Just an informal survey: How many of you are actually professionals that require Photoshop for your work and have a pirated copy of Photoshop?
I keep seeing MS Office and Photoshop as the two most pirated apps on the Mac side. Of all the things I pirated, I somehow found it in me to
NOT pirate all of these pro apps and expensive apps. I have my copy of MS Office v. X on my bookshelf and Photoshop Elements from my graphics tablet. I, for one, had concerns whenever I pirated anything. I didn't go around pirating what I can without thinking what I was getting into. I knew it was wrong. Yet, I wasn't deterred for a couple of years. Good thing my sense caught up to me.
Anyways, back to my question: How many of you actually require Photoshop for your job and pirated it?
I doubt that number is high. Why? For starters, I don't see why your employer isn't paying for Photoshop or whatever pro app it is you need. Must be a pretty crappy company if they can't even provide their workers with the tools they need to get the job done. Secondly, if you're not a professional, why can't you settle for Elements or even less? we have Photoshop Academic Edition (or whatever the education version is called), I've used it, and I thought it was a great app. Instead of buying Photoshop, I bought a Wacom graphics tablet and got Photoshop Elements for free, and I can say Elements is probably much better than the regular Photoshop for my uses. Heck, some of the drawing apps that are free have been just as good.
So, I ask, why do you non-professionals need Photoshop?
You have so many alternatives that are cheap or free. I find it quite stupid to pirate Photoshop because of whatever your excuse may be, when you don't even need it.
And one last story... Microsoft really shrugs off piracy. My school had pirated copies of everything Microsoft. Office, Windows XP, etc. My computer science teacher sent some kids to go on Kazaa, download what they can, and get some serial keys!
One day, some MS reps came to our school because of our tech program. My teacher pretty much admitted we had pirated copies of all of their software. But, MS found in their hearts to give us site licenses after they heard our story. I was shocked!
It might be because we were desperate for funding and MS was able to offer education institutions freebies, but nevertheless, pretty weird.
We also had an X-Box programmer come to our computer science class (it was our teacher's former student) to talk about game development (it was a pretty crappy lecture. Got nothing new out of it). Anyhow, before class, some kids were talking to him, and he said something along the lines, "It's okay to download your games while you're in high school. But you should start buying stuff when you get into college and help us out," with a wink.
Yeah, MS's stance on piracy is pretty lax.
EDIT: One last thing: I always found it funny how some pirates really lack any financial responsibility. Look at some of the pirates, and check what kind of machines they have (some even in this thread). I often find pirates with a PowerMac G5 Dual 2.5 GHz, or pirates with a PowerBook and plethora of other Apple hardware, or some amount of hardware totaling way over $3,000. Instead of being a dimwit and blowing your cash on hardware, why don't you save those pennies, prioritize your money, and buy the software that you so sorely need? That's right. You actually need your software more than your fifth Mac or your third iPod! What a concept!
Not naming any names, but look around. It's quite funny and pathetic. Jeez, I thought I was a pathetic pirate back in the day, but the excuses you hear these days are even worse!
