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[Fleer]

Indeed. In the end it’s convenience that trumps piracy. 

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

10 hours ago, Carl Ewing said:

But I always found that "you wouldn't steal a car would you?" kinda funny.

The funniest part from that particular video is the music from it was commissioned off a Dutch composer under the agreement that the ad would only be played at specific film festivals. Then they put that video in DVDs, played it in theaters...I also heard that sometimes they would wake you up in the middle of the night and play it right in your face. The composer in question took them to court and won.

[Milan]

5 hours ago, Carl Ewing said:

You are flat out wrong about this. Almost every studio and every colleague I've ever met in the music business has used or still uses pirated software. Same applies to graphic design and video work. This can be everything from full scale libraries to preset packs, loop packs to effects. In design it's effects packs, fonts, full design programs, brushes, textures, clip art, and on and on. See it all the time. And these are studios that spend 10s of thouands on software every year. 

Why do they do this? Some of it is habit - always that nerdy engineer guy who has a portable harddrive filled with pirated shit. This guy is in every studio - everyone knows that guy. Other reason is trying out full products (like full sample libraries) before paying for it. Again - I see this happen all the time in large commercial studios.

I think he was talking about people that are poor, or living in poor countries, where a plugin might cost a disproportionate amount in their currency. Those people probably wouldn't ever pay, and please correct me if I'm wrong, I think the point is that those types of pirates wouldn't make too much difference to the developer, as no sales were lost.

In addition, like you mentioned, some people use cracked software as a demo, especially if the company doesn't provide a legitimate trial or a money back guarantee. Those people buy the license once they test the software out. It's not only big studios that do this, individuals do it too.

On the other hand, there are people who could afford the license, but they don't want to pay for it because they can get it for free.

Sometimes even people with a legitimate license use cracked software if the official software has an intrusive/unreliable copy protection.

I have no idea what the distribution between these different categories of pirates is since under the law, they are all illegal and it doesn't get talked about much.

Edited June 24, 2023 by Milan

[kitekrazy]

On 6/23/2023 at 7:55 AM, Brian Lawler said:

I think I recall Realitone doing that with one of the libraries I have (banjo or guitar). Can't recall the price difference.  I went the cheap route.

The crossgrades eventually became free.  I have Blue and Ladies and I didn't have to pay for the player version. 

[kitekrazy]

We love to derail threads.  Now we are into the never ending piracy threads.

I can sum it up by I have never walked in the shoes of a developer.  I have no idea how I'd really react if my work was available to anyone without paying for it.

I'd be afraid to download something from a torrent site because I don't believe there is honor among thieves.  What data are they stealing from you that you are not aware of.

I avoid developers who spend more time locking down their product than improving it. 

[PavlovsCat]

The foundations of the opinions expressed in some of the posts are gut feelings based on assumptions, and to be candid,  it's simply not informed by a knowledge of the known facts about piracy -- and there's a lot -- gathered from research as well as from arrests and lawsuits, like the lawsuit I cited. These facts tell us about the reality that those who engage in using pirated software and they don't simply fit  common stereotypes of those who use pirated software that some are expressing in their posts. People who use pirated software are not merely poor people, young people or simply from certain low income areas. 

I cited the example of major composers engaged in using pirated libraries and violating license agreements to convey that. These are affluent individuals who can easily afford to purchase what they use but instead chose piracy. That example is counter to the gut feeling use of stereotypes expressed about who uses pirated software and it's important to understand that fact to have any kind of meaningful conversation about piracy. 

Yes, there are many people that use pirated software who are poor, but it's false,  and counter to well known facts / information to assert that piracy is really just confined to those who can't afford software. In fact, it's wildly wrong to state or imply that. Like everywhere else, facts SHOULD trump gut feelings and stereotypes. Piracy is not merely something exclusive to poor people as some are asserting and implying.  The evidence is incredibly clear on that and the examples I cited earlier of well known composers-- very wealthy individuals-- using pirated sample libraries and intentionally violating license agreements,  is a good example that piracy isn't merely something poor people do that has no correlation to the revenue of the companies whose products are pirated. 

Anyhow, I'm not under the false impression that I'm going to be able to persuade anyone of the wrongs of piracy through a series of forum posts. I just wanted to make a point about the realities of software piracy and its impacts. 

Back to our regularly scheduled deals posts...

Edited June 24, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[Paul P]

27 minutes ago, kitekrazy said:

We love to derail threads.  Now we are into the never ending piracy threads.

This place is really exceptional.

That we can discuss something like this without things degenerating is pretty amazing.

I appreciate the information that has been shared.

[Fleer]

1 minute ago, Paul P said:

This place is really exceptional.

That we can discuss something like this without things degenerating is pretty amazing.

I appreciate the information that has been shared.

^^^This. 
It may be the only music forum on the web that allows for this kind of open yet tasteful discussions of sensitive topics. 

[Nick Blanc]

I thought I made had some reply which was ontopic, couldn't find it. Turns out this forum saves your drafts, so I have it back again. But I'm not going to post it, that ship has sailed.

What I do want to mention is that I have gone 100% legit. But sometimes you watch some big youtuber do a tutorial and the use Kontakt Portable with some expensive library like Strevoz BALKAN Ethnic Orchestra. Well, you KNOW that's pirated. I mean, I sorta get it? I would like to have Project SAM Lumina, but even discounted it is a bit too much. But in the end piracy is not worth the hassle for me. The same way I stopped using Usenet for my movies and series and I got a couple of streaming services. 

4 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

I also heard that sometimes they would wake you up in the middle of the night and play it right in your face.

I'm Dutch and I can confirm this. Piracy just wasn't worth it after that. Funny thing, when you pirated a DVD with some program (DVDripper?, I don't know), the pirate warning was a seperate thing in the DVD structure and removable. 

[PavlovsCat]

3 hours ago, Nick Blanc said:

But sometimes you watch some big youtuber do a tutorial and the use Kontakt Portable with some expensive library like Strevoz BALKAN Ethnic Orchestra. Well, you KNOW that's pirated. I mean, I sorta get it? I would like to have Project SAM Lumina, but even discounted it is a bit too much. But in the end piracy is not worth the hassle for me. The same way I stopped using Usenet for my movies and series and I got a couple of streaming services. 

If it's a big YouTuber, you can be fairly confident that they are using an NFR sample library the developer gave them for free. I've even arranged some of those relationships and I have recommended that developers even give NFRs to smaller influencers, if they reach the right audience. Developers/companies look at the cost of giving a YouTuber / influencer free product (and often sales commissions AKA affiliate marketing; the biggest YouTubers commonly want money up front to do a "review " or tutorial). YouTubers with a really big audience expect money upfront to do a "review" /  tutorial and the amount they charge is commonly correlated to the size of their audience.  

Consider that developers/companies are comparing the amount of reach and influence an influencer has over their audience to the cost of reaching those people with the same level of awareness and influence/credibility using other methods, like their own sponsored content, advertising, etc. You can very accurately say that influencers are in a business of building credibility with their audience and then monetizing that credibility to sell to companies by doing things like product walkthoughs and what they call reviews (SPOILER: it's as unbiased as asking a salesperson at a car dealership to give an unbiased review of a car they sell). 

Of course, there are also a lot of people on YouTube who use pirated software and sample libraries in their videos,  but if you're only looking at "big Youtubers," they're almost certainly going to be using an NFR library a developer gave them directly.  

Edited June 25, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[MusicMan]

9 hours ago, Milan said:

I think he was talking about people that are poor, or living in poor countries, where a plugin might cost a disproportionate amount in their currency. Those people probably wouldn't ever pay, and please correct me if I'm wrong, I think the point is that those types of pirates wouldn't make too much difference to the developer, as no sales were lost.

In addition, like you mentioned, some people use cracked software as a demo, especially if the company doesn't provide a legitimate trial or a money back guarantee. Those people buy the license once they test the software out. It's not only big studios that do this, individuals do it too.

On the other hand, there are people who could afford the license, but they don't want to pay for it because they can get it for free.

Sometimes even people with a legitimate license use cracked software if the official software has an intrusive/unreliable copy protection.

I have no idea what the distribution between these different categories of pirates is since under the law, they are all illegal and it doesn't get talked about much.

That's exactly right. Many people simply can't afford the software and hell, even if you look at students in any university, college, audio school, they sometimes have as much pro recording and graphics, media, CAD software as some studios. Sometimes more! The point is they were never going to spend those tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes over $100K on that software at that point in time..

Even for pro studios, if they're using cracked software, then it's pretty clear to see that they're open and inclined to use pirated software at times and so unless there's a specific need to open a project someone has brought in and they can't get a cracked version, or the software is very, very niche and can't be achieved with anything else, they're also likely to find something cracked and not buy the software at that point in time.

If I enter a raffle and don't win, I can't blame ticket holder 555735678 because i didn't win, as I was never guaranteed a prize. In ways piracy is similar. It's hard to claim an actual loss of a purchase that was never guaranteed to be made. If we assign that assumed loss to the company for every single pirated copy that any user has, that's completely unrealistic.

Absolutely, there's not one single type of user for pirated software and there will be all sorts of variations and exceptions, but that's where the mentality of assigning a perceived dollar cost loss in every situation clearly doesn't hold any water.

Edited June 25, 2023 by MusicMan

[Nick Blanc]

10 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

If it's a big YouTuber, you can be fairly confident that they are using an NFR sample library the developer gave them for free. I've even arranged some of those relationships and I have recommended that developers even give NFRs to smaller influencers, if they reach the right audience. Developers/companies look at the cost of giving a YouTuber / influencer free product (and often sales commissions AKA affiliate marketing; the biggest YouTubers commonly want money up front to do a "review " or tutorial). YouTubers with a really big audience expect money upfront to do a "review" /  tutorial and the amount they charge is commonly correlated to the size of their audience.  

Consider that developers/companies are comparing the amount of reach and influence an influencer has over their audience to the cost of reaching those people with the same level of awareness and influence/credibility using other methods, like their own sponsored content, advertising, etc. You can very accurately say that influencers are in a business of building credibility with their audience and then monetizing that credibility to sell to companies by doing things like product walkthoughs and what they call reviews (SPOILER: it's as unbiased as asking a salesperson at a car dealership to give an unbiased review of a car they sell). 

Of course, there are also a lot of people on YouTube who use pirated software and sample libraries in their videos,  but if you're only looking at "big Youtubers," they're almost certainly going to be using an NFR library a developer gave them directly.  

In this case it wasn't a huge youtuber but big enough that he might have got an NFR license? But, then he uses Kontakt Portable which is, as far as I know, not a real product of NI and specifically designed to be used with pirated libraries. You can't just load them up in your regular Player. Also, it was not a product review or something, he just used a tiny portion of it in a beat. So my bet is on piracy.

Anyway, to me it was just funny but also a sign of the times maybe that someone 'openly' uses pirated software and nobody seems to bat an eye.

[antler]

9 hours ago, MusicMan said:

If I enter a raffle and don't win, I can't blame ticket holder 555735678 because i didn't win, as I was never guaranteed a prize. In ways piracy is similar. It's hard to claim an actual loss of a purchase that was never guaranteed to be made. If we assign that assumed loss to the company for every single pirated copy that any user has, that's completely unrealistic.

It's not quite the same thing though.

If a raffle ticket holder doesn't win, nothing much happens - they bought a ticket, had their funds decreased by the cost of the ticket, and that's pretty much it.

If someone pirates a library, writes a score for a multi-million dollar movie, and collects royalties from it the situation is different. No funds go to the library developer, no funds go towards royalties for the musicians who were recorded for the library to be made (if this is the case), but the pirate goes on to gain funds. In this case, it's more like somebody steals the winning ticket or somehow changes the outcome of the raffle so they win.

[MrFigg]

I’m still pissed off they took my 80% voucher back hahahaha. 

[MusicMan]

45 minutes ago, antler said:

It's not quite the same thing though.

If a raffle ticket holder doesn't win, nothing much happens - they bought a ticket, had their funds decreased by the cost of the ticket, and that's pretty much it.

If someone pirates a library, writes a score for a multi-million dollar movie, and collects royalties from it the situation is different. No funds go to the library developer, no funds go towards royalties for the musicians who were recorded for the library to be made (if this is the case), but the pirate goes on to gain funds. In this case, it's more like somebody steals the winning ticket or somehow changes the outcome of the raffle so they win.

In ways I see where you're going with that, but the fundamental point of difference that actually is very similar in my opinion, is the developer still doesn't get something that they never had anyway. So whether the pirate makes money or not, it's somewhat moot as the developer hasn't experienced a loss in the same way they would if the pirate stole money or physical assets from developer. To put it another way, it doesn't cost the developer in a direct sense.

I don't advocate piracy (although if a developer removed the ability to activate software someone had paid for, then fair game) and like I mentioned, I don't use pirated software personally, but speaking more philosophically, while both might be illegal and called theft, I don't see them to be equal when it comes to software as I do for physical things.

When someone steals a physical object like the car which someone used in an earlier example the company no longer has the car and needs to spend money to replace it.

When someone pirates software, or a library however, the company still has their copy to keep selling to whoever is wanting to buy it at that time and all they really lost was a theoretical copy and theoretical sale/royalty that they never really had.

Edited June 25, 2023 by MusicMan

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

11 hours ago, MusicMan said:

If I enter a raffle and don't win, I can't blame ticket holder 555735678 because i didn't win, as I was never guaranteed a prize. In ways piracy is similar. It's hard to claim an actual loss of a purchase that was never guaranteed to be made. If we assign that assumed loss to the company for every single pirated copy that any user has, that's completely unrealistic.

If I remember, there were a few studies on the subject and they concluded piracy either causes a negligible impact on sales or no impact at all.

[MrFigg]

19 minutes ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

If I remember, there were a few studies on the subject and they concluded piracy either causes a negligible impact on sales or no impact at all.

78% of all statistics are made up on the spot. 

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

2 minutes ago, MrFigg said:

78% of all statistics are made up on the spot. 

I'm taking about scientific studies, one of them being 20+ years long.

[MrFigg]

42 minutes ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

I'm taking about scientific studies, one of them being 20+ years long.

Yep. As I said 65% of all statistics are made up on the spot. 

[PavlovsCat]

1 hour ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

If I remember, there were a few studies on the subject and they concluded piracy either causes a negligible impact on sales or no impact at all.

This is not just a little wrong, but fantastically wrong. There has been a great deal of research as well as arrests and lawsuits. I'm going to be a bit lazy in sharing and just use Google's AI result (of course,  some of this is very elementary,  so feel free to have a laugh) :

37% of software worldwide is unlicensed.

Lost revenue from software piracy by corporate users was $12.2 billion last year.

Lost sales due to software piracy amount to over $11 billion annually.

Software piracy is a global problem, with China, India, and the United States being the top three offenders.

Common types of software piracy include counterfeiting, end-user piracy, internet piracy, hard disk loading, and client-server overuse.

Software piracy is illegal and considered a crime.

Businesses or individuals who are caught selling pirated software can be fined as high as $250,000 and jailed for up to 5 years.

Software piracy can increase the chances that the software will malfunction or fail.

Software piracy can also forfeit access to support for the program, such as training, upgrades, customer support, and bug fixes.

Software piracy can also increase the risk of infecting your PC with malware, viruses, or adware.

Edited June 25, 2023 by PavlovsCat