Piracy

1. Robbery committed at sea. A similar act of robbery, as the hijacking of an airplane.
2. The unauthorized use or reproduction of copyrighted or patented material: software piracy.
3. The operation of an unlicensed, illegal radio or television station.

most of us haven't robbed anyone at sea, much less on land, hijacked a plane, or operated an unlicensed radio or tv station, but most of us have used unauthorized versions of software or reproduced/used copyrighted material.

last night while walking a friend through the process of downloading a free version of acrobat reader i stumbled across a link to download a 30 day trial versions of other graphic software. i proceeded to download four of these pieces of software. three of the four are full blown versions of the software. they just deny you access after 30 days. the other one is almost the full blow version. the only difference is it doesn't let you save any of your files. out of the other three, two of them cannot simply be converted to the full licensed version by simply adding an activation code, but one of them could. i'm aware of websites that offer what are know as "cracks". a crack is a piece of software that aids in the activation of software without an authentic activation number from the manufacture. i proceeded to see if i could find a crack for the software and i found it in about two minutes. most cracks wouldn't be made if the software didn't cost $300-$900. three years ago i bought four pieces of software for a combined total of $1300. one if which cost me $800.

piracy is a funny subject. i find that most people i know are like me and are okay with a certain amount of piracy. an amount of piracy that robin hood would be okay with. i find that most are okay with robbing from the rich to provide for the poor. an example would be borrowing a cd of a famous artist and copying it for yourself. most of us don't do it to make a profit, we do it to save money and we feel that the artist won't hurt from us making a copy. on the flip side, if a friend has a cd of an artist that hasn't made it big and struggles to make ends meet. we won't give each other copies of it. we are respectful of the artist and buy the cd. i would say my music collection would only be two thirds the size it is today if i didn't copy my friend's cds, and i wouldn't have been able to learn as much about design in school if it wasn't for unauthorized copies of software.

is piracy a crime? yes it is, but like speeding there are different degrees that seem to be socially acceptable. copying a cd or using pirated software for recreational purposes is like driving 70 mph in a 60 mph zone is. it is illegal, but rarely is anyone punished for it. on the other hand driving 120 mph down the highway and making money for selling copied cds, dvds, or software will get you fined heavily and posibly locked up.