Today I had a discussion with two colleagues from my company, one I know well, when I've met in the course I was doing this week.

The first has just bought a new PC. He purchased the components and had someone assemble it to him.  He spent over US$4000 in his computer, which is a lot even if here PC parts are much more expensive than for those of you in the USA.  With US$1200 you buy a very decent PC here.

Well, he was commenting of the many times he had to reinstall Windows 7 because the cracks he got didn't work.  I asked him why he didn't buy Windows 7 - which is around US$100 in an OEM version he could buy with the components, a very small extra cost in his total expense - he said he refuses to buy OS.  And he said it would cost much more, because he "needs" the Ultimate edition, not Home.  Why "Ultimate"? Because he likes to have the top versions.

Then we started talking about the beneficent CD auction I am doing for Christmas, and that's when the second guy entered the discussion.  "Why buy a CD?", he said.  After arguments about intellectual property, he replied that musicians already make enough from concerts, that CDs are too expensive, and after all it's just music, it's just entertainment.  

(My blood was already boiling at this point. Of course he thinks books are just books and photos are just photos).

In fact he implied it that what musicians do, being just entertainment, should not be worth much, and that it is an absurd that they make so much money, the same way as it is an absurd that football players make so much money just by playing football.  Although I agree that some musicians make much more than their work deserve (for my taste) and sell well due to the high marketing investment of the recording companies, and that definitely football players make too much money, but they represent a high and profitable investment for teams, I argumented that none of this gave him the rights to demean these people's work, because they are being paid for their talent according to what the market considers worth.  There are many distorted values in our consumerist society that lead to this, but this is not justify his way of thinking.  He claimed to be a socialist and that all this wealth should be shared with others, pointing to the slum we could see in the distance, and I asked him to share his wealth with the slums too.

(Socialist my ass!)

We were back in class, so the discussion ceased.  At lunchtime, the first colleague brought the subject back again, trying to justify his piracy of software and music.  Of course there were the arguments of price - indeed, why does MS Office cost US$100 when there is OpenOffice for free?  But people want MS Office, not OpenOffice.  He considers a CD for US$10 already an absurd.  He thinks more people would buy legal software if prices were lower - I agree some would, but many, perhaps most, wouldn't.  

He then introduced another aspect to the discussion, which was the reality of broadband and streaming.  He said he would pay 1c for each time he listened to a song online. I pondered that this wouldn't change anything, most people who download music illegally today would still download it just because "it's free".  I do believe that broadband and the actual impossibility of controlling digital content sharing through Torrent and such will, at some point, change the way rights over intellectual property are negotiated today, but this 1c theory for me wouldn't be efficient.  

On the way back to the class we met the second guy and the first presented him his broadband-music-streaming-for-1c concept and asked him if he wouldn't agree paying in that case.  "Why", he replied, "we are already paying for this in the high prices we pay for broadband."  So, paying a lot (as we indeed do) for a broadband service gives him the right to pirate software, music...

(I had to control myself a lot today).

Sorry for my English, but honestly what do you expect from employees?

Not to badmouth being an employee in general but obviously many people who are employed have no idea what it takes to create creative content or be self employed, branded or successful in any other professional way?

You cannot reason with these people and yes they are the source of all (piracy) evil.

Just like with the copyright infringements that we struggle with daily, just forget about these people. It'll drive you mad constantly thinking about them and their views...

Well, Office is cheaper now, but my point is why pay for it, if you find it expensive, if all you need is done by a free software like OpenOffice.  I've been using for a while, and our company has plans to substitute MS Office for OpenOffice in the future, and I'm sure most users would find it more than enough.  I haven't tried writing any macro yet, and I don't even  know if they have VBA (or equivalent), so maybe it won't be able to replace Office, especially Excel, in our more ellaborate spreadsheets.

I also find Adobe software highly overpriced. I've said over and over that I don't see almost anything in PS that I can not do in PSP. Of course, there are some advanced tools, but for curves, levels, masking, etc - what I actually use for edition - I don't miss anything.

Click_click, the people I'm talking about are people with university degrees, well employed (we work in a big company).  They know that they're doing something wrong, they just want to find excuses.  The first colleague in fact admitted he is wrong, but that he won't change.  Even worse, all this piracy and cracking and downloading, he is using the company's resources (notebook and broadband), which is strictly forbidden.  Not all sites are blocked.

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Click_click, the people I'm talking about are people with university degrees, well employed (we work in a big company).  They know that they're doing something wrong, they just want to find excuses.  The first colleague in fact admitted he is wrong, but that he won't change.  Even worse, all this piracy and cracking and downloading, he is using the company's resources (notebook and broadband), which is strictly forbidden.  Not all sites are blocked.

Sorry, I wasn't very clear on what I meant.

Regardless of the degree of someone's education, some people will always be employees who need to be told what to do. I've seen brilliant people graduate with honors and working at high profile companies all over the world but some just cannot even imagine how to be self-employed.

They love the stability of coming to a an office in the morning, doing the same thing over and over again every single day and are super happy when they get paid regularly.

To those people it is absurd that someone like a famous musician who appears to have fun all the time, is getting paid millions of dollars a year for doing what? Making music?
Most of those ignorant people actually believe that they even could pull it off themselves.

Btw, ever heard this phrase when someone looks at your pictures: "Wow, your camera takes great pictures, what brand is it?"

Now you know why these people think "art" isn't worth anything...

close minded bast@#>$

When anyone tells me that my life as a microstocker is easy, I tell them "OK... here are some agencies I use.  Try it yourself, come back to me in a year, and then tell me how easy it is".

And their answer is "I have a lot of great pictures, can you please help me to choose 10 for the test?"
Which means: "I have 3 hard disks full of beaches and dogs, can you please spend your entire weekend looking at this point-and-shot crap?"
And you even have to be somehow polite to your friends. I am scared at telling people what I do lately.

About one person in fifty is a psychopath (ie has no conscience).

Children should be educated in school on how to spot, avoid and deal with sociopaths in school.  And we should screen for sociopaths before any of them are allowed to run for political office.

Regardless of the degree of someone's education, some people will always be employees who need to be told what to do. I've seen brilliant people graduate with honors and working at high profile companies all over the world but some just cannot even imagine how to be self-employed.

They love the stability of coming to a an office in the morning, doing the same thing over and over again every single day and are super happy when they get paid regularly.

To those people it is absurd that someone like a famous musician who appears to have fun all the time, is getting paid millions of dollars a year for doing what? Making music?
Most of those ignorant people actually believe that they even could pull it off themselves.

Btw, ever heard this phrase when someone looks at your pictures: "Wow, your camera takes great pictures, what brand is it?"

Now you know why these people think "art" isn't worth anything...

close minded bast@#>$

Click, normally I completely agree with everything you say, but in this instance I can't.  Certainly you are right that those types of people exist and are quite commonplace, but to suggest that it has anything to do with whether one is self-employed or not makes no sense to me. 

It is a matter of ethics, plain and simple. Turn on the news on any given day and you will see that there is no shortage of unethical business owners.  And most people in the world work for someone else - it is the norm - and to suggest that all those billions of employees are innately unethical thieves who have no respect for intellectual property seems like quite a stretch.  I really can't imagine on what evidence you would connect someone's employment status with whether or not they have ethics. 

I particularly enjoyed the comment about MS Office at $100 being too expensive. That's one of the cheaper softwares to buy! You should show him the Adobe site and the Creative Suite software. I wish the Creative Suite was $100. But it just shows that no matter how inexpensive, some people still think things cost too much and use it to justify their stealing.

Congrats on the controlling yourself...

MS office cots only $100 because there's no reason to buy it. Almost any other software that is a necessity is terribly overpriced out of simple greed, and the answer to that is frugality. Just look at photoshop: I have an old comp, a 600 mhz celeron that surfaced recently in a moving operation, and I tried it out. I edited the same 12 mp psd files, and PS 6 is a LOT faster on a comp with 192 mb than cs4 on a comp with 3 gigs + 3+ghz. That's more 10 times the memory. It has 99.9% of all the features I need, and I would guess 80% of all the features in general... but is sure isn't supported by camera raw... I wonder why    So what the f*k are people paying for again and again? Apparently, the huge performance decreases. No joking, that's what you have to pay for. Nice : )

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It is a matter of ethics, plain and simple. Turn on the news on any given day and you will see that there is no shortage of unethical business owners.  And most people in the world work for someone else - it is the norm - and to suggest that all those billions of employees are innately unethical thieves who have no respect for intellectual property seems like quite a stretch.  I really can't imagine on what evidence you would connect someone's employment status with whether or not they have ethics.  

I suspected that this will come back to me  

Fact is, anyone who assumes that music, video or images are not worth the money we get, are people who haven't tried it before.

Give anyone a guitar and tell them to pull of a success story like Elvis.
Tell anyone to direct a movie like James Cameron and watch what happens.
Drop off your Canon at your neighbor's house and tell them to whip out a few shots like you do.

In most cases the big success will not be happening. Why? Because a big part of the population has no sense for the work behind the scenes of any artwork.

I stupidly associated the majority of the population as employees but not meaning that every employee is a thieve or ignorant!

I had lawyers steal my images who used them on their web sites, hence the argument that intelligence or degree of education doesn't make a difference.

Of course a lot of my personal experience goes into what I write. Friends of mine who started companies with products and services that they created were much more understanding about copyright violations than people I know who are employees.

I believe the whole issue starts with awareness. If there is no awareness of what copyright actually is, then how can you expect people to respect it?

Again, English is not my native tongue. I hope I could bring my point across. I don't want to generalize and insult anyone. It's just my observation and I started off using the wrong comparisons.

One aspect the second guy commented - musicians make money with concerts - has become the reality for some. I know of a group here, very succesful financially, who even give away copied of their CDs and make money with their concerts.  And their concerts are cheap, their are not pop stars playing in stadiums. Yet, they have their own private jet. Maybe it's an strategy for some artists. Wasn't it George Michael who also put his songs for free in his website?

However, this does not apply to all music artists. There are many composers who do not sing. I guess it's expected that they sell their music to singers, and that's all they get from it?

And writers?  If their books are free to download, what will they live from?  Eventual prizes?  Interviews? 

Photographers should live only on commissioned work?

Of course a lot of my personal experience goes into what I write. Friends of mine who started companies with products and services that they created were much more understanding about copyright violations than people I know who are employees.

Of course people who make money on their own creations have a deeper sense of it, but the general population, in all levels, think different.  The internet created this sense of '"it's there, it's free", and it's really difficult to change.  But this comes from before the Internet - pirate copies of DOS, for example, and then all PC programs.

I remember when I was in school and we used to cut magazine photos to illustrate howework. Was this illegal in some way?

I xeroxed many books during university. They were expensive imported books. I purchased many too. The university library didn't have enough copies for all students. Professors didn't bother much writing their own reference material other than the notes they used in class (which we were generally not allowed to copy - many of my colleagues xeroxed my notes because I have such a small letter and took note of everything in less pages ) and the textbooks were really necessary and not just a source of information.  This is still done.  After completing university and having some books that I would no longer use, I gave them to the library - they didn't take some however because they were older editions.    And I bought some of those books I had xeroxed, because they would be useful to me. In the end, I thik it was a fair thing.

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Seems like there are two types of people who use images without paying - the ones who don't know any better and the ones who know it's wrong and do it anyway.   Probably you were talking about the first kind and I was thinking of the second kind.  Looks like I took your analogy too literally. 

No Lisa, I really wasn't very specific and this happens to me all the time. My thought process happens in my native language but bits and pieces get lost when writing in English. I really hope I didn't upset anybody. Hope this clears it up. 

Quote from: cclapper on November 12, 2010, 18:41

I particularly enjoyed the comment about MS Office at $100 being too expensive.

I will be crucified probably, like Ivan (Dreamframer) a few months ago. The world is larger, strange but true, than the industrialized high-wages West. In the Philippines (but the same is true for Indonesia, as I heard), 40% of the people have an income of <2$ per day. The monthly wage for a grade school teacher is 6000php = 140$. Yet many PC's I saw have the latest Office, PS and Windows Ultimate. When back in 2007, I bought my first local PC, they told me that for a legal Windows (the CD with the laser hologram) I would have to wait 7 weeks. In the whole Philippines (94 million people) not one legal copy present of Windows was my conclusion. When I fetched my PC after a couple of days and I wanted to install Linux-Ubuntu, I found out it had XP Ultimate, Photoshop, Office, Pro CD-burning software and "sample music" that filled up the rest of the disc. Courtesy of one of the country's largest PC chains. Don't ask don't tell.

When I bought a replacement system disk earlier this year, as an "added service", the vendor included the same software, even if I didn't ask for it.

All recent software and games are sold in markets and booths in malls, for 5$ or less. All in the open. The games have "installers" that create a virtual CD-drive mimicking the original circumventing the copy-protection. In principle it's illegal but a government that would dare to bust this home-grown industry would lose a lot of votes and would be faced with a major foreign currency drain.

Last week I tried to buy Photoshop for my photography partner that is a full-time university student. I had the enrollment proofs ready. On the site of Adobe for the Philippines, it said you couldn't pay and download from the Philippines and you should order in Australia. Yeah right, the postal services open all the snail mail from abroad in the hope to find money in it. Last month I got a letter from Moneybookers with no external marks. The mailman told me with a cheesy wink that it was about money. How could he know? Ah, the letter had been opened. If you order something in Australia, be sure the CD will be missing or copied at least.
Fair chance the customs will block the CD in their custody until you come with "proof" it's genuine. They will need months to "examine" the proof unless you give the decisive "proof" under the form of a banknote. Then you can take it right away. No thanks.

In fact, you can't buy any software here legally unless you import it yourself. My Windows is legal (OEM on my new PC I brought from Belgium) but I'm quite sure I'm the only one in continents around. And before the moral rants start, my PS is a legal CS2 from long ago. It does what I want but of course the RAW handlers are not updated.

My photography partner had to make a movie for a class assignment. He used Adobe Premiere CS4. He got it from the Chinese torrents, he told. Is he a sociopath? The price is a full year income of a school teacher and you can't even buy it in the Philippines. No movie = assignment failed = the college enrollment fee wasted. Sociopath, huh?

When Microsoft did an audit years ago on the Indonesian government PC's, they found none of the Windows were genuine. They made a settlement with the Indonesian government to legalize these installs for 1$ per copy so they had access to all upgrades. After that, they poured the money x 10 back in scholarship grants to Indonesia. That's the right way to go. Adobe has no such program, as far as I know. I wonder who the real sociopaths are.

    I'm not sure that sociopaths have anything to do with the situation you describe. More like a non-existent intellectual property enforcement attitude. Yes, the people are poor. Yes, the government is corrupt. Yes, it's easy to get pirated software, and everyone does it. And yes, the rich consumers of the west pay full price in order to support the continued viability of the software companies. If the whole world takes the software for free, how does new software get developed? If I have to pay for your software, how can i compete with you when we both sell files for the same price? The attitude of the developing countries that intellectual property is something to be taken for free is a very big issue. The Phillippines does not export it's raw materials for free. Why should they in return not pay for the software? In a true market economy, the software companies would find a price point that works in your country and still allows a profit. If that's too expensive, then do without it. But since it can be stolen, I pay the difference. All my life i've heard excuses about the prices of american goods. But here's the bottom line- if you don't like the price, don't buy it. There is no moral obligation on the part of the US to subsidize the rest of the world so that they can use that subsidy to unfairly compete from a far lower cost basis. If you don't like the price, create your own software, but don't steal ours. Your example of microsoft taking $1 per copy then giving back 10 times in scholarships is a perfect example. I am paying for that  copy of windows that the government is using through high prices here. You may think thats a great thing, but if you take away my ability to make a living by using that software to compete at the same price for a sale as me, how can that be sustainable? Am I working for you?
   Please note that this rant is not aimed at you personally, FD-Regular. I have a high regard for your posts. I'm just sick of always being told that I'm the only one who has to play by the rules.