How much pirated Amiga software did you have?

[Ral-Clan]

Coming from the C64 tradition where disk-swapping was a popular pastime, I went straight into this with the Amiga.  Of course I was also a high school student with little money and no real appreciation of how much work it was to produce these games.  So....yes, I had about 99% pirated software, which was probably a hundred titles.

After I hit twenty I started gradually buying software.  It started by paying for Shareware licenses: Wzonkaland, ShapeShifter, SoundFX.  

After Commodore died and in the late nineties I would sometimes buy full boxed copies of older software from vendors at computer shows.  It's the classic case of "you don't know what you've got until it's gone".  It was just so nice to see some Amiga software in a real, professional box - you wanted to buy it partly for that reason.  Perhaps if we'd bought more boxed original software before Commodore went belly up things might have been different.

In the late nineties I started paying for full fledged application software like ImageFX, Aladdin 4d, PageStream.  I had been fumbling with pirated versions of the software for a few years, not fully understanding it, but still getting a lot of use out of it.  I realised that if it was really something I was using everyday I should PAY for it.  Even if it did seem expensive, with the amount of use I was getting out of it the price would work out to pennies a day.   Plus it was the right thing to do.

The benefit (especially for applications) was that it was much better to have the real manual and support from the official mailing lists or the author.  With this I started using the software to its full potential.  Plus it feels so much better to know you are supporting the author for his/her work and encouraging development of the title.

I've never regretted paying for this software.

So if any of you are using pirated versions of Aladdin 4d, ImageFX, PageStream, etc.....get out there a pay for legitimate copies.  These three publishers are still in business and we NEED them.  Some of them are porting their software to OS4 and they need the support.

All these titles are less than $100 and they are very much worth it for what they can do.

[Ral-Clan]

I feel mostly the same regarding software. The most I am ever willing to spend on a specific software product is $25 dollars. Unless this software is going to cure cancer and HIV alltogether, I am not willing to spend a dime more. It is unreasonable from a home user perspective to pay more than that. It is absolutely different from a corporate perspective.

I find this argument a bit weak because you are under no obligation to use the software if you don't like the price.

[Ral-Clan]

Stealing is just SO COOL,until you steal from the thief.

I gotta admit this is so true.  It goes for software and music downloads.  It's the cool thing to do, but if you could go to the pirates house and pick anything from it to just take, they'd have another thing to say.

I would bet that 90% of the people who think pirating is totally okay don't actually create anything like art, music, photography, writing, reports, programs. etc.  They are consumers.  If they actually created something intangible for which they based their livelihood on, or even placed value for their time upon, they might have another opinion.

[Ral-Clan]

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.

Okay, since that's what you believe, how would you feel if you were working on nice graphics project for client, and a poor young struggling graphics artist somehow got ahold of your graphics files and put them in his portfolio for prospective clients, claiming they were his own work?

Same situation, but with the positions reversed.  Now that you are successful, should someone in a less fortunate position be able to freely benefit from your hard work?

How would you feel?