VocaVerse Network

Offhand, I don't think piracy is a good way to influence companies to change their policies. Won't companies that are getting pirated just raise the prices and implement anti-piracy software measures that will burden honest purchasers?

If you want a company to change its policies, there are honest and legal ways to pursue it. Write to them to express your opinion. Follow your own prerogative not to purchase their product--for any product, certainly in the music/vocal synth field, there are bound to be alternatives.

The decision to pirate or not, or to do anything or not, ultimately comes down to your personal ethics. Your actions, and more importantly your reasons for them/the intent behind them, reflect on your character. If I pirated something, I think I'd regret it, because any rationalization would just have been my excuse to avoid waiting until I could pay for the thing, or choosing to give up that thing and purchase an alternative.

I suppose some companies might, in fact, not completely hate piracy, as you mentioned--it gives them an excuse to raise prices, or possibly to collect more personal data in the name of anti-piracy measures.

I don't think piracy is completely justified but after i keep seeing the trend of companines keep pounding all the weight on the customers back for a decade, it make me question myself.

Yes, there are legal ways to express their concern and make them re-think about their decision as you mentioned. If that really work. You probably won't see peoples complaining about how companines treat them so poorly and if they get treated poorly for long enough, i don't think people have enough patient to hold a positive morals for that long.

Meanwhile, some small companines use that Honor system (0 software protection) and treat customers fairly (reaper and analog obsession for example) they really thrive.
I just saying that if people see something that worth paying for. They will pay for it.

I never asking a companines to complete with free/piracy software, that's not the point. It's about fairness and transparency to their customers, the example is a software without demo or trial version, this is call lacking of transparency. Buying perpetual licenses and then 2 years later they reverse to subscription model, it's just straight up unfair.

As long as people are treated worse, piracy will thrive.

I agree with you--while it is an ethical and honest way to encourage change in a company, I don't really think that writing letters to a company is likely to change their business practices, either. It would be much more effective, at least from your own perspective and in the interest of your own happiness/peace of mind, just to choose an alternative product and put the offending company out of your mind.

That's not to say that there aren't times when it's appropriate to do something more than that. There's a long history of people who enacted change through legal means, be it through writing to elected officials for legislation, demonstration, protest, boycott, or even nonviolent civil disobedience. (Most of those things weren't directed at companies, but the principle holds.) There are surely many legal ways to try to seek change without doing illegal things, if your conscience dictates that you must take some action. At the same time, there's so much volatility today, these tools aren't always used in the same purposeful, deliberate, aware way that they were used in the past. And even in the case of civil disobedience (which, by definition, involves breaking the law), those who participated willingly went to jail because they knew that what they had done was illegal. (As far as I'm aware, I've not heard of civil disobedience involving stealing, though.) I doubt that most pirates do what they do with the mindset that being jailed would be acceptable as a way of making a social statement, although, to be fair, perhaps some do.

On the other hand, some (relatively few) companies do honestly listen to their customers. It's well worth your time to offer your opinion to them--they may just take you up on it.

Meanwhile, some small companines use that Honor system (0 software protection) and treat customers fairly (reaper and analog obsession for example) they really thrive.
I just saying that if people see something that worth paying for. They will pay for it.

I never asking a companines to complete with free/piracy software, that's not the point. It's about fairness and transparency to their customers, the example is a software without demo or trial version, this is call lacking of transparency. Buying perpetual licenses and then 2 years later they reverse to subscription model, it's just straight up unfair.

As long as people are treated worse, piracy will thrive.

Click to expand...

I would further comment that I agree with basically all of this.