Software Piracy

[Macboy2002]

Ya, you read this and thought "God, not another idiot harping about how bad software piracy is!"
Uh, no.

What I want to say, is software piracy is more than just an illegal act. Its a war.

What do I mean by that?
When America split from Britan, what for? Umm... taxation without representation, religion, and the ability of England to do whatever the fuck they wanted with the Americans, because they were still in charge.

Basically, that's what I think of software piracy. The pirates are the Americans, and the English are corporations.

America is a nation of the people, by the people and for the people, so why do corporations have all the power?
Now, mull this over. Would you have (for example) paid $99 in 1998 for the ATOMIC SECRET that is BTK6G-MVCVF-C6CM6-K9XGY-9VC6Y?
That's what you get when you buy an application. You don't get an application, you get a contract, a license to use, not own, use the software in whatever way the creator of it sees fit.

They call us immoral, but they benefit from it.
They benefit from calling us criminals.
They benefit from removing our rights to OWN the software
They benefit from controling US!
NOW WHO THE FUCK IS IMMORAL?

But then, there's always the argument that people have to make a living off of developing software.
So, what the fuck is FSF.org, GNU.org, Mozilla.org, and Sourceforge.net?
They are either examples, or collections of FREE software.
And, if a quality operating system can't be made without the developers being paid, what the fuck is Linux, BSD, and Darwin?
Ya, I'm a fucking software pirate.
Ya, I know if we lose this war (and the chances of winning are dim,) that we're gonna fucking lose our lives.
Ya, I know many people will lose their lives in the course of this war.

But isn't that what the revolution was?

The chances were slim in the revolution.
So, if a hopeless war cannot be won, what the hell is America.
It's time the AMERICAN people started enforcing AMERICAN FREEDOM!!!!

[Prometheus]

I feel you dude. Im one of the biggest perates I know or have even heard of. I havent paid a cent for music programs or media in about ten years. They need to realize information is destin to be free and there is nothing they can do to stop it.:D

[buttless_wonder]

Gotta love torrents!
Granted they will disappear like many P2P networks of the past but another will pop up to replace it. Try as they may this is not something that is going to be stopped. Call it piracy or theft if you please but people have been doing this since the concept of ownership was first created. Cavemen stole each others sticks and rocks and the idea continued from there.

[ballzack]

I had a friend that did business in China.

He came home once with a suitcase FULL of pirated software he bought on the street while on business there.

At the time, he brough back full working software like:

Office 2000 Professional
Adobe Acrobat Professional

Just to name a few. He had so much software, I was stunned. He paid $1.00 US for each box. They all worked, so he says.

He also brough back dozens of movies on CD. The quality was not as good as DVD, but it was good enough to watch. Hot movies at the time. He paid 25 cents per movie.

[General Septem]

I don't think torrents will ever disappear because it is an open source system. There are many clients out there produced by many different companies, and many trackers across many networks. There's nothing to target. The only thing they can do is send the message that torrent networks are far too insecure to risk getting caught downloading something illegal, but even at that one can block known IPs and mask their own identity.

I don't mess with P2P anymore because I've gotten caught a few times, but I definitely agree that it's a war. You can't sue someone for acquiring a number.

[Macboy2002]

Plus, they can't filter 6881-6889 anymore because some torrent programs wont allow you to use those ports.