How much pirated Amiga software did you have?

[ElPolloDiabl]

Hi, a poll for the old days, how many pirated games or productivity software did you have in your collection at it's peak. Don't count anything post 1997 seeing how it became hard to get a legal copy. If you replaced your pirated software with a legal copy in that time frame, don't count that either.

[ElPolloDiabl]

Having a modem in the old days and you were still in school was like having a Santa Claus machine. When I got my modem all the pirate BBS had closed.

[ElPolloDiabl]

So here is a question, if a company invested in bringing software back to the Amiga would people copy that. Do people believe software has a value or a developers hard work should be given away for free. All I can say is I hope that chefs out there will cook me dinner for free, and builders sort my roof out for free :-)

Mostly depends on price. I like winzip, use it a lot and reinstall it every time it expires, but the $50 price tag is too high. $25 would be fairer. You could see it as $25 loss, but considering I'm not going to pay $50 anyway, it's a lost sale.

[ElPolloDiabl]

Its obvious that software piracy on the Amiga was HUGE, probably as high as 90% of all software being used was not purchased.  

I've always maintained that for all of Commodores mismanagement, software piracy played the decisive move in killing the Amiga eventually.  Which programmer in his right mind would spend countless hours of his professional time and then not get paid, and then make MORE software?  No software=dead platform eventually

I don't agree. Back then the software companies did everything to make their software look better than the competition. Amiga fell behind in price/performance. They also tolerated piracy because it was free advertising.

[ElPolloDiabl]

I have 4 shelves of DVDs I happily bought and maybe half a shelf of copied or pirate DVDs. I go over to my uncle or cousins house and both have about 5 DVDs each. Is some movie industry guy going to start foaming at the mouth because in his opinion he's lost sales because of me.

A good pirate is probably spending their money on their education or donating to charity.
A bad pirate has a collection of sports cars and a holiday home, but still pirates.

[ElPolloDiabl]

It's a bit like leaving the keys in a rubbish car hopping it will get stolen with some of the albums being pimped for 10 bucks in the shops these days,

haha lol
Make a crappy album. Wait till people download it and then sue them for huge profits.

You can get 2 disc best of's for 10 bucks that beats any download price and what's the deal with mp3 downloads that are only available to some countries?