Is this stealing adobe photoshop? Moral conundrum

[Timmibal]

Snip

Not agreeing with the kitty in any shape or form, but sir, you mad, and YHBT.

Nope. Never.

I'm not a millionaire or Jesus. I am simply not a thief.

I call bullshit, m'laddo. Ever sung in the shower? Ever? You've breached copyright. Agreed nobody would ever be greedy enough to prosecute you, but technically it's on the books (Unauthorised performance of copyrighted material.)

 

[Omegatronacles]

Snip

Not agreeing with the kitty in any shape or form, but sir, you mad, and YHBT.

Nope. Never.

I'm not a millionaire or Jesus. I am simply not a thief.

I call bullshit, m'laddo. Ever sung in the shower? Ever? You've breached copyright. Agreed nobody would ever be greedy enough to prosecute you, but technically it's on the books (Unauthorised performance of copyrighted material.)

A) No, I've never sung in the shower.

B) It isn't against any law to recite ANYTHING, so long as it isn't for profit or in front of an audience.

Research - it helps.

And not being a smug self righteous twat helps as well.

Copyright law differs from country to country, so your blanket responses are as misinformed as some of the opinions you are trying to shoot down.

You're from Australia. Have you ever gone into a JB Hi-Fi store and watched the movie playing on the TV displays there? Even for 30 seconds? Or ever had a coffee at a cafe where they play CD's over the speaker system? Congratulations! You were involved in COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT!

And if you, or anyone you know, bought a TV from a retailer, then profit has been made as a result of COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT!

But lets also take a look at your claim to have never stolen something. Have you ever used someones pen and not given it back? Have you ever found money on the ground an put it in your pocket? Have you ever been given more change by a store clerk than you were supposed to? If you answered yes to any of those questions, then you have engaged in theft. If you answered no to all 3 of those questions you are either a liar or you live in a cave on the moon.

So now you may go back to your research, and maybe this time you'll pay attention to the whole thing, not just the parts that support your arguments.

Law is not a black and white situation. That is why we have a judicial system, to help work through all the shades of grey. You can not stand there and claim to have never benefited in any way from something that is against the letter of the law. It is physically impossible.

 

[The Rockerfly]

You can call me a thief but I'm not actually stealing anything, just creating a copy.

Morality is ridiculous, the only person who should care is yourself
If it's illegal? Oh well, slavery used to be legal

No I don't give a crap about your opinion, I don't care

 

[Timmibal]

You're from Australia.

You've looked at the profile. You must have noticed that you're dealing with a teenage girl there... I think that pretty much sums up the reasoning behind the "LALALALALA YOU'RE WRONG" style of argument. Normative appeals will not work in this instance.

 

[TheOrangeOne]

Ok first the bad then the good.

A) Yes it's illegal.

B) I have CS4 (legally, I might add) and 1) it's totally worth the money. 2) During my time in art college, I needed Flash for a course in digital media. It strikes me as weird that your school would require you to purchase these programs. My college had them on all of the university computers. Whether you bought your own copy to work from the comfort of your own home was up to you. Anyway, here are 3 legal alternatives that will save you from legal issues and/or give you piece of mind from a moral standpoint:

1. Buy the programs. As long as you are enrolled in college, you qualify for Adobe's Student discount. All you need is a student ID. That's how I bought mine. You get something like 80% off the standard price. It'll still cost you a few hundred, but when it regularly retails for around $1000, it's not a bad deal. And that's for the whole creative suite. You can go program by program, but often times it'll cost more for three programs than it would for the entire suite. More bang for your buck, my friend.

2. Like Aylaine said, Adobe has 30 day trials on all of its products. That's how I got through my poor college days. My 30-day trial of Flash got me through the bulk of my digital media course. When that ran out and I'd saved the money, I bought CS4 and have been using it ever since.

3. See if they have the programs on the school computers, and use those. I'm sure your school has a computer lab...why not check it out?

Again, it seems really strange to me that a class, especially at the university level, would require you to spend that much money. If all else fails, I'd contact the university and ask if it's school policy that you have to purchase those programs to take the course. Again, I took half a dozen art courses that required the Adobe Creative Suite, and I was never required to actually buy the programs. They were on all of the computers in the computer lab where we took the course.

Good luck, and may college have mercy on your wallet

 

[Baneat]

All I asked was some form of structured argument, you've given me fuck all in your first and last post, we don't need unsupported opinions in a forum, it has no value besides from "this guy thinks that".

Whether I agree with you? irrelevant, maybe I do, maybe I don't, how can I know? You've presented nothing.

No need to get all hostile. It is illegal plain and simple. Are we entitled to make up our own minds? Yes. If you're cool with pirated software, fine. Not everyone is.
[/quote]

It's not hostile, it also fails to address the topic.
Moral Conundrum, not legal.

I know I've screwed up the quoty thing when trying to snip XD

 

[Lono Shrugged]

I have a student copy and you can use it professionally (I paid for mine with a 80% discount and it still cost me 550 USD)

Cool I didn't realise that. The more you know etc.

 

[Private Custard]

Adobes problem is their own greed. They need to realise that if they dropped prices to something not totally and utterly fucking mental, they'd make soo much more money.

Yes, what you're considering is illegal. No, I don't blame you for going down that road!

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

Just a FYI, do not like any sites or warez here guys. Thanks. <3

Do not "link", maybe? Otherwise, it sort of makes little sense.

OT: You really need it? Eh - well, go for it. It is illegal, of course, but you can buy the licensed version later.

Really though, Photoshop costs a fortune.

 

[zHellas]

Hi everyone, I've been visiting the escapist for quite a while but never posted anything... ...until now.

The problem is that I need to get Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign for my university course and that will cost a fortune, However, I know a guy (you can probably see where this is going)who has all these, and he could give me them for free by copying his onto my laptop and then changing the product key code thing (or something like that).

So my first question is, is this legal.

I'm certain it isn't but hey, if I'm wrong I'll save £230, I was also wondering what the difference was in the student and teacher edition of Creative Suite 5, mainly is there some sort of restrictions on it or time limit.

My Digital Media 1 class uses a free Photoshop-like program called GIMP(dunno what they were smoking when they chose the name) that's pretty good, I guess. Not sure how it holds up to Photoshop, though.

 

[Heart of Darkness]

Don't universities give required programs to their students?

Yes it is illegal, you're pretty much doing the real world equivalent of torrenting.

Depends on the university. I need Flash, Photoshop, Maya, and Final Cut Pro for my classes, but my university doesn't offer each of us individual copies of the software. Instead, my department has two computer labs with all the software already on each computer, so I don't need to purchase the software, either.

The only downside to that arrangement is that I need to use Macs when I'm in lab.

EDIT:

My Digital Media 1 class uses a free Photoshop-like program called GIMP(dunno what they were smoking when they chose the name) that's pretty good, I guess. Not sure how it holds up to Photoshop, though.

"GIMP" comes from "GNU Image Manipulation Program." "GNU" comes from the recursive acronym "GNU's Not Unix." This kinda thing is common among the free software "developers."

 

[BGH122]

You're learning. Don't worry about it.

Once you start making money by using Photoshop, then it's time to pay up.

Until then, just focus on getting to the point where you're in a position to make that sort of money.

I actually had a friend who worked on Photoshop 7 and he unofficially (read: Adobe doesn't endorse this) said this is the attitude of a lot of the Photoshop developers.

Nonetheless, what the OP is talking about is definitely illegal:

he could give me them for free by copying his onto my laptop and then changing the product key code thing

One of the incredibly annoying, illogical and unfair things about 'buying' software is that you're not actually buying software, but a non-transferable limited license to use it; you're paying £230 to rent the software at the licenser's discretion. This ass-backwards distortion of capitalism strikes me as more immoral than copyright infringement, but that's pretty irrelevant since two wrongs don't make a right. I have never, however, seen any valid justification of why copyright infringement is equatable to stealing (lack of scarcity, lack of deprivation of original copy etc) so the actually morality of piracy is yours to decide, just make sure you've read the arguments thoroughly before you take a stance.

The best anti-copyright infringement argument I've seen was by an economist on the ArsTechnia forums which pointed out two major overlooked points:

1) 'Try before you buy' copyright infringement leads the viewer to use any nitpicky excuse to avoid paying for the product since its already in their possession. A legitimate owner will gloss over product faults to justify their purchase whereas a copyright infringer will focus on product faults to legitimise not buying the software. This invalidates the 'try before you buy' argument.

2) Tangential losses can occur even if no direct loss to the infringed occurs: even if you were never going to buy the Adobe suite because you'd never have the available funds, infringing it means you're less likely to spend money on other services that overlap either since a comparison between your illegally owned copy of Adobe Suite and its competitors will always be skewed in favour of the free alternative. Furthermore, if a trend of infringement emerges, even if you were never going to buy any of the infringed products, then free time (and thus money) is consumed by infringed products thus making it less likely that other products will be purchased legitimately as less free time exists to validate their purchase. This argument is rather weaker since it also argues against freeware and shareware and ignores positive tangential effects of copyright infringement e.g. an increase in pirated games leads to more available money to spend on more powerful (and otherwise preclusively expensive) luxury hardware such as fancy graphics cards to run the infringed stuff.

You may note that I don't use the term piracy, that's because it's a deliberate slandering misnomer which I do not intend to endorse, despite its convenient truncation of the rather lengthier term copyright infringement.

 

[Sikachu]

Adobe have an unspoken policy about not prosecuting student pirates because it's the way people learn to use their products and become the professionals that have to pay for them. Yes it is illegal, but if people didn't do it Adobe would definitely lose business. It's actually one of the really fascinating edge cases in software piracy.

 

[Sikachu]

It is indeed illegal.

Adobe is one of the few companies that probably benefit from piracy (though I'm certain they'd never admit it). If it weren't for piracy, most people would never be exposed to Photoshop.

Please don't excuse theft and crime.

With your counterargument being? All I'm gonna say is you've only asserted what you think, there's no reason to believe you.

?

My counterargument to what? It being a illegal? It is... What more do you need.

To my statement regarding excusing crime? If you need to hear why making excuses for stealing is stupid, I cannot help you.

im pretty sure hes talking about morality. I could care less about the legality of this situation and the poster probibly could too. What this guy asked you is what is your moral argument for all of this

ps : ill take "its aginst the law i dont need an argument and if you break the law your just a criminal " as you dont have one

So you're a pirate?

Please leave our forum.

It's not your forum, and I for one would much rather have software pirates to talk to than busybodies with nothing better to do than pathetically attempt to enforce someone else's forum guidelines. Report him if you must, but don't pretend to speak for The Escapist.

 

[SnipErlite]

]

mindlesspuppet snip

I'm intrigued as to your response to mindlesspuppet's post. Would you mind?

As for OT: Ask your uni, or see if they do anything specifically for students (who by their very nature are poor and a lot of companies acknowledge this). While in general I don't condone piracy (especially of videogames), Photoshop is way way too expensive.

Hence why I use GIMP. It isn't quite as powerful or flexible but it's pretty damn good for a free program.

 

[johnman]

As said before, Adobe love Piracy. All those teenagers who torrented it know how to use it and it becomes standard. Businesses go out, but loads of licenses because thats what their workforce wants and knows, and Adobe make billions. If piracy really hurt Adobe then they would have made its alot more diffcult to steal than it currently is.

 

[Vanguard_Ex]

Hi everyone, I've been visiting the escapist for quite a while but never posted anything... ...until now.

The problem is that I need to get Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign for my university course and that will cost a fortune, However, I know a guy (you can probably see where this is going)who has all these, and he could give me them for free by copying his onto my laptop and then changing the product key code thing (or something like that).

So my first question is, is this legal.

I'm certain it isn't but hey, if I'm wrong I'll save £230, I was also wondering what the difference was in the student and teacher edition of Creative Suite 5, mainly is there some sort of restrictions on it or time limit.

First off, welcome to our humble adobe abode, awesome name and hope to see you around a lot

Second, I'm pretty sure it's illegal but who honestly gives a shit? Just sleep soundly at night knowing it's more like sharing than anything, and you've saved almost a quarter of a hundred quid.