How much pirated Amiga software did you have?

[coldfish]

I bought a lot of originals, in fact when I sold my A500 I fished out all the boxed originals and was surprised to see just how much I had, stacked together they built about a 1m cube!  Some games like; Frontier-Elite2 you had to have the manual for.

Of course I also had 100's of copies aquired from adverts in the paper.  You'd go around to someones house and pick out a stack from his collection, pay about 50cents a disk. Irresistable towards the end of the Amigas life when retail outlets stopped stocking Amiga software.

People are right about actually playing the copies, at some point it stops being about enjoying the software and more like collecting for the sake of it, because you can.  

I used to really savour my originals, a good game like Myth or Frontier could keep me going for weeks.  On the flip side, paying $50 for a crap game stung so bad it'd almost justify getting copies to try b4 U buy.

[coldfish]

While I dont think wholesale piracy is a "good" thing, ( based on nothing more than the flimsy moral premis that if someone is getting something for nothing. then someone else must be missing out).

Comparing digital duplication to vehicle (or whatever physical object you choose) theft is just dumb.

I see it more like taking a photograph of a painting rather than getting the ladder out a ripping the painting of the wall.

The original is still there, piracy is an act of duplication not removal.

To all those on their moral high horse, who of you have never taped a TV program for later viewing or borrowed books from the library?

[coldfish]

Just not true. As I've said in a previous post, as a kid all of my software was pirated. This was because I came from a pretty poor background (to say the least), had no income and in the 90s couldn't afford £35+ per title. I agree, games are a luxury and my not being able to afford them is no moral argument - i should have just "done without".

But the point is, I certainly could not have afforded to buy those games anyway, and more importantly I would NEEEEEEEVER have been able to afford my copy of Real3D (which, iirc cost around £300) or 3D Studio Max which cost thousands. I honed my graphic skills on pirated applications as a kid and that enabled me become employed as an adult in an industry I love. Now that's a more moral based argument. Games you can do without, but productivity applications open doors to careers, careers that would be exclusive to only those children that came from families who could afford to buy them certain software titles. :/

Nowadays, EVERY item of software I own is legal. Not because I "can't" crack these software titles (I most certainly easily can) but because I can afford them thanks to my sort after skills (honed, largely, thanks to pirated softwrae)

Nobody lost ANYTHING through my piracy because, as has been pointed out by many in this thread, "our types" would not have been able to afford most of the software we pirated. But society HAS gain a skilled software user and a guy who can now afford to PAY for all the games and software that he and his family (children included) uses.

see, it's magic and just afterall.

I think this is a very nice point that amiga4ever has made.

I also learnt my skills on machines that had mostly copied software, today I'm a designer who spends several thousands on software each year, and much more on hardware. Without that early start I might be working the land like my father and grandfather.

Those who would say "if you cant afford it you cant use it" are suffering from the typical small minded elitism that aims to maintain a (perceived) superior position over others. Fortunately these "superior" people seem to be a minority in this thread.

I think people just have to accept that one of digital media's great flaws and benefits is its infinite duplicatablity.  Personally I'd like to see software become available in a free library, which is sort of what the internet is software developers like it or not.