Is it illegal to purchase pro apps with education discount if you are not eligible?

[high heaven]

Well, I saw people arguing about the education discount since many users buy pro apps with an education discount which is $200. Obviosuly, they weren't a student at all. But it seems Apple doesnt punish or sue them at all. Is it mortally ok or do Apple find them secretly?

 

[chrfr]

Well, I saw people arguing about the education discount since many users buy pro apps with an education discount which is $200. Obviosuly, they weren't a student at all. But it seems Apple doesnt punish or sue them at all. Is it mortally ok or do Apple find them secretly?

It's a violation of the license terms and Apple provides the discount so that students can save money and learn how to use the programs.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Not illegal but it could end up hurting those who need it the most. I'm an older college student and even though I have an EDU account and could apply for an EDU discount, I usually don't utilize it. Mostly because Best Buy has sales that result in more $ saved anyway. My wife is a PhD student. Neither of us have ever utilized our education discount with Apple. I wouldn't say we've never used it with other software but... it's rare.

 

[MPclk2006]

Well, I saw people arguing about the education discount since many users buy pro apps with an education discount which is $200. Obviosuly, they weren't a student at all. But it seems Apple doesnt punish or sue them at all. Is it mortally ok or do Apple find them secretly?

Well I dont think its mortally wrong, like no one is going to kill you for doing it.
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Not illegal but it could end up hurting those who need it the most. I'm an older college student and even though I have an EDU account and could apply for an EDU discount, I usually don't utilize it. Mostly because Best Buy has sales that result in more $ saved anyway. My wife is a PhD student. Neither of us have ever utilized our education discount with Apple. I wouldn't say we've never used it with other software but... it's rare.

Yeah I’ve bought stuff during my college time and then for my MBA but always found a sale or something that outweighed any student discount.

 

[Madhatter32]

Fraudulent behavior is morally wrong.

 

[DaveSanDiego]

If Apple gave a darn ... then they would require you to provide valid credentials to prove you are a student or teacher... and they don't

 

[oneMadRssn]

Illegal as in criminal? Not really. Illegal as in a breach of the terms, yea, but who cares?

 

[26139]

Well, I saw people arguing about the education discount since many users buy pro apps with an education discount which is $200. Obviosuly, they weren't a student at all. But it seems Apple doesnt punish or sue them at all. Is it mortally ok or do Apple find them secretly?

Why would you post about scamming Apple on a public forum populated by Apple fans?

 

[AZhappyjack]

If Apple gave a darn ... then they would require you to provide valid credentials to prove you are a student or teacher... and they don't

Not at all. Not being eligible, but taking advantage of an offer is like switching price tags on items in a store. It's stealing. I realize that these days, most people will take advantage and never give it a second thought... but, well, maybe someday Apple will eliminate the discounts because of abuse... and future students will miss out. But, you got yours, so no problem, right?

 

[high heaven]

Why would you post about scamming Apple on a public forum populated by Apple fans?

Because they believe it's fine to do that and I wanted to know if it's illegal or not.

 

[26139]

Because they believe it's fine to do that and I wanted to know if it's illegal or not.

Why would you think a forum of Apple fans would be able to give you solid advice on the legality of defrauding a company?

 

[throAU]

Illegal to purchase? Probably not. Well, not in the way that will likely see you in court and charged.

If you use it, you are however technically in breach of the license, thus from a software licensing perspective it's not much better than "stealing" it.

This is one of those things with most modern software. You don't known it. You purchase a right to use it, under the terms of the license. If you violate or otherwise do not comply with those terms, your rights to use it are revoked.

That would be illegal. Again, you'd be unlikely to ever be prosecuted, but... just because you "can" do something (like manage to purchase via an EDU discount) and get away with it, it doesn't mean it is "legitimate".

Essentially if you do the above you are buying something you are not legally entitled to run. You may as well not have purchased it - as far as the license is concerned, in both cases you are in breach of the terms.


edit:
obligatory car analogy: it's like buying a car that does not pass emissions requirements for cars, and arguing that it is fine to drive on the road because it meets the emissions standards for a truck. The circumstances for that depend on it being a truck, and it just isn't.

 

[high heaven]

Why would you think a forum of Apple fans would be able to give you solid advice on the legality of defrauding a company?

Dont tell me, tell them.

 

[Madhatter32]

I'm not offering you legal advice, but fraud, in this context, would likely be considered a a very minor technical civil violation, not a criminal violation, under the law. No one is going to put you in jail. Also, Apple is very unlikely to sue you for damages for defrauding them of 5%. So if Apple does not enforce its policy at purchase you will most certainly get away with abusing the policy with no repercussions.

Your only worry will be the damage to your own sense of morality and honesty -- if you are even concerned with such matters. Many people today choose the easy path of self indulgence and are willing to sell their self short by exploiting any available loophole or, worse, cheating or stealing whatever they can get away with -- so you'll be in good company.

 

[Abazigal]

Well, I saw people arguing about the education discount since many users buy pro apps with an education discount which is $200. Obviosuly, they weren't a student at all. But it seems Apple doesnt punish or sue them at all. Is it mortally ok or do Apple find them secretly?

My understanding is that Apple will conduct random spot checks, but I guess they cannot possibly follow up on every one of them. It’s also possible that the incidence of people abusing the education discount is so low that they are not really particular about enforcing it.

In terms of consequences, I think the most Apple will do is simply charge your credit card for the difference in price. I doubt they will actually go so far as to sue you in court. It’s just not worth their while for what - a few hundred dollars?

 

[throAU]

My understanding is that Apple will conduct random spot checks, but I guess they cannot possibly follow up on every one of them. It’s also possible that the incidence of people abusing the education discount is so low that they are not really particular about enforcing it.

In terms of consequences, I think the most Apple will do is simply charge your credit card for the difference in price. I doubt they will actually go so far as to sue you in court. It’s just not worth their while for what - a few hundred dollars?

I think its a case of several things

• not worth it from a monetary perspective
• not worth it from a PR perspective - for everyone they manage to prosecute for using something under an EDU license because they can't prove they are actually a student there will likely be some legitimate users who get accused and taken to court or whatever if they were to press this. It simply isn't worth the bad press for the risk of even a few low income students to blog about being screwed by Apple.
• not worth it from a market share growth perspective - people who learn apple products are more likely to influence others to use apple products, or take their product familiarity with them into the workplace.

That doesn't make it LEGAL, but it does make it unlikely for you to be prosecuted.

Much like the Hackintosh situation. Apple know it exists, it is technically illegal to do, and Apple could (and may at some point) come after people doing it; but as far as they are concerned at the moment it isn't worth pursuing because if the Hackintosh situation didn't exist a lot of people using macOS would not be using macOS. They'd migrate to Windows and be more likely to go MS or Android for other stuff.

So they let it slide. Even though its not legal.

Microsoft are/were the same with Windows/MS Office piracy. They're selective in who they prosecute for it.

Students? Poor people in China? Don't get touched. It helps more people know how to use windows and reinforces Windows' market share via user familiarity.

Multi-million dollar businesses who are running their entire company on pirate stuff? Watch out! Microsoft will want their cut.

 

[gnasher729]

Well, I saw people arguing about the education discount since many users buy pro apps with an education discount which is $200. Obviosuly, they weren't a student at all. But it seems Apple doesnt punish or sue them at all. Is it mortally ok or do Apple find them secretly?

If you get a discount by claiming that you are a student, and you are not, then it is fraud, which is criminal. It's up to Apple to decide if they want to spend time investigating, calling the police, and so on. Probably not worth the effort from them.

With a Hackintosh: Apple doesn't care much UNLESS you make loud claims that it is legal. They managed to get a court order against Psystar to pay $2,500 for each PC they shipped with MacOS (they didn't manage to get any money because there wasn't any).

 

[Gregg2]

Stealing, yes, and lying. Other than that, it's not a problem.

 

[gnasher729]

Multi-million dollar businesses who are running their entire company on pirate stuff? Watch out! Microsoft will want their cut.

theregister had a nice article how they found user names and passwords by looking through the shop window of a bank branch seeing an employee on their computer. Plus they noticed that the software this bank was using was only licensed for non-commercial use.

 

[theluggage]

Is it mortally ok or do Apple find them secretly?

Hmmm - I really don't think that morality and "getting caught" are two sides of the same coin...
...and do you really need to be told that telling a lie for financial gain is (a) immoral or (b) illegal?

Although, frankly, there are greater evils in the world and if you want to take the very small risk of getting caught then I'm not going to cast the first stone. The whole Pro bundle for $200 is rather tempting and ISTR some moral systems have a thing or two to say about leading people into temptation... Practically speaking, if you're using it for professional/commercial work then you should be professional and pay for what you use (both morally and risk-wise) but if it's for personal use, I doubt Apple would give a wet slap so it's down to you and your conscience.

Not at all. Not being eligible, but taking advantage of an offer is like switching price tags on items in a store.

No, it's really not. Dishonest, yes. Breach of contract? maybe (software license agreements have got so ridiculous and one-sided that they long since abandoned any moral high ground, but, hey, two wrongs don't make a right).

But... equivalent to taking physical goods without paying for them? Nope.

If a shopkeeper has 10 leather jackets and somebody steals one (or switch tags with a cheap item) then they only have 9 leather jackets left to sell. Now, you can try and contrive situations where the shopkeeper loses a full-price sale as a result (it's not like the shoplifter was ever going to pay full price) but they're out of pocket by the wholesale cost of one jacket.

For a digital sale - the marginal cost of supplying a copy are somewhere between negligible and zero. if someone obtains an illicit copy then the only significant loss is the hypothetical possibility that the recipient would otherwise have paid for it - which is a long way from certain. If they've paid any money for it then you've most likely made a profit on the transaction.

In the case of Apple's $200 Pro apps education bundle, they'll have collected an awful lot of $200s from people who, otherwise, at best would just have paid $200-$300 for one of the apps or, more likely, just made do with GarageBand and iMovie (or subscribed to Adobe CS because they didn't learn their 12x table). They're not taking any real hit and probably couldn't care less if a proportion of recipients aren't bone fide students.

That doesn't mean to say that it's not wrong to be dishonest - and unprofessional/risky for commercial use - or that large-scale organised piracy can't harm the industry - but, realistically, unless you're re-distributing illicit copies on a significant scale, it's a victimless crime (in a way that shoplifting and "oh, they'll just claim on insurance" aren't victimless)... and over-stating it as tantamount to theft has its own negative consequences (see all the copyright holders' groups using the "every single illicit copy is a lost full-price sale" fallacy to concoct ludicrous figures for 'losses' to support their lobbying for increasingly stringent copyright laws and to justify obstructive DRM).

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

Personally, I think the concept of discounts for certain groups of people is unfair. Why are discounts given to students on software and hardware? Because it's assumed they don't have a lot of money since they are paying for college? There are LOTS of non-student consumers who don't have a lot of money and pay full price, and there are affluent students with plenty of money and get the discount. Seem fair?

 

[Madhatter32]

Personally, I think the concept of discounts for certain groups of people is unfair. Why are discounts given to students on software and hardware? Because it's assumed they don't have a lot of money since they are paying for college? There are LOTS of non-student consumers who don't have a lot of money and pay full price, and there are affluent students with plenty of money and get the discount. Seem fair?

Disagree. Apple's attempt to assist students and teachers is admirable and is not even remotely unfair in my opinion. Just because a subgroup, who may not need the policy, can take advantage of it does not make the policy on a whole unfair. There also may be motivations for Apple to provide this discount other than just financial considerations. For example, I learned to use a Mac as a young student and I still use them today (many many years later). There is a lot of unfairness in our society but Apple's student discount is not an example of it.

 

[26139]

Dont tell me, tell them.

It's your post, man.
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Personally, I think the concept of discounts for certain groups of people is unfair. Why are discounts given to students on software and hardware? Because it's assumed they don't have a lot of money since they are paying for college? There are LOTS of non-student consumers who don't have a lot of money and pay full price, and there are affluent students with plenty of money and get the discount. Seem fair?

...because they want students to use Apple for the rest of their lives. It's not a charitable thing, it's a marketing decision.

 

[AZhappyjack]

Hmmm - I really don't think that morality and "getting caught" are two sides of the same coin...
...and do you really need to be told that telling a lie for financial gain is (a) immoral or (b) illegal?

Although, frankly, there are greater evils in the world and if you want to take the very small risk of getting caught then I'm not going to cast the first stone. The whole Pro bundle for $200 is rather tempting and ISTR some moral systems have a thing or two to say about leading people into temptation... Practically speaking, if you're using it for professional/commercial work then you should be professional and pay for what you use (both morally and risk-wise) but if it's for personal use, I doubt Apple would give a wet slap so it's down to you and your conscience.



No, it's really not. Dishonest, yes. Breach of contract? maybe (software license agreements have got so ridiculous and one-sided that they long since abandoned any moral high ground, but, hey, two wrongs don't make a right).

But... equivalent to taking physical goods without paying for them? Nope.

If a shopkeeper has 10 leather jackets and somebody steals one (or switch tags with a cheap item) then they only have 9 leather jackets left to sell. Now, you can try and contrive situations where the shopkeeper loses a full-price sale as a result (it's not like the shoplifter was ever going to pay full price) but they're out of pocket by the wholesale cost of one jacket.

For a digital sale - the marginal cost of supplying a copy are somewhere between negligible and zero. if someone obtains an illicit copy then the only significant loss is the hypothetical possibility that the recipient would otherwise have paid for it - which is a long way from certain. If they've paid any money for it then you've most likely made a profit on the transaction.

In the case of Apple's $200 Pro apps education bundle, they'll have collected an awful lot of $200s from people who, otherwise, at best would just have paid $200-$300 for one of the apps or, more likely, just made do with GarageBand and iMovie (or subscribed to Adobe CS because they didn't learn their 12x table). They're not taking any real hit and probably couldn't care less if a proportion of recipients aren't bone fide students.

That doesn't mean to say that it's not wrong to be dishonest - and unprofessional/risky for commercial use - or that large-scale organised piracy can't harm the industry - but, realistically, unless you're re-distributing illicit copies on a significant scale, it's a victimless crime (in a way that shoplifting and "oh, they'll just claim on insurance" aren't victimless)... and over-stating it as tantamount to theft has its own negative consequences (see all the copyright holders' groups using the "every single illicit copy is a lost full-price sale" fallacy to concoct ludicrous figures for 'losses' to support their lobbying for increasingly stringent copyright laws and to justify obstructive DRM).

It absolutely is the same thing. The pricing for all products (should) include the cost of R&D, manufacturing, production, packaging, etc. Just because a product is digital does not negate the problem of theft. The fact that a copy can be made for somewhere between negligible and zero does not affect the value of the item. It's still a lost sale to the creator/retailer.

Taking something without paying for it, or taking a discount on an item to which one is not eligible, are both stealing. As has been stated multiple times in this thread, Apple's response is negligible, but that doesn't make it any less wrong/immoral/illegal.

But, with that said, arguing that one who steals or takes a discount for which one is ineligible would probably not purchase the item at full price is a straw man argument.

 

[theluggage]

Why are discounts given to students on software and hardware?

...for the same reason that stores have special offers, sales and other promotions: someone has sat down and done the math and decided that, overall, they will make more money that way. Maybe students are seen as "influential" and will help to promote your products, maybe they buy their kit over what would otherwise be a "dead" period in the summer, or maybe its just that if Apple doesn't offer a student discount, Dell will...

As for the pro Apps bundle, 90% of students don't need FCPX and Logic Pro (even if the course is on media production it's not certain, any more than needing a concert grand piano to study music) but will grab "$700* worth" of software if they're offered it for $200 (and if you're gonna run FCPX why not go for the GPU upgrade...) If you offer the same price to everybody then you're not offering $700 worth of software for $200 any more, the magic goes away, and now all of your commercial customers are paying less...

Any sale/promotion will "discriminate" against people who live in the wrong place, needed a new computer at the wrong time, didn't get their tax refund through in time... that's part of the point of promotions - human nature is prone to the "a penny saved is a penny earned" fallacy and if someone else isn't paying full whack people don't feel that they have saved.

Fortunately, Macs aren't a necessity for human life (and if you wait, the Black Friday sale may well be better than the student discount - "discriminating" against those poor students who needed to buy their kit in September...)

FWIW, though, in the case of the "pro" Apps, it would be nice/sensible to offer "no commercial use" licenses rather than "education" licenses. That said, Logic and FCP are pretty inexpensive c.f. the competition (Apple clean up on the hardware sales...)