How much pirated Amiga software did you have?

[Buzzfuzz]

Back in the days I used to drag my Amiga's to clubs, and Xcopy ran more hours than any game I have played.
On the simple note that I couldn't afford games, they would cost anywhere between 50 and 100 guilders or more.
I paid 50 for my first Amiga 500 which was from my aunt.
I was in high school, dind't have a job or anything, so this was the only way, look nicely at my father, dump everything in his van and off we went.
Every 1st or 2nd saturday of the month I was running floppy's trough the drives and my father paid most of them, usually when I got some cash from my grand father and mom that went into new packs of DS DD disks.
 
Sure, I would love to have bought some, but it wasn't easy to get games anyway in the Netherlands, there was always far to little stock.
And even if stores had it, I always had to go to cities kilometres away, sending it by mail was almost 7/10 times a fail because the disks were bent or damaged.
 
On my pc most things are bought, only have a few trial versions of FTP programs and compression tools and all games are bought.
Cause now I have the money to buy games for my pc.
Windows 7 is a OEM paid for and also MS Office 2007.

[Buzzfuzz]

I wonder..do people here think buying a car entitles one to steal gas and tires?Car won't run without them;computer won't run without programs.

So how does comparing a car to a computer fit in with copying software ?
If you can buy the car you already thought of if you can afford the gas and insurance and repairs/upgrades.
Besides the value of a new proper car can't be compared to a computer and software although some companies charge car prices for software.
And I'm talking about cars that cost around 20000-30000 euro's.
 
And on a side note, most cars are from the bank or lease, cause most people can't pay those amounts at once.
 
I can buy a computer and I can think of what software I want to use and I can find it online what the prices are.
Back in those days I had to call, and the answer most of the time was 'We don't know, you have to wait until we have it, if we get it at all'.
By the time most original software came available, I didn't run my Amiga anymore, I already had a PC which I had bought every piece of software.
 
Today I have a monster Core I7 975 here and every piece of software is paid for, but these days even some prices are just INSANE high!
I can understand the value for example of Adobe Photoshop, but a retail version costs about 1000 euro's, that's almost 9 times as much as my Windows 7 OEM version and almost 15 times as much as my retail version for Symantec Internet Security.
I'm going to buy Adobe Photoshop because I like it, and even though it costs that much, I can afford it now.
 
But there are probably millions of people who have downloaded it from a torrent, and if you see what people can get trough the net.
Even the most current TV series or newest album of whoever.
 
So what about that, TV series went on to tapes with VCR's back in the days and that is about the same as copying software.
But people nowadays TIVO it or record it to HDD recorders, so what's changed ?
Everyone does that too, and that is just as copyrighted as a piece of software, but no one dares to implement a strong copyright protection, because if that where the case, no one would buy a TIVO anymore or HDD recorder.
If you where charged 50 dollars every time you where to record your favorite episode, you would probably say too, hey I'll go to a shop and buy the DVD/Bluray pack or download it.
 
The market would get such a blow and digital progress would stop or get to a crawl.
Why do you think it goes so hard now adays with DVD/Bluray burners in computers ?
Because of copying or all the downloaded things, it's just that simple.
If it was only for data backup like photos and documents, the prices would have been skyhigh.
 
The solution ?
Simple, make it affordable, Microsoft finally saw it our way, and the 3pc 1 license Office 2007 home and student has an affordable price at around 99-120 euro's.
Windows 7 OEM Professional was included with the pc and cost around 136 euro's, that's a lot less than an retail version back in the days of XP.
Even an OEM version of XP was twice as high as Windows 7 OEM is now.
So if Microsoft can do it, why can't others, or my example, Adobe ?

[Buzzfuzz]

With music artists you should look at the percentage they actually get, it's almost :angryfire: what they get, it's like 1-10%, the rest is all going to organisers, retailers, copyrighters and a little bit to the record company e.t.c.
 
I do not say that copying isn't stealing, because it is, but if they were really honest and didn't make price agreements then some software would be a lot less cheaper.
They are all going for the big $$$$ and the easy money, the more profit they make of it, the better, again I think the actual percentage that goes to the developer is less than 10%, unless it's a big company / they are completely in control themselves.
 
It's the same as products in a store, go for big margins and sell less / nothing or make it as low as possible and sell a lot, it's up to them.

[Buzzfuzz]

Hi,
Sorry copy protection and not piracy condemned the Amiga to failure (plus the way that Commode sold it).

Yep, how annoying was that, plus the endless look in the manual games, like Frontier.
That's the only original game I have on the Amiga, and than that cop comes again and again line this word that, letter whatever :uzi:
So annoying for the game play!
The delight of just pressing a specific key was just a whole lot better, makes you wanna get another :drink:and play on
 
The PC did it for a while too in the early days, I remember a lot of games having a No-CD hack.