[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Andy Trish

was that the bit about me being perfect Fuzz?

(sssh we are hijacking Simon's thread and you wouldn't like him when he's angry, clothes rip and he turns green! - yes you are perfect Mr Trish )

[CPLTD]

Fuzzy you nutter I dont turn green thats not me I'm the one that runs into a phone box and comes out to the rescue

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by CPLTD

Fuzzy you nutter I dont turn green thats not me I'm the one that runs into a phone box and comes out to the rescue

Wonderwoman ?


Love the Fuzzy smilie, no one has used that yet

[CPLTD]

hmmm wonderwoman does have a nice sound to it and I used to love her boots lol

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by CPLTD

hmmm wonderwoman does have a nice sound to it and I used to love her boots lol

^^^^^check you out!

[saracen]

Andy i stand corrected

I still believe there are more as yourself who have or had pirate software.

Infact, i had M$ XP Pro on my system, was a copy of a copy, which was a copy of another copy......

However, when being updated by M$ updates, it detected a blacklisted key. Everytime i booted up my comp i got this message that i couldnt remove - granted i knew where to look for a patch but that only lasted approx 1 month before it was blacklisted. I could of easily turned off M$ updates but i believe it would have made my system more vulnerable to hackers and other anomalies.

In the end i re-installed my XP Home Edition and have remained with legit software since back then. No more hassle with warning pop-ups etc etc.

[Interconnect IT]

How can Apple make money on it's OS at £80 a pop, whereas Microsoft charge triple that?

Because you have to upgrade Apple's OS far more frequently, and you pay each time. Microsoft lets you have their Service Packs for free, basically, whereas Apple don't.

Anyway, to the OP...

It's a far more complex subject than is it right or wrong to copy software or even music. Ultimately you're not taking something physical - it's intellectual. Now, is it right that people can or want to copy something? Well... why not?

That IP has value. That's for sure. It costs a lot of money to create, and quite a bit to distribute. I've been a professional developer for 20yrs now and I see it from both sides. I know that some of the worst offenders in software copying are... developers. Same applies in the music industry - musicians often have enormous ripped off MP3 collections.

But let's keep away from music ripping - that's a totally different set of problems. With software copying I actually believe that many companies have been complicit in the business of not making their code too uncrackable.

Here's how it works - imagine a student... he can't afford much image handling software, but would like to try it and play with it. He could pay £20 for something that's a bit underdeveloped... or for free he could download a cracked copy of the market leader. Well, the decision is quite simple for him - and given that he'll probably never make money anyway, he doesn't feel to bad. The market leader doesn't actually lose any money (except when trying to generate headlines) but the smaller rival does.

So the leader wins in that their software becomes the de-facto application, while it's the small firm that suffers.

So instead a smaller company has to think of other ways to make money. Think about how the open source movement has worked. People who do good stuff can and do make good money even though they give away a lot of their core IP. Where they make money instead is on additional services - support, bonus packs and so on.

We know that people will rip-off our themes club designs. But they still won't have access to support forums, get advance news of the latest themes, no patches, and so on. They lose out. They don't get to belong to a community.

And in the music industry, although cd revenues may have dropped, have you seen what's happened to live concert revenues since the MP3 era? Through the roof....

New technology requires new business models, that's all....

[CPLTD]

Hiya InterconnectIT,

Many thanks for your valuable feedback there, and yes I agree new technology requires a new business model.