I put myself through university and gained extensive skills using pirated software. At the time I decided I would do what needed to be done and because I could. I resolved however to get licensed copies once I was working.

7 years later I have an annual budget of £2.3 million and am responsible for buying decisions relating to the software we use. Autodesk, Macromedia (until a while ago) and Adobe have all been represented largely.

All I can say is that at the time, I used software piracy to my advantage - now I am trying to repay my debt.

Overheard from This Week in Media (http://www.pixelcorps.tv/this_week_in_media):

Post-production houses and graphical design companies often demand that all job applicants already have Photoshop experience. Yet for someone who doesn't already have a job, they can't afford Photoshop in order to get experience. The unspoken industry solution is that everyone has a pirated copy of Photoshop for personal use.

Also mentioned is that the big 3D modeling/rendering packages that everyone uses for production work (3D Studio, Maya, and LightWave) also happen to be the most pirated 3D software. Coincidence? Is the dog wagging the tail, or is the tail wagging the dog?

This subject comes up every month or so, and every time I give my opinion which is always in the minority. Sometimes I think I'm the only one. So once again, as I prepare to get downmodded into oblivion, here goes...

You forgot Side 3 - I hate software piracy because it's wrong. Period. It's unethical, immoral, and illegal. And it's that simple. I don't even consider either of your 2 choices because both sidestep the question of right or wrong to examine other issues. This is situational ethics.

In all the years I've been in business, my number one concern has been ethical issues. The partner who disconnected his speedometer to increase his resale value. The vendor who raised his prices to get a personal "kickback". The employee who downloaded a customer list and sold it to a competitor. I could go on and on and on...

I've seen stuff like this so many times, and I ask the same question every time, "If they will compromise their ethics on something small, where do they draw the line?" I've seen multi-million dollar deals scuttled because someone didn't trust someone else because of their personal behavior on a "small" issue like this. Don't let yourself fall into this trap. It simply isn't worth it to save a few bucks.

I've heard all the counteraruments. "It's no big deal." "Everyone does it." "It's not hurting anybody." "I'll never get caught." Or the worst one of all, "They've already ripped me off, so I'm just getting them back." And you know and I know and everyone here knows it's all BS. We're just making excuses for what we all know is wrong.

Almost every proprietary software vendor has a complimentary "developer version" or a very cheap "student version". There are many other ways to get access to software or music without breaking the law or compromising your ethics. But a lot of us are just too lazy to take advantage of these things.

I would expect the Hacker News community, of all places, to be especially sensitive to this issue. After all, we are smart, hard working people who make software. But it seems like I'm always in the minority on this one.

So before you click that down arrow on this old prude, can I ask one question? Does anyone agree with me?

"though no one explains how and from where these numbers came from"

I think those are just poor understanding of economics. Hope I don't say anything incredibly stupid, but the money has to come from somewhere. It seems more likely that the economy would suffer if more people would pay for software, because doing business would become more expensive. Or maybe it is just zero-sum (either the pirates get to spend the money, or the software vendors, but no additional wealth is being created).

Not saying I would decide for 1 or 2. Morals are a difficult issue. Is something immoral, just because it is against the law? What if I don't agree with the law? I am from Germany, so I have been taught that there can be times when the laws themselves are immoral.

I can't blame some poor 3rd world person to pirate a game or a movie that they otherwise would never be able to afford - I don't see the loss for the vendor? The usual counter is "games and movies are not essential for living", but I don't agree. I think people's lives should be worthwhile, too.

I've seen a similar argument when used with music: people download music, share it, and the pirated band sells more CDs as they gain fans (questionable) and draw bigger crowds (much more likely and doesn't help the record company in anyway).

However, unlike that, I think Side-1 has pretty strong merit - especially with the widespread availability of pirated software and the amount of people in college who want to use the software but can't afford it. If the software companies REALLY wanted to buck the trend, they'd license education software A LOT cheaper than it is right now. When I was in undergrad, I could buy Windows XP, Office, and Visual Studio anywhere from $10-20. I bought all three and never had to pirate a single piece of MS software.

An example of how piracy helped a company: Macromedia.

Back in the 90s Adobe didn't had trials for their software on their website, and the software was usually lots of MB. Compare that to the old 30MB download of a Dreamweaver trial that you could easly find a crack off. If Adobe had done the same with GoLive (former Cyberstudio) at the beginning they would probably have owned the WYSIWYG HTML editor market.

Also with some different apps, tough Adobe's Livemotion never was a true competitor to Flash.

regarding side-1: I started out as a windows user using pirated copies in india... this discouraged me from using linux for quite some time, as we used to have phone modems and bandwidth was pathetic... one day i got a mandrake linux cd with a magazine... it was great fun using it, but gnome sucked then, but now i prefer linux over windows. so for windows at least, side-1 did not have any benefits. in fact, windows helped me start using computers and i 'converted' to linux!

i had another question: suppose a person cannot check out a book from a library (copy is out), so he downloads an ebook off the net and reads it, then deletes the copy as soon as he obtains the copy from the library.... so what effect did this 'piracy' have on the book producer? the book is quite old and i doubt whether the author (hint: amoeba) would be getting any big royalties on the book....

Why do you want my opinion?

Love. Read "Pirate's Dilemma." Pirates are good for capitalism, good for society, good for the world. Anyone who stands in their way must die.

Ask YC: Which is better, Pepsi or Coke?