A Moment of Your Time, Please.

[Peder 🚀]

I often get hold of things I should not have, but if I like it I ALLWAYS buy it!
And there ARE legal ways of "trying before buying" like with music you have www.spotify.com that does contain ALOT of music! It also has alot of music added all the time (new and old).

I'd say piracy has 2 users.
1. The ones that BUY what they have downloaded if they likes it.
2. The ones that DON'T. Even if they like it.

Unfortnatly there is actually alot of music that is very hard to get and with the stupid customs, buying things not available in your country could end up giving you a pretty high bill. I not gonna go offtopic starting to discuss customs (they are often ridiculess! like Ive been charged for having SEGA MASTER SYSTEM games sent to me!)

Piracy to me has only made me find alot of things I never knew of, for example Studio Ghibli's animated movies.
I only found out about them by searching for animation movies on a site, seen one of their movies on the site, then downloaded a couple more then not long after bought the whole collection on DVD!

So I can see how piracy CAN be good in many ways, but I also see how it CAN be bad!

About the gov taking control of the internet, I feel nobody should have such control!
In Norway I know specially Telenor is allowed to have such control (to block child porn sites etc).

money is the root of all evil

I agree with this ALOT!
This is why for example big companies outsource support to other countries.

I would actually rather live back in the days when you had to hunt your own food than now.
I WANTS to do hard work, go hunting, build shelter. (not saying they lived a better life then just saying I feel the world has changed alot and not necessary in the right direction.)

I mean even just 10 years ago, everything seemed alot more "human". (for me personally)
Anyways I not even sure if I am making any sense right now! getting tired .


Peace

[InCreator]

This line of reasoning is also invalid simply because the open source community has pretty much got you covered for everything:

<list of crappy programs of which many don't come even near their commercial equivalents>

Paying for software is pretty much not needed now unless you are a pro, in which case you are morally obliged not to leech off other peoples software.

Well, adding trash like this into your CV won't get you hired. Every secretary better know how to use MS Office and every artist/designer has to navigate Photoshop in his/her sleep. "Hello, I'm a graphic designer and I can use Paint.NET" is quickest way to get boot.

It would sound even more tragic if you'd use -- for example -- Blender versus 3ds Max, Lightwave or Maya.

[Technocrat]

Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I've a feeling that things like this are doomed to failure eventually, especially with the adaptive and almost organic nature of emergent technologies like the internet. This is the old elite trying to grasp control of something they don't quite understand, under pressure from their industrial backers but as with any human force, they are not omnipotent, nor even close to omniscient.

[Damien]

Well, adding trash like this into your CV won't get you hired. Every secretary better know how to use MS Office and every artist/designer has to navigate Photoshop in his/her sleep. "Hello, I'm a graphic designer and I can use Paint.NET" is quickest way to get boot.

Which is exactly why a graphic designer should own a legal copy of his own?

[GarageGothic]

For a thread that started out in full-blown Alex Jones mode (and which frankly I gave up on posting in yesterday), I'm happy to see how reasonable all the arguments turned out. Yay for the AGS community.

My own current beef with copyright isn't related to willful piracy but rather how the law limits creativity and makes for a poorer culture. If you haven't watched the documentary RIP: A Remix Manifesto, I urge you to do so.

Anyhow, I was watching this TED talk about YouTube and copyright a few weeks ago, and it really started me thinking about how Google (and by extension YouTube) potentially stand in a position to reinvent copyright and media licensing on a very practical level. I fully believe that Google, if they are indeed a force of good in the world, with their connections and massive user base, could - if they put their minds to it - reshape the way the industry views ownership and licensing. And best of all, it could happen totally independently of international law (which, let's face it, would take decades to change) - the only thing they'd have to do would prove to the media conglomerates that there's money to be made.

Recently I was looking into the cost and bureaucracy of clearing music rights. One of the games I have planned is set in part during the glam rock era, and it would of course be awesome to use a few Bowie or Bolan tracks, but with the current state of things that's just not gonna happen. Just finding out who owns the rights not only to the composition,  lyrics and arrangement, but also to the specific performance/recording and the mechanical reproduction rights is a full time job in itself, and of course there's fees to be paid every step of the way on top of the royalties. Add to that the fact that prices go way up the moment you want to use a song in an interactive context and the only viable option is that I'll pay some talented amateur musician to write a few songs "in "he style of..." instead of using the real thing.
Consequence: My audience gets a less authentic product and the artists I wanted to pay homage to won't see a dime. Of course my little game isn't gonna make a dent in the wallet of Sony et al, but imagine this happening on a larger scale. What if, instead of me having to pay thousands of dollars per song, Google made arrangements with the music distributors that allowed me to use the songs for, say, 50 cents or a dollar a piece per sold copy of the game? Possibly coupled with a web page with links to purchase the songs on iTunes that opens when the game exits (or better yet, treat the songs as having been purchased by the customer already and simply triggered from within the game - in much the same way that I, owning a copy of Dark Side of the Moon and a DVD of The Wizard of Oz am entitled to sync those two up in my living room without violating any copyrights).

Things have to change soon, not just because of piracy and failing economic models, but because our way of using media has changed monumentally during the last decade. Copyright isn't evil per se, but the current implementation is too cumbersome and costly for anyone not part of the industry. There is money to be made for the copyright owners, and changing the attitudes towards what constitutes infringement would not just let them focus on actual, destructive piracy, but also hugely improve the image of the big bad publishers - all it would take would be the right middle man, and Google/YouTube seems a likely candidate in my opinion.

[InCreator]

Well, adding trash like this into your CV won't get you hired. Every secretary better know how to use MS Office and every artist/designer has to navigate Photoshop in his/her sleep. "Hello, I'm a graphic designer and I can use Paint.NET" is quickest way to get boot.

Which is exactly why a graphic designer should own a legal copy of his own?

What if you just finished school, broke as a bum, and as it's common today - have loans till you're 60?

[Damien]

What if you just finished school, broke as a bum, and as it's common today - have loans till you're 60?

Does it really make a difference? Surely, using a software to pay for your bills makes it more than a mere pixel lighting algorithm.
What I'd like to know is, what if the professional but digitalized work of our struggling designer gets stolen and used for someone else's gain, is that ok too?


To go back at Calin's list of alternative software and your edited quote: <list of crappy programs of which many don't come even near their commercial equivalents>

So, pro software has pro features but how does that affect the amateurs? I could imagine that 95% of illegal photoshop copies are used for creation of forum signature pictures or simmilar art heavy on filter usage. Advanced features do not apply to them. Same goes for any software on that list.
If I need to create a vector image for personal use, why bother with illustrator when I can download a portable version of Inkscape which will do the job just as well?

[Calin Leafshade]

Yea, Damien clarified my point pretty well.

Practically everything that Photoshop can do (That the average user would want to do), Paint.NET can do.

Sure Paint.NET sucks ass in comparison to Photoshop Pro Elite Edition but suck it up, you didnt pay for it.

1st class plane tickets are better than economy but that doesn't mean you are just allowed to have them.

On the subject of training, Adobe CS5 standard (which includes photoshop and illustrator) is $299 for someone in education.
A years worth of textbooks is worth that much.

And as I'd already mentioned you can get PS Elements for about $60. (Ben304 uses PS Elements btw)

In fact this year Autodesk are giving away all their software free for anyone with an academic email address.

But of course you didnt know this because all the software companies ARE EVIL!!!

Software is not expensive unless you need professional grade stuff in which case they are kinda tools of the trade.

[Clarvalon]

To dismiss open source applications and projects seems a little short-sighted.  

Take, for instance, the short animated film Sintel.  It may not quite be Pixar quality (what is?) but it's pretty impressive as a showcase for something created entirely with non-proprietary software.

[Dualnames]

I agree with Calin's point and probably disagree on the same time. Yes, indeed there are some fantastic programs that sometimes do things that commercial suites/programs do. But that usually goes for bulky processes. Meaning that I've found myself very happy that I got an open-source/free program that performs operations like a commercial one, appearing equivalent at times. But when it comes to certain details I needed to be done via that program, I've always found the commercial one to win.

This is my personal experience. Personally I feel it all comes down to: "You get what you pay for".
I've also been disappointed by commercial programs. That goes without saying.

[Nikolas]

As someone who just completed a PhD I can tell you that open office worked very very well for that purpose! Perhaps it might be coming short in a case or two, but I never had any trouble with it! My editor also is using it, and so are all the composers I'm collaborating with (under my influence and suggestion... they might also have MS Office, but since I'm using Open office they had little trouble in switching!)

As a professional composer I can tell you that the, literally, tens of thousands of $ I've spend on samples are well worth it. HOWEVER in the case of the sequencer, reaper (which has a $60 non commercial license) is a very well thought out program, which rivals any other sequencer out there, including Cubase, Sonar, etc.

Blender had also done a previous movie a few years back called The Elephants Dream. Quite impressive for Blender, huh?