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Comment by aerovistae | Hacker News Reader

Speaking as a prolific pirate, I currently pay for Spotify because it's just so convenient. I currently pay for HBO Now because I don't want to wait an extra hour to watch Game of Thrones.

I pay for games on Steam, but I still pirate most major creative software like Adobe, Windows Office, or DAWs and their plugins...I just have absolutely zero incentive to do otherwise.

And before anyone guilt trips me on morality, please stop to carefully think through why you believe sharing digital files is stealing but borrowing a book from a library or buying a used video game or movie is not. None of those things give ANY proceeds to the authors or creators, either, and the authors have no choice in that matter either. Yet society deems that arbitrarily acceptable.

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   but I still pirate most major creative software

But do you make money out of this activity ?

   Yet society deems that arbitrarily acceptable

Well it feels like society is OK with pirated content, no ? I only know 1 person in my environment that attacks me about it.

I do not make any money off of it, no. And now that I think about it I actually did buy a used license for Word, which doesn't give any money to Microsoft, but which is again arbitrarily considered moral.

As for society being ok, yes and no. Nobody attacks me about it but I know plennnnnty of people who will refuse to budge on the idea that it's immoral and wrong.

That makes 0 sense to me. Presumably an author can pick a publisher that does or doesn't distribute to libraries. Even then a library is still buying at least one book if not multiple.

If a creator stopped making software you pirated because it wasn't sustainable would you feel guilt?

> Even then a library is still buying at least one book if not multiple.

And someone originally bought the pirated software, too, which they then went on to share with others....just like a library. So what, again, is the difference?

No, of course I wouldn't feel guilt. Do you feel guilt when you buy things secondhand or borrow books from libraries? You're not benefiting the creator and you're shortchanging the creator of the cost of purchase because you don't want to pay full price for a new copy. What's the difference?

> Presumably an author can pick a publisher that does or doesn't distribute to libraries.

As if a library is legally required to only carry books with the publisher's permission?

I would imagine a lot of pirated software is taken from versions stolen from creators so there was no original purchase.

Also buying second hand is completely different as one second hand DVD can't be shared amongst millions of people. It's a completely different scale...

Was also interested to read about the PLR

https://www.plr.uk.com/allAboutPlr/whatIsPlr.htm

> I would imagine a lot of pirated software is taken from versions stolen from creators

I can confirm this. One of the 'cracks' for one of my programs was a license code obtained by someone using a stolen credit card. No attempt to actually crack & keygen the software. And there's genuine theft there, as payment processors keep the transaction fee after the refund, and there's a $25 penalty fine for a chargeback. Plus the owner of the credit card temporarily gets their card locked until it's replaced, etc.

So if you've ever used warez from Team OXiDE, keep in mind that some of that software was obtained via actual fraud.

> Was also interested to read about the PLR

To save people a click: "Public Lending Right (PLR) is the right for authors to receive payment for the loans of their books by public libraries."

Australia has a similar Public Lending Right as well. In return for allowing their books to be available in libraries, authors receive a subscription payment from those libraries:

https://www.arts.gov.au/funding-and-support/lending-rights

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