lemme go over some realities with you:

First off, with respect to the Futurama pics, there's still a concept known as "fair use" in this country. He's in NO WAY diminishing the value of the show by using it's images here, he's not attempting to profit from it, he's using it basically in a "review" sense. It's perfectly legal according to most people who care about the fact that individuals are still allowed to have rights in this country.

Secondly, theft is where you take someone's property and in doing so deprive them of it. Copying software is NOT theft, nor is it piracy, no matter which way you try to spin it, because you are not depriving anyone of anything, except for their RIGHT to control COPIES of their work (The word copyright comes from somewhere), and according to every legal system in the world, you have to be in the air or on the ocean to engage in piracy. The crime is "copyright infringement", period. In most cases, you're not even depriving them of a sale, because you wouldn't have bought it in the first place. It's a strawman argument to use that as a defense. That doesn't make it any less illegal, but would you appreciate it if I said that assault and murder were exactly the same, right after you got accused of assault? I think you'd protest, and rightly so.

Copyright and patents were enacted under the promise of contributing to the greater common good, that they would benefit the public by encouraging people to create more. I don't really think that locking down all usage of everything, indefinitely, except for those who pay is enriching the public.

Anyway, this is obviously a heated topic. Please make sure we stick with discussions, and do NOT use personal insults or derogatory remarks, ok? I don't want to have to close this thread, as there's a lot of good discussion going on. READ the arguments, think about them, take a few deep breaths, and construct a response. Emotional outbursts will get it locked.

 

Because if it ever raised false positives, that would put the company into horrible view with the public. With that being said, I've had WGA failed to authenticate with real windows before and those operators are just total *******s. Unlike you, I on the other hand am thinking why they put that crap on to screw legit consumers in the first place.

 

Well said. I agree with this post.

Piracy is obviously illegal, but that does not necessarily mean it's morally reprehensible, depending on your point of view. In the end, once you cut through the profit-seeking, it boils down to what Pitabred said - the ultimate goal of intellectual property and copyright laws to provide incentives to foster innovation, and whether or not the current set of laws fulfill that goal.

It's not proven that piracy necessarily makes said copyright owner lose money - some people believe this is so, others believe that having a viable method of free distribution on the internet actually promotes the product, introducing it to a larger group of people who otherwise might not have known of or used it (in effect, advertising the program for free). There have been definite cases, such as Stardock and EMI, where companies move towards reducing their strict controls on software distribution, and in Stardock's case at least, has been met with great success (obviously other factors were involved as well).

While i believe distributing and pirating software is wrong, I also think the current set of laws lag far behind the technological progress, and that little by little, the companies that have become so ossified in their old copyright models will gradually do more to hinder the spirit of technological innovation than promote it. For example, levying multibillion lawsuits against entreprenuering college students as a precedent deters not only the free exchange of information and ideas, but the creation of new ideas and technologies -- intellectual property law was enacted to promote innovation, not deter it.

On the other hand, this creates a good balance. If it wasn't for MGM v. Grokster for example, I doubt people would have been as open to newer and better means of information sharing as they are today.

At the end of the day, do these current laws and precedents promote or hinder innovation? It's hard to tell, but one thing is certain - and it's that law will always lag behind innovation, and always on the conservative side.

Even so, having operating systems spontaneously mess with your files because it "suspects" you of pirating would be a far far greater crime. Not only would it invade your piracy, but such a precedent would leave room open for far greater violations of privacy in the future. Would this apply to peripherals? The OS on your cell phone? What about far in the future, when computers become more integrated as a human interface device? And of course, all this means that some random software company is there making decisions about other software that they don't own, and/or data that YOU do own, all of which may be quite confidential, based on a vague *guess* that you pirated some other software.

There simply isn't a way to clearly establish or not whether or not someone has pirated just from some arbitrary check done by a software - the OP makes it sound easy, but anyone who has worked with Windows extensively and/or tried to install Vista in various forms (all legitimately) will know the pain of how badly Windows tries to implement its anti-piracy measures.

As an example, Parallels 3 and Boot Camp has a small bug where it asks you to reactivate Vista over and over again, even if everything you have installed was completely legit. Sure, this is a bug, but if the scenario you envision occurred..Windows would most likely wipe and lock your computer everytime this minor bug appeared.

Finally, such a restriction obviously deters progress instead of promotes it, hindering one of the main purposes of copyright laws in the first place.

That said, I think this is a change that needs to occur at a macro level, and certainly doesn't justify individually pirating. I doubt anyone who's actually pirating has such noble aspirations in mind or are actually thinking "gee, I'll pirate this software to further promote freedom of information and innovation!"

So, usapatriot...stop pirating Adobe and go out and buy it

EDIT: Hrm, I just realized how long this thing turned out to be. Oh well, I bet no one reads past the 1st 2 paragraphs

 

"Secondly, theft is where you take someone's property and in doing so deprive them of it. Copying software is NOT theft, nor is it piracy, no matter which way you try to spin it, because you are not depriving anyone of anything, except for their RIGHT to control COPIES of their work (The word copyright comes from somewhere)."

Thank God someone stepped in with a logical argument and an acceptable command of the English language, I was about to have a seizure.

The idea of software piracy not being theft never occurred to me, and I have to commend Iza for pointing that out; otherwise I would have arrived at the worst conclusion. Nevertheless I find it surprising that people don't understand his line of thinking.

 

My thoughts are simple ..........
Everything man builds can be taken apart by man. And that includes Security.

And YES, Piracy is wrong .... but IMO so is extreme inflation or price gouging.

$12+ Dollars(NY Prices) for a Movie ticket and they also force you to buy their overpriced snacks/drinks buy not letting you bring in your own snacks/drinks. Sure you can easily say, if you can't afford or refuse to spend that much then don't, or if it's not worth it then why pirate? That's were Advertisement plays a huge role. Making the public want a product or see a flick so badly, then charge an arm and a leg for it.

Same thing with knock-off Apparel. You think some kids & teens aren't buying knock offs of brand name apparel just to fit in? Of course they are. Because some brand names are marketed as the cool or the privileged apparel to have and feel because of that alone they can charge $75 for a regular Tee shirt or $400 for an average looking Purse with their logo all over them. Try telling a 14yr old teen that she is wrong for buying a $45 knock off Prada bag when almost every station/magazine that teens watch/Read(like MTV & Seventeen) are being push all this stuff from ad's.

The Internet in general has created a way to Steal without feeling like your stealing. It's become as nonchalant as telling lies everyday(Which we ALL do). I'll admit I have done so, and probably will do so again. It's NOT RIGHT but it is HUMAN NATURE, and the sooner these companies realize this the better off they will be. It's almost like telling the Mexicans not to cross the border when the border is wide open enabling them to do so. "Enable" is the key word. When you enable people to do something, chances are some will. It's like the "build and they shall come" phrase.

The last time I pirated, I had a good reason ......... My cousin bought a Laptop 2 weeks ago, it had 512MB RAM, Pentium M 1.7Ghz and came with Vista Home. She bought it for the low price. It was so slow and buggy that even when she tried to make reinstall discs it would always come up as an error. I got so pissed off that MS would even allow their OS(Vista) to be Pre-installed on a machine that could barely handle it, that I just downloaded a Torrent of XP w/ working serial and loaded it on her machine. Everything is smooth now. In this case screw the EULA or the law, MS knows damn well what the requirements are as listed on their site, so does HP. But they rather make a quick buck buy selling the "Newish" Factor to people.

Not Condoning PIRACY ...... but hey, I don't Condone the sale of Ciggs. Seems like more people care about saving businesses than saving lives.

Well I rambled on enough ....... Please Quote me in whole or don't Quote me at all. Thank You.

 

So is all of mine. That doesn't mean you can't disagree with the methods and laws around copyright and patents that are currently enacted. Just because something is illegal doesn't make it wrong, and conversely, just because something is legal doesn't make it right.

Or at least get a decent, free PhotoShop replacement. You might also try Paint.NET, which is a pretty powerful, free editor as well.

And I did read the whole post

It's not the industry line, which is most widely advertised and marketed towards students and impressionable people. The industry line is full of inflated numbers, blatant lies, and all kinds of bull doody. There are two main problems with their thinking. 1, that every illegally duplicated copy is directly correlated to a lost sale, and 2, that the free advertising and mind-share they get by having their software used against the licenses is worth nothing. But it's still the industry line, not realizing that there is actually a lot of value that can't be tied directly to a dollar value, the "soft" values of how they operate. Can't blame them, though... the business leaders grew out of the 80's, where the immediate dollar was almighty, and you shouldn't even think of the $10 it could have been tomorrow if you hadn't squandered it right now. Live and learn. Or, at least live anyway

 

Such operating systems will inevitably prove themselves worthless. False positives translate into lawsuits by disgruntled customers and corporations, and there isn't an OS maker in the world willing to take such measures. Joke about Vista, but if it were as irrevocably bloodthirsty as the OP desires, Microsoft would have disabled half the kernel via SP1 by now.

 

OMG...that was hilarious!

Here is a different take on the overpricing debate though
On a side note, Piracy in India is fairly rampant but I don't blame the people for it but the software vendors themselves

Here is why...The cost of living in India is typically 1/4th of the US and the cost of most stuff is similarly proprotioned, and obviously, so are the salaries....

e.g. a Bank Teller in India would earn around 400K INR= 10,000 USD a year...while a bank teller in the US would earn say 10,000 X4 = 40,000 USD a year

-Now A 2 bedroom apartment in a decent location in city like Delhi can be rented for approx 10K-12K INR a month (250-300USD) while a similar apartment would be 4X = 1000-1200 USD in say Philadelphia

- Or a big loaf of bread would cost around 20 INR or 50c here as compared to 50c X4 = $2 in the US

This X4 equation may not hold true for everything, but is a fair generalization for most stuff

Now guess how much a copy of Windows XP Home costs here in retail?
a whopping 10,000 or 250 USD
To put it in perspective, how many of you would buy a copy of Vista or XP if it costs the same as the rent of the house you live in?

The reason why software gets pirated in a China or India is simply because companies like MS or Adobe get too greedy

hell, even a single audio CD costs more than what a regular guy would pay for 10 lunches

And before someone talks of the effort that went into building the software or the efforts of the recosrding artistes for that matter, here is something else...Most books (paperbacks as well as hardbounds) are released by publishers at a price that is adjusted for purchasing power parity

e.g. a new John Grisham paperback will be released here for around $3-4 equivalent here as oppese to say $10 in the US...what's stopping software vendors from doing the same?

Instead of putting pressure through bodies like WTO on the Indian/Chinese governements, wouldn't a better idea be to rethink their pricing strategy like book publishers did?

Anyway, Most organizations and office obviously use legit copies, but individual buyers tend to pick pirated copies for this simple reason

 

^ Excellent point. I read about similar price gouging by Apple in Brazil. Greed in growing markets is the primary reason why software piracy is the norm overseas. As long as software and hardware vendors try to maintain US-equivalent prices in non-US-equivalent markets, they will continue to struggle with piracy.

 

On the topic of greed, and a completely different Offtopic note,
pricing software high is still OK....

What is much more vile is the overpricing (USD equivalent prices) of AIDS medicines (or other medicines for that matter) in low income African countries....
And when overseas manufacturers bring out reverse engineered generics at 1/10th the cost, the pharma companies play arm twisting tactics on the geenrics manufacturers....

Though I don't justify the creation and selling of reverse engineered generics logically speaking, In my heart , I would always root for the geenrics manufacturers till the time the big pharma companies redo their pricing for Africa

 

If ms had the delete piracy software thingi built in. Let's have a world wide class virus that activates the security measures "built in piracy deleting code" and wipe out the whole HDD even if ur Windows is LEGAL ... Would be fun to users who onli depend on windows..

 

I do not plan on downloading Vista but here's an example:

Microsoft charges $215 for the full version of Windows Vista Home Premium, that is far to expensive for what it is.

On the other hand, Apple will charge $129 for Leopard when it comes out, much more reasonable, I would not mind paying up to $150 for Vista HP, but more than that is just pointless.

Same thing with PS CS3, they should make some sort of Home licensed version which is cheaper than the regular version without removing a crapload of features, if so I would not mind paying up to $200 for a slightly crippled home version of CS3.

 

They do offer this, it's photoshop elements. It's a slimmed down version that actually has alot of the more useful features. I use version 3.0 and I'm pretty happy with it.

 

If you already had PS Elements, why did you buy Fireworks?

Matt

 

Yeah, I got photoshop elements free with a printer or something (can't remember what it was now) and I used it occasionally at first, but I prefer something like GIMP, with a photoshop skin to make it more usable to most people.

The way I see it, there's two main objections to "piracy," i.e. Copyright Infringement. There's the legal objection, and the moral objection. Now legally everyone who knows anything will agree that copyright infringement is against the law. Some cases of archiving data or doing cryptographic research may be exempt from the DMCA, but the vast majority of copying media or software for normal usage is illegal.

However, the moral argument is much less clear. I'm not morally against breaking the law, depending on the circumstances. I believe each individual has to decide for himself what kind of society he would like to live in, and then decide what kind of laws are just. This country has many unjust laws and court decisions, in my opinion, and I would have no trouble (as an example) of illegally protesting (e.g. without a licence) some of these laws. Does that make me a "bad person?" Well, it might to some, but I don't think the mere fact that someone differs from the norm (assuming a normal person obeys the law, which is highly questionable) makes them "bad" or "wrong" or "evil". Yes, in some instances copyright infringement can hurt individual artists, designers, coders and the like, who may actually depend on their work to live (some independent game producers I know, for example, have been severely hurt by keygens and such for their shareware games.) But when someone who would never normally shell out for a copy of CS3 downloads it just to see what it's like, I don't see any moral objection to that, even if it's illegal.

P.S. Please read my entire post before you flame me, and actually think about what I said.

 

Ps elements doesn't quite do all of what I need so I had to pony up for Fireworks.

 

Photoshop Standard: $650 (Full)
Photoshop Elements ($100 Full) + Fireworks CS3 ($300 Full) = $400

If you would've saved up $250 more, you could have had it.

Anyway, having both is awesome. Plus, you have GIMP and Paint .NET. That's 4 image editors.

 

Yeah but the PS elements came with the Wacom tablet I got from my fiance's parents for birthday so that was free, for me anyways, and the Fireworks was student discount down to 99.00. Yeah I got 4 of them, can never have enough... hahahaa

 

Hate - such a strong word usually the preserve of the zealot.

I DON'T use pirated software but I would never denounce as strongly as the above, people who do.

There have been a large variety of mitigating arguments posted here, specifically the pricing policy of major companies in different countries but the same argument applies to most other people, that I know, as well.

I work for roughly 224 days a year for a wage that my employer considers as being commensurate with my talents and abilities. Out of this salary I have to fund my life and that of my family completely. How can I even begin to justify spending literally hundreds of GBP's on an operating system or a graphics package whose functionality would allow me to produce quality, enhanced photographs and videos. The simple answer is I can't and ultimately I don't, but by God I am seriously tempted at times.

A lot of people have argued on multiple threads that software is so expensive because there are a lot of people to pay who were involved in the program from it's conception, What a load of nonsense. If these people were being paid, like me, commensurate with their abilities, then they would not be working for an employer whose bank balance can be counted in the Billions of dollars. That is despicable greed, particularly given the pricing policies in the "developing world". And this is regardless of charity works - give with one hand and take with the other. Now that is something I HATE.

25 years ago I bought a video recorder and taped copyrighted television shows/films for my own personal use. Does that make you HATE me? I hope not. You don't know me.

4 years ago I bought a DVD recorder and started recording television shows/films in a new way, for my own personal use. Does that make you HATE me? I hope not. Again you don't know me.

Sometimes it is better to judge others after taking stock of yourself than by just by showing utter contempt and deliberately cocooning yours inside your holier than thou attitude.

LJK

 

I have read it somewhere that if it weren't for piracy, software prices would skyrocket. Just imagine it if somebody created an impenetratable software, one that can't be hacked and used illegally!!! I guess software developers would be able to charge as much as they like!!!! The only thing keeping them from charging exteremely high prices is the knowledge that the consumers "us" would just go and download pirated copies of their software.

N.B: The above opinion is not mine, i read it somewhere on the internet, i guess here in the forums but i am not sure. Although i partially agree with what is said above, i don't agree with those who use pirated software, nor do i use such software either. One could always find excellent FREE software on the net, if not totally free it would sell for a small fee.

 

It's almost like saying,

Every time you park illegally and don't get a ticket, your cheating the city out of funds.

Could that be equivalent to someone downloading a pirated version, when they had absolutely no intention of paying X amount of money for it?

The REAL question is, how DEEP are people willing to think about this? Seems like people only go as deep to prove their own point, but refuse to take it further because their point might not be valid anymore.

Then you have the WTF? Factor.

WTF? I have to pay for a conversion tool just to put my music or video on a disc. WTF? Word processing is not part of the OS. WTF? I have to pay for a software to edit my images. I can go on and on and on. The average consumer expects to be able to do all that stuff on a PC right out the box being that it's advertised that way. Companies advertise their PC's as Multimedia machines, so people except the hardware to do everything out the box without paying more for software. And even when all that is said: Here comes, WTF? The software on my PC that I been using for the past 60 days is only a trial and cost $199.

 

The minimum wage in my country is $200, so if someone wanted to buy Photoshop CS3 they would have to stay 3 months without food to buy it. LOL. I agree with a pricing scheme that takes each countries economy into consideration when suggesting MSRP.

On a side note: Can anybody tell me which is better: GIMP of paint.NET. In terms of power, ease of use? How do they compare to Picasa2?

Thanks in advance

 

That's pretty much it.When I download music, movies, or software, I download things I would never have paid for.

Not ever. Not even had I had the money. So call me a pirate, a hijacker, a terrorist, or whatever buzz word is in at the moment, but save the strawman for the scarecrows. There is no profit to be made from me, in any shape, way, or form, when I download/copy/etc. I buy hardware - iPods, laptops, cameras - but I will *not* buy the software...programs, music, operating systems, etc. Tally up billions of theoretical dollars if you wish, but there isn't a single penny in my pockets that would have gone to MS/Apple/etc, had I had the means to purchase their software. They're just counting sheep.

It's funny. If a business tried to sue window shoppers [who walked into their stores, looked around, and didn't buy anything] for depriving them of all the profits they could theoretically have made if every one of those customers had walked out with boxfuls of stuff, they would get laughed out of court. Yet due to our legal system, which is as much a corporate-run environment as the corporations that lobby them daily for harsher restrictions on customer freedom, when a software/music giant tries the same argument, people lap it up like kool aid.

That's one of the fundamental flaws in the argument. You can't argue a loss from people who had no intention of giving you a profit. Are there people who would buy Windows Vista (as an example OS) if they couldn't find it for free, receive burned copies from friends, download the school-offered edition, etc? Sure. But there are also people who would simply have done without. There are people who would have switched to Linux, stayed with XP, hopped to OSX, and so forth. You can attempt to make the OS less available to these people in order to force their hands (suing eBay, cutting deals with schools, adding crippling DRM to new OSs that require them to be connected to the internet for validation every 3 hours of use, etc), but you can't honestly claim these people deprive you of money they had no intention (of means) of giving.

 

Thats a hard question. I don't think either is better overall. I think it's a matter of preference. I prefer the GIMP based on it's minimal straight forward interface.
Most people like the paint.net interface better.

Both Gimp and Paint.net does certain tasks slight better or worse than the other. I recommend both.

Paint.net is easier for a newbie to get a handle on.


IMO Picasa2 is a waste of space.

EDIT: Gimp is definitely the more powerful app.

 

It doesn't matter, all you need is a friend to stream a song: stereo or SS, to you at a decent bitrate and any DRM that was there, won't be there anymore. Additionally, if your internet connection can handle it, you can, theoretically I suppose, do the same with movies provided that the necessary programs exist. IMHO, an effective DRM for music would require the code for copy protection to be directly embedded into the audio, meaning there would have to be blank spaces in the music (unless they figure out how to make an audio copyright noise that isn't audible, but the OS would have to recognize that audio signal). Otherwise, anyone can just stream it to a friend and rename it, sending all copyright protection down the drain.

 

I agree that those doing the pirating are people who are not willing to pay for the product to begin with.

There's so much FUD around the issue of copyright law and pirating intellectual property that probably most consumers don't even know what is legal and what isn't.

I don't think there's a 'WTF' factor for the purchase price of computer software. If your fancy new computer was advertised as being equipped to edit photos or perform word processing and it turns out that it isn't - that's false advertising and should be taken up with the vendor.

If your computer was not advertised as having any specific software capabilities, you should expect nothing more than a bare operating system and no applications what so ever, and it is up to you to acquire those applications. No internet browsing, no word processing, no photo editing - nothing. If your expectations were otherwise, you didn't do your homework when you were shopping. Besides, the Free Software movement has stepped up and provided very high quality alternatives that are totally free. The GIMP for photo editing, OpenOffice for documents, spreadsheets, etc. Firefox for web browsing, Thunderbird for email, the list goes on and on.

However...

There is serious WTF factor around the rights and licensing of intellectual property. Music, movies, etc. For example, it's illegal to copy a DVD movie, even if the copy is for your own personal use - not to share, not to sell, but just for your own personal use inside your home. Even just to back-up the DVD movie in case the disc gets all scratched up - still illegal. That's a big WTF.

Another example is the Microsoft EULA. That magical binding legal agreement that you signed your name to the minute you booted up your PC. With Microsoft Software, you do not own that copy of the software! You have merely purchased the rights to use it, from Microsoft. Those rights include the right to sell your Vista-equipped computer exactly one time, and one time only. That means you can sell your Vista laptop to your friend, but it is illegal for your friend to sell it someone else! He can't sell it to his buddy, he can't sell it on ebay, he can't sell it - period. He has to either use it, or toss it in the trash (or go to the store and buy another copy of Vista for $259), since the Microsoft EULA says that the software can only change ownership ONE time. That's another big WTF.

So my take on the whole issue is that it's not about pirating software or paying vs. not paying. If a vendor wants to charge $100 for their software, fine, I don't care, no one is forcing me to buy it (except the copy of Windows that's bundled with your pc, but that's another story ) If a vendor wants to charge $10,000 for their software - fine, again I don't care, no one is forcing anyone to buy it.

The problem I have is 'What rights do I have when I pay for this software?'. The answer to that, is less and less as time goes by. Software makers, movie studios, music producers, are all locking down YOUR rights, telling you what you can and can't do with software and media that YOU HAVE PAID for. That's the real issue.

 

I guess I should go cry in a corner for testing out Vista... how do you think I got the RTM version?

 

So if a computer is advertised as being a "multimedia powerhouse," the average person should be expected to know that that means they won't be able to edit multimedia files without paying an additional several hundred dollars? I agree that I like to use the free software, but the vast majority of average, non technical-literate people that I know don't even realize free versions exist. And very few computer companies advertise free ways to do things when they can bundle in a "trial" version of a several hundred dollar program.